The Safavids, Empire and Culture

This lecture is on the Safavids, a Sufi order turned imperial dynasty that ruled for over two centuries and converted the majority of its subjects to Shi'i Islam, fundamentally transforming the Middle East.

This lecture was delivered by Dr M.A.H. Parsa at the University of St Andrews on 27 March 2025 as part of the "Introduction to Middle Eastern History" module MH2002.

#safavid
#islamichistory
#iran

0:00 Introduction
1:07 Sufi origins
2:01 Safavid cosmogony
3:44 Safavid lineage and genealogy
5:47 "I am the Divine Truth"
10:56 Ismail's universalist ideology
15:38 Safavids as neither Kurdish nor Turkish
19:35 Empire of the Qizilbash (Red Caps)
22:11 Emergence of Iran in Safavid ideology
24:31 What did "Iranian" culture mean?
31:10 Iranian statehood and Shi'a Islam
36:11 Safavid administration
41:37 Georgians and Armenians
45:58 Isfahan as cosmopolitan empire