Later Mughals v2.c17.s4: Sec. 101.—Decline of the Safawi Monarchy and Afghan Usurpation of Persia.
Later Mughals v2.c17.s4
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Sec. 101.—Decline of the Safawi Monarchy and Afghan Usurpation of Persia.
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The Safawi dynasty founded by Shah Ismail at the beginning of the 16th century, freed Persia from foreign rule and the wars of domineering nomad tribes. The new line of kings gave the country peace prosperity and extension of territory. The faith of the people, which had been persecuted by the former rulers as a heresy, now became the State religion. Wealth and civilization increased, and Persia again took her ancient position as one of the world's famous and independent monarchies, the rival of Turkey and Hindustan in the eyes of the Muslim world.
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For nearly a century and a half after the founder, a succession of wise warlike and active kings maintained the strength and glory of Persia. But about the middle of the 17th century began the inevitable decline in the monarchy from a continuous decline in the character of the monarch. In the words of the historian Sir John Malcolm, during the century following the death of Abbas the Great (1627), the Persian throne was occupied by "a succession of weak, cruel and debauched monarchs...... The lower orders became every day more unwarlike and...... ceased to be able to defend the State...... The nation may be said to have existed on the reputation it had acquired before." [Hist. of Persia, 2nd ed., i. 379.]
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Shah Husain, the last of the Safawi line, who reigned from 1694 to 1722, was no doubt free from vice; but he went to the opposite extreme of meekness and religious bigotry, and did still greater harm than his dissolute predecessors. He placed the administration entirely in the hands of the priests and thus alienated the old martial and official nobility. Under the advice of the keepers of his conscience the king persecuted and banished from the land the Sufi philosophers as heretics from Islamic orthodoxy, and thus enraged the intellectual classes. But the prestige of his worthier ancestors had given the State a momentum which made it continue to go on for nearly twenty years longer.
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At last early in the 18th century the dissolution came, and from the hands of its Afghan subjects. Ever since Abbas I.'s conquest of Qandahar early in the 17th century, Southern Afghanistan had been a province of Persia. It was the home of the Ghilzai and Abdali tribes. The wise statesmanship of the earlier Shahs had left the subject races of the Persian Empire under their own laws, and often under their own magistrates. The turbulent character of the Afghan people, the wildness of their country and their position on the debatable land between the rival monarchies of India and Persia, enabled them to extort for themselves a considerable amount of local independence. Their submission to the Central Government was lax and dependent on their own pleasure. In 1708, a new Persian governor of Qandahar, the converted Armenian Gurgin Khan, by trying to rule with a strong hand, caused an explosion. The Ghilzai tribe rose under Mir Wais, killed the governor, seized Qandahar and established their own rule there.
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The successful rebel's son Mahmud gained the throne of Qandahar in 1717, and led his tribe on to the plunder of the effete king and people of Persia. The Safawi Empire now broke to pieces. Mahmud captured the capital Isfahan, and on 21st October 1722 Shah Husain Safawi resigned his ancestors' throne and the Afghan rule over Persia began. Mahmud was succeeded by his uncle's son Ashraf in 1725. But new dangers threatened the conquerors. Qandahar was held by Mahmud's brother, whom Ashraf could not oust from the fort. Thus the Ghilzai tribe became divided under two chiefs reigning at two distant places. The governor of Sistan annexed nearly all Khurasan and proclaimed his independence. But Ashraf's greatest enemy was Mirza Tahmasp, the son of the deposed Shah Husain, who had assumed the royal title and was trying to establish his power in the province of Mazendran. This Prince was a foolish effeminate and debauched youth, and could not have recovered his heritage by his own efforts. But he was now joined by Nadir Quli, the greatest Asiatic general of that age. [Malcolm, i. 401-465.]