To his Christian subjects he was a kind and tolerant ruler. The establishment of internal tranquillity, the expulsion of interlopers and marauders like Turks and Uzbegs, the introduction of salutary laws and the promotion of public works of utility—these alone would render remarkable his two-score years of enlightened government. With a fine face, “of which the most remarkable features were a high nose and a keen and piercing eye,”[1] he is said to have been below the middle height, robust, active, a sportsman, and capable of much endurance. It is, however, to be regretted that this monarch’s memory is tarnished by more than one dark deed. The murder of his eldest son, Ṣufi Mirza, and the cruel treatment of the two younger brothers, were stains which could not be obliterated by an after-repentance. All that can be now said or done in the matter is to repeat the testimony of historians that his grief for the loss of Ṣufi Mirza was profound, and that, on his deathbed, he nominated that prince’s son (his own grandson) his successor.
Sam Mirza was seventeen years of age when the nobles, in fulfilment of the charge committed to them, proclaimed him king under the title of Shah Ṣufi. He reigned fourteen years, and his reign was a succession of barbarities, which can only be attributed to an evil disposition acted upon by an education void of all civilizing influences. When Shah Ṣufi. left to his own devices he became a drunkard and a murderer, and is accused of the death of his mother, sister and favourite queen. Among many other sufferers Imam Kuli Khan, conqueror of Lar and Hormuz, the son of one of ʽAbbas’s most famous generals, founder of a college at Shiraz, and otherwise a public benefactor, fell a victim to his savage cruelty. During his reign the Uzbegs were driven back from Khorasan, and a rebellion was suppressed in Gilan; but Kandahar was again handed over to the Moguls of Delhi, and Bagdad retaken from Persia by Sultan Murad—both serious national losses. Tavernier, without charging the shah with injustice to Christians, mentions the circumstance that “the first and only European ever publicly executed in Persia was in his reign.” He was a watchmaker named Rodolph Stadler, who had slain a Persian on suspicion of intrigue with his wife. Offered his life if he became a Moslem, he resolutely declined the proposal, and was decapitated. His tomb is to be recognized at Isfahan by the words “Cy git Rodolphe” on a long wide slab. Shah Ṣufi died (1641) at Kashan and was buried at Kum.
His son, ʽAbbas II., succeeded him. Beyond regaining Kandahar, an operation which he is said to have directed in person when barely sixteen, there is not much to mark his life to the outer world. As to foreign relations, he received embassies from Europe and a deputation from the French East India Company; he sought to conciliate ʽAbbas II. the Uzbegs by treating their refugee chiefs with unusual honour and sumptuous hospitality; he kept on good terms with Turkey; he forgave the hostility of a Georgian prince when brought to him a captive; and he was tolerant to all religions—always regarding Christians with especial favour. But he was a drunkard and a debauchee, and chroniclers are divided in opinion as to whether he died from the effects of drink or licentious living. That he changed the system of blinding his relatives from passing a hot metal over the open eye to an extraction of the whole pupil is indicative of gross brutality. ʽAbbas II. died (1668) at the age of thirty-eight, after a reign of twenty-seven years, and was buried at Kum in the same mosque as his father.
ʽAbbas was succeeded by his son, Shah Ṣufi II., crowned a second time under the name of Shah Suleiman. Though weak, dissolute and cruel, Suleiman is not without his panegyrists. Chardin, whose testimony is all the more valuable from the fact that he was contemporary with him, relates many stories characteristic of his temper and habits. Suleiman. He kept up a court at Isfahan which surprised and delighted his foreign visitors, among whom were ambassadors from European states; and one learned writer, Kaempfer, credits him with wisdom and good policy. During his reign Khorasan was invaded by the ever-encroaching Uzbegs, the Kipchak Tatars plundered the shores of the Caspian, and the island of Kishm was taken by the Dutch; but the kingdom suffered otherwise no material loss. He died in 1604, in the forty-ninth year of his age and twenty-sixth of his reign.
About a year before his death, he is described by Sanson,[2] a missionary from the French king Louis XIV., as tall, strong and active, “a fine prince—a little too effeminate for a monarch,” with “a Roman nose very well proportioned to other parts,” very large blue eyes, and “a midling mouth, a beard painted black, shav’d round, and well turn’d, even to his ears.” The same writer greatly praises him for his kindness to Christian missionaries.
Krusinski’s memoir is full of particulars regarding Shah Ḥosain, the successor of Suleiman. He had an elder and a younger brother, sons of the same mother, but the eldest had been put to death by his father’s orders, and the youngest secreted by maternal precaution lest a similar fate should overtake him. There was, however, a second Ḥosain. candidate for power in the person of a half-brother, ʽAbbas. The latter prince was the worthier of the throne, but the other better suited the policy of the eunuchs and those noblemen who had the right of election. Indeed Suleiman himself is reported to have told the grandees around him, in his last days, that “if they were for a martial king that would always keep his foot in the stirrup they ought to choose Mirza ʽAbbas, but that if they wished for a peaceable reign and a pacific king they ought to fix their eyes upon Ḥosain.” But he himself made no definite choice.
Ḥosain was selected, as might have been anticipated. On his accession (1694) he displayed his attachment to religious observances by prohibiting the use of wine—causing all wine-vessels to be brought out of the royal cellars and destroyed, and forbidding the Armenians to sell any more of their stock in Isfahan. The shah’s grandmother, by feigning herself sick and dependent upon wine only for cure, obtained reversal of the edict. For the following account of Shah Ḥosain and his successors to the accession of Nadir Shah, Sir Clements Markham’s account has been mainly utilized.
The new king soon fell under the influence of mullahs, and was led so far to forget his own origin as to persecute the Sufis. Though good-hearted he was weak and licentious; and once out of the hands of the fanatical party he became ensnared by women and entangled in harem intrigues. For twenty years a profound peace prevailed throughout the empire, but it was the precursor of a terrible storm destined to destroy the Safawid dynasty and scatter calamity broadcast over Persia. In the mountainous districts of Kandahar and Kabul the hardy tribes of Afghans had for centuries led a wild and almost independent life. They were divided into two great branches—the Ghilzais of Ghazni and Kabul and the Saduzais of Kandahar and Herat. In 1702 a newly-appointed governor, one Shah Nawaz, called Gurji Khan from having been “wali” or ruler of Georgia, arrived at Kandahar with a tolerably large force. He was a clever and energetic man, and had been instructed to take severe measures with the Afghans, some of whom were suspected of intriguing to restore the city to the Delhi emperor. At this time Kandahar had been for sixty years uninterruptedly in the shah’s possession. The governor appears to have given great offence by the harshness of his proceedings, and a Ghilzai chief named Mir Waʽiẓ, who had complained of his tyranny, was sent a prisoner to Isfahan. This person had much ability and no little cunning. He was permitted to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca, and on his return in 1708 he so gained upon the confidence of the Persian court that he was allowed to go back to his country. At Kandahar he planned a conspiracy against the government, slew Gurji Khan and his retinue, seized the city, defeated two Persian armies sent against him, and died a natural death in 1715. His brother, Mir ʽAbdallah, succeeded him in the government of the Afghans; but after a few months, Mahmud, a son of Mir Waʽiẓ, a very young man, murdered his uncle and assumed the title of a sovereign prince.
In the meanwhile the Saduzai tribe revolted at Herat, and declared itself independent in 1717; the Kurds overran the country round Hamadan; the Uzbegs desolated Khorasan; and the Arabs of Muscat seized the island of Bahrein and threatened Bander Abbasi. Thus surrounded by dangers on all sides the wretched shah was bewildered. He made one vain attempt to regain his possessions in the Persian
