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The Safavid were sayyids. It was previously claimed, notably by anti-Safavid polemicist Ahmad Kasravi, that in the pre-Safavid written work Safvat as-Safa, the origin of the Safavids was traced to Piruz Shah Zarin Kolah, who is therein called a Kurd from Sanjan, and that this portion was excised in the post-1501 period, and Piruz Shah made a descendant of the Imams. Due to Kasravi's work, some scholars subsequently cast doubt on the Safavid claim to prophetic descent, by repeating Kasravi's claim that the Safavids had fabricated evidence the extent that they were Sayyids after they gained power, and that pre-1501 manuscripts did not show evidence of prophetic descent .

Kazuo Morimoto, a specialist in Sayyid-studies from the University of Tokyo, has debunked these claims, proving from manuscripts on the Safavids' genealogy predating their rise to power by at least forty years, that the Safavids were already seen as descendants of the Shi'a Imams before they came to power, and that these claims seems to date back from at least the time of Safi-ad-din Ardabili, who predated the first Safavid Shah Ismail I by at least two centuries.

The oldest extant book on the genealogy of the Safavid family is Safvat as-safa and was written by Ibn Bazzaz in 1350, a disciple of Sheikh Sadr-al-Din Safavi, the son of the Sheikh Safi ad-din Ardabili. According to Ibn Bazzaz, the Sheikh was a descendant of a Kurdish man named Firooz Shah Zarrin Kolah who was from Sanjar, southeast of Diyarbakir. The male lineage of the Safavid family given by what was previously thought to be the oldest manuscript of the Safwat as-Safa is: "Sheykh Safi al-Din Abul-Fatah Ishaaq the son of Al-Sheykh Amin al-din Jebrail the son of al-Saaleh Qutb al-Din Abu Bakr the son of Salaah al-Din Rashid the son of Muhammad al-Hafiz al-Kalaam Allah the son of ‘Avaad the son of Birooz al-Kurdi al-Sanjari." Earlier, as well as later, manuscripts detail the Safavids' purported descent from the Prophet Muhammad.

The great-grandson of Sheyk Safi, Sheik Joneyd, got married with Khadijeh Khanoum sister of Uzun Hassan and daughter of Ali Beyg by his wife Theodora of Trebizond, daughter of Alexios IV of Trebizond. Heydar, son of Joneyd, married Katherina who was a daughter of Uzun Hassan by his wife Theodora, daughter of a Bagrationi Georgian princess and John IV of Trebizond.

References

1. R.M. Savory, "Safavid Persia" in: Ann Katherine Swynford Lambton, Peter Malcolm Holt, Bernard Lewis, The Cambridge History of Islam, Cambridge University Press, 1977. p. 394: "They (Safavids after the establishment of the Safavid state) fabricated evidence to prove that the Safavids were Sayyids."
2. Cite error: The named reference R.M. was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
3. F. Daftary, "Intellectual Traditions in Islam", I.B.Tauris, 2001. p. 147: "But the origins of the family of Shaykh Safi al-Din go back not to Hijaz but to Kurdistan, from where, seven generations before him, Firuz Shah Zarin-kulah had migrated to Adharbayjan"
4. Morimoto, Kazuo (2010). "The Earliest cAlid Genealogy for the Safavids: New Evidence for the Pre-dynastic Claim to Sayyid Status". Iranian Studies. 43 (4): 447–469.
5. In the Silsilat-ol-nasab-i Safawiya (composed during the reign of Shah Suleiman)(1667–1694), written by Shah Hussab ibn Abdal Zahidi, the ancestry of the Safavid is traced back to the first Shi'i Imam as follows: Shaykh Safi al-din Abul Fatah Eshaq ibn (son of) Shaykh Amin al-Din Jabrail ibn Qutb al-din ibn Salih ibn Muhammad al-Hafez ibn Awad ibn Firuz Shah Zarin Kulah ibn Majd ibn Sharafshah ibn Muhammad ibn Hasan ibn Seyyed Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn Seyyed Ja'afar ibn Seyyed Muhammad ibn Seyyed Isma'il ibn Seyyed Muhammad ibn Seyyed Ahmad 'Arabi ibn Seyyed Qasim ibn Seyyed Abul Qasim Hamzah ibn Musa al-Kazim ibn Ja'far As-Sadiq ibn Muhammad al-Baqir ibn Imam Zayn ul-'Abedin ibn Hussein ibn Ali ibn Abi Taleb Alayha as-Salam. There are differences between this and the oldest manuscript of Safwat as-Safa. Seyyeds have been added from Piruz Shah Zarin Kulah up to the first Shi'i Imam and the nisba "Al-Kurdi" has been excised. The title/name "Abu Bakr" (also the name of the first Caliph and highly regarded by Sunnis) is deleted from Qutb ad-Din's name. ُSource: Husayn ibn Abdāl Zāhidī, 17th cent. Silsilat al-nasab-i Safavīyah, nasabnāmah-'i pādishāhān bā uzmat-i Safavī, ta'līf-i Shaykh Husayn pisar-i Shaykh Abdāl Pīrzādah Zāhidī dar 'ahd-i Shāh-i Sulaymnān-i Safavī. Berlīn, Chāpkhānah-'i Īrānshahr, 1924 (1303). 116 pages. Original Persian language source of the lineage: شیخ صفی الدین ابو الفتح اسحق ابن شیخ امین الدین جبرائیل بن قطب الدین ابن صالح ابن محمد الحافظ ابن عوض ابن فیروزشاه زرین کلاه ابن محمد ابن شرفشاه ابن محمد ابن حسن ابن سید محمد ابن ابراهیم ابن سید جعفر بن سید محمد ابن سید اسمعیل بن سید محمد بن سید احمد اعرابی بن سید قاسم بن سید ابو القاسم حمزه بن موسی الکاظم ابن جعفر الصادق ابن محمد الباقر ابن امام زین العابدین بن حسین ابن علی ابن ابی طالب علیه السلام

See also

• Safavid Dynasty
• Byzantine Emperors family tree
• List of the mothers of the Safavid Shahs

• Family trees
• Hashemite people
• Safavid dynasty
• Empire of Trebizond
• Dynasty genealogy