Very good question and I will try to answer it as simply as possible.
The Safavids were Iranians and they recognized that fact. They referred to themselves as the Shahanshahs of Iran. They were originally Kurdish, but claimed that they were descendants of Mohammad, and used their Turkic language to gain allies. They also used the Shia faith to separate themselves from the Ottomans and gain support throughout Iran. Infact, they were originally Sufi Muslims, a sect of Sunni Islam, yet Ismail took advantage of the fact that Shia'ism was different than Sunnism to gain power.
It was the Safavids who forced Shia Islam on the rest of Iran, which was mostly Sunni at the time. Infact, the Ottomans referred to the Safavids as the Kings of Iran or Persia (whichever term they used at certain periods, remember that people in the Near East, such as the Ottomans and Iranians, used the term Iran, which is the correct native term, where as the Europeans used the Greek term Persia), and they referred to the Safavids as descendants of the great kings of Ancient Iran such as Khosrow II.
The Azerbaijan that you refer to did not exist then, and would not exist till 1918.
The Azerbaijan that the Safavids come from is Iranian Azerbaijan, the only Azerbaijan in world history until 1918, when The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was founded in order to separate northern Iran from the rest of the country by first the Turkish nationalists of the late Ottoman Empire and a later the Soviets (Azerbaijan SSR), who wanted to spread communism throughout Iran and gain access to oil and the Persian Gulf.
The Azerbaijan that the Safavids recognized was at that time as is still today a major part of Iran (which actually stands for "Land of the Aryans" which many mistake for Nazism but actually pre-dated Nazism by over a thousand years! Iran means Aryan in the scholarly sense, but since Nazism ruined the term "Aryan", the term Iranic has been used instead, the term Iran is not a discriminatory term in any way shape or form, it historically predated whatever crazy idea's Hitler had, who simply hijacked the term)
The Republic of Azerbaijan is mainly a creation of nationalism, consisting of a Turkic speaking Azeri people, but their region historically is Arran/Albania/Russian governates (Baku governate, Elisabethpol governate, etc...)
Other than language and the Iranian culture which both the Azeri's in the Caucasus and Iran share (although the Azeri's in the Republic of Azerbaijan have a huge Turkish (Turkey) influence), they are not the same people and have different histories. For example, Arran/Albania was Christian for a really long time, while Azerbaijan (Iran) was never Christian and Iranians themselves considered them as Arrani's (in fact, when the Azerbiajan Democratic Republic was created, many Iranian Azari's complained).
The fact that Iran exists today is because the Safavids resurrected and preserved it. That alone goes to show that the Safavids considred themselves Iranians. Before them, there was not a unified Iranian dynasty that was truly Iranian, there were simply Iranified Arabic, Mongol, and Turkic dynasties (although there were some Iranian dynasty but they never managed to reconquer all of Iran). They are really the founders of modern Iran as we know it today.
Yes that is a good question, however we know for sure from at least the Sassanid period, this country has had no name except Iran, but sometimes, like these days, our religion has become more important to our government than our nationality, I think it happened in the Safavid period too, it is enough to read some texts which have been written on the Safavid coins, most of them talk about Shia imams and other religious things, whenas in the next dynasty, Afsharid kings proudly talk about Iran, for example as I mentioned in this thread, Nadir shah calls himself "Nader-e Iran-zamin" (Nadir of the land of Iran) or you can read here his grandson, Shahrukh Afshar says:
dou-bareh doulat-e Iran gereft az sar javani-ra/be-nam-e Shahrokh zad sekke-ye sahebqerani ra (meaning: “Once again the state of Iran has taken on youthful vigor/for sahebqirani coin has been struck in the name of Shahrukh”).
Yea, Thats a good point Cyrus. Back then there was no concept of nationalism. Both the Ottomans and Safavids were fighting for Islam and their religion was top priority.
The Ottomans for example, use Persian (the cultural language) and Arabic (religious language) more than Turkish and were more or less Iranian culturally. So I would say that the Safavids were fighting so that they could be the rulers of the Islamic world, not for Iranian nationalism or anything.
The fact is that in that period Persian was one of the most widespread languages of the world, not only in the large Ottoman empire but in the Mughal empire of Indian subcontinent, it was the main language of science and literature, so Persian culture couldn't be considered a priority for any of them.
As I said in another thread, if we imagine the Islamic world as a human being's body, it had Arabic tongue, Persian brain, Indian Heart and Turkish hands and feet.
What a wonderful answer, thank you! But if it's not too much hassle, can you please provide sources for your following statements?
1. They referred to themselves as the Shahanshahs of Iran.
2. themselves considered them as Arrani's (in fact, when the Azerbiajan Democratic Republic was created, many Iranian Azari's complained).
Yes, ofcourse!
1. Here are some sources regarding Shah Ismail, the founder of the Iranian Safavid Dynasty.
George Lenczowski, "Iran under the Pahlavis ", Published by Hoover
Institution Press, 1978. pg 79:
"Ismail Safavi, descendant of the pious
Shaykh Ishaq Safi al-Din (d.1334), seized Tabriz assuming the title of
Shahanshah-e-Iran".
"Stefan Sperl, C. Shackle, Nicholas Awde, "Qasida
poetry in Islamic Asia and Africa", Brill Academic Pub; Set Only
edition (February 1996). pg 193:
"Like Shah Ni'mat Allah-i Vali he
hosted distinguished visitors among them Ismail Safavi, who had
proclaimed himself Shahanshah of Iran in 1501 after having taken
Tabriz, the symbolic and political capital of Iran".
Heinz Halm, Janet
Watson, Marian Hill, "Shi'ism", Translated by Janet Watson, Marian
Hill, Edition: 2, illustrated Published by Columbia University Press,
2004. pg 80:
"..he was able to make his triumphal entry into Alvand's
capital Tabriz. Here he assumed the ancient Iranian title of King of
Kings (shahanshah) and setup up Shi'i as the ruling faith"
2. Tadeusz Swietochowski, Russia and Azerbaijan: A Borderland in Transition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. pg 69:
"Although the proclamation restricted its claim to the territory north
of the Araxes, the use of the name Azerbaijan would soon bring
objections from Iran. In Teheran, suspicions were aroused that the
Republic of Azerbaijan served as an Ottoman device for detaching the
Tabriz province from Iran. Likewise, the national revolutionary Jangali
movement in Gilan, while welcoming the independence of every Muslim
land as a "source of joy," asked in its newspaper if the choice of the
name Azerbaijan implied the new republic's desire to join Iran. If so,
they said, it should be stated clearly, otherwise Iranians would be
opposed to calling that republic Azerbaijan. Consequently, to allay
Iranian fears, the Azerbaijani government would accommodatingly use the
term Caucasian Azerbaijan in its documents for circulation abroad."
Here is a German source from 1918 about Ottoman activities in the Caucasus (German was the Ottoman Empires ally during WWI; also note that the German lieutenant is using the term Persian to refer to Iranians in general as the west at the time referred to Iran as Persia and to all Iranians as Persian):
In Persia, the fact that Turkey has selected the name ‘Azerbaijan’ for the most eastern of the three Transcaucasian republics in order to be able to construct a claim to the Persian
Azerbaijan has caused very strong ill-feelings in Persia. Agitation in
Persia is even greater, because the Persians are by no means friends of
the Tartars.
Ahmad Kasravi, one of Iran's greatest intellectuals and an Iranian Azeri:
In Kasravi's book titled "The Unknown Kings", where he expressed
surprise at the use of the name Azerbaijan to refer to Aran, writing:
"Why are our Arani brothers destroying their national history and their
past at the onset of their national life? This itself is an enormous
loss and there is no other example of such a strange deed in history"
(second printing, page 265).
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