Talk:Safavid dynasty/Archive 9

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Contents 1 My version 2 Thanks for the suggestion 3 almost there 4 another try 5 Have not received any response 6 Back on it 7 Spelling corrections 8 Once again: Human Rights. 9 Anon IP edits 10 IP blocked 11 Grammatical corrections, formatting, wikifying 12 Some POV leftover quotes and redundant texts 13 moved around 14 Architecture 15 Anon edits 16 Architecture 17 History of Iran 18 .. 19 Anon IP socks 19.1 Shāh Abbās I 20 LOL 21 Roger Savory on Shah Abbas from Encyclopedia of Islam 22 Additions from Shah Abbas EI article 23 Tajik 24 German Orientalist 25 A few "tweaks" 26 IP socks 27 Template 28 Ariana310 29 POV 30 Fabianblue 31 Kurdish origins of Safavids 32 Atabeks newest additions 33 Anon edits 34 New Edits by DerDoc 35 Frye reference 36 Removal of Source

[edit] My version

It is not complete yet (will fix it up (grammer and spelling) this weekend with the relevant sources.. I messed up on the reference tag).. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ali_doostzadeh/Safavid

Hope it looks acceptable..

(PLEASE DO NOT DISCUSS ANYTHING OUTSIDE OF THE REALM OF THE ARTICLE AS SOME OF THE UNRELATED DISCUSSIONS HAS LEFT A NEGATIVE ATMOSPHERE WHICH USUALLY MAKES REACHING A CONSENSUS MUCH HARDER.). LOOKING AT THE ABOVE GUIDLINES, I WILL TAKE THE LIBERTY OF MOVING ANY NON-RELATED DISCUSSION INTO THE PREVIOUS ARCHIVE.

thanks (Sepaas, Sagh Gol, Shukran). Also with the approach of Nowruz, Noruz, Novruz I would like to wish everyone: Noruzetan Pirooz/Noruzetan Farkhondeh and Novruz/Bayramus Mubarak Olson. Maybe we all can give a Norouz gift to ourselves (minutes of precious life) by compromising.

--alidoostzadeh 02:39, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Ali this looks quite reasonable at a first sight. I need to read it more carefully though. Couple of quick comments:

• "Azeri" term referring to language should probably be replaced with "Azerbaijani" in the article. Currently, some parts of the version use Azeri some Azerbaijani.
• Junayd actually married the sister of Uzun Hassan, not his daughter. It was Heydar (Junayd's son) who married the daughter of Uzun Hassan, and Ismail was born to this marriage.

Thanks and happy coming Novruz to you and everyone as well. Atabek 07:51, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to Ali for taking the time and energy to tackle this difficult issue. This intro line should be improved: "The Safavids although claiming Arab lineage from the Prophet Muhammad were probably of Kurdish descent. Nevertheless they were a Turcophone dynasty and used Azeri as their court language. They also patronized Persian as a administrative and cultural language of their domain and Arabic served as the main religious language during their era."

Notes: Azerbaijani language was not only court language, but military and cultural (since 99% of Khatai's poems are in Azerbaijani). Meanwhile, while Turcophone and not Turkic-speaking, a more widely used description? And since this is Dynasty page, and Ismail being the most important member of that dynasty, the whole "probably of Kurdish descent" cannot be stated. There is absolutely no evidence that by Ismail's time he felt himself Kurdish, whilst his preference of Azerbaijani Turki language in poetry, court, military and official business, coronation in Azerbaijan, priority to subdue Azerbaijan (north and south) before the rest of Iranian Empire, etc., show him as a quintisential Azerbaijani.

Also, since a lot of evidence was presented, I think we should try to reference as many statements as possible. Happy Novruz to all. --AdilBaguirov 09:30, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I like Ali's suggestion, although I think that the intro is a bit too long.

@ Adil: your points do not make sense, most of all because everything has been discussed. Ismail's poetry is no proof at all, because we do not know if "99% of his poems were in Turkish", as you claim. All we know is that most of the poems which have survived are in Turkish - also keeping in mind that many poems were not even written by Ismail himself but centuries after his death by some of his Turcoman followers (see Iranica). You are correct that Ismail did not have any Kurdish identity (he even denied it), but all the rest you are saying is pure suggestion. There is not a single proof for the claim that he had any "Turkish identity". In fact, the Shahnama of Tahmasp - which was started and first patronized by Ismail personally - gives the impression that he did not have any Turkish identity and that he considered Turks his enemies. Also his choice to appoint ethnic Persian amirs for the Turcoman Qizilbash, and to revive ancient Iranian titles underlines the theory that Ismail and his children did not have a Turkish identity and did not consider themselvs Turkic, even though they spoke a Turkic language. Yet again, we should also keep in mind that during Ismail'S time, the word "Turk" was only used for Central Asian nomads and was - in part - a self-designation of the Timurids. The Ottomans and the Safavids did not call and did not consider themselvs "Turks". While the Ottomans had some distant memories to their original Turcoman roots, the Safavids had their origin in a non-Turkic and Iranian Sufi order. Tājik 15:17, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Since Ismail did not have Kurdish identity, and was a founder of dynasty, then part about probably Kurdish origin should move out of intro into origins section. Also, the policy of Safavids was directed mostly against Ottomans and their influence, not against Turks as ethnicity. So anyone associated with Ottomans or originated from Anatolia came under suspicion. It does not mean, Safavids were of different identity. For the same reason, Khamenei is Azeri Turk, ruling Iran, neither himself nor his opponents deny this. But he has probably contributed more to strengthening Persian nationalism and language, than he did to strengthen Azeri/Turkic one. Atabek 20:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

The Ghaznavids did not have any Turkic identity and they even openly denied any Turkic origins. Yet, in almost all sources they are described as a "Turkic dynasty" and the "beginning of Turkic power in the Islamic world". Therefore, your suggestion does not make any sense. Ismail may have denied his Kurdish origins (the same way Ghaznavids denied their Turkic origins), but it does not change the fact that the Safavid had Kurdish origins, and that the Safavid tariqa - the base of all Safavid claims to Iran's throne - had a Sunni Kurdish origin. They denied their Kurdish origins because they did not want to be associated with the Sunni Kurds who supported the Ottoman sultans. Yet, it should also be noted that they never claimed to be Turks, although Turks were the backbone of their ascend to power. There is no sign of any Turkish identity, and the writings of Ismail as well as the sources from later Safavid periods clearly point toward a Shia Persian identity. So, the Safavids were a Turkic-speaking dynasty of Kurdish origin who claimed to be descendanst of Arab saints and Iranian Shahs of the past, and who identified themselvs with the Persian heroes of the epic age. All claims of any "Turkic identity" are POV ... even though Ismail's maternal grandfather was the leader of a Turcoman tribal federation, Ismail never claimed to be part of that federation, and he never took pride in his grandfather. From the beginning on, he was a Safavi Sufi Sheikh, and thus, he clearly identified himself with his paternal Safavid heritage and not with any Turkic Khans, tribes, or whatever. Tājik 20:58, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

The evidence presented so far claims some Kurdish origins of Sheikh Safi. It does mean those were Kurdish origins of entire dynasty, especially given the fact that Ismail had Turkic and Greek blood in him, so did his father Heydar have Turkic origins (his mother was a sister of Uzun Hassan). I was just showing an example with Khamenei, that disassociation with a group of certain people does not mean denying the origin belonging to them. Same is with Ismail. Ottoman Sultan Bayazid was defeated by Timur, it does not mean one of them was not a Turk. I am yet to see any evidence that shows anyone Persian (ethnic) in Safavid ethnic genealogy, except for the fact that Safavids just like their predecessors and successors promoted the language and culture. So apart from minor linguistic and major literary connection, any other reference to word Persian (as opposed to Iranian) would simply be out of place. Atabek 21:09, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Timur was not a Turk, he was Mongol - like all Barlas Mongols. That's why they became known as Mughals and called themselvs Gurkānī - derived from the Mongolian word kürügän which means "son in law (of Genghis Khan).

Besides that, the talk is not about multiple origins and all kinds of lines. If that were the case, the the Seljuqs, Ottomans, and Timurids, and ALL OTHER DYNASTIES around the world would have been of multiple origins. Yet, the Ottomans are still defined as "Turks" although most of their sultans had Non-Turkish mothers (mostly Armenians, Georgians, Greeks, Albanians, etc) and they themselvs were only 1/2 or 1/4 Turks.

I know that you have some grundge against Persians, Persian history, culture, and everything else that is somehow connected to the word Persian, but what you fail to understand is that the Safavids had a strong Persian identity. This is not about geneology, but about identity. And the fact that the Safavids promoted Persian language and culture, revived ancient Persian traditions and royal titles, created Islamic legends that connected the Persian people to Arab saints (the story of Shahrbanu, for example, or the special honoring of Salman al-Farsi), and patronized the Persian nationalist works of Nizami and Ferdowsi shows the strong Persian identity of the dynasty. This may be hard for some Turkish nationalists to understand, but keeping in mind that the dynasty had absolutely no Turkic identity, did not promote any Turkic nationalism or identity, did not claim descent from Turkic or Mongol Khans (like all previous dynasties), etc, these Turcophiles are not in any position to criticize the word "Persian".

The geneology of a dynasty is defined by the male family linage. Ismai'l had a Turkic grandfather, and his father had a Turkic mother. Yet, the male linage was Non-Turkic all the way. This male linage defines the Ottomans as "Turks" although they had much more Non-Turkic blood, and this male linage defines the Safavids as "Non-Turks", even though they had some Turkic blood. The Kurdish origins of the Safavids are confirmed. But what is certain is that the Safavids directly descended from Safi al-Din Ishaq, and he was certainly Non-Turkic. In this case, even if the Kurdish origin of Safi ud-Din is denied, his Non-Turkic origins cannot be denied. He is the eponym and the founding-father of the Safavid clan - the same Seljuq was a distant ancestor and eponym of the Seljuq dynasty, themselvs a highly Persianized family with no interest in Turkish language or literature.

I know that certain people do not like the word Persian ... this may be of what ever reason. But simply having a grudge against Persian and Persian identity does not justify anti-Persian POV in Wikipedia. Tājik 21:33, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Tajik, I am really tired of your ad hominem, yet again stating: "I know that you have some grundge against Persians". First of all, you know nothing about me. Secondly, can you for once cease concentrating on contributors and switch to concentrating on topics. Any discussion with you is really becoming counter productive in light of your personalization of it. As I said before, I have nothing against Persian people or their culture.

I am not trying to prove Safavis were Turkic or Persian or Kurdish. In fact, I almost agreed with Ali's proposal. I just care that if the statement is made attributing them solely (as is done in Kurdish case) to a certain origin, that it reflects the truth. So far, what has been deemed probable is connection between Sheykh Safi and Firouz Shah. Sheykh Safi lived some 200 years before Ismail, Firouz Shah lived another several hundred before Sheikh Safi. And you have not provided any single female or male in the lineage aside from Firouz Shah or Sheykh Zahid to show that Safavids had just plain Kurdish origins. You cannot prove that either Sheikh Junayd or Sheikh Haydar were to be Kurdish, since full genealogy of them (including both male and female) is already not fully Kurdish.

Your reference to Ottomans is misplaced as well. The dynasties usually had origins that they clearly identified themselves with. Ottomans spoke Turkish, so did Safavids, in fact, the latter more so even used it as a language of the court. You can never find Ottomans trying to purge their Turkish origin or hide it in their geneaology, while we do have a proof that Safavids tried to purge any Kurdish reference from their history.

Timur was not Mongol, he was what's today considered as Uzbek. Considering that you call all inhabitants of Central Asia as Turks, it's surprising how Amir Timur suddenly became only Mongol.

I will try to get my hands to some text on Safvat al Safa, which apparently had some reference to Sheikh Safi being referred to as "Pir-i Turk". I need to verify this claim. Atabek 22:15, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Atabek, the Ottomans DID HIDE their Turkic origin. In fact, it was even considered an insult to call the Ottomans "Turks". What you - as a non-expert on Central Asian history - still fail to understand is that the word "Turk" had a totally different meaning before the so-called "Young Türk" revolution in Anatolia. The word "Turk" was - just like "Scythian" and "Mongol" - a general name given to a whole bunch of different peoples of different origins who just seemed to have a similar way of life. And that was nomadic and bellicose. That'S why Timru and Babur - both ethnic Mongols - considered themselvs "Turks", because the word reflected their way of life: a nomadic dynasty of warriors and conquerors who claimed descent from the great Mongol conquerors of the 12th century. That'S why Mir Ali Sher Nava'i, in his "Muhākamāt al-Lughatain", claims that Hulagu was a "Turk" and Toghril a "Persian"!

thus, the Ottomans - although they were indeed descendants of a Turkic tribe - did NOT consider themselvs "Turks" and their language was NOT identified as "Turkic". It was known as "Uthmanli" and it was regarded completely different from the "barbarian languages of the Turks". Comperative linguistics did not exist back then and people did not realize or know common origins or grammar of languages. The Ottoman language was a mixed language, and contained Turkic and Persian grammar, as well as countless Arabic and some Persian vocabulary. In total, the ammount of original Turkish words was less than 20% (see Iranica). Thus, the Ottomans - in their own view - neither "spoke Turkish" (= Turkic languages of Central Asia) nor had any blood relations to the "primitiuve Turks" (Chaghataid and Timurid Mongols). The re-discovery of their Turkic background was promoted in the 19th century, when extrem nationalism spread throughout Europe. While the European powers claimed to be descendants of the Scyths, whom they labled "Aryans, Turkish-speaking Ottoman intellectuals discovered the ancient Central Asian nomads, labled all of them "Turks" - including multi-lingual and heterogenious groups such as the Huns - and promoted this nationalist view.

That's the reason why YOU today want to lable the Safavids "Turks".

The Ottomans were a highly civilized, Persianized, and Europeanized family. The Ottoman sultans were multi-lingual and spoke all kinds of languages. Ottoman Turkish was only one of the 3 official court languages, along with Persian (the lingua franca of the early Ottomans) and Arabic. Most of the Ottoman sultans had NON-TURKISH mothers. Yet, they are STILL labled "Turks" and "of Turkic descent", because one of their distant ancestors - Uthman - was a Turcoman tribal chief. The Ottomans are even categorized as Oghuz, although the original Oghuz lived 300 years before the creation of the Ottoman Empire and had splitted into countless other tribes.

The Safavids are considered "Kurds" because their family-tree starts with a Kurd. Saying that "Safavids were originally of Kurdish descent" does not mean that they did not have any other ancestors. And what you also fail to understand is that each of the Safavid princess had countless children. So, the dynasty was not only the king, but the entire Safavid family. The Safavids of Qandahar, for example, constantly married into Timurid or Indian noble families. The Safavid governors of Fars married local nobles. Others were married to neighbouring ruling dynasties. All in one, the family was highly multi-cultural. Only because the ruling Shahs wrote some poetry in Azeri (leaving aside their Persian poetry), it does not mean that the entire family was Turkish-speaking. You also totally underestimate the importance of the royal harem and the "first ladies", each of them trying to elevate their sons to the throne of Persia. Some of the harem ladies were Turcomans, some were Georgians, some others were Persians, Indians, or whatever. Have you already forgotten that Mumtaz Mahal, the Persian queen of India, was a Safavid noble?! And she was NOT a Turk but a a Persian.

Classifying the Safavids as "Kurds" is encyclopedic standard: it's because their family-tree stars with Kurds. Both safi al-Din Is'haq AND his wife, the daughter of Zahed Gilani, were Kurds. It was not until Haydar Safavid, himself a resident of Diyabakir - a Kurdish city; until today! - that the Safavids once again moved to Azerbaijan to lead their Turcoman murshids.

Tājik 23:45, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Tajik, what you say doesn't make good sense - while you are correct to make a point (which we already discussed) that not all poetry has survived the test of time, you should not selectively apply it in case of Ismail only, but in case of all other poets too, such as Nizami, to whose beloved and uneducated Turk wife he must have written love poetry in Turki. Secondly, the point about some poetry being written by his Turk followers is not very rellevant - so instead of let's say 10,000 beyts in Turki, he maybe wrote "only" 5,000. So? The number of beyts in Persian is still only a few lines. How does that help your point? You can't claim that the number of lines in Turki was potentially less, whilst at the same time claim that the number of lines in any Persian dialect was more. Ismail is extremely well-known by his pen-name Khatai, he is remmembered as much by his empire-building and military actions as by his poetry. His poetry is studied, for example, in Azerbaijani middle schools (grades 3-9), and thus is known before or simultaneously with his other activities. So denying Azerbaijani Turkic language its place in the cultural sphere of the Safavid Empire is contrary to verifiable facts.

As of considering Turks as enemies -- sure he did. As he did Uzbeks. And Shirvanshah's. As did Mongols, too, consider Seljuk Turks as enemies. As did Uzun Hasan, the Aq Qoyunlu emperor, who too considered Ottoman Turks as enemies. As did some Azerbaijani Turks when they fought against (Ottoman) Turkey (mostly after Russian conquest, but still). All this doesn't mean he hated, despised, or otherwise ignored his Turkic heritage (whether blood or culture). And his and his descendant's identity being at least partially (Azerbaijani) Turkic is proven by the official letters that they wrote to far-away kings. No one forced them to write in Azerbaijani Turki -- in fact, it were probably easier to write in Persian, especially considering all that stuff you say about Persian amirs and other chancellery and bureaucrats (although even that's disputed by some evidence, as Europeans had easier time to translate from Turkic, than from Persian). Yet they, several Safavid shah's, wrote in Turkic, for some reason. I guess they just practiced their "foreign" language skills in a "hated", if we are to believe you, language, with the very unimportant European kings. It was all just for fun. ;)

Also, you have mentioned before that sheikh Safi wrote in "Azari" language - which would make him, according to the Iranian view, a pre-Turkified Azerbaijani. I have his verses in that language, by the way, too, and hence, him being Kurdish is rendered, by your own information, impossible (although I personally don't doubt that someone in the family throughout the centuries was of Kurdish origin), whilst the whole "Persian Kurdistan" re: Savory is too unspecific (and if the whole premise of Kurdishness is based on that obscure geographic reference, then it's too imprecise). What is Persian Kurdistan to some, is Western Iran to others, Eastern Turkey to yet some others, and Greater or Lesser Armenia to yet others. In addition to "Azari" language (which is closest to modern Talysh, not Persian) and Turki with Persian, he knew Arabic and Mongolian languages.

Meanwhile, don't forget about chroniclers like Hamdallah Kazvini (1280—1349), who was essentially a contemporary of sheikh Safi, and noted ethnic composition of many cities in South Azerbaijan (Northern Iran): Kalantar, Khoy, Urmiya, Garmrud, Maragha, Nilan (Laylan), etc., all are mentioned to have ethnic Turks, sometimes in majority.

Finally, here's a good quote to add to the "Pir-i Turk" user Atabek mentioned above: "It seems that Timur not only transported tribes to the east, to Transoxania and neigboring region's, but that he also sent certain tribes from Iran to the West. At the request of Shaykh Safy-ud-Din Ishag (in Ardebil Azarbaijan) a highly celebradet holy man, Timur consented that the tribes of Turkish origin who had been sent to Syria and Armenia should return to their homelands. These grateful tribes-among whom were also the Qajar-became devoted disciples of the shaykn and were supporters of Shah Ismail,who later founded the Safavid dynasty." Prof. Dr. Ozkan Izgi (Hacettepe University), "Central Asia After the Mongol Invasion-Islam and Sedentray Life as a Consequence", citing: Sir John Malcolm, History of Persia, p.66 and C.R.Markham, A General Sketch of the History of Persia, p.263. --AdilBaguirov 07:02, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually since there are more Turkish poems from Esmail than Persian(50), so I would probably guess that he has more Turkish poems by what has survived. Just probabilisticly speaking. Although Sam Mirza does not elaborate on how many Persian poems Shah Esmail has but he mentions his Persian poetry and thus it is probably more than 50 verses we have now. On the other hand, for some other poets we do not have a single specimen or any books mentioning it. Also many Qashqai's in Iran (being tribal migratory group) do not have an education but they speak and understand Persian well enough. Some have even composed poetry in both languages..I recall reading about an uneducated man in Iran who was a good poet

. The issue about Ismail's poetry has been mentioned though in my latest edits.

But wanted to comment on the interesting quote you brought. It is from Sir John Malcom who wrote his book in 1815.(Although I am not sure when the Turkish Professor who quoted him lived but the title of his book sounds new which is suprising). But since that time, Safavid scholarship has improved tremendously. To the extent that now it is clear Shaykh Safi ad-din and Teymur did not meet. Shaykh Safi ad-din passed away around in 1334(born around 1252) and Teymur was born was around in 1336 (died around 1405). But during the Safavid times a myth passed along that Teymur gave 1000 Tatar slaves to the Shaykh after visiting the Shaykh and being impressed by him and these became the ancestors of the Ghezelbash. (Thus in a way trying to say that the Ghezelbash were attached to the Safawid family from the day of the Shaykh). As you can see, Teymur and Shaykh Safi ad-din though did not meet, but this is another example of a myth created during the Safavid era and it shows that in an event of 200 years how myths can even trasnplant people in different times. Thus Sir John Malcom probably was quoting a post-1501 Safavid manuscript.

On the premise of Kurd on Firuz is based on Safwat as-Safa directly calling Firuz Shah Zarin Kolah, Kurdish twice. (plus the shafi'iteness). The Persian Kurdistan could be replaced to Kurdistan for clarity.. Sanjaar/Sangaan Kurdistan. Safwat as-Safa makes it clear though that Firuz migrated and settled in Ardabil.

Also comment about Iranian languages since I study them on the side. Talyshi, Kurdish, old Azeri are all NW Iranian languages and at that time were mutually intellgible. Still Talyshi and some Kurdish dialects are very close. Thus Lurs in Iran can understand Kurdish and Talysh can understand Tati and etc. Laki is close too. They are all very similar. Persian and some dialects of Kurdish are very close as well. For example Kermanshahi Kurdish is very close to Shirazi persian.

About Hamdullah Mustawafi, he mentions specially that the Shaykh was Shaf'ite. Furthrmore, some of the cities like Maragha, Zanjan, Goshtasfi (between Baku and Ardabil) as Pahlavi-Gilani speaking. Urmia he does not give language. He also quotes some sentences from the dialect of Tabriz which was also Iranic at the time (Yarshater, Azeri).

Three sentences from the dialect of the region before Turkification is quoted from Ibn Bazzaz from the Shaykh:

سه جمله از «شيخ صفي» در صفوةالصفاي ابن بزاز: «كار بمانده، كار تمام بري» (= اي خانه آبادان، كار تمام بود)؛ «گو حريفر ژاته» (= سخن به صرف بگو، حريفت رسيده)؛ «شروه مرزدان به مرز خود بي

Note the sentence Goo Harifar zhaata (the middle one). Zh is not a sound in Turkic dialect but Zhaate is now pronounced as Haate in Kurdish which is equivalent to Persian Amad or English arrived. I have some knowledge of with various Iranian dialects., the quatrains of the Shaykh given to Kurdish or Talyshi speaker is understdanble by large.. Note Ibn Nadeem discussed the unity of dialects of Fahlah (Azerbaijan, Esfahan, Hamadan,Ray..) and this is mentioned. Basically what used to be the Iranian dialects of Azerbaijan (dialects of say Tabriz and Ardabil) was located between Talyshi and Kurdish geographically and thus linguistically and both of these are very close (Kurmanji and Talyshi). Talyshi is also not that far from Persian and some dialects of Kurdish are closer to Persian than other dialects. We now have some new information on Tabrizi dialect thanks to the recently discovered Ikhanid era manuscript of Safineyeh Tabrizi. Thus some Iranian dialects are closer (much like say Azeri and Istanbuli turkish) and others are further. But the NW dialects like Talyshi, Kurdi..are fairly close.

Going back though to Sir Malcom, the quote you brought from Sir John Malcom who quotes a Safavid era manuscript is a good and interesting quote in terms of illustrating how Safavid histography became more mythical by each generation and the Shayk was implanted in Teymur's time or viceversa. Of course Sir John Malcom is not to blame by mentioning this quote and it is a good quote showing how history was modified... --alidoostzadeh 20:25, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for the suggestion

I am glad everyone is enthusiatic about Nowruz.

I was not done yet.. and that will take into account suggestions by Atabek, Adil and Tajik hopefully tommorow and give it another shot with references that has been brought by myself and others and try make the introduction acceptable to everyone.

Comment for Adil. About the languages of the Safavids I was going with the main language. Azeri was the main court language (Persians was present also), Persian was the main patronized language (judging by the amount of works left) in the domain (I am not totaling all the Safavids Turkish and Persian poetry but Tahmasp, Abbas.. have Persian letters, poems and etc and some members of Safavid family like Sam Mirza have even written books like Sam Mirza). Persian was also the main administrative language. Finally while there are some important religious works in Persian from that time, the bulk of it from what I gathered was Arabic. So I was going with what is considevered overwhelming majority in their whole domain. But I will edit that section probably.

Ali, that's why I suggested to list out all the different aspects of language usage: court language (mostly Azerbaijani, as well as Persian), official language (Persian and Azerbaijani), state language (Persian), military language (Azerbaijani), religious langauge (Arabic), poetic language (Persian and Azerbaijani). --AdilBaguirov 05:34, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah but that would be too complicated for the introduction. Probably these things should be included in : Court life, Cultural life, Religion under Safavid sections..--alidoostzadeh 20:26, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment for Atabek. As per Atabek's suggestion that Safwat As-Safa had pir-i-Turk that is not true. I looked at archives with this regardd (I believe GM or someone mentioned something) and the user mentions the book Sisilat an-nasb of Safavids written at least in 1680 (and I am not sure what the oldest extant manuscript is). I have partial access to some passages from this book from Mazzaoui. In it the Safavid family line is given by: (Shaykh Safi ad-din ... (a name abu bakr removed from the Shaykhs ancestor which was in the Safwat as-Safa, the reason is of course that abu bakr is not an acceptable shi'ite name) to firuz shah zarin kolah (removed the Kurdish part) to Imam Musa ibn Kazim to Prophet Muhammad). Note Sislat an-nasab was written at least in 1680. Also it is sufic work and it has some gilaki poems from the Shaykh as well (in another book I have). Uusually in Sufism and Persian sufism, turk has a multiple meaning including bright, light, shining, radiant beautiful as well as cruel lover, raider, without faith and as well as fast, quick, unsettled... (Probably has 20-30 meanings in Persian mysticism). But the main line of Safavids from this book goes back to the Prophet Muhammad. Actually I do not think there exist a single book after 1501 which does not mention the Safavid claiming descent from the Prophet. So all these books are suspect due to their late date and also their contradiction with Safwat as-Safa. Also Professor Togan said that Safavids were at pains to make the Shaykh a Shi'ite descent of the Imams and turkish speaking (perhaps for thei overwhelming turkish followers). Either way not to reject or accept the claim about pir-i-turk , where-as Safwat Safa which mentions the Kurdish origin of the Shaykh was written during the time of the Shaykh's son, the Silsilat an-Nasab was written in 1680 (350 years after the passing of the Shaykh) and the oldest manuscript of it I am not sure where it is from. But anyways in the book it gives the ancestery of the Shaykh from the Prophet Muhammad and removes abu bakr as a name of one ancestor of the Shaykh and removes the Kurdish title of Firuz. Also the fact that Safavids deliberately tempered with Safwat as-safa (and hence really making all post-Safavid manuscripts with regards to their descent ideological innature) shows as you said that they did not want to be associated with Kurds. And of course they did not want to be associated with the Sunnism of the Shaykh which is mentioned in Safwat as-Safa. Basically the Safwat as-Safa because it was written around the time of the Shaykh's son and also because it is the only pre-Safavid document found so far before the rise of their political power, has the most weight amongst scholars and combined with the Shaykh's shafi'ism, is the main reason why scholars have put probable Kurdish origin. Although because there has been so much tempering after the Safavids took power, no one can say with 100% certainty..

As per Tajiks comments. Yes, it is true Esmail did not have Kurdish identity. Of course Esmail I did not have Turkish or Persian identity of today either. He was shi'ite foremost, second he wrote in Azeri ( i put approximately 1400 verses because that is what I read somewhere but I am not sure how many may belong to Bektashi sect as you mentioned) and what has survived in Persian (50) but third he identified with Shahnameh and Persian myths and asked for a Shahnameh style book in Persian to be written about him by Hatefi.. So Esmail I 's identity in terms of today is hard to identity since Turks do not identify shahnameh as their myths/folklore as for the most part Shahnameh is the bible of Persian nationalism and Persians also do not compose Azeri poetry like Esmail I did (even if he did it for his followers still by composing in azeri he is part taking in that culture as well). So probably I will clip some stuff from the intro or emphasize that the dynasty by choice tried to distance itself from Kurdish roots. Esmail I's multi-faceted identity can be discussed in more detail in his own entry. But I agree with users that he did not have Kurdish identity which perhaps the introduction suggest with probable and needs to be clarified that the Safavids distanced themselves from it. Buut he did not have pure Turkish or pure Persian identity either if we are going to be accurate. --alidoostzadeh 00:31, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

we'll edit it on saturday due to some stuff... --alidoostzadeh 00:02, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Still working on it.. will add more sources from different.. Hopefully will be done soon as I am also covering chaldiran and Esmail after Chaldiran...--alidoostzadeh 23:49, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] almost there

The initial feedbacks were positive. I have incorporate most of suggestions by various users. Thankfully the initial comments were positive.

[[1]] (will check grammer..spelling..punctuation tommorow..)

Also need some suggestions on terminology to be consistent.

1) Turcophone or Azeri speaking or Turkic speaking? I have seen all three. I have seen Turcophone in couple of books on Safavids. I like turcophone because it is one word. I also like Azerbaijani speaker on the other hand because it is specific where as Turkic/turcophone can be anything from A (Azeri) to Yakut to Uighyur? Although the context is clear for any scholar that Azeri is meant, but for people looking up Safavids for the first time, they would not know.

Well, Turcophone is just as unspecific as Turkic-speaking language wise. But since Turkic-speaking is more popular, it should be used. To make it more presise, "Azerbaijani Turkic-speaking" could be used. Or just say "Turkic-speaking" and then clarify that in Azerbaijani dialect of Turki later in the article. --AdilBaguirov 05:30, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

2) Kizilbash, Ghezelbash, Qezelbash or Qizilbash? I have used Qezelbash because of Encyclopedia of Islam. How is the Turkish pronounced?

Qizilbash. It is the closest to Oghuz Turkic languages such as Azerbaijani, and has gained a lot of traction in Western literature too over other alternatives (sole exception being probably Kizilbash, which is probably more popular) --AdilBaguirov 05:30, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

3) Ismail (Encyclopedia of Islam) or Esmail ( Iranica)? I am going with Ismail because it seems more common and is close to the Arabic.

I would agree with Ismail too, simply as it's more popular. --AdilBaguirov 05:30, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

4) Safavid or Safawid? I am going with Safawid since it is in Encyclopedia of Islam. The name is ultimately Arabic and thus w is needed to pronounce it correctly. Tehrani Persian and most Turkic dialects don't have w.. but Afghan Persian and Kurdish and other Iranian dialects as well as Arabic languages do. I am going with the Arabic pronounciation since it is reflected in Encyclopedia of Islam and also Iranica. But at the same time Safavid is okay although Safawid is more academic. --alidoostzadeh 04:23, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

The first usage should be Safavid, as its more popular. Many of our names are of non-native origin, but have since solidified their status in our respective languages. Hence, just because the origin of the family name is ultimately Arabic whilst its holders were not, means there is little sense in mentioning it first. However, in parenthesis we should say: "(also spelled as Esmail Safawi)". --AdilBaguirov 05:30, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment. Kizilbash sounds good as it is also in Encyclopedia of Islam. Ismail is good. Safawid is more academic but I do not have problem with Safavid. About Azerbaijani Turkic-Speaking that is just too long although I do not mind it. But how is Azeri-Speaking? For now I'll change to Azerbaijani Turkic-speaking. --alidoostzadeh 20:28, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Ali, your current version is far worse that it was initially, I have to disagree with many assertions made there:

• The Safawids were a shi’ite dynasty that established an Iranian empire and ruled it from 1501 to 1722.

• No, Safavids were a Shiite dynasty which established Iranian empire and ruled it from 1502 till 1722. Although having an intention to establish control over Iran, Ismail did not "establish Iranian empire" in 1501.

• Their originated in Ardabil Azerbaijan region of Iran and are considered by many as one of the greatest Iranian Empires[1] since the Islamic conquest of Persia.

• They originated in Ardabil in Iranian Azerbaijan. Saying Ardabil Azerbaijan region of Iran is actually confusing because Ardabil is town, while Azerbaijan is a region.

• The Safawids established Ithnaˤ'ashari(arabic: twelve) Imami Shiism[2] as the official religion of their kingdom and reasserted the Iranian identity of the region, [3], thus becoming the first native dynasty to establish an independent and united Iranian state since the Sassanids.

• I agree with most of this sentence, except for saying "reasserted". It's clear that identity established by Safavids was not a reassertion (there was no Shiite state in Iran prior to Safavids) but assertion. And the identity was contemporary, because what Safavids defined back then is pretty much the same identity (cultural and national) that Iran has today. Modern Iran resembles more Safavid identity than it does Sassanid or Achamenid identity.

• The Safawid's claimed direct origin from the Prophet Muhammad during the era of their rule, but this is rejected by modern scholars and is seen as an act of the Safawids solidifying their legitimacy.

• The sentence seems too POV and generalizing, what do you mean by rejected and by this? If scholars are uncertain about Safavid identity, how can they be certain that he did not descent from Muhammad or Arabs?

• The Safavids origin thoug remains uncertain but they were probably of Kurdish fatherline[4][5].

• Again POV. Probably of Kurdish fatherline, means entire fatherline of Ismail (founder of dynasty) was probably Kurdish, which is definitely untrue. I suggest moving everything related to Kurdish origins to Origins section out of intro. If it is to remain in intro, then we shall also mention the Turkic and Greek roots of Ismail, which makes the article redundant. As I said, there is some evidence of even Sheikh Safi having Turkic roots (Pir-i Turk), which I am currently investigating.

• Nevertheless, even before the time of their political power, the Safawids were turkified and turkic-speaking and used Azeri as a medium of communication to their followers as well as their court language[6][7].

• "Were Turkified" is wrong statement, it puts Safavids in passive (as were applied Turkification). No one forced Safavids to be Turkified, this was a lengthy natural process, which is yet to be proven to have happened. Turkic-speaking is more balanced and acceptable compromise. Also Azeri should be replaced with Azerbaijani or Azeri Turkic (preferrably using the definition by Minorsky - Azerbaijani Turkish or Turkic).

• "They also patronized Persian as a administrative and the main cultural language of their domain[8]

• Now, where did this come from? I accept it was main cultural language not only of their domain, but of many other empires, but administrative?? This is something new.

• and Arabic served as the main religious language during their era. Despite their demise in 1722, the Safawids have left their mark down to our own era by spreading and establishing Shi'i Islam in major parts of the caucus and middle east, specially in Iran.

• Some spelling corrections, it's Caucasus and Middle East (capitalized).

So overall, Ali, your current version is much worse (at least in my view) than was initial you proposed above. I will have hard time agreeing with this version of introduction without some major discussions and reviews. Also "Safawid" is not the right spelling, as majority of sources, except Savory, use Safavid. In both Azerbaijani and Persian, it's spelled with "v", "w" is more Arabic. After all we don't say "Ganjawi" but "Ganjavi", not "Safawiyeh" but "Safaviyyeh". Thanks. Atabek 17:11, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually let me work backward here.

1) Safawid is used in Iranica and Encyclopedia Islam by all authors. But okay I will go back to Safavid, Safavviyah. Note though Safawid gets 450 hits in google books and Safavid 770. But the books and articles that use Safawid are more specialized.

2) Administrative language has to do with tax collection, and etc. There is a lot of Persian doucments in this regard. I will remove that whole court language, administrative language, cultural language, religious and etc.. to a later sections (court life, administration, culture, religion under Safavids) as it seems unnecessary for an introduction. The intro doesn't need all that info.

3) I'll see what I can do with the Turkified section.. I'll remove the word.

4) As per the Shaykh having Turkish roots, all post-1501 manuscripts of Safavids claim Arab descent for the Shaykh. Post-1501 Safavid manuscripts do not have as much as weight infront of any unbiased scholar as a pre-1501 Safavid manuscript. Note the Teymur quote above which I made some clarifications about above shows a clear example about manipulation of Safavid histography. The Shaykh meeting Teymur for example is another later on invention where as the two were not contemporaries, but a story circulated that that Teymur visited the Shaykh and then assigned 1000 Tatar gaurds to him and these became the ancestors of the Ghezelbash...(Thus the shaykh (Pir, Guide) of Turks..). Of course the Shaykh probably had Turkis, Mongolian followers as well, but this story as you can see was made up. Such a story is mentioned in post-Safavid trying to make the Qajar tribes an original follower of the Shaykh..I have not seen pir-i-Turk in Safwat As-Safa. Someone mentioned something here about silsilat an-nasab written in 1780 (and I am not sure what the latest manuscript is). In that book, the Shaykh's origin is brought to the Prophet of Islam. Note scholars agree that the Shaykh was probably Kurdish. I can bring 10+ academic sources (not random sources) with this regard. I spoke to for example Professor Momen (and although he said he is not safavid scholar) the proof for Kurdish origin is stronger. Anyways I am going to make that portion more relaxed but I can not do more than that.

5) Re-assertion means that Iranian identity was not start anew but was refreshed. For example the Shahnameh connection or calling himself Shah or calling his territory Iran and etc. shows it. There is continuity here via Persian literature and also memories of past dynasties. The quote is direct from Savory.

6) Majority of scholars do not accept Seyyedship of the Safavids. This is a fact. We can remove the whole portion from inro. Also the Shaykhs most distant ancestor in the oldest pre-1501 is given as Firuz Shah Zarin Kolah. The claim for Seyyedship was asserted in order to legitimize Safavid rule. The Shaykh himself was a Sunni Shaf'ite but in political Shi'ism having a descent from Imam Musa Kazim is seen as acquiring legitimacy for leadership.

7) Ardabil is currently a province as well as a town..I'll clarify it.

8) Your right about the 1501 versus 1502 part.. but technically the empire started in 1501.. For example the US gained independence in 1776 but it doesn't mean all of US is covered.. That is not a big deal we can make it 1502. I'll rework that section alittle bit.

So I'll work on some of the suggestions and give it another shot right now... --alidoostzadeh 20:43, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Are we talking about Iranian ethnic or political identity? Grandmaster 07:59, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Not ethnic but National identity. By promoting national Iranian traditions (Noruz, Charanshanbeh Suri, Shahnameh) and Shi'ite traditions, the Safavid took from the old Iranian identity and renewed it. It does not mean the Safavid identity was exactly the same as Sassanid identity, but there is a continuity between the two identities in the fact that they both celebrated national traditions, considered themselves Iranians, consider their political enemies as Turanians (Uzbeks) and Romans (Ottomans) (exactly as in Shahnameh), had awareness of the pre-Islamic past of Persia and pre-Islamic celebrations were held (Tiregan, Noruz) and in some areas Sedeh, Mehregan and etc. Had basically established similar boundaries. On that sentence we are just quoting Savory who is the most eminent Safavid scholar. --alidoostzadeh 14:02, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] another try

I have incorporated some new results based on Atabek's comments. Happy Noruz to everyone and hope to see this article agreed upon by everyone sooner than later.. [2] --alidoostzadeh 21:28, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Ali, I have a problem with this part of the intro: Their originated in Ardabil city in Azerbaijan region of Iran and are considered by many as one of the greatest Iranian Empires

It should just say They originated in Ardabil, Iran and are considered by many as one of the greatest Iranian Empires.Azerbaijani 19:38, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Ali, I will address your comments in response to my comments separately. This one is in response to User:Azerbaijani, an ArbCom participant, who is trying to exclude the word Azerbaijan or Turk from everywhere he can on Wikipedia or inserting "pan-Turkist" quotes from milliondollarbabies.com. Again, he is forgetting (?!) that there was no political entity called Iran, at the time of Safavid rise to power neither for 8 centuries before that. Iran was not a limited geographical entity (province) either, while Azerbaijan was and is a historical region with well defined limits, where Ardabil belongs. Atabek 22:21, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I have no problem with Azerbaijan, but the FACT is that Ardabil is an Iranian city! The Safavids originated in Ardabil, Iran. Simple as that. Arabil is now in Iran. See Van, Turkey for example, no where does it say "Kurdistan". Azerbaijani 22:49, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Atabek Iran was a geographical region (not a political entity) before Safavid times.. And just like Azerbaijan, it did not have definite borders either. (A good deal of Safavid sources for example do not consider above the Aras river as Azerbaijan).

Azerbaijani, I do not see any problem with the quote..its not a hair splitting thing.

I think what I mentioned is a compromise between Atabek and Azerbaijani. --alidoostzadeh 23:17, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I dont know why Atabek is pushing so hard for it not to be mentioned, even though its correct. So far, I have seen no compromise come my way, and I do not understand why Atabek is being so stubborn about this.Azerbaijani 23:19, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah but I think my version is a compromise with this regard and many other issues. --alidoostzadeh 23:22, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Again, Azerbaijani, maybe it's hard for you to understand, there was no political entity called Iran in 1501 and for at least 5-6 centuries before that. So calling Ardabil, Iranian Azerbaijan very well defines the geographical and contemporary belonging. I don't see why you keep fighting it simply out of plain POV. And assume a good faith, before calling me "stubborn", I have seen you compromising on nothing so far.

Ali, frankly, given the amount of material references presented by myself as opposed to Azerbaijani (with his milliondollarbabies or "world Flags"), I consider it almost an insult to intelligence when you say "compromise between myself and him". While you, myself and Tajik spend time coming up with versions, try to always get scholarly references, read them, present them in arguments, all Azerbaijani is involved with is copy-pasting from amateur websites, revert warring or POV pushing in every single Wiki site related to Azerbaijan.

Also Ali, the geographical region of Iran (with certain borders) did not exist until the national redefinition that came during the reign of Qajars (read Firouzeh Kashani-Sabet. "Fragile Frontiers: The Diminishing Domains of Qajar Iran", International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2. (May, 1997)). Iran, just like Turan, was always a mystical definition of national/ethnic domain rather than particular geographic entity with given borders. While Azerbaijan was, regardless of ethnic origins, a geographic entity (province) with well defined borders. This is regardless of your mentioning "north of river Aras", as Ardabil is not north but south of river Aras. It seems that if I or others, "from north of river Aras", won't defend Ardabil as Azerbaijan, the entire Iranian Azerbaijan will soon simply be named as Fars and forgotten as a region, just because people there speak different tongue. But aside from those, Safavids fought their battles north of river Araxes before proclaiming themselves in Tabriz, so that makes your argument double irrelevant in this case. Atabek 00:24, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Atabek there was a geographical region of Iran (borders) varying used by various people at various time. It was not just a mystical definition, it is what the Sassanid's called their country and then Islamic sources have used it too. You did not understand my point or maybe I was not clear or said the same thing you did. Geographical designations such as Iran, or provincies/territories Azerbaijan, Armenia etc. did not have define borders they do today. That is why various authors have given various borders. The only thing perhaps that is defined with a certain border is Ardabil here since it is a city.. Ilkhanid era Rashid al-din Fazlollah has used Iran for example as a clear geographical region and not a mystic definition. These attested to in many texts as geographical regions although different authors have given different borders... And of course Safavids used Iran as I already brought relavent texts from Shah Abbas and Sultan Selim and even Mughals addressing Safavids... In fact I have 10 references to Iran during Safavid era of hand. And some in Ilkhanid and of course Ghaznavids, Samanids and etc. Also Turan was not just mystical, it was used for Uzbek regions by Safavids era. It was used as a term for central asia and sometimes Makran/Baluchistan in Sassanid era. For a geographical name, there is no need for political entity if that geographic name has been used throughout history continously. This is the case with the name Iran and its borders are generally defined from Oxus to Euphrates in many texts (pretty much Sassanid Iran). But anyways I think that section which I modified is fine now and has all three, Ardabil, Azerbaijan, Iran. If we wanted to be clear by modern official political boundary it would be Ardabil, Ardabil province, Iran. But right now I made it in a way that all three names people want are mentioned without any political overtone and I have explained this to to Azerbaijani as well. There is no reason to spill what is happening in any other articles between Azerbaijani and Atabek to over here. Lets cut the political stuff and non-relevant stuff and concentrate on reaching a consensus. --alidoostzadeh 00:38, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

It should be Ardabil, Iran. Other than that, I think your intro is fine, but my suggestion needs to be included (Atabek does not get to decide on his own what will and will not go into the article).Azerbaijani 22:36, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes I am trying to work out suggestion satisfying everyone. Lets leave that issue for now as it is very minor. --alidoostzadeh 23:36, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Its not minor at all, its actually major.Azerbaijani 00:08, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay but you agreed with the rest of my intro. So we can discuss this point after the rest since it can easily be resolved still in my opinion. Also note in my introduction I did not mention that the oldest extant biography of the Safavid family dating before the rise of the rise of political era. I could have easily used the term oldest. So I am waiting for others to compromise. --alidoostzadeh 14:06, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Ardabil is in Iranian Azerbaijan or Azerbaijan region of Iran. This info cannot be suppressed. Grandmaster 14:20, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

That is what I have right now. I am awaiting response for other points. --alidoostzadeh 14:52, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Guys I want to add a section (without any text) called religion in Safavid era. I am not going to add any text to that section. But if anyone objects, let me know. --alidoostzadeh 14:50, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I made a section for religion and architecture. I did not see any opposition after mentioning this in the talk page. --alidoostzadeh 23:33, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Have not received any response

I have not received any response from some folks who used to discuss here. Even when I took long to propose my version, I was active and at least made a comment. If some people are doing further research let me know, but any new findings can be included in the article after discussing it here on the discussion page. I am guessing GM will definitely be here and I believe he can contact the other users to get their feedback if necessary. So their input is not cut off. I am awaiting for responses to make an agreeable introduction. Given the distortion in Safavid histography after their take on power (and note the example of Teymur above which is one in a dozen and scholars have discussed it), I have worded it all down so the issue is finished and other aspects of Safavids can be attended to. I can definitely say that the the earliest extant biography and the only pre-safavid one... which is definitely true and a correct statement and is independent of what Encylopedia X or Mr Y or Dr Z says. But I am trying to do everyone a favor by finishing the discussion which has gone too long. Personally I do not like topics of conflicts, since usually the debates get out of hand. The immaturity of various users has impeded a solution, specially in this talk page where unfortunately personal attacks and red herrings were more than plenty.

Also I had to make a sidecomment here for Atabek, although I did not want to, but I had to set the record straight in case he was looking for an answer and others might stumble upon that particular comment. On Ferdowsi. Ferdowsi lived in a time when Turks (and at that time Turks were foreigners in the area of Tus in Khorasan) started to invade Khorasan and Iran. Thus his reaction to such events was very normal and so he has some verses here and there about Turks. Although he has at the same time said positive stuff about Afrasiyab (who is really not even a human in Avesta but a mythical creature) in constrast to Keykavus and like any other Persian poet at the time, the beauty of Turks (and these were Turks before the expansion in caucus and Anatolia and looked like Kazakhs today and that is why they are described as Cheshm -Tang (narrow eyeed) beauties in Persian poetry). But Ferdowsi's reaction, in some verses, specially for his own time, is totally understandable and should be seen in its context (time and place) and not the 21st century wanting to be politically correct context (which does not exist anyway). Just had to make this point for clarification and it can be discussed further privately with anyone. --alidoostzadeh 01:17, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I will provide my input soon. As you all probably aware, most of Azerbaijani and Armenian users are currently party to an arbcom case and are mostly busy with it. Grandmaster 18:23, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay at least it is good to get some sort of response. I'll await after Arbcomm then.--alidoostzadeh 22:42, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Arbcomm is over. So I think it is time to fix the page.. --alidoostzadeh 01:56, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is time to move on. Grandmaster 10:33, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

How about we put two sources for Kurdish origin of Shaykh Safi and two for possible Azeri origin and we'll leave it at that? All in one/two sentences. No need to clutter the article. Hope to see solution soon.. --alidoostzadeh 16:56, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Back on it

Since I now have more time to devote to this article, wanted to find out what's the current state of affairs on it. I saw the current introduction which does not look that bad actually, and with minor tweaks could become a consensus version. Ali, I know you have version of your own, which has some extensive material. Perhaps, we can discuss those section by section, come to an agreement and incorporate them. Thanks. Atabek 14:46, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

No problem.. I will make a minor edition today or tommorow and ask for feedback.. I think it should be good enough and hopefully the issue will be resolved. --alidoostzadeh 19:39, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay I gave it another try here: [3].. what I propose is just put two sources in the begining where I meantioned Kurdish, Azeri, Arabic for each. Thus way all views are given. I removed the part about consensus of scholars that Safavids hailed from region X and also removed the emphasis part about the oldest manuscript mentioning Kurdish background. I will also have to convince user Tajik, but I think the current version has what everyone is looking for..--alidoostzadeh 00:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Guys let me know your opinion as I think the article needs to be fixed soon. --alidoostzadeh 01:37, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Ali, I think the current introduction of one sentence on Safavid page is the best. And the rest of the text in your version of the introduction can be moved to other appropriate sections of the article. Don't you think? It just seems to me that we have been concentrating too much on the introduction and this one sentence solution will clear the disputes over what's more or less important. Atabek 07:25, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Atabek, I think we should have something about the importance of the Safavids in the beginning. Check Sassanids or Kushans in wikipedia for example. Let me know which part of my introduction you have a problem with as everything in it is also sourced as far as I know. I have included all POV's and even removed some sourced items from the introduction to make a compromise. Eventually someone else will expand the introduction since one line is really not sufficient. Also everything in the introduction is sourced and there is nothing anti-anyone in it.

Here was intro: The Safavids dynasty (1501-1722) was a Shi’ite Azerbaijani Speaking dynasty that established an Iranian empire. Their originated in Ardabil city inAzerbaijan region of Iran and are considered by many as one of the greatest Iranian Empires^[1] since the Islamic conquest of Persia. The Safavids established Ithnaˤ'ashari(arabic: twelve) Imami Shiism^[2] as the official religion of their kingdom and reasserted the Iranian identity of the region, ^[3], thus becoming the first native dynasty to establish an independent and united Iranian state since the Sassanids. Despite their demise in 1722, the Safavids have left their mark down to our own era by spreading and establishing Shi'i Islam in major parts of the Caucus and Middle east, specially in Iran.. As you can see I have not put the origin of the Safavids in this section and will probably jut put one line on varying opinions on the Shaykh. I would change Azerbaijani speaking to Azerbaijani but some users (not me) in the future one day might object but they can not object to azerbaijani speaking.

As you can see the origin part of Safavids, consensus of scholars that they are from Kurdistan and the oldest and only extant Safavid manuscript describing the families origin is not in intro even though they are sourced. Everything else is currently is also sourced. I think the Shah Esmail section of my version is also balanced. Thus like any other wiki article, there needs to be a paragraph or so. I am currently actually not satisfied with the current page and I am r.v.'ing back to S.A. Vakilian's version until the new version. --alidoostzadeh 11:25, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Dear Ali, this is not about references. I just think major disputes can be resolved by just having one sentence in introduction as it was in the previous version before your restored it to sa.vakilians. We can discuss the details in other following sections. It just seems that so far we have been putting too much effort into introduction. The key elements to recall:

• Safavids were Iranian dynasty,
• Ruled from 1502 - 1722
• Asserted Ithnaˤ'ashari(arabic: twelver) Shia branch of Islam as a contemporary religion and identity of Iran
• Originated in Ardabil in Iranian Azerbaijan
• Were Turkic-speaking and used Azerbaijani as a court language
• Had their origins in Safaviyyeh movement, whose founder, Safi al-Din Is'haq may have had Kurdish origins

If you can make one or two (maximum) sentences expressing these facts, we should put it into introduction and then move on to discuss details. With all due respect to this language and culture, minor literary usage of Persian by Safavids or Ismail's obsession with Shahnameh, are not sufficient factors to put Persian language into introduction. Those can go into details of founder of dynasty section and to Ismail I page. Atabek 10:11, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. But I do not see why it should be one or two sentences rather than a pagraph like other dynasties. Actually the Persian language was used widely not just by Safavid dynasty (Azeri was used also by the dynasty) but as the cultural language of the empire given the works they patronized. Also my introduction above did not have Persian language but it is important to emphasize some Safavid's key points in the intro (Iranian dynasty , ruled, religion, unified Iran and re-asserted a national identiy based on national-religious factors within a unified governance, ...). I think the introduction of S.A. Vakilian (which is also sourced) has all these points basically and since it was agreed upon, then we should just leave it or use my introduction which does not have Persian language. --alidoostzadeh 12:20, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I am fine with the above version that Ali is proposing, except for one minor modification to the second sentence.Azerbaijani 22:48, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that wording is fine..its very NPOV.--alidoostzadeh 12:20, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Do you think this version is completely inacceptable?

The Safavid dynasty (1501-1722) was a dynasty that ruled Iran from 1502 thru 1722 (though several Safavid rulers were nominally reigning until 1736) and established a unified independent Iranian state for the first time since the Islamic conquest of Persia. A predominantly Turkic-speaking dynasty originated in Ardabil, Iranian Azerbaijan, from where its expansion started in 1501. Safavids promoted Persian cultural and linguistic heritage and Shiite branch of Islam, which became the basis of the contemporary Iranian national identity. Establishing Shia Islam as the official religion of Iran, Safavids expanded their empire well beyond Iran's modern boundaries.

We can fix some lines here and there, but could it be acceptable in general? Grandmaster 13:04, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I think it is not bad at all and we are very close. I believe though my version is slightly better because it is sourced and there is one confusion with your last sentence from my perspective. The Safavid's called their empire Iran (Shah Abbas, Sultan Selim)(used other names like Dawlat Saffawiyya as well of course but Iran was a common name). So what was beyond modern Iran's boundary was also called Iran and that might be confusing. Also the Safavid's promoting linguistic/cultural heritage is going to be in the cultural section. What stands out about Safavids is important to emphasize. They established Shi'i Islam (which we hear every day about in the news and if it wasn't for Safavids the middle east would be predominantely Sunnite), made a unified Iranian state since the time of say Sassanids (some might argue Buyids or Samanids), re-asserted or remoulded Iranian identity (using what was existent and injecting it with a government and expanding Shi'ism and making it an important aspect of Iranian identity). If we say Shi'ite branch of Islam became the basis of the contemporary Iranian identity, other users might say it is one of the basis, the other being shared history or etc. That is why it is just best to quote the scholar in this case. --alidoostzadeh 20:20, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

My sugesstion is that if we can not reach a consensus on the introduction, then we should simply follow wiki guidelines and put sourced info from reliable historians. I do not think it is good to have an article with all these tags like this. --alidoostzadeh 02:03, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Ali, can you add what you think is necessary to my version? I see no problem with changing or removing the last line per your comments. Grandmaster 12:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

What is important is to have have exactly sourced sentence from scholars who write in the context the way they are. I am not sure what the exact issue is here anymore.. but since we had agreed previously, I am going to keep S.A. Vakilians version and slightly modify it. I put Azerbaijani speaking instead of Turkic since Turkic is actually a language family and it would be appropriate if we did not know the particular language. But I do not mind Azerbaijani either but some users might in the future say something but I am fine with either: Azerbaijani speaking. The Shaykh Safi and Shah Ismail version since there was no problems with that.. I think with that we can remove the tag and be done with this issue since frankly much conversation has not taken place even after arbcomm and it is unfair to have these tags on such an important article. Basically everything is sourced and I think the article is balanced. I think the intro and the two sections (Shaykh Safi and Ismail) is sufficient and the article is balanced. --alidoostzadeh 00:55, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I’m in general Ok with the current intro. I only replaced the word “established” with the word “ruled”, because it says in the next line that they established Iranian empire, and repetitiveness is not good. Also, I removed the text from Savory quote, because is we are to include text, we should do that for other quotes too. Also, I added back reference to Frye. Otherwise, I’m fine with the intro, even though some fixes could be made to improve English. Maybe we can ask a native English speaker to have a look. Grandmaster 10:03, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the quote from savory is good.. someone might ask for it later on. It is only a sentence. Other than that, I have no problem with anything else and it seems good. Or I will add some of these quotes in an specialized archive page here.. for later reference. --alidoostzadeh 11:31, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

The reference to Savory is there, I just removed the quote, because if we are to keep it, we might as well quote Frye. Grandmaster 11:34, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind quoting frye in the reference section either but some people might object to the first couple of sentences. I think though it is best to make a special archive section with these quotes and I'll do it. The reason is later on someone might like to look at. --alidoostzadeh 11:45, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok, we might collect the quotes somewhere for future reference. Alternatively, we can add both quotes to the article. Grandmaster 11:58, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I think if we have an accessible quote, we should added it to the reference section made in the talk page so it won't cause future headaches if other users r.v. for some reason. I basically cut the quote to:...reasserted Iranian identity and established an independent Iranian state after eight and a half centuries of rule by foreign dynasties... ..since I do not want to discuss origin and etc. Basically the part about Iranian identity and independent Iranian state in the sentence was relevant to what I was quoting. --alidoostzadeh 00:29, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

article if it is not say two paragraphs or something..

The sentence: They originated in Ardabil city in the Azerbaijan region of Iran and are considered by many as one of the greatest Iranian Empires[2] since the Islamic conquest of Persia. makes no sense at all.

It should be: They originated in Ardabil, Iran and are considered by many as one of the greatest Iranian Empires[2] since the Islamic conquest of Persia.Azerbaijani 23:58, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I believe the article is good. That sentence is not confusing. It says: they originated in Ardabil in Azerbaijan region in Iran. Basically has no political tone. --alidoostzadeh 00:30, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Yea, your right, your version is much better, my mistake.Azerbaijani 22:43, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

“Considered by many” is a weasel wording which we should avoid, also Safavids were not an empire, but the dynasty that ruled the empire, so I reworded it as follows:

and created the greatest Iranian empire since the Islamic conquest of Persia.

Because I don’t think that there were greater empires than Safavids after the Islamic conquest. Feel free to rv if you disagree. Grandmaster 07:15, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay cool. I hope the article stays pretty much this way and the intro is fine. Hopefully anything else that is sourced by people is added to other sections. Now to fix the other article soon.. --alidoostzadeh 11:23, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling corrections

Ali, the current version needs a lot of spelling corrections and addition of some article references, which we used on the talk page. I made some spelling corrections and typo edits, and will continue working on those later. THanks. Atabek 11:15, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Made some more typo corrections (Islamil to Ismail, etc.) and added references to Shah of Azerbaijan in addition to Tapper's. The added references are from Archive 7, no text or semantics on that were changed. Thanks. Atabek 12:57, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Also added references to maternal genealogy of Ismail and proper names of Uzun Hassan's wife and daughter. I guess this should not cause any disagreements. Atabek 13:51, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that Ali's version was added on the top, while other stuff at the bottom is from old version and is redundant, we have to merge those together with the rest of the top version. I tried to rearrange the section on Conflict with Ottomans, but the rest need to be done as well. Please, do not alter references if taking the task of rearranging. Atabek 14:52, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I agree but I think putting too many non-related sources for that is extensive. I mean it's like putting 20 sources for the Kurdish origin of Shaykh Safi. I don't disagree with the statement but I think one/two sources convey the same thing. --alidoostzadeh 18:53, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Ali, I don't know why you keep removing references to published books. If you agree with reference, and more than one book tells it, why not present all the sources? Atabek 20:19, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Atabek, I didn't remove the reference since there are two references I kept (I have no problem with the satement). It is just referecing the same fact with 20 sources makes the wikipedia article not look good. Also two of the sources were not really in "context". For example putting 20 references about the Kurdish origin of Shaykh safi would make the numbers 1,2,3,4,...20 all clutter after one word. i just think an encyclopedia article should use good references, but the same fact doesn't need to be references by 20 books. It is just to make the article look good as you have done by spell checking. For example if I put 20 references after the word Iranian dynasty for Safavids.. So the statement is not in dispute. --alidoostzadeh 20:28, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Once again: Human Rights.

When Safavid Tribe came to power in Iran one must remember the history that they were not Iranians but as we Iranians say there were Am-Iranians, None-Iranians: They were of Mongul descendents. As You see the historical and political development for the past 1000 years in the Middle East is based on Lawless Behaviour by political and religious leaders who just empowered themselves rather than caring for their own people. The lack of Human Rights for this period and the decisions made by these incompotent leaders have brought us to what We are to today. It will take time to bring back Law and Democracy to The Region. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Iranian Issue (talk • contribs) 15:55, 27 April 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Anon IP edits

Someone with Anon IP edited the article inserting all kinds of POV without references and changing the discussed version. So I am reverting to Ali Doostzadeh's last version. Ali, please, watch your edit when you have time. Thanks. Atabek 11:24, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll try to keep a watch although might not have time always in the summer. But if future users add stuff with sources, it will be hard to r.v.. I am sure someone in the future might want to mention the tati poems.. (I personally do not care either way), and they can source it. But the introduction and different sections have taken a long time to work out, so it would be good if they use the talk page. Also the anonymous ip did some positive stuff like wikifying uzun hassan and etc.. So I think someone should do that in the future. Thanks Atabek for keeping a watch. ..Okay looks like ip did put the tati again.. I do not like to remove sourced information, but I removed the origin stuff, turkification, iranian clan.. and etc.. although it is sourced. But I did mention the extant tati poetry, without any implications on origin (check diffs). But if the ip user wants to put the other information in, I recommend he register with wikipedia, comes in the talk page and then insert it. I'll try to keep an eye on this article, but I have more than dozens of articles on the watchlist. My latest focus in wikipedia will be on Persian poetry rather than topics that cause controversy once in a while. But if this article ever reaches a problem stage, users can always go back to the consensus. --alidoostzadeh 05:20, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

The anonymous user needs to get consensus for his edits on talk of this article. Current version is a result of many months of discussions and is a compromise supported by all parties. Grandmaster 04:46, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree.. the current version is balanced. I have no problem with sourced info, but the anonymous user should register with wikipedia, bring his argument in the talk page, get feedback and etc.. This article is just too much trouble unfortunately but I thank users for trying to keep the consensus. --alidoostzadeh 05:20, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Nothing new was added. I only added a qute from Ehsan Yarshater to the article. The major information of the quote, that the ancestors of the Safavid dynasty were Iranian speaking, was already mentioned in the article and in the Safi al-Din article. I simply copied that info from the other articles and added a link to Encyclopædia Iranica to it. See E. Yarshater's quote: Azari lost ground in Azerbaijan at a faster pace than before, so that even the early Safavids, originally an Iranian-speaking clan (as evidenced by the quatrains of Shaikh Safi-al-Din, their eponymous ancestor, and by his biography), became Turkified and adopted Turkish as their vernacular. What is wrong with putting these 5 sentences into the article? Does this shift the balance? Everything is fine now. The article describes the Iranian-speaking origins of the Safavid family, and their adoption of a Turkic language in the 15th century.

What is obvious that several anon IPs emerged and try to make their - (or indeed a single point) Consenus reached previously shoud be kept. Argument is weak and based on one scholar opinion.--Dacy69 14:55, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

It is not the opinion of one scholar but that of many. If you read the previous discussions (as I have done) you'll find lots of quotes. The very same author (Ehsan Yarshater) has been quoted many times in the article. So why should this one quote be removed?! After all, it is not a new info, but an elaboration of a given paragraph. The addition does not break the consensus and it does not change the balance. As a side note: no one owes Wikipedia articles.

The just archived checkuser case stated a decision that this anon IP editor shall be "dealt with as a vandal" [4]. Atabek 16:00, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Could you please explain which part of my edits you consider vandalism and POV? Is it the quote from Iranica? Or is it the message of scholars that you do not like? You do not owe this article. And nothing new, POV, or insulting has been added to the article. Your versions says: Nevertheless, even before their ascend to political power in the 15th century, the Safavid family had become Turkic-speaking and used Azerbaijani Turkish as a medium of communication to their followers.[8] In addition, my version says: Nevertheless, even before their ascend to political power in the 15th century, the Safavid family - originally an Iranian-speaking clan[3][7] - had become Turkic-speaking and used Azerbaijani Turkish as a medium of communication to their followers.[8] My version is supported by two scholarly references, one from Encyclopaedia of Islam and one from Encyclopaedia Iranica. And you call these two scholarly references vandalism and POV?! It is sad that the article focuses on Ismail's and the Safavid's Turkic language in several paragraphs, yet, when it comes to the Tati poetry of Safi al-Din and the important quote from E. Iranica, it is automatically regarded vandalism and POV.

I also believe that consensus should be adhered too as mentioned by couple of users. That's my two cent. We have mentioned the Safavid's Iranic origin as well. That is Shaykh Safi was probably a Kurd. He had tati poetry. Ismail was of mixed heritage. He was a big patron of Shahnameh. Mentioned his Persian poetry. We have acknowledge their mixed heritage. So everything is mentioned. If I was anon , I would register and then discuss it with other users and etc. The article currently acknowledges the Safavid's mixed heritage and I believe is balanced. Even Tati poetry is mentioned as well. I do not like to delete any information, but I believe the current version has mentioned both the Safavid's Iranic and Turkic heritage (moder Iranians , Azeris, Persians and etc.. as Atabek said nicely several pages previously have influence from both, some more and some less..) and is balanced. Anyways I believe adhering to consensus. But I have spent too much time on this article as the history of the name Azerbaijan. As long as people do not remove the intro, and the other quotes, and are able to work out a new consensus, then that would be good and I will accept a new consensus. But until a new consensus, the old consensus should be adhered too as mentioned by users. So that is why discussion in the talk page is necessary and we should adhere to the consensus. That's my two cents. --alidoostzadeh 16:58, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Are you saying that 5 simple words directly copied from E. Iranica is against the consensus? What kind of consensus is that? This is not about Ismail's poetry or about Shah Abbas, but about the early history of the Safavid family, way before their ascend to power. What is wrong about adding 5 words to the article, quoting one of the most respected scholars of Iranistics? I did not change your consenses but only elaborated a given information by adding 5 words to it. --82.83.158.90 17:02, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Salam to you and everyone else writing here. I can see already things are not going in the right direction. But NO, that is not what I am saying. I am saying that consensus should not be changed else someone can easily bring 20 sources about the shaykh being a kurd and another person brings 20 sources for their view and the article will simply concentrate on the shaykh's background with 40 or so references in one sentence. I have mentioned the tati poetry already and Dr. Yarshater's article is linked and there are many other sources like his available. So it is not about the correctness of the source. But I would first register with wikipedia, then discuss it in the talk page, and etc and if you do not like the current version, then get a new consensus and use other wikipedia procedures (talk and etc.). So it is not about content but just the fact that we should not ignore anyone. You are free to discuss on the talkpage with a registered user name or even your ip and get a new consensus. Until there is a new consensus, I believe in adhering to the old consensus and personally I do not see a need for a new consensus. I will respect any new consensus as well. But I very firmly believe that a balance has been reached not emphasizing any view too much. Scholars will in the long term decide and wikipedia is not taken really serously by scholars. The stronger sources show the Shaykh was a Kurd (which is mentioned also) and the same sources mention Safavids by the time of their rise were Turkic (which is said). I think everything you mentioned has been already said. It is just a matter of not repeating the same thing for me. But as I said if you work for a new consensus, then I have no problem. But till then the old consensus which took months should be respected and I am not going to go through a whole new process again on this article. --alidoostzadeh 00:02, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

From the pattern of edits and comments, it's pretty familiar who this IP vandal is. So I may file another checkuser request. But until then, as proposed, the IP vandalism shall be stopped. The user must register, identify him- or herself and then join the discussion and editing of the article. "No consensus needed" or "Atabek is known for anti-Iranian racist remarks" are not at all useful or appropriate comments for editing a Wikipedia article. Atabek 17:18, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Though I am not into this article's conflict anymore, I have still reverted to the anon's edits, since his edits were neither "vandalism" nor "POV", as Atabek claims. He had wikified the new paragraphs, corrected spelling mistakes, and added usefull information - including sources - to it. Honestly, I have no idea why the notorious gang around Atabek jumped on his edits and reverted the one part they did not like. This is not what a "consensus" is. @ Ali: if you say that "... Nevertheless, even before their ascend to political power in the 15th century, the Safavid family had become Turkic-speaking ...", then this indicates that they were not Turkic-speakers before. His Tati poetry, written in a relatively unimportant local dialect, is a clear proof that he was a native Tati-speaker. Why else should some write religious poems in an unimportant local dialect wherelese other languages - such as Arabic or Persian - were much more familiar to the people back then?! The consensus is that Safi ud-Din and the entire Safavid clan - up to the 15th century - where speakers of a local northwest Iranian dialect. And so, the anon's edit is absolutely correct and there is no need to remove it, only because certain people do not like the fact that the origins of the Safawid family were Iranic and not Turkic. "That's my two cents" ... I am out again. Have fun. Tājik 09:29, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

That reminds me of an argument I had with you. You claimed that the fact that Ismail wrote poetry in Azeri Turkic was not a proof of his ethnicity. Now you make claims about origins of the family making the same argument about the poetry. Isn’t it strange? Also, assuming good faith implies that you should not use the words like “notorious gang” to refer to other editors and make no personal attacks. I never reverted this anon, but I remind you of another quote from Yarshater:

The origins of the Safavids are clouded in obscurity. They may have been of Kurdish origin (see R. Savory, Iran Under the Safavids, 1980, p. 2; R. Matthee, "Safavid Dynasty" at iranica.com ), but for all practical purposes they were Turkish-speaking and Turkified.

So basically we stuck to this. This scholar says that Safavids “may have been of Kurdish origin”, but your version says that they “were” of Kurdish origin. That makes difference. Grandmaster 10:46, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] IP blocked

I've blocked 82.83.158.90 (talk • contribs • info • WHOIS) for 24 hours for edit-warring and violating the spirit of the 3-revert rule. I make no judgement on the validity of the anon IP's edits, but would urge him/her (and everyone) to discuss proposed changes here first and work toward consensus here, rather than trying to implement changes through brute force and edit-warring. After all, there is no deadline. MastCell ^Talk 18:07, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Tajik, welcome back and thanks for editing under the username now :) Please, discuss your edits here before making edits. Thanks. Atabek 16:39, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

The IP editor was Tajik. I have indefinitley banned him unless he agrees to participate in the arbcom case filed against him (which he seems to have been intentionally avoiding). Thatcher131 01:16, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Grammatical corrections, formatting, wikifying

The article as it is right now looks as the most acceptable version content-wise. So I took the liberty to improve its grammar, sentences, correct typos, and so forth. Please, review the changes and comment. No content changes were made, and no references were removed. Atabek 16:13, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some POV leftover quotes and redundant texts

The article as it stands now contains plenty or rendundant text and sections, especially closer to the bottom. The whole Beginnings section for example is useless now. Also, some POV quotes, which were not part of consensus version by Ali Doostzadeh [5], got somehow included in between some version, particularly this one: "Safavids patronized Iranian culture in the manner of their predecessors, with the difference that they were of Iranian stock". I think the stock part was discussed at length before and deemed unacceptable before. I didn't make edits to the article per this commentary, but we should probably discuss to clean it up. Thanks. Atabek 14:32, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree the begining section is a repeat. If everyone agrees, we should remove it. As per that sentence, I'll change it since the word stock might seem redundant as the background of safavids was discussed already. --alidoostzadeh 16:22, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

The origins were discussed earlier, however, there was no political entity called Iran or Azerbaijan at the time of Safavid rise to power. So more appropriate wording would be "with the difference that they originated locally" or "with the difference that they were not newcomers to the region". Atabek 04:27, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

But there was sure a geographical and cultural entity. For example Ilkhanids, Atabeks, Seljuqs have all used the term Iran for the land or part of the land they ruled. The current version does not imply there was a political entity named Iran or for that matter Azerbaijan or Ardabil or etc. If it does mention a political unified state, then that would be wrong of course. But in my opinion it says they were from the territory of Iran (geographical convention) themselves,. Also I think the "begining" section should be removed since no one else is looking over the article. But the terms like Persia in the west or Iran is also a geographical convention for example Ilkhanid Iran or Abbassid Persia...The Safavid's golden age should also be merged with the cultural section. --alidoostzadeh 10:59, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Ali, yes, we should merge some facts from "Beginnings" section, like the years when Ismail took which city to the rest of the article, and get rid of that redundant section and slowly work on other parts. Regarding your comment on political entity, just like Iran was geographic region, Azerbaijan where Ardabil is located and where Safavids originated from, was also referred to in history - "Atabakan-e Azerbaijan", etc. So, why does the quote has to say because "they originated in Iran", ignoring Azerbaijan. I think the mildest would be, "as opposed to their predecessors, they were indigenous to the region" or "they originated locally, in Iranian Azerbaijan", etc. Atabek 21:34, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Atabek in the begining line it already says where they originated from. So that information is there. The sentence was about previous dynasties who ruled Iran, and thus we said they were natives of Iran unlike previous dynasties. Actually If you note, I did not mention the consensus of scholars where they were originally originally from. So Azerbaijan, Ardabil and etc. are mentioned in the first line of the article. I do not see what is the point about mentioning azerbaijan, ardabil or etc. for that same sentence since the emphasis is on dynasties that controlled all over Iran in prior. I have not ignored Azerbaijan as you can see from the first line. Actually the scholarly consensus now believes they orginated from Kurdistan per the oldest extant safavid manuscripts, but I did not mention this either. So I just put Iran here again, so that controversy is not there and we know at least 7 generations before Shaykh Safi. On a side note, it is interesting to note that poets in the court of Atabakan-e-Azarbaijan have also praised them as rulers of Iran. But that is another issue. I believe the best way to handle this safavid article is to go king by king. I do not see anymore controversial items in this article and anyone that has sourced information from reliable safavid historians and scholars should add non-redudanant sources to quickly make this article good. I do not have patience that much after waiting for 2-3 months and since there is no controversy I think people should just assume good faith and edit the article to make it better. We know more about Safavids than Sassanids, but the Sassanid wikipedia article currently is much better and informative. So I will be adding sourced information on all the kings and I think the only obstacale to this article before was the endless origin (countless archives) issue which is now balanced in my opinion and people can move forward. --alidoostzadeh 23:35, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Atabek, they originated in Iran (Azerbaijan region of Iran), not in the Caucasus. Atabakan-e Azerbaijan does not mean that Azerbaijan extended into the Caucasus, infact, if you read about them, you will know that their kingdom included specifically both Arran and Azerbaijan, which were seperate regions, but was called Azerbaijan because Azerbaijan was the bigger and more important of the two. Arran and Azerbaijan were two different entities, the Safavids originated in the Iranian region of Azerbaijan, not the Caucasus.

Iranica on the Atabegs: ATAÚBAKAÚN-E AÚD¨ARBAÚYÔAÚN, an influential family of military slave origin, also called Ildegozids, ruled parts of Arra@n and Azerbaijan from about 530/1135-36 to 622/1225; as “Great Ata@baks” (ata@baka@n-e a¿záam) of the Saljuq sultans of Persian Iraq (western Iran), they effectively controlled the sultans from 555/1160 to 587/1181; in their third phase they were again local rulers in Arra@n and Azerbaijan until the territories which had not already been lost to the Georgians, were seized by Ôala@l-al-d^n K¨úa@razmÞa@h in 622/1225.

Atabakan-e Azerbaijan is just a descriptive name, it doesnt imply anything about the extent of the region of Azerbaijan. Att he time of the Safavids, the only Azerbaijan was the Iranian region, and the article rightly says that they came from the region of Azerbaijan in Iran, so that readers dont confuse it with the modern Republic of Azerbaijan.Azerbaijani 21:43, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Agha! Please, please do not bring this issue of Aran/Azerbaijan/Atabekan-e-Azarbaijan and etc. here. Thanks.--alidoostzadeh 23:35, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not the one that did so, Atabek said that we should not mention Iran in the intro, and if we do, we should also mention the Republic of Azerbaijan because Azerbaijan "included the Caucasus". I didnt start the discussion here, Atabek did:

"Regarding your comment on political entity, just like Iran was geographic region, Azerbaijan where Ardabil is located and where Safavids originated from, was also referred to in history - "Atabakan-e Azerbaijan", etc. So, why does the quote has to say because "they originated in Iran", ignoring Azerbaijan."

As you can see, Atabek made the first comment, and I merely corrected him. Overall, I agree with Ali Doostzadeh's comments.Azerbaijani 00:21, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Okay but let's not get into that discussion. Also I r.v.ed anon [6] and will start editing the article soon for other kings. Some of you guys need to chill and listen to some googoosh (I like her azeri songs a lot too).--alidoostzadeh 02:07, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] moved around

I moved around some sections (renamed some sections) for chronological order without any major modification. I think the article is in chronological order now. Also took care of the artifical problem .--alidoostzadeh 02:34, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Architecture

I added something under the Architecture heading. I also left a reference for those curious as to it's sincerity. Hope I didn't mess things up TOO much. Kansas Bear 21:18, 27 May 2007 (UTC)Kansas Bear

[edit] Anon edits

Reverting anon IP edits of the well known user. This POV needs to be discussed before editing for consensus. Kansas Bear, you can make your architecture edits over this version. Thanks. Atabek 00:43, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Why did you revert Kansas' bears edits in the first place?Azerbaijani 00:53, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Atabek, your last edit on this article could be considered vandalism. Do not removed every single edit when all you want to do is change one part of the article. It is not Kansasbears obligation to re-do his edits simply because you felt like removing everything over one or two sentences on another section. I restored Kansasbears edits. Next time, only change the part of the article that you have a problem with, instead of removing entire legitimate sections.Azerbaijani 02:15, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Azerbaijani, please watch your lingo as well as WP:AGF and WP:NPA before accusing me of vandalism. As clearly indicated above, the version reverted to was a consensus, on which we all worked very hard. So any edits, especially those again trying to revive discussion on "Azari" language and its linkage to Kurdish, which have no major relevance to the topic, or playing with words "probably" vs "possibly" already discussed at length, shall be noted and agreed to on talk page in a constructive manner. I have no problem with the architecture text, as long as its properly referenced. Atabek 05:45, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Read about what a personal attack is before you try to use it against people. YOu took out an entire section in order to change one thing? Thats vandalism.Azerbaijani 13:05, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Why should the info about the sheikhs poetry be removed? this has nothing to do with consensus. The information is sourced, and his poetry is important for the history of the Safawi order. The sheikh wrote poetry in his native Azari language (related to Kurdish), and translated them to Persian. Therefore, his poetry has linguistic importance today for studying the old Azari language. Shah Ismael's poetry is also mentioned, so the sheikh's poetry should also be mentioned. What is wrong with mentioning his Persian poetry? (50% of his poetry was in Persian). Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia and everyone is allowed to edit the article. It is not owned by a few people. --84.58.40.137 13:03, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I reverted User:Tajik, who keeps coming back despite the ban. Edits of banned users should be reverted on spot without any consideration. Grandmaster 13:06, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Stop ur wrong accusations! If u do not have any proofs, then say nothing! --84.58.40.137 13:20, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Please, be respectful and stop sockpuppeting. Your attempts to reinsert unagreed text while being banned are counterproductive. Atabek 16:15, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Interesting how Germany based IPs turn up to make the same edit about Tati poetry and claim that they are not Tajik, who is also based in Germany. Tajik, you are not supposed to edit wikipedia, unless your permanent ban is lifted. Grandmaster 05:25, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Germany's population is 80 million, and Hamburg alone has more than 100,000 Persian speakers. German Wikipedia is second biggest after English Wikipedia! It is more interesting that a person from Azerbaijan, such a small country with people who do not know English but Russian, has infiltrated Wikipedia as Atabek, Grandmaster, and many others and now accuses others. Stop accusing others. U asked the admins. What did he say? Did the admin say that we are the same person? Stop accusing and stop vandalising. You just do not like the word Persian, although the sheikh did write in Persian. U are a nationalist and want to falsify Wikipedia! --85.177.175.254 22:45, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Salam. I did not see any new sources actually that was added. Just a rewording of sentence. Can you please discuss the sentences you want to change and get a feedback? The Safavids after 1501 were mainly Azerbaijani speaking. Of course they supported the Persian Art and Persian poetry, Shahnameh, and etc.. Iranian architecture and all of this is also mentioned. The Kurdish origin is also mentioned and although scholars are not unanimous, the classical sources have excluded turkomen origin for the Shaykh by the fact that all sources either say Kurdish (the oldest ones) or Arabic (newer ones after 1501). The Tati poetry is also mentioned in the article. All of these have been discussed and I believe it is reflected in the article. --alidoostzadeh 17:55, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Tajik, why do you think that other people are stupid and wouldn’t know who you are if you edit as anon? You want to know what the admins said? Your previous IP (84.58.40.137) was blocked by admins, who confirmed that it was you: [7] and so will be this second IP (85.177.175.254) that you are using. Grandmaster 05:10, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Architecture

The architecture section is a good start.. but can be improved tremendously. As per the intro, we should stick with consensus of users unless there is a massive discussion on the talkpage..which I am not going to go through again for this article.--alidoostzadeh 00:16, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Ali, I am afraid, there will be no consensus and we will have to go back to discussion of major topics again, if users Hajji Piruz/Azerbaijani and Tajik with his socks don't leave the page content alone and edit it after discussing. It's sad that because of these two disrputive users, we cannot maintain a consensus on the page, which tooks us months to discuss and agree on. Atabek 22:02, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History of Iran

The history of Greater Iran template is for articles that have to do with Greater Iran in general. The Safavids were a direct part of Iranian history and Iranians. The history of Iran template is the one that applies here, as per Achaemenids, Parthians, Sassanids, Qajars, and the Pahlavis.Azerbaijani 03:32, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I reverted recent edits that had no consensus. Grandmaster 05:13, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I left Ariana a message asking him to discuss his edits from now on for this article: [8]Azerbaijani 05:32, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

It's fascisnating how Tajik, his socks, and yourself are trying hard to prove that Safavids are even remotely related to Persian ethnicity, when it's well known that they never were. Puny attempts to prove Kurdish origin of Safavids with a sole purpose of distancing them from contemporary Azerbaijani identity are not quite credible. It's very well known and proven that Safavids spoke Turkic and were, what today is known as Azerbaijani. It's sufficient to just read some poetry of Ismail to see that it's the same language that 99% of Azeris on both sides of Araxes use today. So, given these facts, it's rather sad to see your persistent edit warring and the bitter attempts to misrepresent own history based simply on ethnically intolerant and inflammatory views. Atabek 17:34, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

What are you talking about? Why is it that everytime you comment on a talk page its to express your POV and OR or to attack other users?Hajji Piruz 21:20, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

When you fail in a content dispute the above comment looks more like a standard of yours, accusng people of POV or OR :). I urge you to calm down, do some reading, and stop misrepresenting your own history. Atabek 22:00, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Atabek, what are you talking about? Why dont you talk to your buddy Grandmaster, I'm trying to help you guys out, so that instead of you guys having to edit war on this article, you can try discussing the issues with Ariana. OMG, you need to calm down and relax, get to know whats going on before jumping to conclusions. And its so amazing, its as if you forgot your own comments made not more than minutes ago, accusing me of POV pushing. This is truly one of the strangest interactions I've ever had with another user...its like your two different people.Hajji Piruz 22:03, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

First of all, Grandmaster is not "my buddy", he is just another Wikipeditor. So again, you fail to AGF. There is NOTHING you have helped with so far on Safavid page, your contribution of references here has been pretty much zipple. This page has been a result of major contributions from Ali Doostzadeh, along with myself, Tajik, Grandmaster, and others. You were the only one here to spoil consensus or start revert warring. Sufficient to check archives, and actually that's what your revert parole is for, primarily the Safavid page. So please, do calm down, AGF and finally start editing constructively. It's not hard to do so, if you can separate traits from objective attempts to edit encyclopedia. Atabek 22:09, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

What are you talking about? This is one of the weirdest conversations I've ever had. For the last time, AGF does not apply to you, or me, or anyone else involved in the arbcom.Hajji Piruz 22:12, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for only confirming my point about your inability to AGF. Atabek 22:22, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

AGF does not apply to you, to me, or anyone who is in an arbcom, or has used socks, or has committed vandalism, or whatever.... why wont you understand that?Hajji Piruz 22:33, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ..

I restored the consensus on shaykh Safi ad-din. I recommend everyone to simply assume good faith and talk any differences and do not insert a nationalistic tone in the article. Also since the consensus took time to work out, it is much better to discuss any changes in the talkpage before implementing them in the main page. I believe the current version is balanced and also the Kurdish theory is also described and also the Tati poetry of the Shaykh (which is really close to modern Persian but closer to NW dialects like Gilaki, Kurdish). I suggest users use google books and other resources to improve other non-nationalistic sections..--alidoostzadeh 01:09, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

There is a new user Houshyar, a suspected meatpuppet of Hajji Piruz, who is also trying to spoil the consensus version. So, I am sorry to state Ali that our effort to achieve consensus and make constructive edits has failed. As long as Hajji Piruz (Azerbaijani) and his flock don't stop their unencyclopedic POV and OR edits on this and other pages, looks we will not get anywhere on a scholarly front. Atabek 16:21, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I think this page has had its problems. I am not going to be involved in any new consensus version, but I believe any new edits should be discussed on the talkpage and some feedback be given. Although I have been very busy myself with real life. Overall the scholarly contribution to the article is good as long as sources are not removed. The intro seems balanced in my opinion. Although I disagree about Hajji Pirouz since he actually restored the consensus version. If users ip, or tajik or houshyar don't like the currentt version, they should discuss it on the talk page and get a new consensus, but I am not going to work out a new consensus again(and as long as the verifiable materials I have put is not removed I will accept any new version) and it's up to other users to do so. --alidoostzadeh 16:39, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Atabek, you are a disruptive person. I know that you are going to accuse me and many other Wikipedians of being someone else, sockpuppets, or whatever, but honestly, I do not care. I am trying to help, and I am doing editing that no one else is doing. I consider you an extremely disruptive Wikipedian, not only because of your constant insults and accusations, but also because of your edits of which nearly all are nationalistically motivated. You have spent many hours deleting the term Persian from the article, yet not even one single minute to correct the spelling mistakes or the wording of the article. You purposely delete good and reliable source while you claim that you are fighting vandalism. For your information: adding reliable sources to the article and correcting spelling mistakes is not vandalism. I am purposely not creating an account in Wikipedia, because I am not interested in its silly community. All I care about is the quality of certain articles I am interested in. You can ask admins to check my IP: I am 36 years old, living in Germany, I am neither Iranians nor Azeri or Afghan or Turkish or Arab or Indian or ... I have studied Orientalism and languages of the Middle East at the University of Munich, and I am specialized on Persian literature of the 12th to 17th century. The Safavid Empire is an important part of this era, for they were the last great patrons of classical Persian literature. I really do not care about the Safavids ethnic origins. I was taught that the Safavids were Turks, and I really do not care. What's important is not their ethnic origins or the languages the spoke, but their legacy and the influence they had on the region. And that influence was without doubt Persian, whether you like it or not. Many Persian nationalists of the past were not ethnic Persians. In fact, there is not really a Persian ethnicity, but a large cultural and historical identity that defines the Persians. Your understanding of the issue is totally wrong, because you try to explain the past with modern concepts. The concept of Persian ethnicty and Turkish ethnicity is the product of the 19th and 20th centuries and was totally irrelevant at the time of the Safavids and Ottomans. If you study the origins of the Safavids carefully, you will see that most of the kings had Turkmen mothers, almost all of them from the Black Sheep dynasty. However, if you study the origins of the Black Sheeps, you will see that they were not really Turkmens, but rather Greeks, because almost all of the ruling Khans had Greek mothers. And again, if you study the history of all of these dynasties, they all patronized Persian culture and literature, and none of them thought of it as a foreign language or culture. From the beginning of time, Turkish nomads had accepted the cultural dominance of the Persians, and this cultural dominance remains to this day. The Safavids may have been Turks, or maybe not. They may have been Kurds, or maybe not. But this is totally irrelevant, because the Safavids saw themselvs neither as Turks nor as Kurds, not even as Persians. They were a dynastic family with many different backgrounds. But they ruled an empire that was overwhelmingly Persian and had not lost the memories of its more than 3000 years lasting national history and identity. So, the Safavids were in fact Iranian nationalists, and Iraniannationalism is bond to Persian literature and mythology. This is absolutely normal in the region. If you look at Pakistan or Afghanistan today, the many different ethnic groups do not see each other as foreigners. And if they do, its a product of modern nationalism. Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, is an ethnic Pashtun and his native tongue is Pashto. But, like all the previous rulers in the region, he admires Persian literature and language, and almost all of his interviews and publications are in Persian. In Pakistan, Urdu is the unifying factor, and in America its the English language. Many Americans speak another language than English at home, but English remains the unifying and undisputed national language of America. The role of Persian language and identity in the region is far more impressive than that of English in America, because it has a continuous history of more than 2500 years as the unifying language between many different peoples. For this reason, it is known as Dari. No other language in the region, not even Arabic, has the same status in this regard. I have no idea why you are so obsessed with Persians, but your attitude does not help anyone. All I was doing was trying to help by correcting mistakes and literally clean up this messed up article. I also added the paragraph about the Persian poetry of Sheikh Safi, because his Persian poetry (its only a very few verses) are important in understanding the old Azari language and, particularly, the dialect of Ardabil. The Sheikh's poetry does not really have religious or political importance, but linguistic importance. I added a link to Encyclopedia Iranica (the authority of this encyclopedia is undisputed among scholars!), because it explains the important role of his Persian verses: Of the written remains of AÚdòar^, the dobayt^s of Shaikh Sáaf^-al-d^n are the most important: They are relatively old, their linguistic area and their author are known, and they are accompanied by a paraphrase in Persian which helps their understanding. Despite Ardab^l's location at the eastern edge of Azerbaijan, in view of its significance both before and after the advent of Islam, its language must have been one of the more important dialects of AÚdòar^ [9]. Please stop your aggressive attitude, and please stop accusing and insulting others. Wikipedia is a free dictionary, and everyone is allowed to improve articles. I have read the entire discussion, you debates with other Wikipedians, and I see no reason why this article should not be improved. Your debates with Ali were a good beginning, but both of you have ignored all the others. Again: I really do not care about the ethnic origins of the Safavids. Call them Turks if it makes you happy, call them Arabs if it makes you happy, or call them Russians if it makes you happy. I do not care! But certain information has to be mentioned, and this includes the purely Iranian identity of the Safavids, and the important Persian verses of their (alleged) ancestor Sheikh Safi. They Sheikh may have been the Safavids ancestor or not, we do not know. But his poetry is extremly important for studying the old Azari language, and this is all I am interested in. Many students from all around the world use Wikipedia a reference for their home works. Please do not delete important and reliable information, only because you, as an individual, are obsessed with certain words, peoples, or languages. Please stop it. Not everyone in here is obssessed with nationalities, and not everyone is interested in the Wikipedia community. I am not going to write anything else in the discussion, because everything has already been said. Good bye.

Tajik, I don't care who you're personally, that's not my business. My concern is your POV pushing without facts at hand and vandalizing the pages using anonymous IP addresses, which is a violation of Wikipedia rules. Any word or statement can be interpreted completely different ways, by omitting words or taking them out of context. That's exactly what you do. It's well known to everyone that Safavids spoke Turkic and had primarily Azerbaijani identity, the way it's known today. Ismail wrote 1500 verses in Azerbaijani and only handful in Persian, and yet all this time yourself and few others were trying to dig up far minor details and bring them to front with only attempt to diminish his Azerbaijani identity and emphasize on Persian or Kurdish.

I don't support the idea of ethnic nationalism, although many perceive edits this way. In fact, the same Qaraqoyunlu Turks that you cite fought against Mongols and Timurids, and yet Turks in Iran are being stereotyped and associated with Mongols, inferiority complex is being establish by making stupid jokes about them so that they start hating their own language and origin, and claim to be Aryan. This is a shame but it's more of a social problem. The concern here is not the general issue with perceptions or stereotypes, it's with the fact that you and few others see removing word Azerbaijani or Turkish, and replacing it with Persian or Kurdish as if it's a threat to Iranian identity. This form of complex, seeing everyone else other than Iranian speakers or non-Aryans, as enemies, is a tragic ideological damage inflicted upon many Iranians by 3 generations of self-invented Aryan ideology imposed on them. The truth is, if you're truely trying to build a unified Iranian identity or trying to contribute to unbiased and encyclopedic editing, whatever your goal is, acting on Turkophobic, Semitophobic or another pan-Aryan complexes will not help at all, it will only damage, diminish and fragment multicultural Iranian society and yours as well, apart from the fact that you're simply violating Wikipedia rules. Atabek 18:56, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Your crossing the line Atabek, do not make personal attacks, and keep your POV and OR to yourself. Discuss the edits. This is not a forum. Mind the rules.Hajji Piruz 19:04, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Hajji Piruz, why don't you make a little template with "do not make personal attacks, and keep your POV or OR to yourself" :) and then reinsert it instead of typing. It will ease up your "work", since your other useful contributions to Wikipedia articles, apart from embitterment or ethnic POV, are close to 0. It's a matter of time before your second round of aggressive revert warring hits the ArbCom. Atabek 19:08, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

We're all still waiting for the evidence Atabek, where is it, I thought you were "compiling" it? Keep making the personal attacks if you like.Hajji Piruz 19:15, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Atabek, as I had expected, you continue your pointless accusations, name calling, and off-toppic discussions. Just go through my edits and check everything I have written. I have neither deleted the word Turkish, nor the word Azerbaijani, nor anything else connected to Turks. In fact, I have already stated above that I was taught in college that the Safavids were Turks, and honestly, I do not care. Instead of accusing and insulting others, you should spend some time cleaning up the article. You accuse me vandalism without any proof. Your emotional response, your off-toppic accusations against Iranians and Persians, and your pointless claims and personal attack further prove my point that you are an extremely disruptive Wikipedian, and that your aggressive and in part racist attitude prevents this article from becomming a very good and reliable source of information. The stereotypes against Turks do exist, but not specifically against Azeris. These stereotypes have a long history and go back to the time when Turks were still nomads, and were considered cultureless by the Persian city population. Azerbaijanis, however, are Turks in regard of their language, but in now way reflect the old Turkish identity of the past. The Azerbaijani identity is itself part of the larger Iranian identity and without doubt bond to the Persian literary and cultural identity of Iran. Modern Turkish nationalism is only a product of the 20th century, and that's also the reason why the Safavids are not the best example to reflect this, what you call, "Azerbaijani identity". It's too bad that you do not have much knowledge about the region and about its history. The Safavid dynasty was indeed Turkic speaking, but your allegation that they had any kind of Turkic identity is totally wrong. The "Aryan ideology" of modern Persian nationalists may be an invention of the past 3 generation. So what? What's then the difference to the self-invented "Turkic ideology" you are representing here? And what has all of this to do with this article, which neither deals with Aryan idelogy nor with Turkish nationalism, but with a dynasty that saw itself neither a Turkish nor as Persian? And again: I am not Tajik, I am not X, and I am not Y, and I do not care about what you think. I guess name calling is the only option when no arguments are left. I am out.

Tajik, first of all, to strengthen your credibility, it's good to just present yourself as you're, not hide behind various names or IP addresses. We are not here for warring or hiding, but for discussing and making edits to articles based on our agreements. Azerbaijani identity is unique by itself, and I don't see why it should be owned, or otherwise, assigned to "larger" Iranian or Turkish identity. Azerbaijani culture, music, literature, history are unique and dinstinct from Persian, and the region has not only been part of Iran only neither it has been under Turkic control at all times. So, it's important to emphasize that Safavid dynasty is authentically Azerbaijani, and contributed to building Iranian identity. Turkish language just happens to be one of the distinctive factors identifying Safavids along with Shia Islam.

In the rest, I see no need to respond to your counter-productive accusations. Aryan or Turanic nationalism is immaterial to me, actually, I think one should balance the other to build really strong identity and neither one should be given opportunity to become stronger and/or predominant. Many pan-Aryanists we see often have also Mongoloid features and looks, so this self-defeating hatred is rather laughable.Atabek 22:08, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Anon IP socks

Continue destroying the article without any discussion. Can those who participated in consensus, help to maintain the article's integrity? Atabek 15:13, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Since it took several months to reach consensus any further editing should be discussed thouroguhly before introducing into the article--Dacy69 19:43, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Dacey, do you realize that you just reverted grammer, spelling, and wikilinking edits: [10]

What you reverted had nothing to do with the consensus, they were just fixes...Those edits didnt hurt anything, infact, they were improving the article. Dont blindly revert, the anon was actually improving the article by fixing the minor mistakes.Hajji Piruz 19:51, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I restored everything back to consensus version after the semi protection of the page. No more IP vandalizing without discussion. If Tajik would like to discuss and make edits to article, he is welcome to contact Ali doostzadeh, myself, Hajji Piruz or other contributors, to voice his opinion and make suggestions. Atabek 21:39, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Atabek: Vandalism has a rather well-defined meaning... and fixing errors in an article isn't it. Looking at the contributions by User:82.83.145.243, most of them, within my admittedly limited knowledge of this topic, are perfectly reasonable edits, improving spelling, fixing links, re-wording things, and generally working to improve the article. Even if you disagree with them, they're certainly not vandalism. Unless I see a shred of evidence that you're reverting them for a good reason, I'll probably revert back to them, as the article looked better before you reverted it. Bushytails 23:15, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Bushytails: Edits by socks of a banned user without discussion are not acceptable and a complete disregard of Wikipedia regulations. After all, what do we have ArbCom and admin enforcement for, revert paroles and restrictions, if all banned user can do is establish 100+ socks and continue editing. I agree with fixing an article and typos or English in it. But along dozen edits, the anon IP was also moving words out and changing the meanings and even removing some references along nationalist lines, without any discussion. So, unless the spelling corrections only are made, everything else should be discussed on talk page first. As a courtesy, I have even expressed willingness to work with these IP socks of the banned user to incorporate his edits properly. See below. Thanks. Atabek 00:03, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Again you are accusing. You claim that I removed sources. Please give the exact link to the edit. You claim that I changed words along nationalist lines (which is rather your special field), give the special link. Here is your revert: [11] Everyone can see that it was a bad faith edit, and that you reverted 3 hours of hard work imrpoving the article.

I am not accusing, evidence link was presented, and not my writing. Again, you call moving "Azerbaijani-speaking" word from first sentence to the second as a good faith edit? :) Interesting. Good luck. Atabek 00:50, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Umm. How, exactly, is moving where the language the population spoke down ten words a bad faith edit? How is it even relevant enough to matter where, if anywhere, it is in the introduction? If that's the worst edit you think he did, it's hard to see that you're doing anything other than arguing for the sake of arguing. Don't make this end up in WP:LAME. Bushytails 02:39, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

You are probable not aware what’s going on here. The anon IP is permanently banned User:Tajik. Permanently banned users are not entitled to edit Wikipedia according to the rules. His arbcom case is here on the final stage of voting to formalize the ban imposed by the admins: [12] Grandmaster 09:19, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Nope, not aware of anything. I just saw atabek make some suspicious reverts while I was patrolling recent changes, and had never heard of any of these users or this article until then. From what I can tell, most of the changes made by the anon user were perfectly acceptable, and without some proof they're disruptive, should not have been reverted. I notice another user has since improved some of the grammar problems, originally fixed by the anon user, and re-added when atabek reverted it. And, seriously, it doesn't matter where in the introduction it mentions the language they spoke. It seems out-of-place sticking the language in the very first sentance, an area reserved for the most important bits about the article's topic, when no big deal is made of it anywhere else in the article. The anon may well be a banned user, but implementing the spirit of WP:IAR, if he is improving the article, I see no reason to remove those improvements. The goal is to make a better encyclopedia, after all.

However, since the article has been edited a fair bit since then, I'm not going to just revert back to the anon's version. User:82.83.145.243: Why don't you create a subpage (either off this article or in your userspace), based on the current version, with your edits? That way, if people like them (and "OMG they moved a minor piece of information to the second sentance!" isn't a reason not to like them), I or another editor can copy it over to the article.

Lastly, I've gotten several emails by people on both sides of this dispute, most of which consisted of nothing but sniveling, whining, and personal attacks against members of the other side. This will not accomplish anything, except annoy me, and I'm a lot less likely to be helpful to people who annoy me. Let's resolve this like adults, ok? Bushytails 17:35, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Please be aware of this: WP:BAN#Enforcement_by_reverting_edits and this: Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Tajik. Banned users are not entitled to edit Wikipedia, and their edits should be reverted no matter how good they are. I already informed the admins about checkuser results and their reaction is expected very soon. So Atabek was right by reverting the banned user, this is something everyone should do. Otherwise there’s no point in existence of arbcom, if its decisions are not gonna be enforced. --Grandmaster 06:34, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Dear Bushytails, first off, regarding your last comment, just wanted to make clear that I haven't ever emailed you. I am making this note here formally to make sure that no accusations or claims thereof arise later for any reason. Now, I would like to ask you to kindly provide the links to my "suspicious reverts". I am ready to discuss the reason for them. Ever since ArbCom, I have always left comments regarding any single one of my edits, whether it was a revert or not. So if there is something unclear, I am ready to clarify. About IP edits, I guess, there was nothing suspicious here. In fact, I was told by administrator [13] that anon IP edits on this page shall be treated as vandalism. Later administrator Thatcher131 identified and blocked the anon IP socks of User:Tajik on this very page. My report from yesterday to Dmcdevit has also yielded the same result that the new set of IP socks (a.k.a. German Orientalist) is also most likely User:Tajik. I have no problems with edits of the user in general, but as outlined here they should be first discussed, and secondly, IP sockpuppetry is prohibited in first place. I am sure the rules outlined above as well as decisions and notes by administrators, will help clarify the situation. Meanwhile, as seen below, I am listening to what User:Tajik has to say on this page, and incorporating some improvement edits as we go. I believe that's the farthest courtesy I have done with regards to user who was banned from editing this article altogether. Also, I would like to see your comments on these edits:

• [14] - this is an edit by IP address in question. Having a more or less decent command of English, I can't see what the improvement is here about, other than moving words around to imply new meaning.
• [15] - some typo changes, hmm interesting, also this long dispute about History of Iran vs History of Great Iran, to which I was never a part anyway. And actually instead of improving English an edit is made to say: "Shah Tahmasp was forced to moved...", typo, yet the previous edition was OK in that sentence without the word "forced".
• [16] - yet another IP edit saying: "What is known with certainty is that he spoke Old Tati, a now distinct Northwestern Iranian language closely related to Kurdish, and wrote his religious poems in that language." -- WITHOUT ANY REFERENCE. Is that an improvement or simple POV pushing - and doing so hard without discussion?

Thanks. Atabek 22:49, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Of course it was a good faith edit. That way, the wording of the introduction is better. It is not important where the information is mention, but that it is mentioned. I did not delete anything. I simply improved the wording. German-Orientalist 01:37, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, fine, Atabek has forced the protection of the page and has reverted all my work - 3 hours of extensive corrections and clean up. Something he calls "vandalism". I do not care, I just wanted to help. Meanwhile, I have cleaned up another section of the article, but unfortunately, I cannot update the page. I guess it's more important to insult other users and accuse them than to work in constructive way to improve the article. Here is the section about Shah Abbas:

---

[edit] Shāh Abbās I

Main article: Shah Abbas I

The greatest of the Safavid monarchs was Shāh Abbās I. (1587–1629). He acceded to the throne 1587 at the age of 16, following the forced abdication of his father, Shāh Muhammad Khudābanda, and having survived Qizilbāsh court intrigues and murders. Events of the past, including the role of the Turkmen Qizilbāsh in the succession struggles after the death of his father, and the counter balancing influence of traditional Ithnāˤashari Sayeds, made him determined to end the dominance of the untrustworthy Turkmen chiefs in Persia.

Abbās quickly recognized the ineffectualness of his army which was consistently being defeated by the Ottomans in the west (who had captured Georgia and Armenia) and by Uzbeks in the east (who had captured Mashhad and Sistan). In order to modernize his weak army, one of his first official acts as monarch was a peace-treaty with the Ottomans (1590), giving away territory in the north-west. Then, two Englishmen - Robert Sherley and his brother Anthony - were invited by Shāh Abbās to reorganize the Shāh's soldiers into an officer-paid and well-trained standing army, similar to a European model (which the Ottomans had already adopted). He wholeheartedly adopted the use of gunpowder which in the past was strictly opposed by the Qizilbāsh who regarded the use of modern weapons an "act of cowardliness". In order to further weaken the Qizilbāsh, Shāh Abbās raised a standing army from the ranks of the ghulāms (غلا - crown servants)^[4] who were usually ethnic Armenians, Georgians, and Circassian. The new army would be loyal to the king personally and not to clan-chiefs anymore. In addition to the ghulāms, the new army also included tofangchīs (تفگنچى - musketeers) and topchīs (توپچى - artillery). The reorganization of the army also ended the independent rule of Turkmen Qizilbāsh chiefs in the Safavid provinces, and instead centralized the administration of those provinces under the direct command of the Shāh. Ghulāms were appointed to high positions within the royal household, and by the end of Shāh Abbas' reign, "one-fifth of the high-ranking amirs were ghulāms".^[5] By 1598 an ethnic Armenian from Georgia had risen to the position of commander-in-chief of all Safawid armed forces.^[6] The offices of wakīl and amir al-umarā fell in disuse and were replaced by the office of a Sipahsālār (سپهسالار - master of the army), commander-in-chief of all armed forces - Turkmen and Non-Turkmen.

Having modernized his army and having deprived the Turkmen Qizilbāsh chiefs of their former status, Abbās once again turned on his enemies: the Ottomans in the west and the Uzbeks in the east. He first attacked the Uzbeks, recapturing Herat and Mashhad in 1598. Then he turned against the Ottomans, recapturing Baghdad, eastern Iraq and the Caucasian provinces by 1622. He also used his new force to dislodge the Portuguese from Bahrain (1602) and the English navy from Hormuz (1622) - a vital link in Portuguese trade with India. He further expanded commercial links with the English East India Company and the Dutch East India Company.

The Ottomans and Safavids fought over the fertile plains of Iraq for more than 150 years. The capture of Baghdad by Ismāil I. in 1509 was only followed by its loss to the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I in 1534. After subsequent campaigns, the Safavids recaptured Baghdad in 1623, yet lost it again to Murad IV in 1638. Henceforth a treaty, signed in Qasr-e Shirin, was established delineating a border between Safavid Persia and the Ottoman Empire in 1639, a border which still stands in northwest Iran/southeast Turkey. The 150 year tug-of-war accentuated the Sunni and Shi'a rift in Iraq.

In 1609-1610, a war broke out between Kurdish tribes and the Safavid Empire. After a long and bloody siege led by the Safavid grand vizier Hatem Beg, which lasted from November 1609 to the summer of 1610, the Kurdish stronghold of Dimdim was captured. Shāh Abbās ordered a general massacre in Beradost and Mukriyan (Mahabad), reported by the Safavid historian Eskandar Beg Monshi (1557-1642), and resettled the Turkic Afshār tribe in the region while deporting many Kurdish tribes to Khorasan.^[7] Nowadays, there is a community of nearly 1.7 million people who are descendants of the tribes deported from Kurdistan to Khurasan (Northeastern Iran) by the Safavids.^[8]

Due to his obsessive fear of assassination, Shāh Abbās either put to death or blinded any member of his family who aroused his suspicion. In this way, one of his sons was executed and two other blinded. Since two other sons had predeceased him, the result was a personal tragedy for the Shāh: when he died on 19 January 1629, he had no son capable of succeeding him.^[9].

At its zenith - during the long reign of Shāh Abbās I. - the empire's reach comprised the modern nations Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Azerbaijan Republic, Georgia, and parts of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

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By the way, as far as I understand it, Atabek has broken the 1 revert per week rule. Since my edits were neither vandalism nor POV-pushing, he has broken that rule and violated against the ArbCom decision. Since Atabek himself always turns to admins, I think that it is totally OK to notify an admin and explain that he has violated the 1 revert per week rule. His first revert today was 15:13, 6 June 2007, and now he has once again reverted, claiming that spelling-checks and clean up of an article is "vandalism", of course further accusing me of being Tajik, a person I neither know nor have worked with.

Tajik, you have been proven as Tajik here [17]. And yes, you have vandalized the page, because, first you were evading the ban while editing, secondly, because you yourself have made over 3 partial and full reverts. So you can go ahead and explain to admins this, by yourself or through your suspected meatpup Hajji Piruz.

Thanks for inserting the whole section on Shah Abbas here, I think we should concentrate on discussing and incorporating it, rather than trying to endlessly fight each other's virtual identity. Atabek 22:59, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

And looking at your Shah Abbas edit, you expect any kind of respect after this unsourced, unreferenced but most importantly hateful sentence: "Events of the past, including the role of the Turkmen Qizilbāsh in the succession struggles after the death of his father, and the counter balancing influence of traditional Ithnāˤashari Sayeds, made him determined to end the dominance of the untrustworthy Turkmen chiefs in Persia". I cannot call this anything other than very racist view, and untrue, especially because Iran was ruled by Azeri Turks for almost 200 years even after Safavid dynasty. Too sad that you cannot hold your hate even in encyclopedic writing. I will incorporate your grammar edits and some other incontroversial things, and you can comment on them as well. Meanwhile, a note to Hajji Piruz, the word grammar is written with "a" not "e". Thought might be helpful for future editing and/or posting complaint notes. Thanks. Atabek 23:07, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

You can call me Tajik if it makes you happy. I do not care. And I have already written on that talk page. The admin claims that I am Tajik, because we both live in the same area, an area that has a population of more than 24 million (Rhine-Ruhr, the area in which I live, has a population of 11 million and is considered a megapolis). This is not a proof, Atabek. But I do not care. The sentense you do not like is a direct quote from the article Qizilbash, itself a direct quote from the Encyclopedia of Islam (I have full online access). The Qizilbash article was indeed written by Tajik. But I had enough time to check the quote by myself. (in fact, I checked almost all sources given in this article). The entire Kizilbash article is almost a literally copy of the Encyclopaedia of Islam article. Give me your E-Mail adress and I will send you both articles, Safavids and Kizilbash. If you do not like the quote, then write an E-Mail to the editors of the Encyclopedia of Islam. I just cleaned up the article. It is not my fault that you do not like the sources. By the way, I hope you have read this: [18]! And thanks to Bushytails.

Tajik, I don't think we are stupid, and admins definitely know what they say. There was no reason for you not registering a username and editting with IP addresses, if you were not a banned user. Your edits, formatting and highlighting even on this page are strikingly the same as those of Tajik. But in any case, I can't give you my email publicly, you can try to send me email if you register through Wikipedia and/or provide your email here, and I will email you. But please, provide your precise quote on this page from EI, and we will have it incorporated. Atabek 23:57, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Atabek, your writing, your style, even the rhetoric you use is totally identical to that of Grandmaster. And since you live in the "same IP range", you two my be the same person. I do not think that a person like yourself who is known for having used sockpuppets has the right to accuse others. I have explained to you my reasons for not creating an account, and the way you are jumping from one admin to the other, desperatly trying to find allies for your POV-push proves my point that the Wikipedia community is silly, and I do not want to be part of it. If you do not want to give me your E-Mail address, than its fine with me. Again: I just wanted to help. I am sure you can find someone else with direct access to the Encyclopedia of Islam, and then you'll see that I am right. Nothing is that paragraph is racist, and it is perfectly d'accord with mainstream academic teachings. Reverting my edits was clearly based on bad faith and had nothing to do with improving the article. You reverted, because you think that I am Tajik. You have no proof, and your favourite admins have no proof. What you did was not only vandalism against my hard work, but also a violation of the ArbCom decision. You are not allowed to have one revert per week per article. As Bushytalis has pointed out (and I am sure that many others agree with him), my edits were not vandalism. I think someone should report you to an admin.

Tajik, that's all cute tit-for-tat, except I don't live in Grandmaster's IP range. I am not looking for allies among anyone, just making sure that enforcement is done properly, and no banned user is given opportunity to edit the page. Yes, I was accused of having a sock 6 months ago, in my first 7 days in Wikipedia, because my friend and I used the same computer. Oh well, one of us got banned without even minor review into reasoning. So, while inexperienced in the first 7 days, I learned the rule not to have any socks at all, which I never do. That's all I can say about that, and I said this all the way. Hajji Piruz can continue trying to use this to his own joy :)

Anyways, I incorporated the racist sentence you claimed from EI, and added a reference tag waiting until you provide the actual reference. I don't see though why you can't just post reference to the article in EI (Link, page number, etc.) here, and instead you need my email.

As I said any edit by a sock of a banned user is an utter violation of Wikipedia rules. If you're allowed to make edits and someone gets punished for it, then violating Wikipedia rules and having socks pretty much becomes an encouragement. Then everyone can get banned and use socks, and those who revert them, can get punished. I don't think that will happen but you're welcome to pursue your accusation. If you believe you're not Tajik, why not just register like others, discuss the edits and incorporate them? Atabek 00:24, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Stop making your POV and OR comments. You cant claim that information from EI is racist. Atabek, you need to either show the evidence to support your claims, or not make the claims in the first place.

At Anon, please sign your name at the end, this well help everyone know where your statements begin and where they end. To sign your name, just type four ~ in a row.Hajji Piruz 00:33, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I think that's the second time I hear POV and OR from you, or maybe twenty second, again no useful content for me. Evidence was presented and page is now protected from anon IP abuse, that's all I can say for now. For the rest, you have been suggested to try mediation, if you're unable to be tolerant towards other, mostly Azerbaijani, contributors. Yes, the statement singling out "Turkmen" as untrustworthy in Persia is racist, even if it comes from an encyclopedia. That's why we are discussing them, and I did actually incorporate it into the article. This is the best way edits can be done, discussed, agreed and put into the page, not revert warring. Atabek 00:46, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh, we will definetly do mediation Atabek. I'm working on getting a mediator. Also, POV and OR have nothing to do with the statement that I made. Familiarize yourself with these terms please, these arent terms you can just throw around.Hajji Piruz 01:23, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

So your entire accusation is based on speculation. The assumption that I am Tajik, only because my IP is from the "NRW/Hessen" area (two of the largest Bundesländer of Germany with 1/3 of Germany's total population). I just checked Tajik's talk page, and he was blocked because it is claimed that he used another sockpuppet: [19]. He himself rejects this. Taking a look at the alleged sockpuppet's edits, they are the total opposite of Tajik's edits: [20], and the only point of the admins is that both users are from Germany. Seems to me as if it was the same mistake your are doing here. Only because different users are from the same "IP range", which covers hundreds of km², it does not mean that they are the same person. But, it is not my job do decide. All I can say is that I am not Tajik, and I believe that it is part of your destraction tactic to accuse others. You also accuse me of racism and vandalism, of course without any proves. The article of the Encyclopedia of Islam does not have page numbers, because it is an online article. The whole encyclopedia is an online publication. You need special access (only available via universities). Anyway, here: Roger M. Savory, Encyclopaedia of Islam, "Safawids", Online Edition, 2005. Read the chapter "Shah Abbas". By the way: how do you people sign your comments?

Submit the link, please, for EI article. Again, I don't care who you're, I only know that edits by socks of banned user are unacceptable, that's what was stated by administrators who semi-protected the page not just by me. Again, if you think you're legit, register and make edits. Thanks. Atabek 00:46, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh, thank you Hajji Piruz :) 82.83.136.53 00:42, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Atabek, here is the link: [21]. You need a password from a university. That means that you have to be either a professional orientalist or a staff of the university to have access. Unless you have enough money to pay the list price of US$ 2810.00 [22] :) 82.83.136.53 00:51, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I asked you for a link to article not to pricing. In any case, Article direct link and full text are provided below. Thanks Tajik, but there is no reference there to the statement that you used about "Turkmen Qizilbash chiefs untrustworthy in Persia". Atabek 01:14, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

For the sake of discussion, I have created an account. But please do not annoy me with the silly Wikipedia community nonsense. I am not interested! German-Orientalist 00:59, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Good, that does not change the fact that you could still be a sock of Tajik though. Atabek 01:14, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

At least you have changed your tone. That's an improvement. Now you say that I could be a sock. But I am telling you again: I am not! German-Orientalist 01:35, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I am not the one to decide. I am the one to suspect, admins and CheckUser runners are the ones who confirm. So I don't see what you're trying to prove me. Atabek 01:46, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] LOL

Just came from work.. Whats going on here ? It looks like a discussion forum rather than wikipedia talkpage. anyways as long as the sourced sentences I put in are not removed, you guys have fun.. I recommend listening to Googoosh or Rashid Behbudov or Shahram Nazeri or something and don't get upset. No one will remember it when they die.. I recommend you all work together in a peaceful manner, put any verifiable western scholarly source written by major historians(regardless if it supports a viewpoint or not) and calm down. Since this seems like a discussion form, just wanted to add that our region is messed up because Kurds don't like Turks, Azeri don't like Armenians, Persians don't like Arabs,Arabs don't like Persians.. Europeans learned their lesson after WWII and they are more tolerant towards each other (I am no sure if they are more tolerant towards Middle Easterns). Anyways guys I recommend taking a one or two day break and then re-editing. Also perhaps archiving is not a bad idea.--alidoostzadeh 00:41, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Atabek removed everything: [23]. He should be reported to an admin. 82.83.136.53 00:43, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Roger Savory on Shah Abbas from Encyclopedia of Islam

Tajik, here is the piece you were talking about, and yes I have an access to Encyclopedia of Islam, it's available at any university. Nowhere does it use the racist statements you cited claiming from EI. Here the direct link [24] if you have access and below is the full text. This is encyclopedia after all not place for POV or falsifying references. Atabek 01:06, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

"ʿAbbās I

, styled the Great, king of Persia of the Ṣafawī dynasty, second son and successor of Muḥammad Ḵh̲udābanda, was born on 1 Ramaḍān 978/27 January 1571, and died in Māzandarān on 24 Ḏj̲umāḍā I 1038/19 January 1629, after a reign of 42 solar (43 lunar) years. In 980/1572-3 he remained at Harāt when his father moved to S̲h̲īrāz. In 984/1576-7 Ismāʿīl II put to death the lala (tutor) of ʿAbbās, and appointed ʿAlī Ḳulī Ḵh̲ān S̲h̲āmlū governor of Harāt with orders to execute ʿAbbās himself. ʿAlī Ḳulī procrastinated, and, when the death of Ismāʿīl II (985/1577-8) rendered the order null and avoid, was made himself lala to ʿAbbās by Muḥammad Ḵh̲udābanda. Three years later ʿAlī Ḳulī read the k̲h̲uṭba at Harāt in the name of ʿAbbās, but, when threatened by the royal army, he re-affirmed his allegiance to Muḥammad Ḵh̲udābanda at G̲h̲ūrīyān. Shortly afterwards his protégé ʿAbbās fell into the hands of his rival Murs̲h̲id Ḳulī Ḵh̲ān Ustād̲j̲lū, governor of Turbat, and in 995/1587 the latter marched on Kazwīn. Muḥammad Ḵh̲udābanda was deposed, and ʿAbbās became S̲h̲āh at the age of 16, with Murs̲h̲id Ḳulī as his wakīl-i dīwān-i ʿālī.

ʿAbbās, faced with the twofold task of enforcing his authority over the Ḳi̊zi̊lbās̲h̲ amīrs, and of checking the encroachment on Persian territory of the Ottomans in the West and the Uzbegs in the East, at once created from the ranks of Georgian prisoners converted from Christianity a cavalry corps of g̲h̲ulāmān-i k̲h̲āṣṣa-yi s̲h̲arīfa, paid direct from the royal treasury. With their aid, and by a successful appeal to the loyalty of the s̲h̲āhī-sewen [q.v.], he crushed a revolt of amīrs, and followed this by ridding himself of the now too-powerful Murs̲h̲id Ḳulī. The importance of the g̲h̲ulāms gradually increased.The appointment of Allāhwardī Ḵh̲ān to be governor of Fārs elevated a g̲h̲ulām to equality of status with the Ḳi̊zi̊lbās̲h̲ amīrs, and eventually g̲h̲ulāms filled some 20% of the high administrative posts. ʿAbbās systematically pacified the provinces of ʿIrāḳ-i ʿAd̲j̲am, Fārs, Kirmān and Luristān. The local rulers of Gīlān and Māzandarān were subjugated. In order to avoid fighting on two fronts, ʿAbbās signed in Constantinople in 998/1589-90 a peace treaty most unfavourable to Persia. The regions of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān, Ḳarabāg̲h̲, Gand̲j̲a, Ḳarad̲j̲adāg̲h̲, with Georgia and parts of Luristān and Kurdistān, were to remain in Ottoman hands, and a interdict was placed on the S̲h̲īʿite objurgation of the early Caliphs.

ʿAbbās entrusted to Allāhwardī Ḵh̲ān the reorganisation of the army on the lines suggested by Robert Sherley, an English adventurer then at the Persian Court. A new corps of 12,000 musketeers ( tufangčī), for the most part mounted, was recruited locally from the peasantry; the strength of the g̲h̲ulāms was raised to 10,000 by further recruitment from the Georgian converts; 3000 more were selected as mulāzimān or personal bodyguard to the S̲h̲āh; and a corps of artillery, comprising 12,000 men and 500 guns, was also recruited from the g̲h̲ulāms, cannon being cast under the supervision of Sherley. ʿAbbās thus had a standing army of some 37,000 men.

After the death of the S̲h̲aybānids ʿAbd Allāh b. Iskandar [q.v.] and ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, dynastic rivalries distracted the Uzbegs, and ʿAbbās was able to inflict on them a severe defeat at Harāt (1007/1598-9), and to recover Mas̲h̲had and Harāt after ten years of Uzbeg occupation. In a attempt to stabilise the North-East frontier, ʿAbbās installed at Balk̲h̲, Marw and Astarābād Uzbeg chiefs subservient to himself. But Bāḳī Muḥammad, the new k̲h̲ān of Transoxania, re-occupied Balk̲h̲ (1009/1600-1), and though ʿAbbās led a force of 50,000 men against him, he was outmanoeuvred and forced to retreat (1011/1602-3), losing large numbers of men through sickness, and abandoning most of his new artillery. At this point hostilities in the East were suspended, but in the West ʿAbbās invaded Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān in 1012/1603-4, and occupied Nak̲h̲čiwān and Eriwan. The Ottomans under Čig̲h̲ālazāda suffered a signal defeat at Sīs near Tabrīz (1014/1605-6), with the loss of 20,000 men. Gand̲j̲a and Tiflīs were taken by the Ṣafawids. Internal disorders in Turkey contributed to the haphazard conduct of the war against Persia. Successive Turkish invasions of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān were hampered by the Persian policy of devastating the regions of Čuk̲h̲ūr Saʿd and Nak̲h̲čiwān and evacuating the inhabitants. Peace was eventually concluded at Sarāb in 1027/1617-8, but was broken by ʿAbbās in 1033/1623-4, when he took Bag̲h̲dād and Diyār Bakr from the Ottomans.

In other directions too ʿAbbās expanded Ṣafawid territory. Baḥrayn was annexed in 1010/1601-2, S̲h̲īrwān was reconquered in 1016/1607-8. With British aid, the island of Hurmuz was taken from the Portuguese in 1030/1620-1, but a long series of bitter wars in Georgia failed to result in permanent annexation, and ʿAbbās was finally forced to recognize the Georgian prince Taymuraz. Military necessity was often the pretext for the transference of large bodies of people to other regions. Some 20,000 Armenians from the Erzerum region were enrolled in the g̲h̲ulāms: a further 3000 families were moved from Ḏj̲ulfa to Iṣfahān: the Ḳaramānlū tribe ofḲarabāg̲h̲ was moved to Fārs in 1023/1614-5: and the influx of Georgians from Kakhetia—130,000 prisoners were taken in the expedition of 1025/1616-7 alone—was a major factor in achieving that admixture of races and creeds by which ʿAbbās planned to offset the power of the Ḳi̊zi̊lbās̲h̲.

Diplomatic contracts with European countries and with India were numerous during ʿAbbās's reign, but all his efforts to create a European alliance against the Ottomans failed. Though careful to keep on good terms with the Mug̲h̲al Emperors Akbar and Ḏj̲ahāngīr, he always regarded Ḳandahār, seized by Akbar in 999/1590-1, as Persian territory, and in 1031/1621-2 he re-occupied the city. ʿAbbās maintained friendly relations with the princes of Muscovy and the Tatar k̲h̲āns of the Crimea. Foreign monastic orders, like the Carmelites, the Augustinians and the Capuchin Friars, were accorded permission to operate without hindrance. In 1007/1598-9 Sir Anthony Sherley, brother of Robert, was dispatched to Europe accompanied by a Persian envoy, Ḥusayn ʿAlī Beg Bayāt, and visited Prague, Venice, Rome, Valladolid and Lisbon. Return embassies were sent by the Spaniards, the Portuguese and the English. The latter's envoy, Sir Dodmore Cotton, was the first accredited English ambassador to the Persian Court.

ʿAbbās improved communications by the construction of roads (notably the coast road through Māzandarān), bridges and caravanserais. He enriched Iṣfahān, which became his new capital in 1006/1597-8, with mosques, palaces and gardens: but he also built palaces at Ḳazwīn, and at As̲h̲raf and Faraḥābād on the Caspian, where he spent an increasing amount of time in his later years. He explored the possibility of diverting some of the head-waters of the Kārūn into the basin of the Zāyanda-Rūd.

Although endowed with great qualities, ʿAbbās could be ruthless, and his family fell victims to his desire for security. His father, Muḥammad Ḵh̲udābanda, and two brothers, Abū Ṭālib and Ṭahmāsp, were blinded and incarcerated at Alamūt; a son, Muḥammad Bāḳir Mīrzā, was executed on a charge of treason in 1022/1613, and another, Imām Ḳulī, was made heir-apparent in 1030/1620 during an illness of ʿAbbās, but was blinded on the latter's recovery. Throughout his reign, ʿAbbās attached great importance to maintaining the pīr umurs̲h̲id relationship with his subjects: hence he made frequent visits to the S̲h̲īʿite shrines at Ardabīl, Mas̲h̲had, where he repaired the damage caused by the Uzbegs, and, after their capture from the Ottomans, to those at Karbalāʾ and Nad̲j̲af.

(R.M. Savory)

Bibliography Iskandar Muns̲h̲ī, Tārīk̲h̲-i ʿĀlam-Ārā-yi ʿAbbāsī , Teheran 1897

A true report of Sir Anthony Sherley's journey, London 1600

Garcias di Silva y Figueroa, De rebus Persarum Epistola, Antwerp 1620

Ambassade en Perse, transl. de Vicqfort, Paris 1667

Pietro della Valle, Voyages, Paris 1745

Sir John Malcolm, History of Persia, London 1815, i, 555 ff.

Chardin, Voyages du Chevalier Chardin, ed. Langles, Paris 1811

The three brothers, London 1825

W. Parry, A new and large discourse, London 1601

Cl. Huart, Histoire de Bagdad, 55 ff.

Browne, iv, 99 ff.

L. L. Bellan, Chah Abbas I, Paris 1932

V. Minorsky, Tad̲h̲kirat al-Mulūk, London 1943."

Stop being so arrogant, Atabek. This is not the part I was talking about. I was talking about this: [25] (sorry, since I am home again, I do not have the instant access; but I have the CD version, so this is an extract from the PDF text). As you can see, I slightly changed the wording and added a sentense from another source to to it, thus not violating copyrights: "Events of the past, including the role of the Turkmen Qizilbāsh in the succession struggles after the death of his father, and the counter balancing influence of traditional Ithnāˤashari Sayeds, made him determined to end the dominance of the untrustworthy Turkmen chiefs in Persia." It is almost the same thing. German-Orientalist 01:28, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Also check the article Kizilbash, especially the paragraph about Shah Abbas removing Turkmen tribal chiefs and replacing ghulams as new amirs of the tribes. German-Orientalist 01:33, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Tajik, right above you added Turkmen extension in front of Kizilbash, as opposed to the link you just sent [26], which only says "Kizilbash" without Turkmen. So may I ask why was that added in front specifically in this context of diminishing? Now, just today you claimed: "The entire Kizilbash article is almost a literally copy of the Encyclopaedia of Islam article", now you're saying: "It is almost the same thing" :)) Indeed, with exception of your additions of words Turkmen in two places, to emphasize that Turkmens were untrustworthy in Persia, which I rightfully claimed as racist. In any case, the one I reposted from EI archives is in full from 2007, not even 2005. So we can stick to that and use it for editing. Hopefully your further edits will be in good faith. Atabek 01:57, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

See Atabek, do not rush to conclusions. Thanks for clarifying German-Orientalist.Hajji Piruz 01:48, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Piruz, why don't you provide us with at least one reference for the sake of fairness :) Are you here for editing encyclopedia or just fighting/revert warring with virtual identities? Atabek 01:57, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not a part of this content dispute, and German-Orientalist soundly proved you wrong. I'm here because you dragged me into this, and now I want to make sure that you dont harrass this new user. By the way, I never revert or "fight" warred on this article or any article, so I dont know what your talking about. The only person fighting and revert warring, as evident from the tal page and the history of the article, is you, right?Hajji Piruz 02:01, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually, you're no authority (neither admin nor mediator) to make or not make something sure about users treating each other. But anyways, good luck with ambitions, I shall simply ignore you, since you just don't understand much.Atabek 06:10, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Atabek, the Qizilbash were Turkmen. Whenever classical sources speak Qizilbash, they speak of Turkmen tribal chiefs. Shah Abbas removed these untrustworthy Qizilbash chiefs. He even appointed Armenian and Georgian ghulams as new tribal chiefs of the Turkmen tribes, a heavy humiliation of the Qizilbash who, for decades, believed themselvs to be the de facto rulers of the Empire. Whether you remove the word Turkmen or not, the message is still the same. Shah Abbas did not humiliate them because they were Turkmen, but because the Turkmen had become untrustwothy and dangerous. The Persian, until then still submissive to the dominant Qizilbash, took advantage of the situation and established two important offices: that of the Sipahsalar and that of the vezier, both held by Persians. That was an important turning point in Iran's political history. By the way: it was not me who added the word Turkmen to the sentese, but Tajik. I copied his text from the Qizilbash article, and I donot think that it is racist at all. I have no idea why you think that the paragraph is racist. If I understand it correct, it was indeed the Turkmen Qizilbash who were racists and killed 4 of their Persian wakils simply because they were Persians. On of these wakil murders resulted in the destruction of the Safavid army in Central Asia (see Amir Najm). German-Orientalist 02:05, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, Tajik, I am well aware that Qizilbash were Turcomans, although you earlier increasingly tried very hard to claim that they were not based on some remnants left in Afganistan. But I don't see why you were modifying the quote in this case to add the word Turkmen, when the word wasn't there in the original quote and the quote is used in negative sense to imply that Turkmen chiefs were untrustworthy to a Shah, who was a Turk anyway :). Why not add it to the introduction, that Qizilbash who brought Safavid dynasty to power, were Turcomans? Huh? Why were you instead removing "Azerbaijani-speaking" statement into second sentence in introduction? Isn't this part of the same ethnic POV? If you don't like Azerbaijani-speaking, how about adding the fact that Safavid court language was Turkic, after all we agreed as a compromise not to include that essential fact in introduction. Do you want to spoil that consensus now with this POV? Atabek 06:10, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

OMG, Atabek. Is it really so important to you that Azerbaijani-speaking is mentioned in the first sentence and not in the second? You were already told by Bushytalis that this is not vandalism or POV. In fact, stubbornly accusing others of racism only because a word was moved from the first sentence to the second, is paranoid and may be interpreted as racist and nationalistically motivated POV. It is also extremely disruptive that you still call me Tajik, although I have explained many times now that I am not that person. While I am trying to help improve this article, it is you who is reacting emotionally. I do not know with whom you agreed to do this or that, but it is irrelevant. Everyone is free to edit Wikipedia, and since my edits were good faith edits, your claims and accusations are laughable. It also does not surprise me that you have switched your accounts and now use Grandmaster to accuse me. As I have said before: your edits are 100% identical to those of Grandmaster, along with the words you use, your style, your rhetoric. You should not accuse others while you are indeed using sockpuppets to manipulate this article. German-Orientalist 08:52, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Tajik, it's been confirmed by an administrator with CheckUser access that you're who you're. Unless proven otherwise, in a reliable form, you're still Tajik, as the pattern, history and distribution of edits you make are pretty much the same as those of Tajik. As I said, this topic of tit-for-tat is uninteresting for me, I prefer to concentrate on content rather than on people. Grandmaster and I are in different geographic locations (and I mean way different), but even your futile targetting of himself and me is another proof that you're Tajik. Atabek 16:11, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

This is very simple, Tajik. If you think that Atabek and I are the same person, file a checkuser request. Grandmaster 09:38, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

If it is so easy, then why do you not file a checkuser request which would prove to all of you that I am not Tajik? Go ahead, I have no problems with it. Instead of accusing others of racism and POV pushing, you should read what they write and you should help out to improve the article. Just like Atabek, you, too, waste your time with accusing other Wikipedians, while you do not feel responsible for the good shape of the article. Everyone can see that my edits were good faith and that I did neither delete anything nor did I write anything offensive or controversial. It is totally laughable that Atabek calls me a racist, only because I have moved the words Azerbaijani-speaking from the first sentence to the second sentence of the article in order to improve the wording. He also calls me racist, because I have directly copied a sentence from the Encyclopedia of Islam (about the Persian verses of Sheikh Safi which are very important in understanding his native Ardabili dialogue). Meanwhile, he has deleted that quote again, while he accuses me of deleting sources. Of course, he does not have any proofs for that and was lying. Thank god, there are also some neutral and fair Wikipedians like Bushytails who see recognize that I have done nothing wrong. You do not owe this article. And right now, you (Atabek? Grandmaster? or whatever your real name is) are even preventing its improvement. German-Orientalist 09:53, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

There is nothing to argue about, German-Orientalist is an IP sock of a banned user until proven otherwise. He should complain not to us, but to admins that identified him now and before. The angry and Turkophobic POV pushing is the same as that of a banned user Tajik, IP range is the same, pages edited are the same. So any reasonable person will never doubt it's a sock. Nevertheless, I will continue to assume good faith and listen to content comments of the sock on this and other talk pages, and participate in incorporating his contributions to the article. Thanks. Atabek 16:11, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I did file a checkuser request, and it is now official that the IPs and German-Orientalist are socks of Tajik. Please see Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Tajik. So Atabek was absolutely right by reverting his edits as he was enforcing the community ban, and so should everybody do. Grandmaster 06:25, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Additions from Shah Abbas EI article

Added couple more referenced quotes from EI article on Shah Abbas, which I posted above. Thanks. Atabek 08:01, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I also added some information on this from Shah Abbas I expelling Ottomons from Iranian territory from Savory. --alidoostzadeh 11:49, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Ali, I made some more spelling, typo and other minor fixes to that fragment. Atabek 16:18, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Some more edits to Shah Abbas section, hopefully, the same references are used in Shah Abbas page. But there is still more work to do on this page with typos, grammar, etc. Atabek 23:32, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I hope the article can be fixed up soon with respect to grammatical and structural mistakes. --alidoostzadeh 01:12, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tajik

As is well known, User:Tajik is a permanently banned user. As such, he is not allowed to edit Wikipedia and all his edits must be reverted on spot without any discussion or consideration. Such reverts are not considered violation of arbcom parole. Please see WP:BAN#Enforcement_by_reverting_edits:

Any edits made in defiance of a ban may be reverted to enforce the ban, regardless of the merits of the edits themselves. As the banned user is not authorized to make those edits, there is no need to discuss them prior to reversion.

So don't waste your time on pointless discussions and just revert all the edits of banned users as required by the rules. Grandmaster 07:54, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] German Orientalist

Here is the confirmation that User:German-Orientalist is a sock of User:Tajik [27]. Now, I would like to ask User:Tajik, aka German-Orientalist, to continue contributing to talk page on the topic of Safavid dynasty content, and hopefully, we can constructively edit the article. Atabek 12:00, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually didn't notice the prior edit by Grandmaster in this regard, but anyways, wanted to make it clear that Tajik should present his thoughts on the article on the talk page, we can discuss and incorporate them. That way he won't need to employ more socks to edit the main article against Wikipedia rules. Atabek 12:02, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Tajik is not supposed to make any edits to Wikipedia unless the arbcom lifts his permanent ban. We are not supposed to discuss anything with him, as it would be a violation of Wikipedia rules. Grandmaster 12:20, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A few "tweaks"

Removed "were" and replace with "was". Also, made "Originating" as the beginning of sentence 2, instead of "they" since the reader should already know who "they" are. All in all, made it easier to read and HOPEFULLY less "choppy".Kansas Bear 15:56, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Kansas Bear

[edit] IP socks

IP socks of the banned User:Tajik are again editing the article without discussion [28], [29]. Please, discuss your edits on the talk page first. Atabek 16:22, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Does this edit need discussion? BTW: it is very likely that you and some others get banned because of new hostilities in Azerbaijan-Armenia related articles.

Tajik, please, sign your edits. This is truely pointless. I think you should rather discuss your edits on talk pages, come to agreement and then someone can edit the page. You're not going to get far with IP sockpuppeting, it's considered simply as vandalism per this [30] regardless of content. I am not involved in "hostilities on Azerbaijan-Armenia related articles", and I don't see the relevance on Safavid dynasty page. Atabek 06:06, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Tajik, as a banned user you are not supposed to edit articles in Wikipedia. Please respect the decision of Wikipedia community. Grandmaster 10:03, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Why should light edits which improve the article be discussed? It is only the Pan-Turkists and radical Turkish nationalists who want to mention the Azerbaijani language of the dynasty (which is mentioned in almost all parts of the article) in the very first sentence of the article. If you take a look at my version, its wording is better. The Azerbaijani language and their Shia faith is put into the second sentence, while the first sentence gives a very short discription of what the Safavids were: a ruling dynasty of Iran. Honestly, I have no idea why you persist on your version. As for the Tati poetry, you have once again deleted and manipulated a direct quote from Iranica, because Ehsan Yarshater says: "... accompanied with a paraphrase in Persian which helps their understanding ..." and that Sheikh Safi's poetry is important for studying the old Azari dialect of Ardabil. You have deleted both infos and their attached sources, and now you ask me to discuss?!

@ Grandmaster: stop hiding yourself behind false descisions. My ban was wrong, and I have asked to two admins, including admin FPAS . He has confirmed that CheckUser was wrong, that my edits were totally contradictory to those of User:Tajik-Professor (who is in fact a sockpuppet of User:NisarKand, a radical Pashtun nationalist and a supporter of the Taliban movement). He has also confirmed that User:German-Orientalist is not me. Go and do yourself a favour and ask for a comparison of User:Tajik-Professor and User:German-Orientalist - their IPs are totally unrelated, as well as their edits. German-Orientalist is a good and famous editor in the German Wikipedia who has written at least 4 FA articles. In regard of my case, I have written to 5 different admins and I have requested unblock twice in order to defend myself in the arbcom. But the admins - I regard two of them good friends of yours - simply ignore my mails, although on my talk-page, they claim that they would discuss everything with me if I ask unblock. Now, FPAS has done some investigation, and - as he told me - he also spoke with German-Orientalist. You are by far one of the biggest hypocrites in Wikipedia, Grandmaster. And let me tell you: there are some admin who are watching you. And the current arbcom will very likely ban Atabek, because - although he is on a revert paroll and is known for controversial articles and comments in Wikipedia (for example his recent POV comment in the Anti-Turkish article), he is still continuing his disruptive work. Because of you guys, Ali dosstzadeh has left Wikipedia. And let me show you what he wrote with an E-Mail to another contributer: "... if you see Tajik tell him no hard feeling.. I made a mistake with trying to reason with pan-turkists.. anyways I am leaving wikipedia.. ..." Good job, Grandmaster ... now you can push for your Pan-Turkist propaganda without any control ... 82.83.155.124 10:31, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I do not run checkuser, and I do not vote in arbcom. If they decided that you should be banned, address your grievances to them. Right now you are using a sock account and making personal attacks, which does not help you much. Looks like you did not learn from your past mistakes. Grandmaster 12:25, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I did not make any personal attacks. I think it is more disruptive that you are preforming some sort of witch-hunting, accusing almost everyone of being a sockpuppet. I have addressed my thoughts to 5 different admins, but they are ignoring me. Now, I have contacted two others (one has already replied, and - in some way - agrees with me). That fact that you take advantage of my situation (being banned because of wrong accusations and being ignored by admins who - very obviously - want me banned because of unknown reasons) shows your weakness, Grandmaster. Otherwise you would not jump from one admin to another, asking for my block. Instead of wasting your time and taking advantage of the misinterpretation of certain IPs, you should at least READ my edits. Everyone can see that my edits were good faith and that I did not remove anything. All the points of the consensus, i.e. mentioning the Azerbaijani language of the Safavids in the intro, the mysterious origins of Sheikh Safi, etc etc etc, are mentioned. I reverted to the version of User:German-Orientalist, because he did a good job in cleaning up the article. You, however, reverted all of his edits only because the word "Azerbaijani-speaking" was moved from the first sentence to the second one. This cannot be considered "good faith". Do not hide yourself behind hypocracy and false tricks and work for the improvement of the article. Your disruptive behaviour forced Ali doostzadeh to leave Wikipedia, and he even appologized for believing that discussions with you people would be helpful. While Ali spent hours to improve the article and accepted many of your views, you are still driven by ethnic nationalism, and you revert everything other people write. You even feel insulted if a single word is moved from the 1st to the 2nd sentence. What is your problem? Do you have minority complexes? Is the Azerbaijani identity so weak that Azerbaijani nationalists feel insulted in their pride if a word is moved from the 1st to the 2nd sentence of the article?! I do not think so, but obviously you do. I did not make any mistakes in the past, I was banned because certain admins wanted to ban someone because they believe that they can bring this hot area of Wikipedia under control if they ban users who have contributed to duzens of articles, have written 5 "good articles" and 3 "featured articles". However, it seems to me that YOU have not learnt anything from your past mistakes. Remember that you are on a revert paroll, and that the admins had mercy with you and did not ban you indef. as they have banned many others of your "Azerbaijani gang". I do not think that you, in particular, are in any position to accuse others or to preform witch-hunting. You are once again in an arbcom, and an un-involved suer has already written a long comment against you, confirming your disruptive behaviour. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.83.155.124 (talk • contribs) (User:Tajik)

Sorry, wait a second. What you say about my findings is not entirely accurate. It is true that I attempted to disentangle those accusations because I found some of them dubious. But the only thing I found out with certainty is that "Tajik Professor" is not "German Orientalist". In fact, I cannot confirm that "Tajik Professor" was NisarKand, nor that "German Orientalist" exists as a separate personality. I also have no evidence that he is based in Dortmund; you both have the same range of IPs that is dynamic across all of Germany. I did try to get into contact with him, but I have no evidence of his existence outside his activities here. Moreover, if you are the person who made the talk page remark above ([31]), then you are obviously also the person who was edit-warring rather insanely on Timurid dynasty yesterday - and that, in turn, appears to be de:Benutzer:Phoenix2 in his usual war with de:Benutzer:Westthrakientürke (the 85.* IP). So, sorry, right now I don't see I can confirm your innocence. And I must insist you stop editing again and respect your block. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:30, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Remember what I told you in the mail: I know de:Benutzer:Phoenix2 personally (he is a medical student from Hamburg [32], but he also used to study Iranology at the "Hauptcampus am Grindel" where we met; at the beginning, he used the same account for all edits in Wikipedia, also edits dealing with medicine [33][34] or with Hamburg [35]. Now he has two different accounts, one only for Iranology and the other for medicine etc.). As you know, I am also often at the "UKE" in Eppendorf, but I am not studying medicine. I see Phoenix2 regularly in the "Casino" of the "UKE". For your information: it was not Phoenix2 who edited the Timurid page; he does not want to edit the English Wikipedia because of certain reasons. My German account is de:Benutzer:Tajik and I have not edited the German Wikipedia since 2006. He asked me to take care of WTT's vandalism (he has various sockpuppets in the German Wikipedia, he denies the Armenian Genocide, he openly insults Kurds and Armenians - take a look at his racist comments in the Timurid dynasty history, etc etc etc), and I took care of his vandalism. At the end, it was useless, because User:Ariana310 was already taking care of it. Same IP range is not the same as having same IP. You confirmed yourself that I also used HanseNet IPs which are definitly from Hamburg, while the IP range of German-Orientalist is NRW & Hessen, and thus from Dortmund! You have to agree that all of this is confusing, and that the admins should not have banned me without valid proofs! 82.83.155.124 15:08, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

You can't show even one single edit, in which WTT insulted Kurds, insane liar. Unbelievable that each word of a "human" can be a lie. Concerning the Armenian case wtt thinks about the case, which is something very normal because he did not live in 1915 and there are some discrepancies,but some Germans showed him their respect for thinking about, it to be sure. If genocide or not hundreds of thousands Armenians died. The real cruelness is that you exploit these deads to gain points in completely different subjects (Timurides, Timur etc.), to gain points to push your POV. This shows that you are not even a human being. Your endless wikipedia hate propagandas will take you one day to hospital, Tajik, de:Phoenix2.

Very funny story that 82.83.xx.xx would be a friend of Phoenix. Real multiple personality, I can imagine it. Each time when an edit war starts between WTT and Phoenix2 in German wiki and it jumps to English wikipedia, then 82.83.xx.xx continues the edit war. I really wonder if anyone really believes your stories. If anyone does so, I can imagine how you laugh up your sleeve. This is the disadvantage of such an open system that is open to IPs and where is a rule of good faith: insanes like you can slate such a rule up to the maximum. Till now you have done your job very good. You have all the Turkology articles under your power at german and english wiki. But WTT will not leave you alone. Since your dispute began with him they blocked you two times one after another. WTT is also not very normal in his head when he discovers fanatic hateful racists like you. I think, he will be the first in german wiki that brings you down to your knees. He just has started his war against you and you have been blocked two times *lol* 85.178.136.248 18:28, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Tajik, I think you need to prove your point not to us but to administrators, who deal with your excessive anon IP sockpuppetry. Again, assuming good faith in regards to you, I think the best for you is to discuss your edits on the talk page, come to agreement and then we can incorporate the edits. Doing so using your sockpuppet accounts is a plain vandalism [36].

Why is it so hard? Can you explain the reason why you're trying so hard to move Azerbaijani-speaking away from the first sentence? Perhaps, you can bring up your concern and we can find out if it's addressable.

Atabek 16:22, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

No, this is not vandalism. Vandalism is what you were doing in Anti-Turkish and in Church of Kish. But this is not the issue. I want to move both words, Azerbaijani-speaking and Shia, to the second sentence, because the intro sounds better that way. The first sentence should only explain the meaning of "Safavid dynasty", namely that it was a dynasty that ruled Iran from xx to yy. The second sentence should discribe the family, namely Azerbaijani-speaking and Shia. The following sentences are OK, except for a few spelling mistakes (commas, etc). Also, the improtance of Safi ud-Din's poetry for the Azari language has to be mentioned, because Safi ud-Din's poetry not only proves his native Azerbaijani origin (as opposed to claims that he was Turkic or Persian), but also his poetry is one of the very few testimonies to the ancient dialects of Ardabil that were lost after the effective linguistic Turkification and Persianization of the region. The Persian paraphrase attached to his religious poems are important, because they help linguists to understand the meaning of his original Tati poetry. That he was probably of "Kurdish" descent (Ancient Azaris were in fact closely related to Kurds and may be regarded as "Kurds" the same way Luris are considered Persians and modern Azerbaijanis are considered Turks) is already mentioned in the text and should stay. I have no idea why you are desperately trying to keep that one single word in the first sentence, although the wording of my version is better. Does it really matter to you if the word is not mentioned in the first sentence but in the second one?! After all, the fact that the Safavids later became Turkic-speaking (and - for the sake of consensus - I even agree to leave out Ehsan Yarshater's quote that the Safavids were originally and Iranian-speaking clan!!!) is again mentioned in the 2nd paragraph! It surprises me that you still do not show any good faith and just like Grandmaster distort to witch-hunting. Keep in mind that the current ArbCom may get you banned, Atabek. So far, you have not show any good will or good faith. This was even observed by un-involved users, such as User:Bushytails. So please do not revert the edits automatically, but read them and think about them, assuming good faith (although you claim that you assume good faith, you are NOT assuming good faith; your witch-hunting and your failed attempts to get User:Mardavich and User:Ariana310 banned as "sockpuppets of Tajik" prove your general bad faith position; and this will be used against you in the ArbCom). You know exactly that my edits and those of German-Orientalists were not vandalism, but indeed ment to improve the article. Neither of us removed or changed anything reached in the so-called consensus between you and Ali doostzadeh (who by now regrets having worked with you). Could you please explain why you consider the following "vandalism" and "nationalist POV": "... The Safavid dynasty (Persian: صفویان) ruled the Iranian Empire from 1501 to 1722.[1] The Safavids were Azerbaijani-speaking Shi’as and originated in Ardabil, a city located in the Azerbaijan region of Iran. ..." ? 82.83.155.124 17:06, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Dear Tajik/German Orientalist/IP socks. I shall ignore your personal attacks, those will be addressed in a larged sockpuppetry case. Regarding content, if you haven't forgotten, there is a nice Iranica reference from Richard Frye, which says "Azeri Turks were the founders of Safavid dynasty in Iran". This quote has been discussed with yourself at length, so I don't see any necessity to go back to that edition. Please, resolve the illegitimate sockpuppetry problem first, then we can make constructive edits to the article, based on new points you have. I don't see any new point in moving the word Azerbaijani to the second sentence. That's far from being constructive, but rather being plain nationalistic. Atabek 17:17, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

For the record, Frye also says that Azeri Turks are descendants of Iranics.Hajji Piruz 17:27, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

First of all, Frye says in the same sentence that Azeris are not descendants of Turks, but descendants of Iranians. Secondly, Frye's quote neither supports your version nor disproves mine. My version of the article also says that Azeris founded the dynasty, that the ruling dynasty spoke Azerbaijani-Turkish, and - in fac t - it was me who inserted in the text that Shah Ismail was an ethnic Azerbaijani, linking the word to Azerbaijani people. So, your claims are baseless. On the other hand, you constantly remove important quotes from Iranica, namely that the family (NOT the ruling dynasty) was originally IRanian-speaking, and that Safi ud-Din's poetry has linguistic improtance. At the beginning, you were even remopving the word "Persian" from the article, claiming that it was "POV", although it is direectly quoted from Iranica. This again shows your extreme enthnically motivated POV and your general bad faith attitude. Haji Piruz should comment on this in the arbcom in order to prove that you are disruptive and that the revert paroll against you was not enough. And, just for the general information: how is it racist if a word is moved from the first sentence to the second sentence? You had been asked the same question by User:Bushytails and you did not have any reasonable answer. In fact, I guess it's your minority complexes that interpret this as "racist" ... this again proves that not my edit, but YOUR edit is ethnically motivated. Again, Hajji Piruz should report this in the arbcom. Then, all others should judge if moving a word from the first to the second sentence is "racist" (as you claim) or not. And if the community decides that it is NOT racist, than you not only owe me an appology, but you may get banned because of these kinds of disruptive and illogical comments! 82.83.155.124 17:40, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for once more confirming that you're User:Tajik, and repeating the same sentence that Azeris are not descendants of Turks [37], [38]. Come on User:Tajik, coming from the same Hessen region in Germany, edit warring on the same page, repeating the same POV, and yet claiming to be someone else. Can you convince admins with this POV, please.

Regarding your insults, include the statements like "minority complexes" or calling me "racist", despite the fact that you're a sock of a banned user, I am assuming good faith with regards to you. Please, again, discuss your edits, and I am willing to incorporate them if we can come to consensus. But your sockpuppetry and revert warring using various IP addresses is nothing more than violation of basic Wikipedia rules. Atabek 17:48, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I am not from Hessen, but - just like User:Future Perfect at Sunrise from Hamburg (we both are at the University of Hamburg)- and he can confirm this. And, yes, Azeris are not descendants of Turks, but they are ethnically Iranics. You have just quoted Richard Frye yourself. Why do you accept the first part of his quote while you fully reject the second part of the very same sentence?! BTW: I did not call you racist, but you insulted me. I have asked an admin to show me that moving a word from the 1st sentence to the 2nd sentence is "nationalistic", as you claim. If Wikipedia's rules confirm this, I will appologize to you. But if it is confirmed that moving a word is NOT nationalistic, than it will be used against you in the ArbCom in order to prove that you are disruptive and insulting, with totally illogical comments! 82.83.155.124 17:55, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I think you have been told [39] by the user clearly that you're a sockpuppet. You're welcome to produce further evidence insulting me, such as using the word "minority complexes", for which you don't even manage to apologize. You're unfit to edit Wikipedia using this kind of attitude, not just for being a sockpuppeteer, but also for being intolerant and not following WP:NPA. Atabek 18:09, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for mentioning certain words you will be forced to deal with in the comming few days. Your disruptive attitude is known, and the fact that you insult others of being racists and nationalists only because they move a single word from the 1st sentence to the 2nd one shows that you are totally unable to contribute to Wikipedia in a positive way. This is exactly why User:Ali_doostzadeh is regretting having worked with you. He believed that you are a reasonable person, but now he is realized his mistake and the fact that it is totally useless to reason with you. You have a general bad faith attitude, you accuse everyone of being suckpuppets of others, and you insult others with totally illogical comments ("moving a word is racist"). Let's see what the community and the ArbCom decide! :) 82.83.155.124 18:20, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Tajik, User:Ali doostzadeh is welcome to contact me by email or in my talk page for any concerns. I don't think there is a need for third party (especially a sock of a banned user). As I said, still assuming good faith, I welcome you to comment per topic on this talk page and discuss your edits. But your IP socking will be reverted. Atabek 18:49, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I expect certain user coming here to support banned user:Tajik socks. It is better for you, Tajik, if you try to reabilitate yourself thru discussion and dialogue rather than pushing your edits.--Dacy69 18:54, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I am discussing the issue in here, and it is Atabek who is reverting. He is also accusing me of "pushing for nationalistic POV", only because I have moved a word from one sentence to another, without changing the message of the paragraph. Now, the ArbCom and the community will decide if Atabek is right or if he is disruptive and insulting. Atabek not only reverted the good faith edits, he even changed the professional transcription of Arabic letters into Latin letters back to the general and wrong version (for example the correct transliteration "Balkh" to the wrong "Balkh"). He also keeps on deleting an authoritative source from the article (Encyclopaedia Iranica) and the direct quote of Ehsan Yarshater. This is not "good faith", as he claims. The article should be fully protected, and then we can discuss the issue. I am still waiting for Ali's comment. @ Dacy69: it does not surprise me at all that you have once again jumped into the discussion out of nothing, siding with your pal Atabek. This has already been mentioned in the ArbCom, and it will be mentioned again :) 82.83.155.124 19:00, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Tajik, the very fact that this precise sentence is an object of your attention, as well as your usage of word "minority complexes" in my regard, quite clearly reveals which one of us is actually intolerant. And now you, being a sock of a banned user, start attacking yet another user Dacy69. The reason for Balkh is because there is a relevant page on Balkh. In the rest, I recommend you follow WP:BAN for what to do further rather than further exacerbating the situation. Understand this once, your edits will be reverted until they're legitimate (i.e. you're established non-banned user and you discuss your edits). Allowing your sock edits here would pretty much mean letting the worst violation in Wiki fly without any enforcement. Atabek 19:26, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it is YOU who is focused on that one sentence. To me, it does not matter where the word Azerbaijani-speaking stands. In fact, unlike you, I have no problems to accept attested facts. I accept that the Safavids sopke Azerbaijani, while you still refuse to accept that, even though Persian was not their mother tongue, it had the same improtance to them as their Azerbaijani mother tongue. But let's leave that aside. Let me tell you one thing: "Persian nationalists" do not have the need to claim any of these dynasties for themselvs. Persian culture and history is much older than you can even think of, and the Safavids occupied only 200 years of this long history. Even if we were to declare the Safavids original Mongols who spoke Mongolian, then it would not change anything about the rest of 5000 years of Persian history, and Persian cultural and linguistic dominance in the region. And honestly, I also have no idea why suddenly Turkish nationalists jump into all of these discussions and claim everything for themselvs. Do you think that the cultural identity of Azerbaijanis loses any value if this article explains the simple fact that the Safavids also spoke Persian?! Do you think that Azerbaijan and the Turkish language of the Azerbaijanis is so weak?! I am supporting German-Orientalists version (and I do not care if you believe that I am him - especially not you, because you are known for having sockpuppets) ist because it's wording is better. Not only the Azerbaijani-language reference was moved to the second sentence, but also the reference to their Shia faith (which already disproves your accusation that the edit is nationalistically motivated). Do not use the "Wiki rules" card, because you have also reverted many registered users, and you do not care if these users are registered or not. You have also reverted the articles Church of Kish and Anti-Turkish to POV versions without any discussions, although your revert paroll oders you to discuss ALL of your edits FIRST, BEFORE changing the article. I WILL be legitimate again, and I will PROVE that I am innocent, that CheckUser is WRONG, and that I did NOT use sockpuppets. The admin has already partly admitted that the allegations seem to be wrong, because User:Tajik-Professor and User:German-Orientalist cannot be the same person - so how can I be both of them at the same time?! Do not hide yourself behind hypocracy, Atabek. Especially not because of the FACT that it is HIGHLY possible that you'll get banned soon - the admins and all the rest involved in the ArbCom are tired of you and your tricks. The easiest solution is to ban you ... and than you will be in the same position as me right now. 82.83.155.124 20:09, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Both sock IP addresses of User:Tajik got blocked - [40], [41]. The anon IP above actually confirmed being User:Tajik by this past comment "I am living in Hamburg...I have not signed up as "Tajik", because I want you to see my IP." [42], and then, the same is on Safavid Dynasty talk page [43] without admitting to be User:Tajik. Atabek 22:33, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template

I restored the History of Iran template as the History of Greater Iran is for articles that have to do with historical entities founded outside Iran's general borders today.

As per the Azerbaijani history template, its unnecessary. Are we then also going to add Armenia, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, etc... templates? In the Ottoman empire are we going to add Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, etc... templates? It doesnt make sense and is unnecessary.Hajji Piruz 13:12, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Safavid history is part Azerbaijan's history for sure. It is enough to read history and many events took place in Azerbaijan. If countires listed above wants to be includeed they can do it rightfully. --Dacy69 13:50, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes it is, but this does not mean that the template belongs. Safavids era is also part of Afghanistan's history, Iraq's history, Armenia's history, Georgia's history, Bahrain's history, etc... but this does not mean that all those templates should clutter up the article just because the Safavids conquered all of those places. The Safavids created an empire, so ofcourse their history is going to be a part of several countries histories, but this does not mean that their templates belong. These templates are supposed to be for articles that have a direct link to the nations history.Hajji Piruz 14:02, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

How many history templates do you see in these articles: First French Empire, Russian Empire, German Empire, etc...Hajji Piruz 14:10, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Hajji Piruz, Safavids influenced History of Azerbaijan more so than any other country besides Iran. Remember Afghanistan is not majority Shia, while inhabitants of Republic of Azerbaijan are after Safavids for several centuries now. After defeat of Shirvanshah, Ismail forcefully converted the population of Baku from Sunni to Shia. Moreover, Shah Ismail fought his most important battle with Ak Koyunlu, before taking over Tabriz, near Nakhchivan which is in Azerbaijan also. Atabek 14:45, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

What about Iraq, what about Bahrain, both have large Shia populations. It doesnt matter where the battles were fought, or what religion got established, this doesnt mean that the Safavids have a direct connection to the Republic of Azerbaijan's history.

The battle of Waterloo was fought in Belgium, why is Belgiums template not on the Napoleonic Empire page? You are simply trying to push your POV. Whats next, your going to add the template to the Achaemend, Parthian, and Sassanid empires too? Or what about the Russian empire, are you going to put the template there too?Hajji Piruz 15:29, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Why with user:Hajji Piruz discussion always turns into heated dispute? Why you always put some accusatuion instead of just discussion? You put this "You are simply trying to push your POV" while nothing personal towards you was said before in this discussion. The argument is that Safavid history has much more intersection with Azerbaijan than other part of the Empire. Plus - this is the question of ethnic, religous and cultural attribution. Yes, Azerbaijan was also part of Russian Empire. I personnaly would not object if someone insert Azerbaijan template to the Russian Empire page.But definitely with Safavid Azerbaijan has strong connection. After all, there are only two states with Shia dominated population in the world - Iran and Azerbaijan (I leave Iraq for several reasons) and this is the result of Savafid legacy.

I concur with Hajji Piruz's statements. If we include the Republic of Azerbaijan's template, then we will have to include Armenia's template, Georgia's template, etc. The only relevant templates are Iran and Greater Iran. Houshyar 15:53, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

It's not a problem that you concur with someone, but you're supposed to come to consensus in order to remove something. Azerbaijan was a birthplace and part of Safavid empire, not Armenia nor Georgia. Moreover, Azerbaijan is predominantly Shia domain, and the only one aside from Iran, not Armenia not Georgia. Atabek 16:51, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh Atabek, werent you the one that said that we have to come to consensus about adding things? From your edits, thats seems like what you've been doing, removing things and saying there must be consensus before additions. So before you add the template, shouldnt you get consensus?Hajji Piruz 00:27, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Hajji Piruz, your assumptions of bad faith are just tiring. Anyways, please, provide your arguments against including the History of Azerbaijan template on this page, and do so, aside from the fact, that you just want to disagree. Atabek 00:35, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ariana310

I guess the behavior of both Ariana310 and Houshyar will need to become a subject of extensive discussion at ArbCom. What's amazing though is the recent revert by Ariana310 to version where grammar was much worse, removing several Wiki links. Can you, Ariana310, explain what's the point of blind revert warring? Atabek 00:00, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] POV

Hajji Piruz, the Iranic descent OR has been discussed before. Safavids were not of Iranic descent, as the very founder of the dynasty was a mixture of Greek and Turkic origins. Discuss your further edits on the talk page. Atabek 22:21, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

The original Safavids were Iranic. Safi ad-din was Kurdish. The Safavids were originally a family from Iranian Kurdistan. Furthermor, it is virtually accepted in the scholarly community that the Azerbaijani Turkic speakers of Iran are Iranic by descent, so technically I'm not the one with the POV here, because all the facts say that the Safavids are of Iranic descent. Azeris are an Iranic people by ethnicity (not by langauge), and I, like you, know that the later Safavids definetly mixed with Azeris also, but that would still make them Iranic, as Azeris, just like the Kurds, are Iranics. It is practically universally accepted that Azeris are Iranic in origin. Also, note that I inserted "Iranic descent", thats fact, its a fact that Azeris and Kurds are both of Iranic descent, so whats the issue? Its fact.Hajji Piruz 02:19, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Piruz, please do not change the compromise version. We agreed on the current version to put an end to endless edit wars on this article. Iranic descent in one of the versions, you cannot present it as a fact. Even Iranica does not claim it as a fact, the article by Yarshater says that they may have been of Kurdish descent. We also have sources that say Safavids were Turks, we left them out too. So instead if initiating another round of edit wars, which you latest edit would definitely do, it is better to stick to the compromise version agreed between the parties earlier. Grandmaster 06:19, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fabianblue

The Safavids were originally Kurds, not originally Azerbaijani speaking, although they became Azerbaijani speaking later.Hajji Piruz 13:35, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kurdish origins of Safavids

The Kurdish connection seems to have been waterdowned in this article. The current state of the article undervalues the Kurdish origin of the Safavids. It should be rewritten. AlexanderPar 01:08, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree.Hajji Piruz 02:01, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

It has been discussed for many years. The current version is a compromise reached by both sides of the dispute. --Grandmaster 07:33, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

There is evidence for the Safavid's Kurdish origin scattered throughout the talk page. No one can remove sourced information, but addition of sourced information can not be hindered. I will not delete any information, but wikipedia allows information to be added into the article. I am reading through the archives and collecting all the materials on the Kurdish origin that is not included in this article.Hajji Piruz 16:09, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

AlexanderPar, can you please provide sources to your OR that Safavids had Kurdish origins (that's to say Kurdish-only origins). Unless, you have participated in this discussion before (?), you can check the archives to find sufficient evidence that Safavids can be claimed Kurdish, Turkish and even Greek, based on mixed origins. So the discussion, in which User:Hajji Piruz participated under his old User:Azerbaijani name, has settled exactly that.

You are welcome to add new reference, which you believe are not in the article, but then I think, if the consensus is spoiled, we should also add references to Richard Frye, Roger Savory, and other Iranologists, specifically emphasizing Turkic connection in Safavid heritage. Of particular interest is the fact that in Safwat al-Safa, the only biography of Safavids, Sheykh Safi al Din was sometimes referred to as Pir-i Turk, which is probably worth another investigation if we are to move beyond the consensus. Thanks. Atabek 16:25, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I'll create a Kurdish origin section, if you like, you can create a Turkic origin section, although the consensus amongst scholars, including Frye, Savory, etc..., is that the Safavids, along with Azeri's in general, are Iranic in origin.Hajji Piruz 19:38, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I created the Kurdish section and it is heavily sourced.Hajji Piruz 22:29, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I switched two paragraphs so that they make logical sense. Statement "most" scholars is POV, how many of which is considered "most"?? What's the total? Also, other information on Turkic origins of Safavids will be incorporated. Atabek 23:43, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

The biggest names in the study of Iranian history are listed there and they all seem to agree on the Kurdish origin of the dynasty.Hajji Piruz 23:45, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I have been reading through the archives of this and several other pages to gather evidence for the ArbCom, as many comments I have come across on these pages show a battle ground mentality. I still believe that significant information on the Kurdish origin of Safavids had been suppressed in this article, and Hajji Piruz proved that with his sources. AlexanderPar 01:24, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Frye actually says nothing about Safavids being of Azeri Turkic descent, he says that Azeri Turks, who are descendents of Iranians, founded the Safavid dynasty. Thus, that would mean that the Safavids were Iranic in origin. I made that clear in the intro.Hajji Piruz 15:23, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I reorganized the background section. Also Yarshaster says that the Safavids may have been of Kurdish origin, but that they were an Iranian speaking clan...He never says that they may have been of Iranian origin.Hajji Piruz 00:01, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Frye says "Azeri Turks were the founders of Safavid dynasty", and if you noticed the title of the article is Safavid dynasty. Ismail's father Heydar Safavi was a relative of Uzun Hassan (born to Uzun Hassan's sister), as was Ismail's mother half Greek half Turkic (daughter of Uzun Hassan). Also, if the reference says "may have been", that's what should be used in the article, not "most likely" POV and OR. There is only one person named 200 years before Safavids, which may apparently be the descendant of Firuz Shah of Gilan who was Kurdish. This is not just OR and POV but simply mocking Wikipedia's credibility as an encyclopedia.Atabek 01:13, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

There are 19+ sources in the section...how is that OR or POV?

Also, dynasties are known by their male lineage as explained in the archives. The Shirvanshah were Arabs but Persianized and intermarried with Iranians, the Seljuks had different mothers, but their ancestry is Turkish, the Ottomans had Greek, Persian, Arab, (etc...) mothers but they were Turkish. Eventually it is the male line that defines the origin of any dynasty. Also, the Frye article is about the Land of Iran, not the Safavids.Hajji Piruz 01:58, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Please, lets not insert our own interpretation of what scholars say. I removed some POV and OR material regarding Minorsky, just because he didnt mention anything says nothing about his intentions. I also made some fixes.Hajji Piruz 16:08, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

You should not be arbitrarily removing sourced material without discussion, that's called POV/OR pushing. I added several precise quotes to Turkic origins of Safavids. The introduction shall spell out that Safavids were of mixed Turkic and possibly Kurdish origins, as all scholars concur on both origins. Atabek 07:37, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Atabeks newest additions

Atabek, I want the full quote because this statement makes no sense:

According to Pierre Oberling, Oghuz Turkic tribes that migrated into the region at the beginning of 11th century, provided Persia with most of its ruling dynasties, including Ghaznavids, Seljukids, Atabegs, Ilkhanids, Jalairids, Timurids, Qara Qoyunlus, Agh Qoyunlus, Safavids, Afshars and Qajars^[10]

The ones I bolded were not Oghuz...The Timurids and Ilkhanids were Mongols. This insertions is borderline historical revisionism.

Also, here is the entire Cambridge History of Iran quote:

The establishment of the Gajar capital in Tehran at the end of the eighteenth century was merely the last manifestation of what may well be a permanent tendency in the life of Iran. There are manifold reason of this phenomenon. Moreover, the Turkish and Mongol origins of the earliest dynasties certainly played a major part in causing the capitals to be situated in the north, and especially along the main invasion route following Alburz into Azarbaijan. The princes of these basically nomadic states were anxious both to be near their tribes and to avoid the excessive heat of the climate farther to the south. This helps to explain the evolution of Tabriz, which, despite all the vicissitudes, was the capital successively of the Mongols, the Qara Qoyunlu, the Aq Qoyunlu, and finally the Safavids, all of whom stemmed originally from the Turkmen tribes of the north-west from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Tabriz was abandoned only for short periods, and always for other cities in the same region: Maragheh, whose, fertile pasture land had attracted Hulagu, Ardabil, the cradle of the Safavids; and Sultaniyeh.

Stemmed in this context me support, not origin.Hajji Piruz 15:09, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

That's exactly how I quoted the above in the article, Safavids stemmed from Turkmen tribes. The quote is precise from the source, and any form of further POV/OR pushing shall be left out for the reader to decide.

Ghaznavids were kins of Seljukids and were an Oghuz Turkic tribe, Ilkhanids were essentially the same as Atabegs of Azerbaijan, and those were Turkic as well. Timurids were considered Mongols in some sources, but then Amir Timur (Tamerlane) is considered an Uzbek, thus Turkic as well.

In all, Safavids were an Azerbaijani dynasty of Iran, Turkic-speaking, and closely related to Akkoyunlu Turkic dynasty which ruled over both Azerbaijan and Iranian Kurdistan. Of course, the possibility of some Kurdish roots should not be excluded, it's natural that Turkic groups intermarried and mixed in the region. But it's no ground for POV/OR pushing that Safavids had solely Kurdish origins. They had mixed Turkic and Kurdish origins, which is what article shall reflect. Yet another quote here:

• In 1501 Ismail, the leader of a Shiite religious group the Safavids, became Shah of Persia. Ismail was ethnically Turkish, as therefore was the Safavid dynasty that he now founded. His accession to power and the establishment of his family on the throne reignited the border wars between the rulers of Iran and those of the Middle East. (Christopher Catherwood. A Brief History of the Middle East: From Abraham to Arafat. ISBN-10: 1841198706)Atabek 15:47, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree, POV and OR should be left out. Timur is considered an Uzbek? Ilkanids were Turkic? Timurids were Turkic? Lets not get into POV and OR here, lets use authoritive sources regarding the Safavids.

Are we using sources that are authoritative on Iranian or Safavid history or are we using every and any source we can find? There are many who also say the Safavids were Persians.

I suggest we create different sections in the Safavids section, a Kurdish origin section, a Turkic origin section, and a Persian origin section.Hajji Piruz 15:51, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

We will not be turning this article into another History of the name Azerbaijan with copies from different sources and no logic linking them. Safavids are a well defined subject, and there was a consensus previously that they had mixed Turkic and Kurdish origins. I am fine including that, right now the introduction is POV claiming only they had Kurdish origins, which creates a false picture for the reader.

You should define an authority in identifying what is a source "authoritative on Iranian or Safavid" history. Yes, we will use every and all sources available to let the reader make unPOV and unOR judgements on origins of Safavids. So far there is more than enough evidence to show that Safavids had Turkic roots, not to mention that the court language they used was also Azeri Turkic and several of their shahs, including Ismail and Abbas II, wrote poetry in Azeri Turkic. Here is one more source:

• Shi'ism was reintroduced and imposed by the Safavids many centuries later, and they, I would remind you, were Turks. Until then Iran was a largely Sunni country. Iran in History by Bernard Lewis

I would like to see proofs that Princeton Professor in Middle Eastern studies is somehow not an authoritative source. Atabek 15:59, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Thats fine with me, there are tons of sources which state the the Safavids were Persians, then those sources should also be included. Lets split up the background section up into these three categories:

Kurdish origin, Turkic origin, and Persian origin

Hajji Piruz 16:03, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

The references to Persian usually refer to nationality not ethnicity. In medieval history until 1930s, Iran was called Persia, it does not mean that every inhabitant or dynasty of Iran were ethnic Persians, with all due respect to this ethnicity. That's distinguishing shall be made clearly in every article, in fact all dynasties of Iran from 11th century to 20th century with exception of Zand, were Turkic not Persian in ethnicity. Writing otherwise in Wikipedia through POV/OR pushing only undermines the credibility, as there are tons of material already citing this information, the most vividly expressed in Oberling's reference. Atabek 16:08, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

You just said that we shouldnt interpret sources and let the reader decide. If you are going to use sources by anyone and everyone, regardless of their expertise, then sources that also refer to the Safavids as Persians should also be mentioned.Hajji Piruz 16:10, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Again the sources citing Safavids as Persian imply Iranian, not Persian ethnicity. Safavids has absolutely nothing to do with Persian ethnicity, except for using their language in some of their poetry verses. The fact that Ismail wrote 1400 verses in Turkic and only 50 in Persian is sufficient enough of a proof. Atabek 16:12, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Let the reader decide for themselves what the sources actually say, not you or I, you yourself said this.

Atabek, no double standards, either we agree that only authoritative experts should be used or we agree that any and all sources should be used. Just above you said that we should use all the sources and let the reader decide, now you are trying to say that the Persian aspect should be excluded.

Lets decide now, a) only authoritative experts or b) any and all sources.

I choose a, you? We have to settle which sources we should use now so that this issue doesnt come up again.Hajji Piruz 16:14, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

The Pierre Oberling quote is irrelevant to this article and inaccurate anyways, as the Timurids and Ilkhanids were Mongols, that's the mainstream academic view. I am removing it. AlexanderPar 16:17, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Really? And how qualified are you to decide how authoritative a scholarly source is? And yet another source of Safavids being Turkic:

• The Safavid threat to the Ottomans was rendered at once more acute and more intimate by the Turkish origin of the Safavid family and their extensive support in Turkish Anatolia. Bernard Lewis. The Middle East. ISBN: 0684832801 Atabek 16:30, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Here are ony two, or many which state the Safavids as Persians, for example:

"For more than two hundred year, from the early sixteenth century on, the Ottomans and the Safavid Persians waged intermittent war..." Source: The Unbound Prometheus by David S. Landis, second edition, page 588

"In the sixteenth century the Ottoman Turks and Safavid Persians conquered Armenia." Source: Contributions to the Archaeology of Armenia by Valeriĭ Pavlovich Alekseev, Published 1968, page 6Hajji Piruz 16:35, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

• The Zands were an Iranian people, and their decades of dominance were one of the few periods, between the arrival of the Saljūqs and the twentieth century, during which effective political power was exercised by a dynasty that can be regarded as in some sense ethnically "Persian" . David Morgan. Medieval Persia, 1040-1797 (History of the Near East) ISBN: 0582493242 Atabek 17:17, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
• With the exception of some very local dynasties, the Zands were the only Iranian dynasty that had come to power since the Buyids in the 10th century. Encyclopaedia Iranica. Iran. Successors of the Safavids Atabek 17:18, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Whats with the double standard? The Turkic origin is incorrect too based on the major scholars. I'm just saying, if you want to include the "Turkic origin" based on non authoritative sources, then the Persian origin should also be included.Hajji Piruz 17:54, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Sources clearly show that Safavids were ethnically Turkish (see above), and also show that they were not ethnically Persian, only Zands were. So, in light of POV/OR pushing on this page, and obstruction of NPOV contributions to the article by User:AlexanderPar, I have inserted POV tags to disputed sections. Atabek 18:25, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, sources say that the Safavids were Kurdish...What are you talking about?Hajji Piruz 19:01, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Really, some sources do, but majority do not. One more, (7th source) I am bringing:

• "Safavids were a Sufi order that originated in Turkic Azerbaijan in the 14th century" - (Tamara Sonn. "A Brief History of Islam", Blackwell Publishing, 2004, p. 83, ISBN 1405109009)

Don't know how many more I have to bring before this POV/OR falsification of history stops. The Safavid article is a complete POV disaster right now, misrepresenting historical facts, presenting some sources with OR words "most" and "most likely", while constant attempts by some users to remove sourced material. So these sources will require independent mediator to determine that Safavids were Turkic, and all of this POV/OR pushing war will be presented to ArbCom for independent judgement. The previous consensus actually compromised many references to Turkic roots of Safavids in favor of balance and NPOV by highlighting handful of sources alleging Kurdish origins, when even Safwat al-Safa does not claim them. So this will be corrected now. Atabek 21:11, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Your using random people that you do a google book search on Atabek. I can bring up dozens of more sources which say that the Safavids were Persian, whose to say that they were only Turkic? If you want to put the Turkic stuff in, then I can also put the Persian stuff in, no double standards. If we can use any random sources we want, then why is it fair that you get to and I dont? You dont own this article, I can edit it also if we agree to use any and all sources instead of scholarly authoritative sources.Hajji Piruz 13:52, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Safwat as-Safa is clear that Safavids were Kurdish. See the Iranica article by Savory. If you look at the archives, Ali Doostzadeh brought the actual Persian quotes. I can e-mail him to see if he wants to bring it again. Primary sources like Safwat as-Safa say Safavids were Kurdish. In the introduction, we should mention that the only pre-1501 source on Safavid geneology says they were Kurdish. Roger Savory clearly states the consensus of scholars is that the Safavids were Kurdish. This should also be in the introduction. Shah Ismail's Persian poetry has been mostly lost. But Minorsky says his composition of Turkish poetry was not due to "the delight of heart" and we should make that clear in the article.

Your sources are not written by Safavid, or Iranian history, specialists.

The other option is to create a Kurdish, Persian, and Turkic section and present all three views.Hajji Piruz 14:11, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Again more POV and OR. Who is not Iranian history specialist? Richard Frye is not? Or perhaps, a famed scholar in Middle Eastern history in the U.S., Bernard Lewis, is not? As far as I know, when I tried to use Richard Tapper before, Ali Doostzadeh claimed that he was anthropologist not a historian :). Now Richard Tapper, also appears in references with "Frontier Nomads of Iran", just because he claims that Sheikh Safi probably had some Iranian or Kurdish ancestry? How much of this POV will be pushed? And what's wrong with searching through Google Books, they have Savory, Frye and other references too. Are you claiming that books scanned by Google are somehow not legitimate? My sources are also from Iranica, JSTOR, and few other databases. Here is another source:

The ethnic origin of the Safavid family is unknown. They may have been Iranians or Turks, or even of Kurdish or Arabic origin, but their appeal was religious rather than ethnic or tribal. Devotion to the Safavid order was widespread among the Turkmen tribes of Azarbayjan and ANatolia, Safavid followers wore a distinctive red turban and were known as Qizilbash, or "red-heads". The Safavid order was both Sufi and Shiite in orientation, and it is thanks to the Safavids that Iran is a Shiite country today.

Religious overtones aside, in most other respects theirs was a typical Turkish dynasty. As late as the 1660s and 1670s, a Frenchman at the Safavid court could still write: "Turkish is the language of the armies and of the court; one speaks nothing but Turkish there, as much among the women as among the men, throughout in the seraglios of the great; this comes about because the court is originally of the country of this language, descended from the Turkmens, of whom Turkish is their native tongue" (Kenneth Chase, "Firearms: A Global History to 1700", Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 115). Need more? Atabek 14:48, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Need more for what? I already told you, anyone can search these online search engines and find books written by anyone saying things, tell me, how would a guy whose writing a book about Firearms know about the details of the Safavids?

Fine, I'll bring up more quotes about the Safavids being Persians. This wont change anything though, as the only sources we should be using are the experts, not random authors who have no expertise. The Safavids were not Turkic in origin. The Safavids were as much Turkic in origin as the Seljuks were Persian in origin.

I'm not using POV or OR, I'm not the one claiming Mongols to be Turks either... Richard Frye is a specialist, and he is included in this article. I'll post a more detailed response either.

No double standards, your bringing up any author you can find which mentions the "Turkic" origin of the Safavids, even though they are not experts, but you dismiss the authors that call the Safavids Persians. Even more interesting is that you dismiss what the actual experts have to say about this. Isnt that POV?

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with JSTOR or Google books, I'm just saying that you can just make a search and find any author that says anything. Theres nothing wrong with that, but no double standards, if we are going to use any random author, then we should use also the ones that say the Safavids were Persians...Either we use only the experts, or we include what every random author has to say, no double standards Atabek. I personally say we use the experts only, because the Safavids were neither Turkic in origin nor were they Persians.Hajji Piruz 15:31, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

You cannot define who is an expert on Safavids, that's an abstract statement for more dimensional POV pushing. And Iranologist Frye already wrote that "Azeri Turks were the founders of Safavid dynasty", although you were the one who reverted my edit stating based on Frye that Safavids had Turkic origins leaving only Kurdish. So what is that source acceptable to you, only the one that says Persian or Kurdish? Do you see the POV you're pushing. Any reference to Persian word in this article, will include an introductory sentence saying "Persian in this context implies the nationality of Iranian, not ethnicity of Persian". Because that's what it is, in Western press, Iran was referred to as Persia, and Persian ethnicity had nothing to do with Safavids, until the appointment of wakils by Shah Ismail.

And again more POV and OR, now you claim an author citing a Frenchman in Safavid court, who clearly said that Turkish is the language of court and origin of dynasty, is also not credible. How about a linguist:

"A specific Turkic language was attested in Safavid Persia during the 16th and 17th centuries, a language that Europeans often called Persian Turkish ("Turc Agemi", "lingua turcica agemica"), which was a favourite language at the court and in the army because of the Turkic origins of the Safavid dynasty. The original name was just turki, and so a convenient name might be Turki-yi Acemi. This variety of Persian Turkish must have been also spoken in the Caucasian and Transcaucasian regions, which during the 16th century belonged to both the Ottomans and the Safavids, and were not fully integrated into the Safavid empire until 1606. Though that language might generally be identified as Middle Azerbaijanian, it's not yet possible to define exactly the limits of this language, both in linguistic and territorial respects. It was certainly not homogenous - maybe it was an Azerbaijanian-Ottoman mixed language, as Beltadze(1967:161) states for a translation of the gospels in Georgian script from the 18th century" (Éva Ágnes Csató, Bo Isaksson, Carina Jahani. Linguistic Convergence and Areal Diffusion: Case Studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic, Routledge, 2004, p. 228).

More sources? :) Atabek 15:59, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Here again is another Safavid-specific source: In 1501, when Shah Ismail proclaimed his public allegiance to the Imami Faith, the Husaini/Musavi lineage of the Safavids had not yet been officially engraved upon their genealogical tree. It is true that during their revolutionary phase (1447-1501) Safavid pirs had played on descent from the family of the Prophet. Shaykh Safi al-Din’s hagiography Safvat as-Safa (by Ibn Bazzaz, 751/1350), was first tampered with during this very phase. As the initial revisions saw the transformation of Safavid identity as Sunni Kurds into blood descendant of Muhammad. (Kathyan, Babayan, Sufis, Dervishes, Mullas: The Controversy over the Spiritual and Temporal Dominion in the Seventeenth-Century Iran ’, in Safavid Persia , 1996, pg. 124.)

Safvat as-Safa says that Safavids were Kurdish and Iranica confirms this. Roger Savory also agrees that the consensus of scholars is that the Safavids were Kurdish. Your sources are not written by Safavid specialists and the articles you have quoted were full of mistakes. Ilkhanids/Mongols were not Oghuz Turks. Bernard Lewis, as mentioned in the archives is not a Safavid scholar. The article that he wrote is not specialized and geared toward Safavids. Also he says: Nevertheless, the culture of the Persian language and the distinctive Shi'ite version of Islam helped to maintain the unity that was imposed by the Safavids and maintained by their successors. Also again the article of Lewis is not specialized for Safavids. The only option I see is create a Kurdish, Persian, and Turkic section and present both views. If you want to use random sources, then we should also mention Safavid ethnicity were Persian as well based on random sources.

Minorsky also says: Shah Ismail, even though he must have been bi-lingual from birth, was not writing for his own heart's delight. He had to address his adherents in a language fully intelligible to them, and thus the choice of the Turcoman Turkish became a necessity for him. Shah Isma/il's son Sam-mirza states that his father wrote also in Persian, and as a sample quotes one single verse. Some traces of Persian poetry are found in one Paris MS. ; but with this exception, all the known copies of Khatais divan are entirely in Turkish. The question of the language used by Shah Ismail is not identical with that of his "race" or "nationality". His ancestry was mixed: one of his grandmothers was a Greek princess of Trebizond . Hinz, Aufstieg, 74, comes to the conclusion that the blood in his veins was chiefly non-Turkish. Already, his son Shah Tahmasp began to get rid of his Turcoman praetorians.

Also we do not know how much Persian poetry Shah Ismail wrote but we know that his son Sam-Mirza wrote only in Persian.Hajji Piruz 12:45, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Your judgment of scholars or choice of only Savory or Iranica as the "only experts on Safavids" is POV and OR. Shah Ismail's grandfather was Uzun Hassan, ruler of Akkoyunlu Turks, and Uzun Hassan's sister was the grandmother of Ismail on father's side (Sheykh Heydar's mother and Sheykh Junayd's wife). That enough is sufficient to find any absolutist claims that Safavids were of Kurdish origins as simply void. At the time of their ascent to throne, they were already chiefly Turkic. Of course, Ismail himself also had Greek bloodlines, and the fact that Tahmasp was getting rid of Turcoman praetorians does not change the origin of the dynasty. Atabek 21:11, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I added more information per Minorsky.Hajji Piruz 20:20, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Your additions are not scientific. Please scan and send the page where Minorsky said. In Safwat-as-Safa if your read without bias, Sheikh Safi is called Piri-Turk, i.e. Turkish Saint. Ogtay Efendiyev has made this claim base on St. Petersburg copy of the book. One Greeck grandmother from mother's side and assumptions on obscure origins of 10th grandfather of Ismayil on father's side does not make his "blood" "cheifly non-Turkish". This is pure POV and irrelevant --Aynabend 10:18, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

First of all, assume good faith. Secondly, it is not my obligation to scan and send over Minorsky. I already brought the text about him being bilingual earlier. Do not delete sourced information. I have already brought the text. The actual article can be found from JSTOR which other users also have access to. Ayabend I am willing to send you those pages of Minorsky. But you can not delete a source from the article, just because you do not have a copy. That could be considered vandalism.

As per Ogtay Efendiyev, never heared of him but Wikipedia requires neutral third party sources. If you have the scanned Persian page of the original St. Petersburg copy, then please bring it. But keep in mind that there are only two copies of Safvat Safa prior to 1501 and Savory has mentioned this in Iranica. You need 3rd party sources verified in reliable publications to make such a claim. I can bring many Iranian scholars also.Hajji Piruz 14:49, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Well if Oqtay Efendiev is not "considered a neutral third party or reliable source", then I don't see how Iranica or even Safvat al-Safa would be. Atabek 09:05, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Iranica is produced by Columbia Encyclopedia and the article on Ebn Bazzaz is written by Roger Savory. Encyclopedia of Islam article is also written by Roger Savory. These are 3rd party source. I did not find anything reliable or significant under Ogtay Effendiev in JSTOR, Google books, Google, and other sources. Also there are only two pre-1501 manuscripts of Safvat al-Safa. You should bring a reliable published source that mentions any other manuscript, the date of the manuscript and also the actual sentences. For my own research puposes, I asked Ali Doostzadeh for the Persian of the two pre-1501 manuscripts and he sent me the scanned copies. Iranica article has already summarized the Safvat al-Safa and so have other sources: [44]

The origin of the dynasty lies upon the male descent. There is no other option but to make a Kurdish origin, Persian origin, and Turkic origin section. That way there will be no POV.Hajji Piruz 23:05, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Anon edits

The language of dynasty was discussed at length. Safavids were Azerbaijani-speaking, Ismail wrote 1400 verses in this language and only 50 in Persian. Also, there is sufficient amount of evidence presented to both Turkic and Kurdish origins of Safavids, and that's what article should reflect. Atabek 06:48, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

He didnt only write 50 verses in Persian, only 50 verses survived to this day. Also, they were not of mixed Kurdish and Turkic descent, they were originally of Kurdish descent with mixes of everything, including Greek, Turkic, Persian, Kurdish, and who knows what else... Also, the Safavids were intially mainly Azerbaijani speaking but they were also Persian speaking, and later on, they became even more Persian speaking and incorporated Persians into most of the political scene. I also made some changes regarding flow, wikilinking, etc...Hajji Piruz 15:59, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

They were PROBABLY (per Savory) of Kurdish descent but at the time of their rise to power they were Turkic speaking. I believe with Uzun Hassan being Ismail's grandfather and Sheykh Safi being called pir-i Turk in Safvat al-Safa, as well as Ismail making Azerbaijani his court language, it's safe to say it was of mixed Turkic and Kurdish roots. Atabek 18:49, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

WP:OR. They were not originally mixed, they were originally Kurdish. By the time of Ismail,like I said, they were a mix of a lot of things, including Persian, Kurdish, Turkic, Greek,etc... There is a difference between what they were originally and what they were by the time the dynasty was founded. The Safavids were of Kurdish descent, they were not of mixed Kurdish and Turkic descent. At present, the articles reflects what the major sources say.Hajji Piruz 18:56, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I guess we should invite independent third party to resolve this dispute. Your OR about Kurdish origins and replacing some 5 references to Turkic origins of Safavids presented on this page, is not acceptable. When Safavids were connected by bloodline to Akkoyunlu Turkomans, there is just no way that dynasty was not mixed with Turkic descent. Atabek 19:13, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Guess what, the Ottomans were of mixed Turkic, Persian, Armenian, Greek, Arab, etc... (probably dozens more ethnicities) but this doesnt matter as the Ottomans were originally of Turkic descent...Who their kings chose to marry and have children with, out of their many many wives, is inconsequential really as lineage as passed through males back then.

I can bring tons of sources which say that the Safavids were Persians. Just because you do a simple search and use any reference that mentions Safavids being Turkic does not mean that they are if those sources are not authoritative. I can bring a source from an expert in Chinese history who says that the Safavids were Persians, but I cant, because that person is not an expert on the Safavids.

The Safavids were not originally mixed with anything, they were Kurds. Infact, the Safavid family goes back way before the Turkic language even dominated the region.

And stop calling sourced information from some of the most authoritative scholars in the world OR. Its actually the other way around.Hajji Piruz 19:17, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't see what Ottomans have to do with Safavid origins topic. Please, assume good faith. You can't claim an entire group of people developing over 300 years as only Kurds when the only reference you have is to a single person, Firuz Shah Zarin Kolah. What about the rest of the family lineage for 30 decades? Atabek 19:29, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm using the Ottomans as an example, and its a very good example, as everyone who knows about the Ottomans knows how mixed they were. By your logic, the Ottomans could have been Armenians, or even Greeks, or even Persians, or even Arabs...

The article says that the Safavids were of Kurdish descent, it does not say that they were not mixed. Infact, Ismails section clearly says that he was of mixed Turkic, Iranic, and Greek descent.

Original research is not an acceptable inclusion in any Wikipedia article.Hajji Piruz 19:33, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

The dynasty was of Turkic descent as well, as numerous references brought on this page, and removed by you in your last edit certify. Atabek 00:38, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

The scholarly authoritative sources clearly contradict the non-experts that were cited previously. One of the sources you cited was about the history of firearms...how could that author, obviously an expert on firearms, be used as an authoritative source here? The leading Iranologists have already been cited in this article.Hajji Piruz 02:29, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

OR, who is a scholarly authoritative source? I presented references from linguists, which you are removing. Atabek 03:11, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Piruz, why do you keep on changing the compromise version of the intro, agreed between the parties some time ago? I think you should stop it if you want this dispute to end. Safavids were Azerbaijani speaking all the way thru, and even later Safavids such as shah Abbas II wrote Turkic poetry. And Minorsky does not say that Safavid dynasty was not Turkic speaking either. --Grandmaster 04:35, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

All I'm doing is adding more information to the article to make it better. Assume good faith.Hajji Piruz 17:10, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Some quotes from Iranica:

The oldest poet of Azeri literature known so far (and indubitably of Azeri, not East Anatolian or Khorasani, origin) is Emad-al-din Nasimi (about 1369 – 1404, q.v.). Other important Azeri poets were Shah Esma’il Safawi “Khata’i" (1487 – 1524) and Fozuli (about 1494 – 1556,q.v.), an outstanding Azeri poet. During 17th – 20th centuries a rich Azeri literature continued to flourish, but classical Persian exercised great influence on the language and literary expression. On the other hand, many Azeri words (about 1.200) entered Persian (still more in Kurdish), since Iran was governed mostly by Azeri-speaking rulers and soldiers since 16th century (Doerfer, 1963-75); these loanwords refer mainly to administration, titles and conduct of war. [45] see page 246.

Shah Abbas II (r. 1052 – 77/ 1642 – 66 q.v.) was himself a poet, writing Turkic verse with the pen name of Tani. [46] p 251

Note this line: Iran was governed mostly by Azeri-speaking rulers and soldiers since 16th century, i.e. since the times of Safavids, Azeri-speakers. This is what Iranica says. Grandmaster 04:48, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, no one disputes this. The introduction clearly says that the Safavids were mainly Azerbaijani speaking. However, the Safavid dynasty did incorporate a lot of Persian speakers in their court and government. Minorsky also says that Ismail was bilingual, and everyone knows that he spoke both Persian and Azerbaijani and wrote poems in both languages. Unfortunately, all of his works have not survived these past centuries. However, many of his Turkic verses have survived, as well as a few of his Persian ones.

Infact, one of the things that made the Kizilbash jealous was that later on the Safavids started incorporating more Persian speakers into the government positions. Infact, it got to a point where most administrators were Persians, and the court was Persian speaking as well, the Kizilbash assassinated many of the Persian speakers.Hajji Piruz 17:10, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Instead of unsourced POV and OR above, like "everyone knows that he spoke both Persian and Azerbaijani", bring references in response to Grandmaster's reference. As Minorsky reference shows in the article, Ismail wrote 1400 verses in Azerbaijani Turkish and only 50 in Persian, and Turkish was the court language of Safavids per several listed sources. Atabek 17:43, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Edits by DerDoc

Thank you for the proposal. But I don't see a compromise yet, I think in order to achieve it, we need to look at all references not just deliberately choose some of them:

1. Why is "Ardabil, the city in Azerbaijan region of Iran" changed to "Ardabil, a city in northwestern Iran". I don't think that statement was disputed to change it.

2. Several legitimate sources brought on this page, most importantly Richard Frye, say that Azeri Turks were the founders of Safavid dynasty. Why is that being replaced by Azerbaijani-speaking or by any other word. Frye is a prominent Iranologist, so the reference should appear in introduction.

3. Reference to the book about Firearms, that Hajji Piruz is disputing, actually cited a Frenchman at Safavid court (that's traveller John Chardin), saying that Azeri Turkic was a language of the court.

4. Nowhere did Minorsky claim that Safavids were of Kurdish stock, he only talked about origins of Ismail, which were mixed: his father, Heydar Safavi (son of Junayd) was a Turk (Heydar's mother was a Turk too, sister of Akkoyunlu Uzun Hassan) and Ismail's mother, Marta, was a Pontic Greek princess.

5. Savory claimed that Safavids originated in Persian Kurdistan and that one of Safi al-Din's ancestors was Firuz Shah Zarin Kolah. This does not mean that Safavids were Kurds.

Please, address these issues in your next attempt for compromise. Atabek 17:43, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

1)Ardabil is an Iranian city.

2)Frye says that Azeris are of Iranic descent, and that they founded the Safavid dynasty. So Frye says they were Iranic.

3)The intro clearly says that the dynasty was Azerbaijani speaking.

4)Savory clearly states that Ibn Bazzaz says the family was Kurdish.Hajji Piruz 17:51, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your replies. First of all, let me add that I am not really an expert on Safavid history. I have some basic knowledge of that time, and I have access to some good litereture (Minorsky). I think that the question of the Safavid's ethnic origin is unimportant, because the Safavids ruled as a religious institution and not as a nationalist dynasty. Like all dynasties of that time, the Safavids were patrons of Persianate culture, but it is accepted that they were not ethnic Persians although they had intermarried with local Persians to some extent. From what I have learnt during my studies, they were not Turks either, although the use of Turkish is attested. Most Safavid rulers wrote in Turkish, although the same rulers also wrote in Persian. The official language of the Safavid kingdom was Persian, that means that they communicated with the 'outside world' in Persian, although many nobles at the Safavid court also sopke Turkish - most likely, Turkish was the main language of the kingly court, at least when the capital was still in Azerbaijan and not in Isfahan. So, all we can say is that the Safavids were Turko-Persians, spoke both languages, and promoted the Persianate kingly life with poets, scientists, and so forth. However, this does not give any answers to the question of their ethnicity. personally, I believe that V. Minorsky has done a great job trying to lighten up the mysteries surrounding the Safavid family. I believe that his statement that Safavids were originally Kurds is correct. Someone has already mentioned in the article that Safi-ud-Din wrote some poetry in Kurdish or in a related language. This is a very important statement and gives some hints to the early Safavid origins. So, most probably, the Safavids were Kurds who later intermarried with surrounding peoples, most of all with Turks and Persians. It is not surprising that they later chose to speak Turkish. For decades, the Safavids were allied to local Turkish chiefs, and most of their followers were Turks. There must have been a need to come closer to their followers. So, the Turkish element has to be mentioned in the article. Also very important is the Persianate element of the dynasty, in my opinion as important as the Turkish element. While the Turkish element of the dynasty was mostly attached to the Safavid followers, the Persian identity of the kingdom seems to have been the personal choice of the kings and is present from the very early days of Safavid rule. I would say that the article should mention the (probably) Kurdish origins of the Safavid family, and then explain that they had become Turkicized and Persianized through time. I think that is not in the interest of the readers to redicule the Turkish or the Persian elements, because both are essential. To understand the Safavids one must understand both the Turkish and the Persian elements that formed the dynasty, as well as the Kurdish roots of the Safawiyyah movement. -DerDoc 19:20, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, I forgot to answer the questions. 1) I did not remove the source. I think the source was removed by someone else. 2) I agree that R. Frye is an excellent scholar. His statements shoud not be ignored. But I also think that Hajji Piruz has a point.3) R. Savory is another excellent scholar. And like Minorsky, he has somewhat specialized on the Safavids. Ignoring his stamenet would be a major mistake. 4) Minorsky is an authority in this field. Someone has quoted him in the talk page. I prefer his statement over that of Savory or Frye. 5) Ardabil and Azarbaijan are in northwestern Iran, the same way Munich and Bavaria are in southern Germany :) 6) Junayid was not a Turk, his mother was a half Turk and half Greek, like all women of the Akkoyunlu. At the end, the Akkoyunlu chiefs were more Greek than Turkish, because they were allied to the Greeks of Anatolia and always married into Greek noble families. Uzun Hasan was himself half Greek, he married a Greek princess, and his daughter was married to Haydar who was of mixed origin, including Greek and Turkish. 7) Minorsky points out that Ismail's language was not identical to his race. I believe that he is correct, and Ismail points to his non Turkish race in some of his poetry when he refers to Iran, to ancient Iranian kings, or when he glorifies the victories of Iran against the Turks. The language of his poetry was most likely political propaganda. Most of the poetry attributed to him was written decades after his death, anyway. Ismail believed himself to be an Arab, a descendant of the peophet Muhammed, and a hero of Iran. The rest was unimportant. 8) Please do not forget that the expression 'Turk' was quite uncommon back then and was only used for Central Asian Turks. The word 'Turk' was adopted by the Ottomans in the late 19th century, and in the past 200 years, the meaning has somehow changed. In the 16th century, the Turkmens of Anatolia did not identify themselvs as Turks, while the Mongols in Central Asia used the word 'Turk' for themselvs. This is somehow confusing. -DerDoc 19:39, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

We cannot base a whole article solely on Minorsky, and his analysis of Ismail's poetry. Also, can you please, provide reliable sources to prove that Uzun Hassan was half-Greek as you claimed above? Can you provide sufficient sources to prove that whole Akkoyunlu family was semi-Greek? Can you prove us that Sheikh Junayd's father side did not have Turkic descent, when the whole dynasty spoke Turkish and intermarried with Akkoyunlu? You cannot claim the whole dynasty as Kurdish based on one man (Firuz Shah) from some 500 years before Safavid dynasty. Atabek 20:50, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Safavids were Azerbaijani Turks of mixed origin. There are numerous sources about that. While in general edits by Derdoc are good, I think they overemphasize one version of ethnic roots of Safavids, while ignoring other aspects and opinions. I think all scholarly opinions should be presented fairly to put an end to the dispute. Also, saying that Turkic poetry of Safavids was for religious propaganda only is not accurate. Shah Abbas II unlikely to write it for religious propaganda. Grandmaster 06:43, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

The Safavids were originally of Kurdish descent, this is recognized by all the leading scholars in the field. Guess what, by the time the Safavids dynasty was founded, they were of mixed pretty much everything. Ismail himself was a mix of Turkic, Greek, and Iranic. So how could you say that the Safavids were only mixed Turkic.

The Safavids origins are known, and their origins are Kurdish.Hajji Piruz 15:48, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

POV and OR. "All the leading scholars" is Savory, who is only one scholar, and claimed that Safavids probably had Kurdish origins. Another expert on regional history, Professor Bernard Lewis of Princeton, as well as Professor Richard Frye of Harvard, clearly say that Safavids were of Turkic descent. Z.V.Togan is not an expert in the field, in fact, if we are to consider him an expert, I would be delighted to bring other Turkish scholar citations into discussion of references. Atabek 17:09, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to replay that late, but I am very busy right now. So here is a short answer: I prefer Minorsky, because he is regarded an expert on Safavid history, while other scholars are usually experts on other fields and have only some basic knowledge of the Safavids. Another good writer in this case is of course Savory, but since Savory was a student of Minorsky, there is not much difference between their works. Togan and Kasravi have done some important research, but that's basically all. Frye is an expert on Iran's pre-Islamic history and he has some important works regarding Tamerlane, but he has no (!) literature in regard of Safavids, so I see no reason why his opinion should be prefered over specilists such as Minorsky. B. Lewis is an expert on Ottoman history, and he is a highly controversial person, especially when it comes to the Turkish nation and the Armenian Genocide. As for the Kurdish descent of the Safavids: the Iranian origin of the Safavids is accepted among all western Safavid historians, and most newer books (written after 2000) regard them as Iranians. Of course, like ALL dynasties in the world, they had mixed with all kinds of neighbouring peoples. There is also a very interesting research which connects the Safavids and Mughals to Charlesmagne and to the great dynasties of Europe (see Charlemagne to the Mughals). But as I have explained before, the Safavids were mostly a religious institution. They even rediculed their Kurdish Sunni origins in order to further strengthen their claims that they are descendants of the Shiite Imams. The use of Turkish was not uncommon back then, as it was also the language of the Ottoman kingdom. You are correct that Safavid kings wrote in Turkish, but they also knew Persian and Arabic, and Persian had probably a more important role in the kingdom, as it was the lingua franca of all Iranian and Turkish kingdoms. Here one should not forget that the Ottomans were also mixed with other peoples. Almost all Ottoman kings had non-Turkish mothers. They were Europeans, Persians, Arabs, Jews, and so forth. But the Ottomans are still regarded as an ethnic Turkish dynasty, mostly because they descended from a mysterious Turkish warrior in the 13th century. Sultan Süleyman I wrote his poetry in Persian and had only a few verses in Turkish, and his mother was a Polish Christian. I think that the Kurdish origins of the Safavids are fully correct, and I also believe that their 'Iranianness' was more important then some Turkish poetry written by their kings. They Safavids strongly identified themselvs with Irans epic past, and they recreated a unique Iranian kingdom, much different then previous Turkish kingdoms that ruled the region for so long. Only mentioning Turkish poetry of their kings while ignoring the Persianiate way of life of the dynasty, their ancient Azari-Kurdish origins, and their strong touch to Iran's epic past gives the wrong impression that Safavids were Turks. Regards. -193.170.48.2 21:46, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I had forgot to log in. Only one last answer to Atabek: Uzun Hasan was of course half Greek. Actually, he was more than half Greek. His mother Sarah Khatun, a Christian Greek from southern Anatolia. His father was Fakhr-ud-Din Qutlug who was also married to another Greek, Maria Megala Komnene, the daughter of Basileios of Trebizond. Uzun Hasan himself also married a Greek, Theodora Megala Komnene, daughter of Ioannes IV of Trebizond. Their daughter was Halima Begum Aqa, who was later married to Haydar of the Safavids. This is the line of Tur Ali, one of the chiefs of the Akkoyunlu. The other line of the dynasty was that of Osman Bey Qara Ilüq Khan. This line was also of half Greek origin, because Osman was married to Kantakuzene Megala Komnene, daughter of Alexios IV Trebizond and his wife Theodora Kantakazune. Also very intersting: the Ottoman Turks tried to redicule their Turkish origins and instead claimed to be descendants of ancient Greek kings. Because the origins of their ancestor Ertughul are a big mystery (to this day), the Ottomans claimed descent from the Komnenos dynasty of Anatolia and claimed that they had mixed with Arabs and had converted to Islam (see Runciman, 2000, pp. 29-30). So, as you can see, the Akkoyunlu were a mixed Greek and Turkmen dynasty, while their 'outer appearance' was most certainly Persian, unlike the Ottomans who also used Turkish and Greek titles. The Akkoyunlu chiefs designated themselvs as 'Shahanshahs', as 'Great kings of Iran', and used in their court Persian only (see: W. Hinz, Irans Aufstieg zum Nationalstaat im 15. Jahrhundert , Berlin and Leipzig , 1936). Even more interesting was their motto 'Powerful like Jamshid, Flag of Fereydun and Wise like Darius' (see: W. Hinz). -DerDoc 22:15, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Atabek look at this: [47]. The Safavids were of Kurdish descent. This is acknowledged not only by modern scholars, but also of texts written before they even came to power. I will respond in full soon when I have more time.Hajji Piruz 00:22, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Grandmaster had one for a long time now: [48] -- on Turkish origins of Safavids, which presents substantial references as well. So that's why the article should have had mixed Turkic and Kurdish origins. Atabek 16:11, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

We have talked about this, we can have a Persian origin section, a Kurdish origin section, an Arab origin section, and a Turkish origin section.Hajji Piruz 14:00, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, regarding Kurdish origins, Minorsky's article "A Mongol Decree of 720/1320 to the Family of Shaykh Zāhid", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 16, No. 3. (1954), provides a good analysis of Safvat al-Safa. If you look at pages 516-518 of the article, it clearly shows that:

a) Sheikh Safi's family was different from Sheikh Zahid's. The latter was a Sanjani Kurd, and his daughter Bibi Fatima married Sheikh Safi;

b) Nowhere does Minorsky say that SHeikh Safi was a Kurd, he only says that his ancestor in 7th generation, Firuz Shah, "was a rich man in Gilan whom above mentioned Kurdish Kings" (that is Sanjani) "gave Ardabil and its dependencies". I don't see how this is supposed to establish Kurdish identity for either Firuz Shah or Sheikh Safi.

c) Sheikh Safi wrote in Taati (according to somebody who claimed this), which is a language different from inhabitants of Iranian Kurdistan, again this does not establish ethnic identity.

d) Page 524 of Minorsky, in footnote 1, says:

"One can place on record a passage in Safvat, 17, according to which, when the young Safi went on pilgrimage to Mount Savalan, a Turk shouted to him "in the Mongol language".

So, before proceeding with Kurdish origins, please, present references from Safvat al-Safa, proving:

1) That Firuz Shah was a Kurd.

2) That 7 Generations of lineage from Firuz Shah to Sheikh Safi were purely Kurdish.

3) How the details of "Taati" language used by Sheikh Safi establish his Kurdish identity.

Thanks. Atabek 15:35, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Dear Atabek, you are contradicting yourself. On one hand, you say that the Safavids should be regarded as Turks, because the female line of some Safavids was Turkish (Akkoyunlu). On the other hand, you say that the Safavids should not be seen as a Kurds, because 'only' the 'female line' at the beginning of their silsila was Kurdish. This does not make sense. Minorsky does refer to the Kurdish origins of Sheikh Safi, and to his ancestor Firuz Shah the Kurd. This is also mentioned by Clifford Edmund Bosworth in his "Iran and Islam. In Memory of the Late Vladimir Minorsky" (Die Welt des Islams, New Ser., Vol. 16, Issue 1/4 (1975), pp. 234-235). Of course, the Safavids had intermarried with many different peoples: Kurds, Persians, Turks, Greeks, Arabs, Indians (!), and many others. But still, the origin of the family was Kurdish. Do you think that the Ottomans were 'pure Turks'? Do you think that the Akkoyunlu were 'pure Turks'? I have shown in my previous post that almost all rulers of the Akkoyunlu had Greek mothers. Does that mean that the Akkoyunlu were not Turkish but Greek? Ruling dynasties in the past were all multi-ethnic and multi-lingual, but the origins of a dynasty is well defined. And in case of the Safavids, all facts point to a Kurdish origin, even though the dynasty itself was heavily Turkicized in language and Persianized in language and culture. Safi-ud-Din's Kurdish poetry is not only a claim, but a well preserved fact (see Doerfer's excellent analysis of his poetry and see Yarshater's quotes in this talk-page). It is a very important detail, because after 7 generations of an alleged Kurdish origin, the founder of the Safavid family still used a language that may be regarded as Kurdish. So, there must have been some attachment to a Kurdish identity at the time of the evidently Shafi Sunnite Safi-ud-Din. I would also like to remind you that you and many others claim a Turkish origin and identity for the Safavids, because some of their kings wrote poetry in Turkish. So I really do not understand why you refuse the same logical methology for Safi-ud-Din and instead say that Taati poetry does not establish a Kurdish origin. Actually, it does, the same way the Turkish poetry of the Safavid kings proves the Turkicized Azeri nature of the ruling dynasty. You are absolutely correct by saying that the Safavids were 'Turks', at least at the time when the became kings. However, Hajji Piruz is also correct when he says that the origins of the dynasty were not Turkish but Kurdish, and that the ruling family was also Persian. Sam Mirza's Persian poetry, Ismail's Persian poetry, and the many Persian letters written by Abbas I and Safi II prove the important Persianization process of that took place after the Safavids were forced to move their headquarters from Azerbaijan to mainland Persia. As an 'outsider', I see the Safavids as a native Iranian, Kurdish dynasty, who later were Persians and Turks at the same time. In many ways, the modern Azeris of Iran reflect this phenomenon. Many Azeris in Iran are aware of their Azeri and Turkish identity, while they also strongly identify themselvs with the Persianness of Iran. Recently, as I have figured, many of them are have also developed an awareness for their original Iranian origins. They are proud of their Azeri origin, of their Turkish & Persian bilingualism, and their Iranian nationality. That is basically what the Safavids promoted as well: a Turkish and Persian unity, united by the multi-ethnic and multi-lingual Safavids themselvs. Ironically, the Safavid family was neither Turkish nor Persian, but Kurdish. We should respect these facts and write the Wikipedia article accordignly. regards. -DerDoc 11:43, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

DerDoc is correct, and I appreciate the time he is spending here in an attempt to help solve this issue.

Savory is explicitly clear about the Kurdish origin of the Safavids.: [49] and [50]

Also Savory says that the consensus of Safavid scholars today is that the Safavids came from Iranian Kurdistan. So that is why the Kurdish origin is believed by leading scholars because the leading scholar of Safavid history also agrees. And of course there are other scholars. [51]

Z.V. Togan has many scholarly articles in JSTOR and in peer reviewed western journals. Savory refers to him as well. Also Professor Togan provided passages from the two oldest and only pre-1501 manuscripts of the Safvat al-Safa which clearly discusses the Kurdish origin of the Safavid family. Unlike Lewis, his article deals with Safavid history. The male lineage is important because it determines the origin of the dynasty. The Safavids mixed with Iranic, Turkic, Greek and Georgian elements but their origin is Kurdish through the male lineage of Shaykh Safi al-din. Shaykh Safi al-din wrote Tati poetry. You have not brought a single source that says that the origin of Shaykh Safi al-Din Ardabili was Turkic. Also all the sources you brought had nothing to do with the Safavids or their origins. For example the Bernard Lewis article is not about the Safavids. Not one of the sources you have cited were written by experts of Safavid history. What Frye is saying is clear, that the Azeri are descendants of Iranians who adopted Turkish, founded the Safavid dynasty. So any source calling the Safavid as Azeri Turkic is talking about their language but not their origin. Frye’s article is also not about Safavid. The only way to solve this dispute is to create a Kurdish, Persian, Arab, and Turkic origin and present all four views.

Safavids were bilingual as Minorsky said. They knew Persian. Here is a source from the Archives by Arnold J. Toynbee [52]:

“

In the Iranic world, before it began to succumb to the process of Westernization, the New Persian language, which had been fashioned into literary form in mighty works of art. . . gained a currency as a lingua franca; and at its widest, about the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of the Christian Era, its range in this role extended, without a break, across the face of South-Eastern Europe and South-Western Asia from the Ottoman pashalyq of Buda, which had been erected out of the wreckage of the Western Christian Kingdom of Hungary after the Ottoman victory at Mohacz in A.D. 1526, to the Muslim "successor-states" which had been carved, after the victory of the Deccanese Muslim princes at Talikota in A.D. 1565, out of the carcass of the slaughtered Hindu Empire of Vijayanagar. For this vast cultural empire the New Persian language was indebted to the arms of Turkish-speaking empire-builders, reared in the Iranic tradition and therefore captivated by the spell of the New Persian literature, whose military and political destiny it had been to provide one universal state for Orthodox Christendom in the shape of the Ottoman Empire and another for the Hindu World in the shape of the Timurid Mughal Raj. These two universal states of Iranic construction on Orthodox Christian and on Hindu ground were duly annexed, in accordance with their builders' own cultural affinities, to the original domain of the New Persian language in the homelands of the Iranic Civilization on the Iranian plateau and in the Basin of the Oxus and the Jaxartes; and in the heyday of the Mughal, Safawi, and Ottoman regimes New Persian was being patronized as the language of litterae humaniores by the ruling element over the whole of this huge realm, while it was also being employed as the official language of administration in those two-thirds of its realm that lay within the Safawi and the Mughal frontiers.

”

^[11]

Minorsky says that the families of Shaykh Zahid and Shaykh Safi were separate. Minorsky also says most of the blood in Shah Ismail was non-Turkish. He confirms that male lineage of Safavid was through Firuz Shah Zarin Kolah. So Minorsky is not saying anything in support of a Turkic origin for the Safavids. He has not ruled out Kurdish either but says that Shaykh Safi claimed the origin of his ancestors from Ali ibn Abi Talib but there is some uncertainty about it. I Will uploaded the actual portion of the manuscript of Safwat Al-Safa were Firuz is called a Kurd. I agree writing Tati does not make Shaykh Safi Tati, just like Ismail writing Turkish or Persian does not make Turkish or Persian.Hajji Piruz 17:45, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Here are the images I said I would upload:

I added those images into the article. Also, the Safavids were bilingual. They had Persian Vazirs and administrators. The administrative language was Persian. The cultural language of the empire was also Persian.

Arnold J. Toynbee gives an overview of the role of the Persian language is worth quoting in more detail[53]:

“

In the Iranic world, before it began to succumb to the process of Westernization, the New Persian language, which had been fashioned into literary form in mighty works of art. . . gained a currency as a lingua franca; and at its widest, about the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of the Christian Era, its range in this role extended, without a break, across the face of South-Eastern Europe and South-Western Asia from the Ottoman pashalyq of Buda, which had been erected out of the wreckage of the Western Christian Kingdom of Hungary after the Ottoman victory at Mohacz in A.D. 1526, to the Muslim "successor-states" which had been carved, after the victory of the Deccanese Muslim princes at Talikota in A.D. 1565, out of the carcass of the slaughtered Hindu Empire of Vijayanagar. For this vast cultural empire the New Persian language was indebted to the arms of Turkish-speaking empire-builders, reared in the Iranic tradition and therefore captivated by the spell of the New Persian literature, whose military and political destiny it had been to provide one universal state for Orthodox Christendom in the shape of the Ottoman Empire and another for the Hindu World in the shape of the Timurid Mughal Raj. These two universal states of Iranic construction on Orthodox Christian and on Hindu ground were duly annexed, in accordance with their builders' own cultural affinities, to the original domain of the New Persian language in the homelands of the Iranic Civilization on the Iranian plateau and in the Basin of the Oxus and the Jaxartes; and in the heyday of the Mughal, Safawi, and Ottoman regimes New Persian was being patronized as the language of litterae humaniores by the ruling element over the whole of this huge realm, while it was also being employed as the official language of administration in those two-thirds of its realm that lay within the Safawi and the Mughal frontiers.

”

^[12]

DerDoc, I believe that we should re-write the intro one more time to make these facts more clear. What do you think?Hajji Piruz 18:13, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Frye reference

Can someone explain to the anon IP editing the page, that Frye quote inside "", are the precise words taken from Iranica article, hence cannot be purturbed. The article says Azeri Turks, not Azerbaijanies. Atabek 09:24, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, do not remove the precise Frye wording. That is why it is quoted. No POV interpretations. I reinserted what Frye said.Hajji Piruz 15:44, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Can someone explain to this guy that citation 18 points to a blank line

Also, in English language providing different views from different sources is supposed to have a flow explaining that. You don’t just put two contradictory quotes in two different paragraphs

I fixed the source.

Also, its not two different quotes, its one quote. Its all one quote from the same source, by the same person. Richard Frye says that Azeris are Iranic, but that they founded the Safavids. There is no contradiction.Hajji Piruz 16:48, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

==fix up==--alidoostzadeh 04:44, 27 August 2007 (UTC) I did not want to get involved here again but it seems like there is no choice by to present both views for readers. It seems like some users have used my articles from other places on the internet as well my Persian articles. I am going to move all the origin stuff into two sections where both views are presented. I made a placeholder for the Turkish origin and Kurdish origin theory. This way both sides can put their viewpoint. Although I firmly believe in the Kurdish origin, in Wikipedia we must let the other side represent their viewpoint. I have not seen a source myself also that refers to Shaykh Safi al-Din's descent as Turkish. All the classical sources I have encountered either trace his background to Hijaz (through Firuz) or to just to Firuz. I put the Frye quote on both viewpoints since there is a differing intrepretation on this quote. I am not here to reopen this debate, but just to make the format good enough so that tags are removed. --alidoostzadeh 15:32, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Ali, I don't see how removal of Azerbaijani speaking reference and other related references to Turkic heritage of Safavids, is supposed to be an improvement to article. We have been through these discussions earlier, and frankly, I am puzzled why you would remove the information and references to prior consensus, of which you were a part.

I am going to add back the POV tag to the article, until we reach an agreement which at least somewhat reflects the truth and reality. Thanks. Atabek 22:15, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Atabek, I don't have a problem with the current intro either, so if you are satisfied, you can remove the tag. But others had a problem it seems and so my suggestion was that instead of people deleting information to support one side, it is best to remove the origin debate into two different sections where both sections are discussed. I didn't delete anything, I just put two places for both views. The reason is that the origin of the dynasty has to do with the male ancestry. For example the Shirvanshah's were not of Arab culture and mixed heavily with the locals of Shabaran/Shirvan, spoke Persian, composed Persian poetry and supported Persian culture, but ultimately they are considered Arab because of that male lineage (despite even claiming to be Sassanid like the Safavid claiming Seyyed). The Safavids were of course mixed beyond recognition by the time of Ismail, but their male lineage defines the "origin". So they can not be both "Azeri and Kurdish" origin. Just like Shirvanshah can not be of both "Persian and Arabic" origin or the Abbassid can not be of both "Persian and Arabic and Ethiopian and Turkic" origin. But I am not interested in this debate again, all I did was to make two sections so everyone is comfortable in putting their viewpoint. If you are not happy, leave the tag, but I was interested in making sure both views are presented so there is no need for a tag. I do not think the back and forth saying Safavid are Kurds or Turks will ever finish (specially with users who are active here). So it was best to have both sections. But again if you are not happy, put a tag and maybe someone else will have another suggestion. Thanks.--alidoostzadeh 22:39, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Ali, you didn't answer my prior question. Why were you removing the reference to Azerbaijani-speaking, which was discussed at length earlier and agreed upon by yourself? How is that supposed to improve the article? I believe now, we should also add that Turkic was the court language of Safavids, throughout their reign.

I don't think the discussion should finish, as we are not the first nor last to be active or to edit this article. I believe the proposal to have sections on each origin was made earlier by User:Hajji Piruz, was now implemented by you. So I will go ahead and incorporate all available references on Turkish origins of Safavids.

Also, please, note that Ismail's grandfather was a Turk, so was his father, Haydar, a Turk at least by mother's lineage. He also had Pontic Greek origins due to his mother, Marta of Trebizond. So claiming that Safavids were Kurds only because some 5 centuries earlier, there was a Kurd Firuz Shah, is simply void of any biological evidence to origins. And I wonder why reference to Safi al-Din as pir-i Turk in Safvat is being omitted, while so much attention is given to origin of Firuz Shah.Atabek 22:54, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Atabek which reference did I remove? Can you show me? I took the page as it was yesterday and modified. I put all references to Azerbaijani speaking in the origin and background section. Note it says Azerbaijani speaking twice. So how did I remove it? Can you tell me exactly which reference was removed by me? And no the proposal to have different section was actually originally given long long time ago before Haji Firuz by Tajik. Note Haji Piruz wants a Persian section for origin. That is to me not sound at all. Feel free to put academic references to Turkish origin of the Safavids in the proper section. Also I have access to Safvat As-Safa with me. Which reference and sentence does it say "Pir-i-Turk" (Turk, has multiple meaning and it also means bright and brilliant in Persian Sufic literature). Can you bring the sentence that says that and the prior and the after sentence? Also the manuscript with it's number and a scholarly journal that has mentioned it? There are only two manuscripts of Safvat as-Safa before Safavid. I am not here to have a debate. Origin can not be "Kurdish" or "Turkish". No matter how many mothers the Safavid lineage has, it is the male line that counts on origin. That is not part of the debate. Anyways I made two sections where both sides give their view. It was your suggestion that I fix up this article from OR and one-sided viewpoint. This is the only way actually and if Haji Piruz suggested 4 sections, that is not my fault, it seems logical. The main issue for me is to remove the tag but creating a framework so that both views on origin are presented. That is the best way to proceed given that after two years, this article has had tags due to this irritant issue. And note after I had made the previous agreement, 1501 was changed to 1502. So I put both numbers now. 1501 is based on Encyclopedia of Islam. Thanks --alidoostzadeh 23:02, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Ali, right here [54], as I said, I don't see how moving the basic fact that Safavids were Azerbaijani-speaking dynasty away from introduction (as you agreed for it to be there before), is supposed to improve the article. Origin is a biological definition, I am sure, as so called DNA research is often used to "establish a closer identity" of Azeris and Persians rather than any kind of Turks and Azeris, when it's clear as a day that Turk of Anatolia is not any different from Azeri Turk of either Azerbaijans, you would agree that origin of mothers matters in foundation of DNA as well, doesn't it? Moreover, can you please, provide us with the entire male and female lineage of Safavid family starting from Firuz Shah to Ismail I, in order to establish the pure "Kurdish origin" as the sole definition in this context. As for "pir-i Turk", I am not a speaker of Persian or Arabic, but I will find relevant references to pir-i Turk, which you already admit existed albeit claiming a different context. Thanks. Atabek 23:18, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

. Atabek 23:18, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Atabek, as you I didn't remove it. I simply moved it to the background/origin section. Origin in scholarship means male lineage, not DNA. DNA is a modern concept, not for dynasties like Seljuqs (had many Persian wives), Ghaznavids, Shirvanshah, Abbassid. I didn't define it! The male lineage of Safavid family from Firuz to Shah Ismail I is provided by the picture. I didn't admit Pir-i-Turk exists in different context in Safvat Safa. Look my friend (I know we have our discussions and no hard feelings), we have been through this. Note what GM said: While in general edits by Derdoc are good, I think they overemphasize one version of ethnic roots of Safavids, while ignoring other aspects and opinions. I think all scholarly opinions should be presented fairly to put an end to the dispute. I have created a framework in order so that both sides can present their viewpoint and note Haji wants a Persian section which I disagree with. I agree 100% with the Iranian viewpoint of origin (male lineage) and you might agree 100% with another viewpoint. So with this framework, both views are presented and there is no need for tags (a problem of two years). --alidoostzadeh 23:25, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Also a quick note, Ali, I did not make this suggestion: "It was your suggestion that I fix up this article from OR and one-sided viewpoint." I merely indicated that Safavid article is full of POV and OR, which is a fact as of now too. Instead of impartial research into what was known as Iranian dynasty anyway, the general attempt is to locate another origin of Safavid family in non-Turkish context, this is something incomprehensible to me, but as I see more about Shahnameh, I understand why this feeling generally exists. As for year of establishment, it was 1502, in 1501 Ismail was crowned Shah of Azerbaijan and in 1502 he proclaimed Shiite empire in Iran. You know this well even without Encyclopedia of Islam, as it was discussed at length before. Atabek 23:33, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Again, origins of a human being is identified by bloodline, which comes from father and mother. Just as a simple example Ismail's father Haydar's mother, the wife of Sheykh Junayd, was the sister of Uzun Hassan. Can we claim that Haydar didn't have Turkic origins? Already not, because he was half Turk at birth at least, and I am yet to see the entire bloodline (by the way Minorsky shows the tree, where he includes Bibi Fatima as well, so clearly female line also mattered). Thanks. Atabek 23:33, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Atabek, 1501 is based on Encyclopedia of Islam. I can source it, but i hate to source a date. Azerbaijan is part of Iran as far as I see and as long as the dynasty is partly established, that is when I consider the date of establishment. Plus if we are going to argue what to exclude and include, then it is simply not worth the time. We are not going to exclude Encyclopedia of Islam. It is primary source. Anyways as you can see I did not remove "Azerbaijani speaking". (that was a bad assumption). I moved it into origin along with Kurdish (if I had a purpose I would have kept the Kurdish origin in the intro of Derdoc and not move it to origin). You see I made a framework where the origin is discussed in one section and both views are given. As per Shahnameh comment, I am not here to make such comments. In fact maybe their adoration of the Shahnameh is why I feel Safavids are more Iranian than say Oghuz Turks. But anyways, the entire blood-line (male-line) is in the oldest manuscript of Safwat as-Safa. Manuscript A, which is the oldest extant manuscript of the Safwat as-Safa in the world. [55]. Origin of a human is defined by a bloodline of mother and father. I totally agree. But the origin of dynasty is not. Or else we should say Seljuqs (they married Persians and even Nizam al-Molks mother), Ghaznavids (Mahmud's mother was Iranian) were Persians. Or Abbassids were Turks (because Mutasim's mother was a Turk). Origin of a dynasty is defined by the fatherline in scholarship. Origin of a person is not. For example, one of the sources you brought says "Kurdish or Turkish". It does not say "Kurdish and Turkish". If we are adding "Kurdish and Turkish", then we should add Greek I guess? But that is not how scholarship works. Minorsky includes the entire tree as much as he can from the Shaykh. But we are discussing fatherline all the way. So as per the fatherline you asked, check [56]. Note it says: Safi al-Din Abul-Fatah Ishaaq ibn Al-Shaykh Amin al-din Jebrail ibn al-Saaleh Qutb al-Din Abu Bakr ibn Salaah al-Din Rashid ibn Muhammad al-Hafiz al-Kalaam Allah ibn ‘avaad Ibn Birooz al-Kurdi al-Sanjani. Ibn means son of in Arabic and these are all male names. You can ask anyone that knows Persian or Arabic to read it. Now after 1501, Safavids started connecting the ancestry of Piruz to Hazrat Muhammad(PBUH). So they really did not consider themselves Turks when they were ruling, but Arabs. We have a similar problem with Shirvanshah. They were originaly Arabs, but they claimed descent from Sassanids and even intermarried with Iranian dynasties. I consider the Shirvanshah's as culturally Iranian but unfortunately every encyclopedia says they were originaly Arabs who were Iranified. Anyways these things have been discussed a million time. I have created a framework so that the tags are removed. I do not see any justification for tags, when both views can be presented. That is exactly what Tajik and GM had suggested a while back also, but I didn't want it to be like that. But after coming back and seeing the usual tags, it makes sense. --alidoostzadeh 02:49, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

• Azerbaijan is part of Iran as far as I see - there is no geographical or historical basis for such absolute claim. At different historical periods, Iraq, Afghanistan or parts of Turkey were parts of Iran, parts of Iran were parts of other states, this does not establish belonging. Here is what Minorsky, referencing Abd al-Razzaq, says about the period just preceding Safavids, that of Jahan Shah Qaraqoyunlu:

Owing to the benevolent administration (husn-i 'inayat va lutf-i atifat) of Mirza Jahan-shah, Azerbaijan was a highly thriving state. That well-meaning sovereign was anxious to practice justice, to secure prosperity of the country, and to treat his subjects honourably. The capital, Tabriz, by its numerous population and the prevalence of tranquility, emulated Egypt (misr-i jami). The rumours of the good beaviour of that felicitous king spread throughout the world. The inhabitants of his God-protected kingdom, indifferent to the arrows of events, enjoyed peace - (V. Minorsky. "Jihān-Shāh Qara-Qoyunlu and His Poetry (Turkmenica, 9)", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 16, No. 2 (1954), p. 277)

I don't see the word Iran being used in here. But in any case, I still insist that you provide us with entire male and female lineage (you still haven't provided full male lineage either) from Firuz Shah to Ismail in order to establish Kurdish ethnicity of Safavids. The argument about Kurdish origins, although must be included, is quite weak indeed. Ethnicities of the regions heavily mixed in medieval times and even now, and provided that Shah Ismail himself had a very mixed ethnic background and that Safavids mostly spoke Turkic, as established, it's rather unrealistic to claim that they had only Kurdish origins. I never suggested we should remove reference to Kurdish origin, it's relevant, but I don't see any basis for absolute statements about origins, when there is magnitude of references claiming them of Turkic origin as well. I will be including those in coming days. Atabek 03:14, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Atabek here is the first line from Encyclopedia Islam: "The establishment of the Safawid state in 907/1501 by Sāh Ismāīl I [q.v.] (initially ruler of Azerbaijan only) marks an important turning point in Persian history". Note it is Persian history (Iranian history), but it is in 1501. It is valid source. We can quote it verbatim if necessary for the first line. And who is "us"? that i need to provide "them" the entire female lineage? I do not have to find the entire female lineage. I only have to provide the enire male lineage and I did. It is in the oldest manuscript of Safwat as-Safa, manuscript A. You can say the argument is weak or strong, it is your opinion ( I respect it but disagree) and I am not here to argue. I also never claimed Safavid kings had only Kurdish blood. I claimed the male lineage (father after father father..) of the dynasty is Kurdish. Male lineage in scholarship establishes the "origin of the dynasty". Dynasty not king or person. We know Safavids were mixed like your modern Iranian or person from Azerbaijan republic and etc. And actually I did not claim it, the oldest manuscript of Safwat As-Safa did and other scholars have. The issue is not emotional. We can fix this article once and for all, by providing both sections. That should be the end of the tagging business that has plagued this article. If you think the Kurdish origin is weak, fine. I think the Turkish origin weak. The important issue is that both views are given space, so that there is no need for tagging. That was a good suggestion by users. You can add tons of sources that says Safavids are "Turkish" (hopefully it is short). Ultimately, if I was a neutral scholar, I would look at the oldest geneology of the family from the oldest manuscript, put that alongside the Shafi'ite origin of the Shaykh and then the Kurdish origin makes more sense. Maybe that is my opinion, but the Kurdish origin is definitely "not weak" if there are serious scholars that subscribe to it. --alidoostzadeh 03:27, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Dear Ali, again Safvat al-Safa only refers to Firuz Shah as a Kurd. I asked you for entire lineage from Firuz Shah to Shah Ismail, to establish that the dynasty was Kurdish. English ruling dynasty had some origins in France, but it's not French, it's still English ruling dynasty. I would think as a scholar you would be interested to investigate the entire lineage, rather than claiming dynasty solely of Kurdish origin, when references say otherwise.

And thanks for EI reference. It says "the establishment of Safavid state in 1501", it does not say establishment of Safavid Iranian state or Safavid Persian state. By the way, EI does it the same way as Azerbaijani and Soviet historiography, which referred to Safavid state (Səfəvi dövləti) without explicitely saying it was Iranian or Azerbaijani. Iran and Azerbaijan are geographical terms, Safavid state is a political and administrative term. Similarly we say Abbasid Caliphate, we don't say Abbasid Arabia. Of course, the establishment of Safavid state in Azerbaijan in 1501 did play important turning point in coming Iranian history as next year all of Iran was proclaimed to be belonging to Safavid state. Same as rise of Timur in Samarkand had repricussions to Iranian history as well, although Timurid empire did not start in Iran. So if we would like to be impartial, we have to accept that Ismail established Safavid Shia state, over the domains of Azerbaijan and next Iran. He did not establish Safavid Iran in geographical title. THanks. Atabek 03:42, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Dear Atabek,the male lineage is this: ":"(Shaykh) Safi al-Din Abul-Fatah Ishaaq the son of Al-Shaykh Amin al-din Jebrail the son of al-Saaleh Qutb al-Din Abu Bakr the son of Salaah al-Din Rashid the son of Muhammad al-Hafiz al-Kalaam Allah the son of ‘avaad the son of Birooz al-Kurdi al-Sanjani (Piruz Shah Zarin Kolah the Kurd of Sanjan)". And I believe you know how it goes from Ismail I to Shaykh Safi (it is in the article here). Origin of a dynasty as I mentioned many times, is defined by the father upon father upon father upon father.. lineage. So Abbassids were Arabs, Seljuqs were Turks, Ghaznavids were Turks (Mahmud had a Persian mother) and so on. Many if not most Abbasids had a non-Arab mother. That is why your source says "X or Y" and not "X" and "Y". Let me give another example. Rezashah's mother was Nooshafarin, who was a Turkic speaker from the caucus. Indeed Rezashah knew Turkish well, as it was his mother tongue. (see him speaking Turkish with Ataturk). Rezashah married the daughter of the Qajar noble Teymur Khan Ayrimlu (A Turkic speaker). So Mohammad Rezashah was 75% Azeri. Then we have Mohammad Rezashah marrying Farrah (an Azeri). So based on this logic, we should say Pahlavids were Azeri? The fact is that Pahlavids are not considered Azeri, because the father lineage is not Azeri. Rezashah's father was from Mazandaran which speaks a unique Persian dialect. Anyways I created two sections so both views are presented from scholarly sources. Maybe you won't agree with the ways scholars define origin of dynasties (Seljuqs of Anatolia for example did not even consider themselves Turks). As per the view and intrepretation of Encyclopedia of Islam, I think we should just quote it Verbatim. I believe any part of Iran defines Iran. So Esfahan, Azerbaijan, Khorasan doesn't matter. If there is a dynasty in Khorasan, then to the rest of Iran, I consider its establishment (not control over all of Iran but part of Iran) as the date they established themselves in Khorasan. That is my viewpoint. So Encyclopedia of Islam should be quoted verbatim. When you say Azerbaijan and next Iran, that is not my intrepretation. My intrepreation is Safavid first established rule over part of Iran (Azerbaijan) then the rest of Iran. So since we have intrepretation problem, we should quote the fist line verbatim. It is a valid source and Wikipedia allows such valid sources. And note my belief that the Safavid male lineage is Kurdish is also due to Shafi'i religion. None of Sunni Turkic speaking countries and dynasties were Shafi'ites. Turkey, Turkomanistan, Kazakhistan, Uzbekistan,Kyrghizstan..all follow Hanafi. But all Sunni Kurds follow Shafii. Anyways, as I said I have a busy life. But I think with the current framework, there is no need for tags as both views are presented in their section. --alidoostzadeh 04:07, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry wrong youtube link. I have a collection of Azeri related youtube (music, politics, language, even on khojaly and crimes of both governments (not people), good or bad...). Unfortunately when I view the Azeri/Armenian (have a collection of those too) youtube videos, there is too much cussing. In Iranian youtubes we have people cursing as well now. But anyways here is the one Rezashah and Ataturk. [57]. Rezashah was 50% Azeri and his mothertongue was Turkish. His wife was 100% Azeri. Mohammad Rezashah was 75% Azeri and his wife Farah was Azeri. But Pahlavids are not defined as "Azeri" because of the male lineage..This is the case for all dynasties of ME. Now I am not ruling out Turkish viewpoint, I have provided a framework and space where that viewpoint can be given in its fullest (without any pressure). Thanks. --alidoostzadeh 04:18, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Dear Ali, with all due respect to your viewpoint, we should go by references. I disagree to absolute claims on Safavids as Kurdish origin. So let's just gather all references we have, and present them to the audience visiting the page, either Kurdish or Azerbaijani. I believe the introduction is comprehensive enough, so we can just work on the origins for now.

Assuming good faith, I guess it was just an accident. But instead of Reza Shah/Ataturk video above you provided YouTube link to Armenian WP:SOAP on so called "Khachkar destruction", an amateur Armenian video, presented around the world as "evidence" to cover up the fact that Azeri mosque in Aghdam houses pigs and cows today. I didn't see either Reza Shah or Ataturk on that video.

Anyways, regarding Safavid rule established in Iran, as I said, and your EI reference shows, Safavid state was established in 1501, which is true. It was established in Azerbaijan (again per EI, Tapper, etc.), and then in Iran in 1502. I think there is a consensus on this issue. Regarding geographical belonging, which is frankly irrelevant on this subject, as Azerbaijan is a well defined historico-geographical entity. I brought you above Minorsky/Abd al-Razzaq quote, which clearly shows that. Similarly Media Atropatene was a distinct geographical entity from Persia. So "Azerbaijan belongs to Iran", just like "Azerbaijan belongs to Turan", is a rather mystical and/or literary, rather than historical or geographical statement. Present-day Iran was part of Arab caliphate, Timurid empire, and Seljukid empire in history. Should we just assume then that Iran is part of greater Arabia, Turan, Uzbekistan or Turkey? Obviously not, so I think the safest assumption is to say that Safavid state was established in 1501 initially in Azerbaijan and in 1502 in Iran, this is a fact, and I think it was agreed upon before.Atabek 04:26, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Can you send me the Aghdam video please? I write articles on the caucus in Persian. Anyways here is the video [[58]]. I think for EI we can check google books as well. [59] [60] [61]. Azerbaijan is considered as part of Iran by Masudi, Moqaddesi, Kushnama, Shahnameh and lots of other sources. So I have my sources as well. So the best way to resolve it is simply quote EI verbatim. --alidoostzadeh 04:31, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Dear Ali, with all due respect to your viewpoint, we should go by references. I disagree to absolute claims on Safavids as Kurdish origin. So let's just gather all references we have, and present them to the audience visiting the page, either Kurdish or Azerbaijani. I believe the introduction is comprehensive enough, so we can just work on the origins for now.

Assuming good faith, I guess it was just an accident [62]. But instead of Reza Shah/Ataturk video above you provided YouTube link to Armenian WP:SOAP on so called "Khachkar destruction", an amateur Armenian video, presented around the world as "evidence" to cover up the fact that Azeri mosque in Aghdam houses pigs and cows today. I didn't see either Reza Shah or Ataturk on that video.

Anyways, regarding Safavid rule established in Iran, as I said, and your EI reference shows, Safavid state was established in 1501, which is true. It was established in Azerbaijan (again per EI, Tapper, etc.), and then in Iran in 1502. I think there is a consensus on this issue. Regarding geographical belonging, which is frankly irrelevant on this subject, as Azerbaijan is a well defined historico-geographical entity. I brought you above Minorsky/Abd al-Razzaq quote, which clearly shows that. Similarly Media Atropatene was a distinct geographical entity from Persia. So "Azerbaijan belongs to Iran", just like "Azerbaijan belongs to Turan", is a rather mystical and/or literary, rather than historical or geographical statement. Present-day Iran was part of Arab caliphate, Timurid empire, and Seljukid empire in history. Should we just assume then that Iran is part of greater Arabia, Turan, Uzbekistan or Turkey? Obviously not, so I think the safest assumption is to say that Safavid state was established in 1501 initially in Azerbaijan and in 1502 in Iran, this is a fact, and I think it was agreed upon before.Atabek 04:29, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Can you send me the Aghdam video please? I write articles on the caucus in Persian. Anyways here is the video [[63]]. I think for EI we can check google books as well. [64] [65] [66]. Azerbaijan is considered as part of Iran by Masudi, Moqaddesi, Kushnama, Shahnameh and lots of other sources. So I have my sources as well. Moqaddesi indeed includes in the land of (Persian lands) in his geography during Abbassid rule. Note the same Cambridge history of Iran[67]. So the best way to resolve it is simply quote EI verbatim. For me Azerbaijan is no different than Khorasan or any other part of Iran. You might think of it as separate entity or something to that effect. So quoting EI directly is the best way. Anyways 1501 gets more hits in google books. For me when Ismail conquered Tabriz, that is the establishment of the dynasty in part of Iran and hence the begining of the dynasty. If there is differing viewpoint, then EI should be quoted verbatim. --alidoostzadeh 04:31, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

LOL. Here is the comment from one user on the Ataturk/Rezashah video(all the comments are nasty): "lol idiot reza shah was a turk not a persian u idiot. do you understand the video? he speaks fluence turkish without accent. .... reza shah lol long live aryan pride reza was a ....... turk not persian this videos is a prove. i will send this video worldwide loooooool". Well that's it for me for the night. --alidoostzadeh 04:44, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Dear Ali, here are the pictures of occupied Aghdam mosque [68] and what condition it is in now. Just for comparison, here is the picture of Armenian church in Baku [69], from an Armenian blog. Anyways, going back to the topic, yes, the dynasty was established in 1501, while 1502 was also relevant as they year when Ismail proclaimed Shiite state in Iran. Specifically, you can't deny that in 1501 he was enthroned Shah of Azerbaijan (only), when several references say so. You can have your opinion in this regard, and I respect it, but references are important. Atabek 04:47, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the pictures. That is really sad stuff also and shows the inhumanity of ethnic warfare. The first two lines of the mosque"Besme allah ar-rahman Rahim. Ena Fatahna Laka Fathana Mobina"...It is read in Nowruz in Iran.

I didn't deny he was enthroned Shah of Azerbaijan only, and in 1502 the rest of Persia. Here is the first line from EI (Encylopedia-Islam):"SAFAWIDS , a dynasty which ruled in Persia as sovereigns 907-1135/1501-1722". I do not think this intrepretation issue will go away. It is not about Safavids establishing their throne in Azerbaijan in 1501 and then Iran in 1502. For me it is Safavids estabilishing their throne in 1501 and then the rest of Iran in 1502. I have my sources (EI one of them). If we can't agree we need to quote it verbatim. I guess I am done for the night. --alidoostzadeh 04:54, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of Source

As was expected - [70]. I don't see how can one edit an article in presence of such POV and OR, just plain removal of references without any explanation. I am inserting another OR tag until everyone can learn to respect sources and edit in a constructive manner. Atabek 02:47, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree the user should not delete sources. But I do not see any need for long cquotes. For example I have lots of the sources, but I did not cquote them. The section should be summarized and the actual quotes in the bibliography. For example I could cquote many quotes like this:"From the evidence available, at the present time, it is certain that the Safavid family was of indigineous Iranian stock, and not of Turkish ancestry as it is sometimes claimed. It is probable that the family originated in Persian Kurdistan, and later moved to Azerbaijan, where they adopted the Azari form of Turkish spoken there, and eventually settled in the small town of Ardabil sometimes during the eleventh century." or "Safavids were at pains to hide their Kurdish identity".. I think it is good to keep the section short. --alidoostzadeh 03:09, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Dear Ali, on the subject of language of court, this reference was very definitive and strong, especially considering that it's Cambridge History of Iran, a very respected source. Atabek 03:17, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

My friend, I mean the origin section. If I have to cquote 10-20 sources, it is not good. So I put it in a paragraph. If you can put it in a paragraph it would be great. --alidoostzadeh 03:28, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

10-20 sources refer to Kurdish origins of the dynasty, which we are discussing above and I have another 10-20 Turkish sources. What was cquoted is language references. I think Cambridge History quote puts clear dots over "i" as to what was Safavid court language. Provided the 1400-verse divan of Khatai as well as the usage of Azeri in poetry as late as 17th century Safavid state, I think it's safe to say that Turkish was the main language of court, while Persian was the language of culture. This in no way, lowers one language over the other, Persian was a lingua franca and to some extent a court language even in Ottoman Empire. Atabek 03:46, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay cquote for one or two quote there is okay. I am referring to cquoting every source on Kurdish or Turkish. As you can see I condensed it to a paragraph. To be fair, if we say "The Safavid were at pains to hide their Kurdish identity and to protray themseves as Seyyeds" or "From the evidence available, at the present time, it is certain that the Safavid family was of indigineous Iranian stock, and not of Turkish ancestry as it is sometimes claimed." are strong claims. They can be cquoted. But I didn't do it. So lets just condense the origin to one paragraph as I did. Also I agree the court language was mainly Turkish. The administrative language was mainly Persian and so was the cultural language. I have no problem with the truth. --alidoostzadeh 03:56, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

OK, I think "Background Origin" section is OK as is now regarding language, one cquote on relevance of Turkish and one on Persian seems fair. About Kurdish or Turkish origins, I believe there have been substantial amount of POV and OR regarding this, with Kurdish origins always making it to the page, while Turkish, due to counter pressure, remaining in talk page. Now, I believe everything should be on the table, and then we can slowly merge the separate referenced sentences to make meaningful material. As I said, pending full family lineage, establishing Kurdish ethnic origin of dynasty is not possible, thus saying they were of Iranian stock (I think you also did not accept such statement before, surprisingly you do now) or Kurdish origin in absolute manner is not acceptable. Atabek 04:04, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay now there is no pressure now as you can see. I agree, the issue before was that one side or another was putting a tag. Now they have no execuse to put a tag in accordance to wikipedia law. So as you see I removed all the origin stuff (even Kurdish origin) to a background section. So my intention was not bad, but it was based really on your comment that the Safavid article is OR and POV. Now it won't be. Because there is no pressure. Both sides have their viewpoint (and they are respected as person despite disagreeing). But of course any of the sources can be cquoted (by wikipedia). I suggest we do not cquote it or else it is obvious one guy will cquote the strongest statements. And note while there are strong statements comparing the Kurdish and Turkish theory and then totally denying the Turkish theory (like the two quotes mentioned), there is none that say "Safavids were either Kurdish or Turkish, but Kurdish is ruled out and is a mistake". I think simply keeping that section to a paragraph is good. --alidoostzadeh 04:11, 27 August 2007 (UTC)