IRAN AND THE WORLD IN THE SAFAVID AGE
Abstracts

Tucker, Dr. Ernest, US Naval Academy, Department of History, Annapolis , Rhetoric of Conflict in Circumstances of Peace: The Evolution of Ottoman-Safavid Diplomacy through the Seventeenth Century

With the emergence of the Safavids as a dynastic state after 1501, the Ottomans confronted rivals whose beliefs directly challenged their version of Islam.  By the middle of the sixteenth century, Ottoman concern about the popularity of Safavid ideas among their subjects increased their hostility towards Iran.  Anti-Iranian Ottoman fatwas of this era reflected such anxieties and were targeted against the Qizilbash in particular, a trend that continued through the long Ottoman conflict with Abbas I.  Sectarian hatred in Ottoman anti-Safavid polemics and fatwas was most obvious during wartime, but such enmity was only one facet of the complex relationship between the two countries during this period.  Interdynastic relations between the Ottomans and Safavids were also marked by numerous congratulatory letters, embassies, and gift exchanges.

Early Ottoman-Safavid peace agreements appealed to aspects of both of these contradictory visions.  Although Ottoman-Safavid agreements did not totally ignore religious disputes, they came to focus on establishing conditions designed to promote stable and peaceful relations between the two countries.  Ultimately, the 1639 Zuhab treaty resulted in an Ottoman-Safavid equilibrium that would not be seriously challenged for the next 75 years.  This paper will explore how and why the treaty of Zuhab came to provide a de jure framework for peace because of how it focused on delineating the boundary between the Ottoman Empire and Iran to the exclusion of other issues, in a way reminiscent of how the nearly contemporary treaty of Westphalia established a framework for international relations in a religiously-divided Europe.

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