Safavid Traditions after the Empire

The fall of Isfahan, the Safavid capital in central Iran, in 1722 shattered Safavid rule; the dynasty’s kingship ended in 1736, when Nader Shah took the throne. The overthrow of the dynasty did not end the Shiite institutions, scholarly debates or buildings that its rulers had supported. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, new rulers, jurists and teachers redirected that inheritance. The Qajars, a later Iranian dynasty that took power in 1796, became important patrons in this changing religious and intellectual landscape.

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Nader Shah’s religious program

At his accession in 1736, Nader Shah proposed that Twelver Shiism, which recognizes twelve Imams as spiritual leaders, be accepted as the Jaʿfari legal school. Named for the sixth Imam, Jaʿfar al-Sadiq, it would join the four Sunni schools of law. Sunni Islam is the other major branch of Islam. Nader called on Shiites to stop ritual cursing of the first three caliphs, early rulers of the Muslim community, while Sunni scholars would stop treating Shiites as unbelievers. At a meeting in Najaf in 1743, Sunni and Shiite scholars undertook these points. The Ottomans rejected Nader’s bid for recognition, and his religious program ended with his death in 1747.

This plan served Nader’s statecraft as well as religious discussion. He ruled a multi-sectarian army and sought to reduce conflict with Ottoman neighbors. His government also suspended the Safavid system of waqf endowments, property or revenue dedicated to religious institutions. Scholars had relied on this income, and Nader ordered the foundations resumed only in the last year of his reign. The change helps explain why learning and patronage increasingly centered on Iraq’s shrine cities after Safavid rule.

Karbala and the authority of jurists

Persian scholars moved to the Iraqi shrine cities after the Safavid collapse and the turmoil that followed. Karbala became a major center of study as pilgrimage grew and the city secured a more reliable water supply. An Ottoman governor stabilized the canal bringing water from the Euphrates; the improved supply and growing pilgrim traffic together supported the city’s scholarly life. The Akhbari school of Shiite law regained prominence in Karbala from the 1730s. Its prominent leader there was Shaikh Yusuf Bahrani. Akhbaris relied chiefly on transmitted reports about the Prophet and Imams when resolving legal questions. Their opponents, the Usulis, argued that qualified jurists could use ijtihad, disciplined reasoning from Islamic legal sources, to address problems not settled by a direct report.

The jurist Muhammad-Baqer Behbahani, born in Isfahan in central Iran, carried the dispute into this shrine-city setting. As a young man he studied with Akhbari teachers; during decades in Behbahan, a town in southwestern Iran, he adopted the Usuli position. After returning to Iraq, he challenged Bahrani through debate and written works. One of his books answered Astarabadi’s influential Akhbari treatise. Behbahani also built a circle of students and lay supporters. By the end of his career, Usuli jurists had displaced Akhbari dominance in Karbala and become the prevailing authority in Twelver Shiism. Behbahani’s challenge to Akhbarism became especially prominent in the 1760s.

This arrangement gave trained scholars a larger public role. A believer without the qualifications for ijtihad was expected to follow a qualified jurist’s rulings, a practice called taqlid. Qajar rulers inherited a society in which scholars could guide ordinary religious decisions and address new public questions. Fatḥ-Ali Shah, who ruled from 1797 to 1834, sought scholars’ favor by publicly presenting himself as subordinate to them and patronizing shrines, especially at Qom.

Safavid philosophy in Qajar books and teaching

The philosophical writings of the Safavid-era thinker Mulla Sadra also found later readers. His major work, The Four Intellectual Journeys, joined Shiite theology with questions about existence, creation, the soul and knowledge. In Qajar Iran, the teacher Molla Hadi Sabzavari revived Sadra’s teaching. A Tehran edition of Sadra’s book appeared in 1865, giving readers a printed text to study alongside a renewed teaching tradition. Scholars thus carried the work forward through both reading and interpretation under a different dynasty.

A palace put to new uses

Buildings, too, acquired later functions. In Isfahan, Chehel Sotun was completed in 1647 as a Safavid palace for court ceremonies and audiences. Under the Qajars, Prince Zell-e Soltan used part of the palace as a workshop for his tentmakers. Jane Dieulafoy observed the workshop in 1881; about a decade later the prince held daily audiences in the garden palace again. Its halls and garden served Qajar artisans and court visitors in turn.

For a wider account of the dynasty and its society, see Safavid History and Society.