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Religion in Safavid Persia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Hossein Nasr
Hossein Nasr*
Affiliation:
Aryamehr University, Tehran
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Extract

The Safavid period marks a definite turning point in the history of Persia and the beginning of a new phase in the history of Islam in that country. Yet, despite its distinct character and the break it seems to display with respect to the centuries preceeding it, there is definitely a long religions and intellectual history which prepared the ground for the sudden establishment of a Shiᶜite order in Persia and the transformation of the country into a predominantly Shiᶜite area. There are several centuries of growth of Shiᶜite theology and jurisprudence, the development of Sufi orders with Shiᶜite tendencies and the establishment of Shiᶜite political power--albeit of a transient character--all preceeding the Safavid period.

As far as Shiᶜite thought is concerned, the advent of the Mongols and the destruction of the major centers of Sunni political power in Western Asia enabled Shiᶜism to flower in Persia more than ever before, culminating in the establishment of Shiᶜism as state religion for a brief period under Sulṭān Muḥammad Khudābandah.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 1-2: Studies on Isfahan: Proceedings of the Isfahan Colloquium, Part I , Spring Winter 1974 , pp. 271 - 286
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1974

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References

Notes

1. Of course if one remembers that much of present day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Baluchistan, Caucasia and Central Asia was part of Persia at that time, it becomes clear that all of Persia did not become Shiᶜite and that the solidly shiᶜite part came mostly within what is today Persia.

2. See Mazzaoui, M., “Shiᶜism in the Medieval Safavid and Qājār Periods: A Study in Ithnāᶜasharī Continuity,” Iran: Continuity and Variety (New York: 1971), pp. 39ffGoogle Scholar.

3. See Nasr, S.H., “Spiritual Movements, Philosophy and Theology in the Safavid Period,” first part, Cambridge History of Iran, vol. VI (in press).Google Scholar

4. See H. Corbin's prolegomena to Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmulī, Jāmiᶜ al-asrār wa manbaᶜ al-anwār, ed. by Corbin, H. and Yahya, O. (Tehran-Paris: 1969)Google Scholar; also Antes, P., Zur Theologie der Schiᶜa, Ein Untersuchung der Ǧamiᶜ al-asrār wa manbaᶜ al-anwār von Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmolī (Freiburg: 1971).Google Scholar

5. See Nasr, S.H., “Shiᶜism and Sufism,” in his Sufi Essays (London: 1972)Google Scholar; also al-Shaybi, K., al-Ṣilah bayn al-taṣawwuf wa'l-tashayyuᶜ, 2 vols. (Baghdad: 1963-64)Google Scholar; also Corbin, H., En Islam iranien, vol. IV (Paris: 1972), livre IV.Google Scholar

6. See Molé, M., “Les Kubrawiya entre Sunnisme et Schiisme aux huitième et neuvième siècles de l'Hégire,” Revue des Etudes Islamiques, XXIX (1961), pp. 61–142.Google Scholar

7. On the background of the Safavid movement see Glassen, E., Die Frühen Safaviden nach Qāzī Ahmad Qumī (Freiburg: 1968), pp. 86–96.Google Scholar On the exploits of Shaikh Ḥaydar, the rise of the Qizil-bash and the religious wars leading to the establishment of Safavid rule, see Minorsky, V., Persia in A.D. 1478-1490 (London: 1957), pp. 61ff.Google Scholar

8. See Mazzaoui, M., The Origins of the Safavids,Shiᶜism, Ṣūfism and the Ġulāt (Weisbaden: 1972)Google Scholar, chapter III.

9. On the spiritual significance of the art and architecture of this period see Ardalan, N. and Bakhtiyar, L., The Sense of Unity, The Sufi Tradition in Persian Architecture (Chicago: 1973)Google Scholar, including the introduction by S.H. Nasr.

10. This, for example, is the view of Sayyid Muḥammad KāzimᶜAṣṣar, one of the leading mujtahids and ḥakīms of present day Persia.

11. Arabic has of course always been the primary language of the Islamic sciences in Persia as in the Arab world itself. But a relatively large number of works has also been composed in Persian in the fields of Quranic commentary, philosophy and the like from the fourth Islamic century onward. It is this type of writing which decreased in number in the Safavid period relative to the periods before and after. There is for example no major Quranic commentary in Persian at this time of the dimensions of Kashf alasrār of Mībudī, and Mullā Ṣadrā wrote only one philosophical work in Persian compared with the many Persian writings of Ṣuhravardi and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī.

12. Debates between Sunni and Shiᶜite authorities became in fact much more pronounced than before as a result of the political identification of the first with the Ottomans and the second with the Safavids. See Eberhard, E., Osmanische Polemik gegen die Safawiden im 16. Jahrhundert nach arabischen Handschriften (Freiburg: 1970).Google Scholar

13. For the meaning of various Shiᶜite practices, see Nasr, S.H., “Ithnāᶜasharī Shiᶜism and Iranian Islam” in Arberry, A.J., ed., Religion in the Middle East, vol. 2 (Cambridge: 1969), pp. 96–118.Google Scholar

14. Concerning the ᶜulamā’ of this period, chapter VIII of Browne, E.G., A Literary History of Persia, vol. IV (Cambridge: 1959)Google Scholar on mujtahids and mullās is still valuable. As for first hand sources on biographies of the ᶜulamā’ of this period, such works as Rawḍāt al-jannāt, Majālis al-mu'minīn, Kashf al-ḥujub wa'l astār, Nujūm al-samā’ and Mustadrak al-wasā'il may be mentioned.

15. See Tadhkirat al-mulūk, part one, ed. by Dabīrsiyāqī, M.(Tehran: 1332 A.H. solar), pp. 1–4.Google Scholar

16. Concerning this hierarchy of functions, see the perceptive description of the seventeenth century traveller to Persia Kaempfer, E., Amoenitatem exoticarum, politico-physico medicarum fasciculi V, quibus continentur variae relationes, observationes & descriptiones rerum Persicarum & ulterioris Asiae… (Lemgovia: 1712), pp. 98ffGoogle Scholar, Relatio VIII, Antistites spirituales, Aedificia sacra. Parts of the traveloque concerning Persia have been rendered into German by Hinz, W. as Am Hofe des persischen Grosskönigs (Leipzig: 1940), pp. 97ffGoogle Scholar. There is also a fine Persian translation based on Hinz by Jahāndārī, K., Dar darbār-i shāhan shāh-i Īrān (Tehran: 1350 A.H. solar).Google Scholar

17. On the class of mujtahids and their importance in Shiᶜite society see Algar, H., Religion and State in Iran 1785-1906 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lambton, A.K., “A Reconsideration of the Position of the Marjaᶜ al-Taqlīd and the Religious Institution,” Studia Islamica, vol. XX (1964), pp. 115–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. On the meaning of marjaᶜ-i taqlīd, seeᶜAllāmah Ṭabāṭābā'i et al., Marjaᶜiyyat wa rūḥāniyyat (Tehran: 1341 A.H. solar).Google Scholar

19. On Ṣuhravardī see Corbin, H., En Islam iranien (Paris: 1971), vol. IIGoogle Scholar; Nasr, S.H., Three Muslim Sages (Cambridge: 1964)Google Scholar, chapter II. As for Ibn Turkah see Corbin, op. cit., vol. III (Paris: 1972), pp. 233ff.

20. On the relation between ḥikmat-i ilāhī and Islamic theology, see Nasr, S.H., “al-Ḥikmat al-ilāhiyyah and kalām,” Studia Islamica, vol. XXXIV (1971), pp. 139–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. See Nasr, S.H., “The School of Isfahan,” in Sharif, M.M., A History of Muslim Philosophy, vol. II (Wiesbaden: 1966), pp. 904–932Google Scholar; and Corbin, En Islam iranien, vol. IV (Paris: 1972), livre V.Google Scholar

22. At last Mullā Ṣadrā is beginning to gain the recognition he deserves in the West. Concerning this remarkable figure see H. Corbin's introduction to his own edition of Mullā Ṣadrā's Kitāb al-mashāᶜir (Le livre des pénétrations métaphysiques) (Tehran: 1964)Google Scholar; Corbin, En Islam iranien, vol. IV, chapitre II; Nasr, S.H., “Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī,” in Sharif, (ed.), A History of Muslim Philosophy, vol. II, pp. 932–961.Google Scholar We are presently completing a book on Mullā Ṣadrā entitled Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī and His Transcendent Theosophy which we hope will appear shortly.

23. For a bibliography of Mullā Ṣadrā see our bibliographical study in chapter two of our forthcoming book on him.

24. The immense richness of the intellectual life of the Safavid period as far as ḥikmat-i ilāhī is concerned is beginning to reveal itself through current research especially the anthology of the writings of the philosophers of this and later periods in Persia being prepared by S.J. Āshtiyānī and H. Corbin, two of whose five projected volumes have already appeared. See S.J. Āshtiyānī and Corbin, H., Anthologie des philosophes iraniens (Tehran-Paris: 1972).Google Scholar

25. See the introduction to al-Tuḥfat al-ᶜabbāsiyyah (Shiraz: 1336 A.H. solar).Google Scholar

26. It is remarkable that despite the very extensive activity of Sufism during the Safavid period, there are very few written sources to go by and one must rely mostly on oral traditions that have survived within the existing sufi orders.

27. It is of great interest that Mullā Ṣadrā wrote his Sih aṣl, ed. by S.H. Nasr (Tehran: 1340 A.H. solar) to refute exoteric authorities who did not understand esotericism and the Kasr al-aṣnām al-jāhiliyyah, ed. by Daneshpazhuh, M.T. (Tehran: 1340 A.H. solar)Google Scholar, to refute those who “pretended to be Sufis.” There was definitely a decayed form of pseudo-Sufism often cut off from the sharīᶜah at that time which incited the rather violent and excessive reaction of exoteric authorities at the end of the Safavid period.

28. See Sarrah, M., Traités des compagnons-chevaliers, introduction, analytique par Henry Corbin (Tehran-Paris: 1973)Google Scholar; also Tuḥfat al-ikhwān, ed. by Dāmādī, M. (Tehran: 1351 A.H. solar).Google Scholar