Safi-ad-din Ardabili

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Sheikh Safi-ad-din Is'haq Ardabili (of Ardabil) (1252-1334) (Persian: شیخ صفی‌الدین اردبیلی‎ ), eponym of the Safavid dynasty, was the spiritual heir and son in law of the great Sufi Murshid (Grand Master) Sheikh Zahed Gilani, of Lahijan in Gilan Province in northern Iran. He was of Persian^[1] and Kurdish background ^[2].

Sheikh Safi al-Din's has poems in the Iranian dialect of old Tati which is very close to Kurdish. He was a seventh-generation descendant of Firuz Shah Zarrin Kolah, a local Iranian dignitary^[3].

Sheikh Safi al-Din inherited Sheikh Zahed Gilani's Sufi order, the "Zahediyeh", which he later transformed into his own, the "Safaviyeh". Sheikh Zahed Gilani also gave his daughter Bibi Fatemeh in wedlock to his favorite disciple. Sheikh Safi al-Din, in turn, gave a daughter from a previous marriage in wedlock to Shaikh Zahed Gilani's second-born son. Over the following 170 years, the Safaviyeh Order gained political and military power, finally culminating in the foundation of the Safavid dynasty.

Only a very few verses of Sheikh Safi al-Din's poetry, called Dobaytis (double verses), have survived. Written in old Tati and Persian, they have linguistic importance today^[4].

Minorsky however writes that the families of Sheykh Zahed Gilani and Sheykh Safi al-Din were different. According to him, Sheykh Safi al-Din's ancestor Firuz-shah was a rich man, lived in Gilan and then Kurdish kings gave him Ardabil and its dependencies. Minorsky refers to Sheykh Safi al-Din's claims tracing back his origins to "Ali ibn Abu Talib", but expresses uncertainity about this and mentions nothing about Kurdish origins of Sheikh Safi Al-Din ^[5].

(Other transliterations for Safi al-Din: Safi al-Din, Safi ad-Dîn, Safi Eddin, Safi od-Din, Safi El-Din, Safieddin, Safioddin)

[edit] Notes

[edit] Literature

Mazzaoui, Michel. The Origins of the Safavids: Shi'ism, Sufism, and the Gulat. Wiesbaden, West Germany: F. Steiner, 1972.