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Extra info for Persia in crisis : Safavid decline and the fall of Isfahan
Example text
Well into the twentieth century concentrated power faced formidable obstacles, with a harsh natural environment, causing communication to be slow and difficult, in first place. Iran’s heartland, the plateau, is made up of vast stretches of semi-desert and piedmont terrain flanked by formidable mountain ranges—a saucer, Chahriyar Adle calls it. 13 The western Zagros range constituted a natural barrier against attack from the Mesopotamian alluvial lowlands, but the same mountains also impeded access from the country’s heartland to Kurdistan and Luristan, in addition to weakening the hold of the central state over ultramontane `Arabistan (modern Khuzistan), and making lasting control over Iraq nearly impossible.
Chapter 2 discusses this process for the period from the accession of Shah Safi in 1629 until 1666, the year of Shah `Abbas II’s death. Chapter 3 considers the reign of Shah Sulayman, the period from 1666 to 1694. It will be seen that, though it was strictly hierarchical in theory, the Safavid political order in practice was flexible and fluid. Individual players and the ethnic or status groups they belonged to or formed sought to maximize and solidify their interests in temporary alliances with others, leading to the creation and maintenance of formal and informal networks of power and influence.
Late Safavid Iran nevertheless was a contiguous territorial entity or at least comprised a clearly defined core territory. ” The land thus named had long remained fragmented, until the Safavids united its eastern and western halves. 60 As noted, Iran was multilingual; as they do today, the country’s inhabitants spoke a number of different languages, from Persian and Kurdish to Turkish and Arabic. While Safavid shahs usually conversed in Azeri Turkish, Persian was the mother tongue of the country’s urban elite and the core political and administrative language of the entire realm.