115\. The Great Conversion: How Iran became Shia
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Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. Me, William Durumple. I'm having that moment again where I'm seeing double, William. I'm going to see two of you. And that can only mean we are once again joined by William's utter, complete and bafflingly similar looking doppelganger, Barnabas.

Barnaby! Barnaby Rogerson is back with us. Hi Barnaby, how are you? Very well. Thank you for getting me back. No, we're delighted. Now look, we have you back Barnaby because you have very conveniently, we'd like to thank you for it, brought out a very timely book for this Empire podcast season, The House Divided, Sunni, Shia and the Making of the Middle East. Congratulations first of all on this brilliant, brilliant book. Out this week.

Well, thank you. It's been a labour of love. I've been working on it for the last 50 years, I think. And your beloved wife cut it in half. Cut it in the third. A third they lopped off. How could they? I delivered a quarter of a million extra words to what the publishers wanted. I think all writers secretly hope for a trilogy.

Well, it's a hefty time as it is, my goodness. I mean, even at your stage in life where you've been so successful, both in publishing other people's work as well as your own, do you still get that flutter of nerves when a new baby is born? Absolutely. And you spot immediately the one typo and you've read 25 drafts and you're just hit by the first mistake and then you close the book and you go off and sob somewhere. Exactly.

Is it on the first page or the first chapter? There was just, you know, it's a small thing, but Muslim spelt wrong or something, you know, not actually going to probably awake tremendous complaints from your reader. But you just inevitably go straight for the one error that is in that book.

So at the heart of today's episode, we're going to talk about this great cleavage in the Muslim community, which goes right back to the immediate aftermath of Muhammad's death in 632 AD. And the split is between those who supported the elevation of his son-in-law and cousin Ali, who were the Shia.

and those who supported Muhammad's closest companions, Abu Bakr and Omar, and they became the Sunni. And Sunnis also revere Ali, but they regard him as the last of the rightly guided caliphs, while the Shia look on him as their first imam.

Anyway, this division in the community reached its peak at the Battle of Kabbalah, which sees the death of Muhammad's grandson and Ali's son, who is Hussein. And for Shia, this is a symbol of the struggle for right against wrong, for justice and truth against injustice and falsehood. And the shrines of these two men...

the shrine of Ali in Najaf and the shrine of Hussein in Kabbalah are the two sacred pilgrimage places for Shias. So Barnaby, the subject which you've been talking about, and I've heard you talk about and heard speak about for so long, suddenly is the focus of every news program. It's the front line of the current war in the Middle East.

Tell us about how important the Sunni-Shia divide is. It's at the heart of everything and it remains incredibly alive and incredibly elusive to

And we should say, I mean, the reason William is saying that, you know, news programs in particular are concentrating on this is because Iran is front and center of the news agenda once again, because what's going on in the Middle East.

and Iran is a Shia country. If you had to just codify, for those who don't know, what are the major differences between Shia Islam and Sunni Islam? I'm going to immediately go against that question by reminding us how much is similar. Exactly the same prayer rituals, word by word, exactly the same Quran, exact same traditions of Hajj. It's incredibly similar.

there's just a different sense of aspiration and history. Because the characterisation often, culturally certainly, in Western media is that the Shia are much more austere, dressed more soberly, have more rules to follow to the letter, I mean, that kind of thing. I think they are both very, very similar because there's a tremendous range of

of sort of mystical practices within both systems. I'm tremendously sympathetic to the Shia having this live tradition before being an Ayatollah. You've got to, a bit like a PhD, you've got to contribute something new to the religion. And it's not so backwards. And they've extraordinary things that they've been fully aware of the gender issue for centuries and quite understand now.

the need for sort of surgery to correct yourself. They're actually quite alive to a lot of sort of human issues, and they desire to interpret the Quran, never to change it, but to interpret it afresh for each generation. So, Barnaby, today, when you look at the map, people look at Iran and see Iran as the center of Shiaism, but that's what we're going to be discussing today. It becomes Shiaism.

Shia very late in Islamic history. It takes on Shiaism from the 1400s and 1500s on. Where in the early days of Islam are the Shia? So after this coup, power then falls into the hands of the four caliphs.

And then the fifth caliph is an Arab warlord called Muawiyah, called the Caesar of the Arabs, a brilliant man. And he starts the Umayyad dynasty, which rules for 100 years. Out of Damascus. Expands the Arabic empire. Fantastically successful, brilliant military political machine. All the way from Tur to the Hindu Kush. From Samarkand to Poitiers. It's the heyday of the empire. One state rule from Damascus. The Abbasids take over.

slightly more Shia in their smell. They're cousins of the Prophet, not an Arab-Waryan dynasty. And they take the rule involving more Persian and Turkish culture to Baghdad.

and rule brilliantly from Baghdad in its golden heyday. And then the story becomes more complicated because what is forgotten is in the 10th century, there are very, very active Shiite empires formed. In Egypt, the Fatimids. In Cairo, the Carmations in the Arabian Peninsula. And what's always overlooked by English speaking listeners is the Buyids,

which are a proto-Shia dynasty in Iran, not claiming any descent from the Prophet Muhammad or any noble blood, but content to act as regents. The lost Shiite world was a tremendously sort of moving moment. They're a rather wonderful group, fantastic ceramics. You and I have visited Buyid Mosque together in Iran. We have, and we've loved that really beautiful Arabic lettering on black around the white pottery. And there's a group of sort of Buyid Emes brothers,

cousins who get on very well, tolerate Sunni. They even protect the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad, but never claim to be the spiritual leadership, just the sort of Shiite regents. And they will be replaced by the first of those storms from the north, which is the Seljuks, pretending to restore Sunni authority by crushing the Buyids.

and the Seljuq's rule for their period, then replaced, as I think you've already had a story talking about, the Mongol invasion. And then Timur, which I think was your last session, brings us to where we're going to

tight focus. So Barnaby, we're talking now about the theology. Take us from where we finished the last episode with the Timurids ruling from Herat and Samarkand into the story that we're going to be telling today about the rise of the Safavids and how they turn Iran into a Shia state.

As your last speaker told you, Timur is a very intriguing character. You don't quite know where he is, Sunni Shia. I mean, he's definitely a Muslim hero, definitely wants to stand as the next Genghis Khan. And we know he even visited Ardabil, this Sufi shrine in the Kurdish mountains somewhere in Western Iran and released prisoners of war out of respect for this sheikh. And after he dies, the authority of his heirs...

crumbles and is replaced by the so-called white sheep and the black sheep Turks, great emirs in Central Asia, in Iran. And you, William, like me, have stumbled around the streets of Mardin and seen the beautiful mosques and madrasas built by

these Emiers. They're no nomads. I mean, they are extraordinary cultured characters. Describe them. I mean, for those of us who haven't stumbled around those streets, what do they look like? Why are they so compelling? Oh, Mardin is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Wonderful place. Perched up, looking down on the plains of Mesopotamia. And

And all the mosques and madrasas have got natural spring water flowing through the back of their walls. So the ablution fountains are fed by sort of God. And the air is wonderful. There's about 12 terraces on the mountain falling down, as William says, to Mesopotamia. I think our current king is quite rightly obsessed by the beauty of Mardin and thinks it's one of the great role models for the world. I didn't know that.

And so we've got white and black sheep Turks. We've got six or seven emirs over what is going to be the Ottoman Empire fighting it out. Quite a lot of confusion, plus some of Timur's heirs ruling in Turkestan. And then suddenly this hidden spark comes from the young heir, the seventh of the Sufi brotherhood, descended from the seventh Shia imam, so holy, holy bloodline.

Through his mother's mother, he's descended from the empire of Trabizond. The Byzantine empire of Trabizond. He's got Byzantine blood. He's got the blood of Genghis Khan in his veins. He's got the blood of Timur in his veins. That's a rich cocktail. So it's a rich cocktail. And he, like a sort of mad but better than we can dream of Robin,

Hood's story sees his father and his elder brother killed, age seven, has to go hiding in the mountains of Gilan, northwest Iran, a prince in the heather. He comes out of the mountains, age 12, and leads his first holy war with 5,000 Shia soldiers.

martyr hero armies. And this just cuts like a knife through this group of emirates. And this is Shah Ismail, the first of the Safavids. The first of the Safavids. But he comes from this very, very respected line of Sufi sheikhs at Ardabil. The most beautiful carpet in the world, you can see in the V&A, that comes from Ardabil. Oh, that enormous carpet when you walk into the Persian room. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And I went to the room with our mutual friend, Bruce Wannell, who showed us the treasures of Iredeville. And we got a scent of where the Safavids came from. Okay. So just origin stories. I mean, that's one thing that we like to put flesh on the bones of mythical and legendary figures. So Ismail was born in 1487. What was the world around him, his family? I mean, were they wealthy as well as having this great lineage and this bloodline, this cocktail of very potent blood? Yes.

Did he have a wealthy background? What was it like? Potentially very wealthy because his grandfather, Uzan Hasan, was the emir of the White Sheep Turks.

but his own father had been driven into exile. So you have that very extraordinary Islamic tradition of the very powerful families also being very poor, able to escape and live as refugees. So you don't have a system that we can compare in England to a French prince or a Norman Duke with great castles. You have the love of the people, you have nothing. And so Ismail is of the succession of Sufi mystics,

who really possess nothing of their own, but accept gifts from their followers. It's incredibly powerful. We should say perhaps what Sufism is for those that don't know it. Sufism is mystical Islam, and it exists across the boundary of Sunni and Shia. You can be a Sufi and you can be Shia. You can be a Sufi and you can be Sunni. Okay, and what did he look like? I mean, do we have any accounts of what he looked like? We have, because I'll get overexcited, but this is actually an

an Italian chronicler, of noble presence and a truly royal bearing, as in his eyes there was something, I know not what, so great and commanding, which plainly showed that he would one day become a great ruler. Nor the virtues of his mind discord with the beauty of his person, as he had an elevated genius, and such a lofty idea of things as seemed incredible at such a tender age."

He had vigour of mind, quickness of perception, and personal valour, never equalled by any of his contemporaries. And this another Italian, just in case I'm being biased, describes Ishmael as fair, handsome, and very pleasing. He is almost worshipped, especially by his soldiers. Many of him fight without armour, being willing to die for their master.

And portraits have him as a redhead as well. Yes. Anita's looking disapproving at this point. No, no, no, no. I like a redhead. I have no problem with a redhead at all. But I mean, that sets him apart too. I mean, is it true or is it sort of iconography later to set him apart as a sort of golden haired creature? No, no, because we know the Shia amongst their vantages don't have that Sunni prohibition of art. So there were all sorts of architects, painters working at his court. And so we have...

accurate depictions of him. And we also have that sort of, he can be claimed by the Kurds as one of them. The Iranians are passionate about him. We know he spoke Turkish. Azeris claim him as one of theirs. There's Georgian blood. I can't think of a character as charismatic in any world history, apart from Alexander the Great. And writes poetry. And writes. Do you want me to claim some of his poetry? Well, the answer, of course, will be yes. Of course, we want you to do that.

I am Zal's son and Alexander. The mystery of I am the truth is hidden in this my heart. I am the absolute truth and what I say is truth. I belong to the religion of the adherent of Ali and on the Shah's path I am guide to everyone who says I am a Muslim.

My sign is the crown of happiness. I am the signet ring on Solomon's finger. Muhammad is made of light, Ali of mystery. I'm a pearl in the sea of absolute reality. I'm Katai, the Shah's slave, full of shortcomings. At thy gate, I am the smallest, the last of thy servants. Oh!

That's great stuff. He's a poet, but as a ruler, he also encourages others who have an artistic bent. Isn't it true that merchants, craftsmen, people who brought beauty to his world were exempt from commercial taxes because he thought they were just above it? Yes. No,

And Shah Ismail is the role model for me. But he also has a tendency to ruthlessness. You don't want to be on the wrong side of this guy. He pursues his enemies. He's vengeful. And he can be quite cruel. He can be very cruel. There was a city who hadn't respected a Sufi savant. And he surrounded the entire city with his army and made certain that no single human escaped the massacre.

When he defeated the Uzbeks, literally leading an army a quarter of the size of the Uzbek host, he had the Shah of the Uzbeks' skull turned into a drinking cup. This, we should say, is the same Shah of the Uzbeks who expels Babur from Samarkand.

and drives him into Afghanistan and hence to India where he founds the Mughal dynasty. But for this man, the Mughals would never have had to go to India. I've never joined those dots before. That's fascinating. That is good. And he's married to, forcefully, not in a pleasant way, to Babu's sister. And Babu's sister...

has been seized by the shah of the Uzbeks and taken into his harem to the great horror of Babu, who writes her letters and stays in contact. And he also proclaims, after his first round of victories, he makes an official declaration in favor of Shia Islam and is very, very destructive. So some of the Abbasid

The Muslims and the Caliphs are destroyed. He brings an extraordinary zeal and authority which the Buyid's had never done or the Abbasids had never done. There'd been much more tolerance. You have that extraordinary sort of energy of the 16th century, which is creative but also so destructive about other viewpoints. He bases himself in Tabriz. That's what he chooses, which is not what his ancestors had done. Their center of power had been in Adebil.

Why does he do this? And is this then the gateway to the takeover of Iran? It is. The story of being a refugee, age seven, coming out of the mountains, age 12, he wins his first round of battles in Azerbaijan and Dagestan, the Caucasus. And goes after the Georgian Christians, doesn't he, at one point? A holy war. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Sort of following his own father, the Sufi sheikhs, sort of jihad against the Christians in the East. So there's a lot going on, sparks and all. Tabriz shows that he's in power because as William and Anita and travellers know, there's that extraordinary broken arc of that vast mosque.

in Tabriz built by the Mongols. And being at Tabriz is one of the places of power. And we're now used to Tehran, but Tabriz was really a good place to be ruling from and declaring yourself Sharia.

Shah organizing this new, not national, because loyalty to the Shia cause is not restricted to Iran. And famously, we're going to go into this in greater detail, he calls upon the great scholars in the Arab world. So he sends delegates to the island of Bahrain, to the Jibreel Amil in southern Lebanon, asking for the great scholars of the Shiite tradition hiding in the mountains.

to come to Iran and make certain that the teachers of Qom are following the proper sources. And in Tabriz, I mean, just this character that you have put, he projects his love of art and literature and poetry.

How does he transform Tabriz? Describe the Tabriz of Ismail. What does it look like? Well, I'm afraid I don't know. I've been to Tabriz and poked around, but it's been so destroyed by earthquakes. It was conquered by the Ottomans several times, and they were very careful to destroy everything of Shah Ismail's time. The Blue Mosque, which you can go and have a feel for,

that you're in a Safavid mosque was actually restored by the Pahlavi dynasty. And it's quite difficult. You can be in the city, but Isfahan has got everything you want to feel if you want to get the Safavid. And Mashhad is also a place of tremendous power. Tabriz is too confusing. One of the things that happens in Tabriz, which is terribly important, is that

To Tabriz, they call all the great artists from Herat and from around Persia. So that's why I was wondering, it must have been so beautiful because, you know, he's like a magnet to all these people. That's a shame that we don't know. Absolutely. And you get the greatest book of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, the most beautiful illustrated book is the Shahnameh of Shatamasb, which is painted in Tabriz at this point. And

And occasionally, very, very occasionally, pages come up at auction. And one came up last year at Sotheby's. And I saw it. It's one of the most beautiful miniatures I've ever seen in my life. This picture of the horse, Raksha, we talked about in the episode, who has escaped. And Rustam comes and captures him again. And this is painted in Tabriz. And they're bringing together the last of the great Timurid painters, pupils of Bezard,

and so on in Tabriz. And this is where, again, this extraordinary Safavid tradition of painting begins. That's a great sadness to me that we don't have an idea or a picture of what Ismail's Tabriz really looks like, because one assumes that he had the power to make it look extraordinary. But we do know that it's just a decade. Here, Ismail and his forces have conquered almost all of Persia.

Azerbaijan, and Mesopotamia. He's sitting on a really very considerable empire. And Barnaby, one of the important things, of course, is that, again, he is Persian, isn't he? And this is one of the very first times that historic Persia has been reconquered under

a person of Persian ethnicity, since the time of the Arabs. Yes, this is why he remains a great Iranian national cultural hero, overlooking the Buyuds and various small emirs. But he's the first time who really claims he's the Shah, a single fount of authority, an absolutely emphatic emir.

about following, enhancing and leading the return to Shia culture to the extent that he is going to undermine the Turkish Emirates power in Anatolia. It's a good point to take a break. We've sort of given you a sketch of the man himself and the beginnings of this considerable empire and why he matters so much to Iranians even today. Join us after the break.

when we explore a bit more the bifurcation of Shia and Sunni and why the world is a little bit, I mean, it may be sort of the seeds of why the world looks the way it does today. But join us then. Travel is all about choosing your own adventure. With your Chase Sapphire Reserve card, sometimes that means a ski trip at a luxury lodge in the Swiss Alps.

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Welcome back. Our guest today, the wonderful, the exquisite Barnaby Rogerson is with us. Exquisite. Exquisite. I think he's exquisite. I think you're exquisite. I'd give you an exquisite. Can I just observe one thing before we plunge into this story again? But it really, my husband was so excited to tell me this. And I was like, I know, I know, I've seen even the picture. But on the front page of your book, you've got two men playing chess. And he's like, I don't know, I don't know.

And he told me, actually, you know, checkmate, the phrase checkmate comes from ancient Persia. It's Shah Moth, which is the death of the king. Did you know that? That's a wonderful new free fact. I'm terribly excited. Is it a free fact from my very brilliant husband, Simon Singh. And I was like, oh, look, I've got a picture even to illustrate that. I could do one little addition to that, though, is that you know how we talk about the castle as being the rook? Yes. The rook is also a Persian word as in Shah Rukh, as in Shah Rukh Khan. Oh, really?

Oh, really? But what does it mean in Persian, rukh? Rukh means chariot. And shamat doesn't mean the king is dead, but it means the king is frozen. The king is frozen! Oh!

No blood. No blood in chess. Okay. Well, I'm still giving it to Simon because, you know, it's a win of some sort. Okay. Your move, Rogerson. So you left us before the break. Yes. You left us with this idea of who this man is and why he is important to Iranians today. What does he go on to do in his rule? Not just to Iran. I mean, there is

Definitely a feeling that Ismail could have reunited the whole of the Islamic community. And in ruling in the Ottoman Empire, it bears its second, not to be confused with the man who was captured by Timur, who is a wonderful, proper Muslim mystic sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

slightly in love with what Ismail is doing and reviving all sorts of Islamic traditions. And he's getting in the way of his son, one of his sons called Prince Selim, opposing Ismail's armies in what is now eastern Turkey. Look, can we talk about the Ottomans a bit more? Because they are Sunni.

aren't they? The Ottoman, not Ottoman Islam, is Sunni Islam. They are Sunni and it's a tremendous task to try and see the Ottomans as they were in the 15th century because they become the great sort of fountainhead of Islamic orthodoxy. At this period they are border warlords without sounding snobbish, with no particular claims to any blood of any descent from Seljuks or Timrit or Genghis Khan, let alone for the Prophet Muhammad. They're there just through their talent,

as frontier soldiers and those who've traveled up to Turkey, where they come from is forested mountains with snow-covered mountains. You could be in Perthshire. The land where the Ottomans begin around Bursa and Iznik is very, very European in its concept. And the Ottomans are very, very efficient at employing Europeans and Jews and merchants and Armenians. They are not passionate sort of

mystical Islamic warriors. They're just efficient, tough generals. And Bayezid is perhaps the first one of them who actually gets the true spirit of Islam and it weakens his ability. He knew the East very, very well. He campaigned in there as a young prince, but he's incapable of really resisting Ismail's sort of

magnetic glow as a spiritual reviver of Islam. You so love him. You and your magnetic glow. I mean, honestly, he's presented as somebody with a ready-break red line of fire around. But is he also, Ismail, is he also pushing Shia Islam? Is he pushing against Ottoman frontiers saying, actually, that's the wrong Islam. This is the right Islam. Yes, and he's on the frontier. The point is that Tabriz is absolutely bang on the Ottomans' doorstep. But

But even more than that, he is sending Kisselbash, who are his martyr militia. Redheads, red hats. Red hats because they wear the red felt cap with 12 gussets. Hang on a minute, 12 gussets. Well, wait a minute. I only know a gusset from a pair of tights. What are you talking about 12 gussets? Are you talking tassels or gussets here, Rogerson? Get it right. I think I'm a gusset. It's a sort of purse. So the crown of the hat.

has got 12 folds to a point. So I've seen one in a museum. They're very, very exciting, even if you're not in love with Shah Ismail. And they symbolize on their head that they respect the authority of the 12 Shia imam. Oh, well, wonderful. I love the symbolism. I don't love the word gusset. I'll just say, I think it's the worst word in the English language, apart from moist. Okay.

And two words I can't be doing with. But he's pushing Shiaism. Is that what he, I mean, is that part of, is that propaganda going along with the expansion of his empire? That, you know what, this is the true Islam. That is not the true Islam. So we're going to take over this and flatten it. Exactly. And to a certain extent, his followers are so passionate about

that they are galloping ahead of his frontiers. So in Antalya, and those of you who know their map of Turkey, that's a Mediterranean port. There's a spontaneous kittlebash rising against the Ottoman sultans. And literally, if they'd left alone, I'm absolutely certain the whole Ottoman Empire would have transferred its allegiance to Shah Ismail without even...

a troop of cavalry coming to accept it. It was on the point of bursting into flames in support. But then that tells me that religious doctrine is then very important in this, because if they're already on the other side of this frontier war that's going on, they're making a choice and they're making a choice on theological grounds. They are. They're making a choice of hope and of change like...

many young in Iraq three years ago, you catch the moment for a whole new generation to remake the world. It happens throughout history. And this is one of those pivotal moments where his appeal transcends ethnic, national, linguistic frontiers.

But not to the Ottomans. I mean, do they also argue that they've got the right flavor of Islam and he's a heretic? Is it a battle that's fought on, you know, you're the heretic, now you're the heretic? Well, it is because Prince Selim, who's not in line to succeed his father, realizes that unless someone takes over with extraordinary energy, the whole empire is going to collapse immediately.

So he has to depose his saintly old father, send him off to Thrace, get rid of his elder brother and take over the Ottoman Empire. He gets the scholars together and gets them to condemn the Shiite traditions. This is the assembled scholars who judged the Shia to be unbelievers and heretics. It is necessary and a divine obligation they be massacred and their community be dispersed. So armed with this fatwa from the pocket Sunni scholars,

in Istanbul and Adene and Bursa, Selim takes on an extraordinary savage war. He's already made a list of all the major Shia supporters throughout Anatolia. And when he marches, he massacres possibly between 40,000 and 80,000 Shiite devotees across Anatolia in his confrontation with Shah Ismail. So this is

as bad as anything that we've experienced. And what date again? Remind us of the date. Dates are so important with this because these are the seeds of what we see in the world today. So where does this start? So this spontaneous rising in Antalya, not terribly good in dates, but about 1511, Selim realizes that the old man is not good enough for the job, deposes his father in 1512. By 1514, he's advancing with the Ottoman field army led by him in person. He doesn't trust anybody else, quite rightly, because on one of the camps,

Some of the Qizilbash troops, even within the Ottoman army, fire their bullets into the Sultan's tent. I mean, we're on the point of absolute conflagration of revolution, of war. And Selim knows he has to absolutely push for a battle. We've got to use the Ottoman army. Barnaby, you talked about this fatwa whereby the Sultan gets the authority of the ulema to suppress and massacre the Shiites.

Are there precedents for this before in Islamic history, or had there never been a major Sunni-Shia massacre on this scale before? I think this is the great turning point. People believe that Selim's massacre was the first proper doctrinal inquisition. I think before all in Islamic societies,

leaders could be deposed, but no one would make an inquisition. So this is the first time we're rooting out people's beliefs and punishing them from that. But specifically, this Sunni-Shia cleavage, you painted a picture at the beginning of this podcast of a certain porousness of belief that there wasn't stark, you are Sunni, you are Shia in the early period. But

But the sort of massacres that we're talking about here, is that what creates the bitterness and the division which goes forward to our current day? It's not the beginning of it. It's in the intensification. There are definite massacres on both sides throughout the Buyid, Fatimid, Carmatian wars. People were being killed for their belief.

through every century. And our mutual friend Bruce was very emphatic about that. He said, remember the race riots in Baghdad in the 10th century, where Sunni and Shia were backing different factions of army, Turkic generals. It is an aspect of Islamic society, but I think this is the most, well, perhaps the most documented and intense instance of it. This is also the moment in which the

Ottomans and the Safavids first face off as absolute enemies, one representing the Turkic tradition and Sunni Islam, while by now the Safavids have become identified specifically with Persian-ness and Shi'ism. It's slightly more complicated because Shahizmul speaks Turkish, and most of their really good soldiers are always Turks. Right. Oh, wow.

But then as these two sides are fighting each other and Selim is massacring those who are Shia, is there a litmus test that is applied? Because if they are Turkic and Shia, as you say, it's sort of a mixture of people believing a mixture of things on this borderland. Is there a litmus test by which they say, can you answer these three questions? And if you answer them a certain way, you're going to die. I mean, how do you pick people out then? Selim has made a register.

of those he's going to take out. But there's also a propaganda going on. So there are public letters between Sultan Selim to Shah Ismail. So I've quoted again here. So this is Selim, the captain of the vicious, the chief of the malicious,

the usurping Darius of his time, the malevolent Zahek of his age, the peer of Cain, Prince Ishmael. So that's one letter. But these are public and read out and obviously relished by us and I imagine by the readers of their day. Brilliant.

Okay, I mean, that makes a love loss between them very clear. We haven't talked about what Selim was like. I mean, we've talked about Ismail. Is this Selim the Grim? Yeah, so was he grim? Because that was his moniker. I mean, how grim was he? Selim was grim until recently. It was a...

A little humorous aside, if you're getting on badly with your neighbor, they would say, may you be a vizier under Sultan Selim. Because they didn't last long because he was so brutally efficient. But it's a normal story. His dad loved someone else. He didn't get on with the old man. He was a brilliant young soldier himself.

And one of the jobs to check if you're good enough as a prince of the Ottomans is you were sent to govern Emesia in the northern frontiers of the Ottoman Empire. And he proved himself incredibly efficient. And also, I'm just going to give you a tiny bit. It's sort of Sultan verse day. This is Sultan Selim. Every morn my hosts of fancies ride a streams of tears to war. Every evening fickle fortune winds me in her wanton hair.

Still alone, a lonely stranger in strange lands I roam afar, will around me march the sullen guards of grief and pain and care. Till I've read life's riddle, emptied its nine pictures to the end, never shall I, Sultan Selim, find on earth a faithful friend.

And I think that's him talking about the toughest job in the world. And knowing that his Janissaries were sort of on the edge of being proto-Shi'a themselves. So he was treading incredibly close to the ice. His professional army, if he called out for a standing ovation, would definitely have all shot over and given three loud cheers for Shah Ismail and a boo for Sultan Selim.

I've had conversations with Muslim friends of mine, both Shia and Sunni, all in the same room. You know that kind of like after midnight conversation, why can't we all get along? Why can't we all get along? And one of the things that came up is that Ismail described himself as the Mahdi or the Messiah, which the Sunnis just had no truck with at all. At what point did he think or say or put it about that he was the Messiah?

If you're a Mahdi, you make reference to it. You don't claim it. So it's not in the Quran, some fairly dubious Hadith about the Mahdi, which seems to be much more sort of Christian influence about the coming of the end of the world. It's not theologically correct Islamic. It's popular belief buttressed by some fairly dodgy traditions. Ultimately, a Zoroastrian idea, so coming back home to Persia.

Is it? Well, I would like to follow that up. The Messiah starts off in Zoroastrianism and enters Christianity that way. It's just a title. You're saying that, you know, actually even the followers of Ismail wouldn't have regarded him as the Messiah. That's just not a thing. It's

One of those currents of belief that is always around in every Islamic society, watching for the end of days. The Quran is full of prescriptions about the end of the world and the day of judgment. That's absolutely clear. We know that the end of the world is due and there are signs for it, again, traditions.

But the Mahdi cult is something that gets sort of added on. One could call it sort of almost mythology of Islam rather than a sort of doctrinal belief. And you do best if you just make reference to the coming at the end of the world and people think, well, we've got to have the Mahdi first. That's interesting that people are going through such bloodletting that they think this must be what the end of the world looks like. Barnaby, I've got a question.

At this point, how much of Persia is already Shia? A tiny minority or quite a lot of people would identify themselves as Shia? That's a really good question and beyond my can. I think...

It's basically the scholars and the leaders and everybody else who's coping. Everybody is sympathetic to Ali. Sunni and Shia weep for what happened at Kabbalah with Hussein. The emotional background of being proto-Shia is there for every Muslim. Yes, in the Sufi shrines here, when I go to Sufi shrines in Delhi, Nizamuddin or Miroli, a lot of the quals, which are Sunni quals, are for Ali.

Ali is the great cry. Oh, gosh, I never thought of that, of course. I mean, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, one of the most famous and most extraordinary Qawwali singers, very much part of the Sunni tradition. One of his biggest bangers, as we say, is Ali Mullah. Ali Mullah Ali Ali, which is known absolutely. If you know what I mean, you will know what I mean. And if you don't, just look up Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Ali Mullah. It's a real heart thumper of a Qawwal poetry, sung poetry.

And it is interesting that one way of looking at Sufism is all the attraction of Shiite culture and belief practice given a sort of Sunni gloss in a way. So a Sufi can have everything that the Shia can do, music, art, belief, poetry.

but can still keep within the frontiers of their own traditions. But Barnaby, what I want to get an impression of is how far is it during the reign of Ismail that you begin to get Persia moving from a partly Sunni, partly Shia hodgepodge to being this bastion of Shiaism? Because this happens during the reign of Shari Ismail, doesn't it?

It does. And how does it happen? I'm not sure if we're allowed to now talk about the Battle of Colderham. Well, we can, of course. So, I mean, you know, you have Ismail who has successfully pushed back the boundaries of his own empire. He's persuaded people, even on the Sunni side, that Shiaism is the true way, the true belief. But he does, I mean, the man that you've said is kind of undefeatable does get defeated eventually. How does that look?

Well, that is the turning point and the crux, really, of our whole morning together. Ismail has been so used to winning. And Fahd al-Ghuzbek, who's outnumbered 4-1, he takes his wives into battle. He's so secure and confident. And he leads from the front. He's an incredibly charismatic general. And at Qaldehan, he meets the adversary who's going to master him. Selim knows that he's got 12,000 janissaries, apps.

absolutely up to the date gunpowder technology muskets. And also unbelievably, because we're talking in the frontiers, the mountains frontiers between Turkey and Iran, very rough territory. He's got a mobile artillery force of 500 cannon. It suggests that Selim was a general beyond compare. Ismail knows the danger of cannons. He hasn't got cannons at this stage.

And so he, his clouds of Turkish Kisselbach cavalry try and take out the flanks of the Ottoman position, which is reinforced by lines of wagons with cannons peeking out. But the Ottoman field artillery are quick to the movement and managed to move the cannons out and literally blast Ismail's Shiite shock troops into pieces with grape shot. It's not just

Sunni and Shia. This is the first instance of the gunpowder revolution reversing what's been going on for thousands of years, is the utter superiority of cavalry coming out of Central Asia. With the talk of Attila, the Hun, Timur, Genghis Khan, you've always had Turkic Mongol cavalry conquering anybody they've got the energy to do. And this is the first time that those cavalry forces...

absolutely passionate behind their general, are mown down by technology. It's a crunch point in world history. But Ismail is not killed. He manages to get out of this. How does he get out and where does he go? He gets out, escapes a broken man within a week. The battle's on the 23rd of August. Within 6th, 7th of September, the Ottomans are occupying Tabriz, his spiritual, emotional, cultural capital. So that's wrecking it.

Selim realizes he's already gone dangerously fast and he needs to secure his lines to get back safely. But it's an emotional breakdown for Ishmael. The sort of God-designated ruler of the earth has had his cavalry shot beneath him. Even his wives were captured. The royal camp was captured that day. So he goes into emotional meltdown. This is an incredibly significant battle.

Incredibly, and what's so odd and bizarre is when you go to the Safavid Palace in Isfahan, I know you're going to talk about that in the next session, there's a great enormous portrait of that battle. Which we saw together, Barnaby. We did, we did indeed. What's so wonderful is I think there's an understanding that Shah Ismail, if he hadn't been defeated, would have gone on to be a world conqueror. In defeat, he

He reaffirms his devotion to the Shiite cause. This is when the letters come to the scholars, Arabic scholars of Shiite belief throughout the Islamic world. And he makes, as it were, a fortress of Persia. He's content with Persia and southern Iraq.

as to be the national homeland that he's going to defend in the rest of his life, a job that's taken on by his son and heir, who has to resist his own troops saying, you're the Mahdi. He said, no, no, I'm not. I am just the Shiite Shah ruling a Shiite Iranian cultured nation. And that's enough. That's enough for us. I mean, how does he meet his end? Because it's not soon after that, that making that decision that we will draw up the drawbridge and this is enough.

that he dies? And how does he die? It doesn't die till 1524. So he's got another 10 years and just ruling as obviously less assertive, some accounts think that he became...

addicted to alcohol, but that could just be sort of Sunni propaganda. He's working with his viziers, working for Iranian society. And as William suggested earlier, making this compact with the merchants in alliance with the ulama, the religious scholars of the Shiite world. And they're going to create this extraordinary, tough, educated upper middle class with lots of charitable foundations supporting schools, colleges, shrines, and

backed by their merchant nephews, giving them money to run a sort of self-help Shiite cultural zone in Iran. It's a rather wonderful transformation. Okay, but it's Fortress Iran. I mean, it's the first indication you have of Fortress Iran, which is now not looking out, but is looking to its borders and looking inwards.

You are quite right. And we're not going to gallop ahead because I'm sure on another conversation, you're going to talk about Shah Abbas, who does take the war out again. But even he is just really keen on reconquering the pilgrimage cities of Southern Iraq to make a unit of

of sheer belief in the central Middle East. But you said, I mean, you said he reigns for another 10 years and whatever, if the propaganda is true or not, but you can see he must have been a broken man from the heights of his power to be, you know, pushed inwards. But he dies at, is it right, 37? So he did all of this at such a young age. Such a young age. And we must write, you know, we'll make a film about this, you know, the seven-year-old escaping to the mountains, declaring yourself imam age 14. Yeah.

Having won your first round of military victories at age 12. I've got a 13-year-old. He can't declare his bed made. I don't understand how people do this in the olden days, was he? Creating, you know, all the poetry, commissioning, you know, it's literally beyond our belief system. But Barnaby, just to clarify. So at the opening of this podcast, we had a very confused political and theological perspective.

jigsaw with different groups controlling different areas. By the end, we have a very familiar map where the ethnically Persian boundaries are now the boundaries of Shia Islam and that the

old Persian heartlands have now become a sheer fortress, which will continue from this point forward. It will, but we must just remember that there are...

identifiable Shiite spiritual homelands in Lebanon, Bahrain, Eastern Arabia, which are not dependent on Persian military power. This is part of a general Muslim sort of world history, complex and difficult to fully understand at any time, but you're quite right. Persia is now the leading bastion

of the Shiite nation. And the Ottomans, to define themselves, to stop themselves losing support of their army, will push the Sunni card more relentless, become more religious. Sultan Selim the Grim's son is Solomon the Magnificent. He's Solomon the lawgiver in Turkish habit because he's creating the great sort of carapace of formal Sunni support, going to become the great Sunni sort of world hero.

It's so fascinating. So it's like watching a Polaroid develop. At the opening of this period, we have a very confused mush of colors and that throughout the life of Shah Rishmail, it comes into sharp focus so that the boundaries of Persia today against modern Turkey are more or less where the Battle of Kaldaran leaves them or the aftermath of Kaldaran leaves them. Persia is a single ethnic group.

country with a single language. I mean, for all the confusion of minorities and Yazidis and Kurds and everyone else living there, there is still a Persian heartland. It is Shia. It follows the boundaries of the modern state of Iran. And this is the crucial bit of history that happens in this one person's reign, thanks to his activity. But in that Polaroid, we're coming to an end of this, but since this is always a light that shines on and gives us an idea of why the world is the way it is today, there

There are blurry edges. And you mentioned the Kurds and the Yazidis. At that point in time when this division was taking place and this sort of fortification or the hardening of battle lines into borders occurs, where are the Kurds in all of this? And where are the Yazidis in all of this? The Kurds are on both sides. The Kurds are Iranian speakers, but they realized that the Sunni Ottoman had shown himself a better general.

And so most of the Kurdish chiefs make their peace with the Ottoman authority on the back of Kaldahan as well. So as we know, what could be the Kurdish community is divided equally between Southeast Turkey and Western Iran and bits of Iraq and Syria.

But this is the time when the Kurds, who are by nature Iranian, they look back on their heritage as being the Median. They're the heirs of the Median Empire, the ancient empire. They absolutely know their Iranian heritage.

linguistic history. But this is when they start making their deal on the side of the Ottomans. At the same time, the Georgians, by and large, go with the Persian card. So when Sultan Selim's army retreats in good order from the victory of Choldan, its only adversary worthy of it are the Georgian cavalry working on behalf of Shah Ismail. So all sorts of sort of

crossovers are happening. It is a neat line. We suddenly see Sunni Turkey and Shia Iran developing, but there are many, many complexities in the zone. And what about the Yazidis? Yes, but they're on the border zone. So it's quite a good way to hold on to what you believe in. There are also Syriac and Assyrian Christian communities. In the Turabdin, those wonderful early Christian monasteries, very close to Mardin.

Exactly. In your book, The Holy Mountain, we've got many, many faith traditions existing in this border zone. Barnaby, one final thing. The great Shia shrines in Iraq, Karbala and so on, the places at which Shia devotion is centered, are

After the Battle of Kaldaran, they become Ottoman territories, don't they? We have a Shia country on the edge of the main Shia shrine, but the Shia shrine is in enemy territory. And it's a ding-dong war with Shah Abbas. The frontiers will change two or three times. There'll be purges. Sunni Muslims will be destroyed by Shah Abbas. Shia shrines will be rebuilt. But the Sunni sultans, because of their respect for Imam Ali and for Hussein,

the grandson of the prophet, do not destroy the Shia shrines in the same way the Shia knock out the Sunni. So there is a sort of a growing sort of majesty in the Ottoman rule of being able to cope in the end with Shia belief. Barnaby, thank you so, so much, because this is a period I don't know at all. And you have painted a wonderful picture of how something very chaotic and complicated becomes something much less complicated. And your wonderful book,

Out today. The House Divided, Sunni Shia and the Making of the Middle East, Barnaby Rogerson's very fine new work. And you'll read about it if you get our newsletter. And if you are a member of the Empire Club, you might even get a discount. Anyway, that is all from us this week. Our next episode is going to be taking this story forward with Shah Abbas and the building of Safavid.

Isfahan. Till then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Durinpool.