We’ve traced the messy patchwork of changing power alliances in the sweep of Asian land between Turkey and China. In 1500, the patchwork was as shifting as ever, although the Ottoman piece grew larger and larger. On its eastern border, the “White Sheep” (Ak Koyunlu) Turcoman alliance ruled a large swathe (including Baghdad), to the Persian border. They were a network of clan chiefs and war leaders, rather than a supreme leader. In Persia, there were regional dynasties like the Shirvanshah in Baku, and a mix of Sunni and Shi’ite tribes with shifting confederations. All this was about to change.
Ismail, the son of Sheikh Haydar, hereditary Grand Master of the Safaviya Sufi Order, was descended also from every ruling family in the region. His mother was the daughter of the White Sheep confederation leader, while her mother was descended from the Byzantine and Georgian royals. Orphaned at age 7, Ismail was raised by scholars in a rural county by the Caspian Sea, speaking Azeri Turkish and Persian.
The region of eastern Turkey, northern Persia, and Azerbaijan had a religious and military movement called the Kizilbash; the name meant “red head” and referred to a 12-gored red turban they wore—-12, to honor the Imams of the Twelver Shi’ite system. It seems to have included both Azeri Turkish and Persian tribes who were united by their Safaviya blend of Sufi mysticism and loyalty to Ali and Hussein, the first Imams driven out by the Sunni Caliphs. The Kizilbash were rejected by other Twelvers as too extreme, since they believed their ruler—the Murshid—was divine, and they initiated jihads against local Christians.
In the summer of 1500, Ismail was 12, and it was time to put him forward as the new Murshid in Erzincan, eastern Turkey. The Kizilbash tribes came to support him. The first military target was the Shirvanshah, who ruled in Baku. That army was defeated, although they allowed him to rule as a vassal. Ismail’s new realm was large enough to be a challenge to the White Sheep of eastern Turkey and western Iran, so next the White Sheep army crossed the Aras River to put down the 13 year old king. In a pitched battle, the Kizilbash forces won—of course! since the Murshid was invincible. Ismail soon added some minor kingdoms in Georgia to his territory. In 1501, he was proclaimed the Shah of Azerbaijan.
As Shah of Azerbaijan, Ismail proclaimed the Safavid Sufi Twelver faith as the official and mandatory religion of his realm. He dissolved Sunni organizations and ordered anyone unwilling to convert to Safavid Shi’ism to be executed. In 1502, he defeated the main army of the White Sheep and took over their territory, proclaiming himself Shah of Iran. Over the next eight years, he took city after city, until he had united all of Iran. In every new territory, he enforced Savavid Twelver Shi’ism with executions.
In 1507, 19 year old Ismail started replacing Kizilbash ministers with Iranian (Persian, not Turkish) ones. He felt the Kizilbash who had installed him were too powerful. Now that Iran was entirely Safavid Shi’ite, the Kizilbash were not special. Their religious identity became that of the whole nation. Ismail made no exceptions: when he conquered the territory of always-Sunni Baghdad, he smashed the tombs of the Abbasid Caliphs and some Sunni Imams. By 1510, he ruled Armenia, Iraq, Iran, eastern Turkey, parts of Georgia, Kurdistan, and the Uzbek area of Samarkand. He must have permitted historical Christians to retain their religion as dhimmis paying extra tax, while he enforced Safavid Twelver Shi’ism on Muslims.
In 1510, Shah Ismail formed a partnership with Babar, the ruler of Kabul and Herat. Babar had been born a prince in the Fergana Valley, farther north. He was a descendant of Timur (Tamerlane). He succeeded his father at age 11, but he went through a period of instability in which he would try to conquer Samarkand, while back at home in the Valley, his nobles revolted. After he regained his home and lost it again, he ended up succeeding his uncle as ruler of Kabul, which he kept. From Kabul, he added Herat, but he wasn’t content. If he couldn’t rule Samarkand, he would rule North India.
The young Shah of Iran’s partnership with Shah Babar of Kabul allowed them both to focus on modernizing their armies. Gunpowder was the nuclear warhead of the 15th century; those who could afford to buy and train artillery squads tended to win wars. The Ottoman Empire could afford it, and they were leading the arms race at that time. The Janissaries had now been gun handlers for many generations, with an array of gun sizes, from the huge bombards used against Constantinople to the most up-to-date sidearms. They are known today as the first Gunpowder Empire. But Shah Ismail and his new friend Babar could aspire to become the second and third Gunpowder Empires.
Before they could get very far in the modernizing project, the Ottomans challenged the Shah. In 1511, a pro-Safavid uprising among Ottoman subjects in eastern Turkey led the Ottoman Sultan Selim, son of Bayezid II, to move against Ismail. In 1514, the Ottoman and Safavid forces fought the first battle of what became a 40-year power struggle over eastern Turkey and Mesopotamia.
In the Battle of Çaldiran, the Shah’s forces lost badly to the gun-firing Ottomans. The Persian horses were not trained to hear gunshots, so they panicked badly, contributing to the loss. Ismail was wounded, and his wives were captured. The Safavid Shi’ites were shocked to see their Murshid actually lose a battle, and probably Ismail himself was shocked and demoralized, having been raised to see his victory as inevitable.
Sultan Selim entered Tabriz, Ismail’s capital, in triumph. He could have smashed and ended the Safavid project, but he received word of an uprising in Ottoman lands, so he retreated as quickly as possible. As we know from Egypt’s history, Selim conquered Mamluk Egypt instead of Iran. The ten remaining years of Shah Ismail’s reign were spent investing in gunpowder. Ismail built up a trained musket corps that may have numbered as much as 20,000. Ismail’s son, Tahmasp, took over an increasingly strong empire. In 1555, the Ottoman and Iranian Empires signed a treaty defining their border, ending a long-running war.
In parallel, during the same period, Shah Babar of Kabul hired an Ottoman general to teach his army how to use guns. They trained in using matchlock guns in the field, not just artillery in sieges. The common enemy of the two Shahs was the more primitive tribe of Uzbeks. Their new firepower pushed the Uzbeks right back. But Babar wanted to spread out in a direction that would not bring him into more conflict with Uzbeks, so he moved south.
In 1519, he crossed into what’s now Pakistan. As the third Gunpowder Empire, he had a clear advantage over every army he met. He defeated the Sultan of Delhi (a fellow Muslim) in 1526, which is considered the official founding of the Mughal Empire. At the Battle of Khanwa in 1527, Babar’s army of 10,000 faced a unified army of 100,000 from all of the kingdoms of the Rajput Confederacy. Outnumbered 10 to 1, Babar’s musket-firing soldiers still won. The next year, at the Battle of Chanderi, the Hindus chose mass suicide inside the fortress over another defeat. And so when Babar died in 1530, he ruled Afghanistan and North India.
The Gunpowder Empires transition our narrative to the modern world, decisively ending the Middle Ages.