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| 1524–37 |
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| War with the Uzbeks, who launched as many as five major invasions of Khurasan with the intent of retaking the area. The Safavids succeeded in repelling the invaders. | 1 |
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| c. 1537 |
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| The exquisite miniatures illustrating the Houghton version of the Iranian national epic known as the Shah-nama (Book of Kings) were painted at the request of Shah Tahmasp. The work was presented by the Safavid ruler to the Ottoman sultan Selim II in 1568. | 2 |
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| 1545 |
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| Safavid capture of Qandahar from the Mughal Empire. | 3 |
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| 1548 |
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| The Safavid capital was moved to Qazvin, following the temporary capture of Tabriz by the Ottomans. Despite periodic wars between them, Iran and the Ottoman Empire maintained an extensive trade, especially in the highly prized Iranian silk. Until the early decades of the 18th century, large quantities of silk were shipped from Iran to commercial centers such as Aleppo and Bursa and from there distributed in the region and reexported to Marseilles, London, and Venice. | 4 |
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| 1576–77 |
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| SHAH ISMA’IL II. This son of Tahmasp was brought to power by a Qizilbash faction interested in a prince whose mother was Turkoman rather than Circassian or Georgian. His short reign was marked by brutality and a pro-Sunni policy. He was poisoned in Nov. 1577 with the connivance of his sister Pari Khan Khanum. | 5 |
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| 1578–87 |
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| SULTAN MUHAMMAD SHAH. The only surviving brother of Isma‘il II, Sultan Muhammad (Muhammad Khudabanda before his accession) proved a weak leader. He was dominated initially by his wife Mahd-i Ulya, and after her assassination in 1579 the Qizilbash took control. There was much factional feuding in the country until a revolt by Qizilbash leaders finally removed him from power and installed his son Abbas as shah. | 6 |
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| 1578–90 |
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| War with the Ottomans, who took advantage of Iran's political turmoil to launch a major invasion of the country. The Safavids lost extensive territories, including most of Azerbaijan (with Tabriz) and Georgia. | 7 |
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| 1587 |
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| Death of Muhtasham of Kashan, a poet famed for his panegyrics of the 12 imams. His elegies in the service of the faith (marasi) were praised by Shah Tahmasp, who had once rebuked him for dabbling in secular verse. Many important Safavid poets left Iran for the more supportive and less strictly religious environment of the Mughal court of India. Not all poets wrote in Persian during the 16th century. Many like Habib (d. 1514), the poet laureate of Shah Isma‘il, wrote in the Azeri Turkish dialect spoken by the Safavids and their Qizilbash entourage. | 8 |
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| 1588–1629 |
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| SHAH ABBAS I. The reign of Abbas marked the apogee of the Safavid state. Abbas drove the Ottomans and Uzbeks out of the vast territories they had conquered after 1576 and checked the Qizilbash factional strife that was threatening to fragment the country. He introduced bold reforms in the military, administrative, and fiscal structures that helped centralize state authority to a degree not achieved by his predecessors. One of his innovations, however, weakened the Safavid state in the long run: fear of revolts by his sons led him to abandon the traditional practice of employing the princes to govern provinces, leaving them instead in confinement in the harem. The new practice, followed also by his successors, resulted in ill-educated shahs of lower caliber. Shah Abbas also founded a carpet factory in Isfahan. Royal patronage and the influence of court designers assured that Persian carpets reached their zenith in elegance during the Safavid period. | 9 |
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| 1588 |
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| INTRODUCTION OF A SLAVE ARMY. Abbas began right away to build a new corps based on Georgian and Circassian slaves (ghulam, or qullar). They formed the core of a standing army intended to reduce the shah's dependence on the Qizilbash chiefs for levies of fighting men in times of need. To finance the new army, Abbas converted large tracts of land traditionally granted to tribal chiefs as assignments (mamalik) into crown lands (khassa) that he taxed directly. This strengthened his authority in the provinces at the expense of the Qizilbash, although the rapacious practices of the shah's tax collectors tended to undermine the prosperity of agriculture. Under Abbas, ghulams rose to high positions, such as provincial governors, which also weakened the influence of the Qizilbash. | 10 |
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| 1591 |
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| Loss of Qandahar to the Mughals. It was recovered by the Safavids in 1622. | 11 |
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| 1598 |
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| The Safavids defeated the Uzbeks and recovered Herat and territories in Khurasan, including Mashhad, lost several years earlier. The shah rebuilt the shrine of the eighth Shi’ite imam Ali al-Rida in Mashhad, which was damaged by the Uzbeks. The shrine became a major center for Shi’ite pilgrimage. | 12 |
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