The group of people...

The group of people, whom the Ottomans called the ‘qizilb a sh’, read-heads, were Shaykh S afi al-Din’s staunch followers, and when Sh a h Ism a ’il, himself of Turkish origin, declared his independence against the Ottomans, he was also considered to be the protector of the ‘qizilb a sh’. [^6] For the religious character of this period, see B. S. Amoretti, ‘Religion in the Timurid and Safavid Periods’, in The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. VI, pp.

610-[^655]: [^7] Said Amir Arjomand, The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Order, and Societal Change in Shi’ite Iran from the Beginning to 1890 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 112-[^9]: [^8] E. G. Browne has put this question to Mirz a Muhammad Kh a n of Qazwin, whose response, which was sent to Browne in 1911, reveals an interesting perspective on the Safavid period by a Persian man of letters.

Mirz a Muhammad identifies the root of the problem as the propagation of the exoterist Shi’ism by the Safavid rulers who ‘by reason of their political aims and strong antagonism to the Ottoman Empire, devoted the greater part of their energies to the propagation of the Shi’a [sic] doctrine and the encouragement of divines learned in its principles and laws… Now the close connection between poetry and Belles Lettres on the one hand, and Sufiism [sic] and Mysticism on the other, at any rate in Persia, is obvious, so that the extinction of one necessarily involves the extinction and destruction of the other.

Hence it was that under this dynasty learning, culture, poetry and mysticism completely deserted Persia, and the cloisters, monasteries, retreats and rest-houses [of the darwishes] were so utterly destroyed that there is now throughout the whole of Persia no name or sign of such charitable foundations, though formerly, as, for instance, in the time of Ibn Battutah, such institutions were to be found in every town, hamlet and village…there exists now not a single monastery throughout the whole of Persia, while in those parts of Turkey, such as Mesopotamia, Kurdistan and Sulaymaniyya, which did not remain under the Safawi dominion, there are many such buildings just as there were in Ibn Battuta’s days.’ The letter appears in E.

G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), Vol. IV, pp.