Subscriber Essay: Safavid Shah Ismail I (1501-1524)

In our previous look at the Safavids we got up to the point where Ismail, the leader of the Safaviyah Sufi order, was crowned Shah Ismail of Azerbaijan by his Qizilbash army. Ismail's rise to power was a world-altering event, inasmuch as the kingdom he founded would be the forerunner of modern Iran, and his decision to convert, by whatever means necessa…