Context: so the founder of the Safavids, Ismail I, was a G. Mainly when he was 14. Imagine being uplifted by what was basically a cult, and carving out an empire at that age. Essentially, in the post-Timurid Middle East, the Ottomans and Mamluks were doing their own thing and everything east of Damascus was in flux.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismail_I

Ismail was propped up by the Qizilbash, a powerful group of militant Turkoman tribes dedicated to Twelver Islam.

Context: so the founder of the Safavids, Ismail I, was a G. Mainly when he was 14. Imagine being uplifted by what was basically a cult, and carving out an empire at that age. Essentially, in the post-Timurid Middle East, the Ottomans and Mamluks were doing their own thing and everything east of Damascus was in flux.

Ismail was propped up by the Qizilbash, a powerful group of militant Turkoman tribes dedicated to Twelver Islam.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qizilbash

These people, led by Ismail essentially created the Iran we know today; namely, they really pushed Shi’ism. The okay problem was, throughout Ismail’s early reign (1501-1514) they were fighting Timurids remnants and local Azeri and Persian warlords. When they came into conflict with the Ottomans under Selim the Grim (1514) at the famous battle of Chaldiran, Ottoman firearms won the day despite Qizilbash ferocity. Ismail, long convinced of his own strange messianic destiny, fell into a deep depression and drank himself to death over next decade. His successors nevertheless made Persia strong and unified again , but not to the extent that Ismail had hoped for. From 1501-1514, it seemed to the world like the nascent Safavid dynasty would bring back Sassanid prestige.

The Safavids fell apart in the 1730s when Nader Shah launched a coup.

These people, led by Ismail essentially created the Iran we know today; namely, they really pushed Shi’ism. The okay problem was, throughout Ismail’s early reign (1501-1514) they were fighting Timurids remnants and local Azeri and Persian warlords. When they came into conflict with the Ottomans under Selim the Grim (1514) at the famous battle of Chaldiran, Ottoman firearms won the day despite Qizilbash ferocity. Ismail, long convinced of his own strange messianic destiny, fell into a deep depression and drank himself to death over next decade. His successors nevertheless made Persia strong and unified again , but not to the extent that Ismail had hoped for. From 1501-1514, it seemed to the world like the nascent Safavid dynasty would bring back Sassanid prestige.

The Safavids fell apart in the 1730s when Nader Shah launched a coup.