Safavid conversion of Iran to Shia Islam

From 1501 the Safavid dynasty set out to turn Iran, then a largely Sunni country, into a Twelver Shia one. The campaign combined state decrees, imported clergy and, especially at first, violent coercion of Sunnis and other religious groups, and it continued in waves for more than two centuries. Its result was lasting: Shia Islam became a defining part of Iranian identity, and it remains the majority faith in Iran and Azerbaijan today.

In the 14th and 15th centuries most of Iran's large cities were Sunni, and the Shafi'i school of Sunni law was influential almost everywhere. Twelver Shia communities were concentrated in particular regions such as Gilan, Mazandaran, Qom, Kashan and parts of Khorasan, and Shia belief was common among the peasantry under the Timurids and the Aq Qoyunlu. The Safavids themselves began as a religious order that at first held Sunni beliefs. Under the influence of their Turkoman followers, they adopted a militant, messianic form of Shia belief far removed from orthodox Twelver teaching.

In 1501 Ismail I proclaimed himself king of kings and founded a Shia state, fusing political and religious authority. He ordered the Shia form of the call to prayer in every mosque and required his subjects to curse the first three caliphs, on pain of death. Relying on his Qizilbash Turkoman soldiers, he met resistance with great brutality: perhaps as many as 20,000 Sunnis were killed at Tabriz, and Sunni judges, preachers and officials were executed in Shiraz and Isfahan after their conquest in 1503. Because Shia law was little known in Iran, Ismail brought in Arab Shia scholars, many from Jabal Amil in what is now southern Lebanon, to staff religious posts. Despite the bloodshed, the Safavid dynasty reunited lands that had been divided since the time of Timur.

Under Ismail's son Tahmasp I, who ruled from 1524 to 1576, Shia Islam took firm root. The clergy grew more powerful, and Shia law and rituals, such as the mourning ceremonies of Muharram, shaped both private and public life. His successor, Ismail II, briefly tried to reverse course, ending the cursing of the early caliphs and favouring Sunni scholars. His policy provoked fierce opposition, and he died in November 1577 after his opium was poisoned. Mohammad Khodabanda restored Twelver Shia Islam as the state religion.

By the early reign of Abbas I, at the end of the 16th century, most Iranians had accepted Shia Islam. Sunnism survived mainly on the margins of the realm, in Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Larestan and along the Persian Gulf coast. Abbas commissioned popular religious works in clear Persian, including a legal handbook by the scholar Baha al-Din al-Amili. His treatment of non-Muslims varied with circumstances, but around 1614 he seems to have compelled Christians and Jews to become Muslims, and some 30,000 Georgian captives were made Muslims between 1614 and 1616.

Under Soltan Hoseyn, who ruled from 1694 to 1722, the influential cleric Mohammad-Baqer Majlesi and his colleagues pressed hard against Sufis, Sunnis and non-Muslims, including the forced conversion of Zoroastrians. These policies alienated the Sunni populations of the frontiers. A Sunni Kurdish rising in 1704 was possibly one consequence, and the persecution of Sunnis helped provoke the rebellion of the Ghilzai Afghan leader Mirwais Hotak. The Afghans later invaded Iran and brought down the Safavid government, but they could not undo the dominance of Shia Islam.

The Safavid adoption of Shia Islam set Iran apart from its Sunni neighbours, above all the Ottoman Empire, with which it was drawn into lasting hostility. Historians have compared the resulting Sunni–Shia divide to the split between Protestants and Catholics in Reformation Europe, in which a state religion helped bind a kingdom together. It was the most profound religious change in Iran since the Muslim conquest of the 7th century.

Our 1500, 1530, 1600 and 1700 maps trace the rise and late years of the Safavid state in Iran, alongside its Ottoman rival to the west.