Suleiman I (; born Sam Mirza, February or March 1648 – 29 July 1694) was the eighth Shah of Safavid Iran from 1666 to 1694. He was the eldest son of Abbas II and his concubine, Nakihat Khanum. Born as Sam Mirza, Suleiman spent his childhood in the harem among women and eunuchs and his existence was hidden from the public. In 1666, after the death of his father, the nineteen-year-old Sam Mirza was crowned king under the regnal name, Safi II, after his grandfather, Safi I. He had a troublesome reign as Safi II, which convinced his court astrologers that he should undergo a coronation once again. Thus, in 20 March 1668, simultaneously with Nowruz, he was crowned king with a new name, Suleiman I.
After his second coronation, Suleiman retreated into his harem to enjoy sexual activities and excessive drinking. He was indifferent to the state affairs, and often would not appear in the public for months. Suleiman's reign was devoid of spectacular events in the form of major wars and rebellions. For this reason, Western contemporary historians regard Suleiman's reign as "remarkable for nothing" while the Safavid court chronicles refrained from recording his tenure. Suleiman's reign saw the decline of the Safavid army, to the point when the soldiers became undisciplined and made no effort to serve as it was required of them. At the same time, the eastern borders of the realm were under the constant raids from the Uzbeks, and the Kalmyks.
On 29 July 1694, Suleiman died from a combination of gout and his chronic alcoholism. Often seen as a failure in kingship, Suleiman's reign was the starting point of the Safavid ultimate decline: weakened military power, falling agricultural output and the corrupt bureaucracy, all were a forewarning of the troubling rule of his successor, Soltan Hoseyn, whose reign saw the end of the Safavid dynasty. Suleiman was the first Safavid Shah that did not patrol his kingdom and never led an army, thus giving away the government affairs to the influential court eunuchs, harem women and the Shi‘i high clergy. Perhaps the only admiring aspect of his reign was the appreciation of art, for the Farangi-Sazi, or the Western painting style, saw its establishment under Suleiman's sponsorship.
Background
Suleiman's father, Abbas II, was the seventh Shah of Safavid Iran. In 1649, Abbas led an army to retake Kandahar, a bone of contention between the Safavid and the Mughal Empire originating back to Tahmasp I's reign. The war, though successful, was one of the reasons for an economic decline later in his reign which plagued the Safavid Empire until its dissolution. After the war for Kandahar, the Safavid army during Abbas' reign undertook two further military campaigns in the Caucasus: one in 1651 to destroy the Russian fortress on the Iranian side of the Terek River (which the Safavids considered as part of their realm), and one in 1659 to suppress the Georgian rebellion.; The rest of Abbas' reign lacked any further rebellions and was relatively peaceful. A consequence of this peace was the decline of the army, which started during his reign and saw its peak in the reign of his successors.;
Abbas' relations with the Uzbeks were peaceful. He made arrangements with Uzbeks of Bukhara under which they agreed to stop raiding into Iranian territory. Relations with the Ottoman Empire were likewise peaceful, despite tensions during Abbas' reign in Transcaucasia, where the risk of war was so acute that the governor of the Turkish border provinces had evacuated the civilian population in expectation of an Iranian attack, and in Basra, where the shah's aid had been sought to settle a struggle for the succession.;
The Farangi-sazi style blossomed under Abbas' patronage who supported two prominent painters of this style, Mohammad Zaman and Aliquli Jabbadar. He was a tolerant monarch. He frequently attended Armenian church services and ceremonies, and gave permission for the Jesuits to establish a mission in Isfahan in 1653. Although at various times between 1645 and 1654, the Safavid authorities forced the Iranian Jews to convert to Islam, there is no evidence to support that Abbas himself set them in motion.;
Early life Sam Mirza was born in February or March 1648 as the eldest son of Abbas II and his concubine, Nakihat Khanum. He grew up in the royal Safavid harem under the guardianship of a black eunuch named Agha Nazer. According to Jean Chardin, the French traveler, Sam Mirza was known for his arrogance. His first language was Azeri Turkish, and it is unclear to what degree he was able to understand Persian. Reportedly, Abbas II was not on good terms with Sam Mirza — it was rumoured that the shah had blinded the young prince — and favoured Sam Mirza's younger brother, Hamza Mirza, the son of a Circassian concubine.; .
At the end of 1662, Abbas II showed the first symptoms of syphilis. On 26 October 1666, while in his winter residence at Behshahr, he died of a combination of syphilis and throat cancer as a result of his excessive drinking at the age of thirty-four.; . It was said that on his deathbed, Abbas II foretold the fate of his successor to be one of perpetual turmoil and disaster.
Reign as Safi II
First Coronation In the hours after the death of Abbas II, the yuzbashi Sulaman Aqa called for a meeting between the notables presented in the shah's camp. Behind the close doors, he told them that the shah was dead and that they should choose his heir before leaving for the capital, Isfahan. The shah's grand vizier, Mirza Mohammad Karaki, responded with "What do I know?" and "I have no knowledge of what goes on in the interior of the palace." when asked about the shah's offspring. It was the eunuchs of the inner palace that informed the notables of the existence of two sons, the nineteen-year-old Sam Mirza, and Hamza Mirza, who was only seven-years-old.
The eunuchs, who were eager to have a pliable child on the throne and believed the rumour about Sam Mirza's blindness, announced their support for Hamza Mirza. The grand vizier also declared his support for Hamza Mirza's claim. At this point, Agha Mubarak, Hamza's lala (guardian), made an argument in favour of Sam Mirza, against his own interests and those of his eunuch colleagues. He accused the eunuchs of opting for Hamza Mirza for selfish reasons. He pointed out that Sam Mirza was not blinded by the orders of his father and argued that he was more worthier than a mere child. And at last, Agha Mubarak's argument prevailed.; .
The Tofangchi-aghasi, Khosrow Soltan Armani, by reputation the least trustworthy among the eunuchs, was chosen to go to Isfahan to announce the new heir before word of the death of Abbas II could spread. Sam Mirza, who had been surrounded by women and eunuchs all his life and had not seen the world outside of the harem, was then brought out of the inner palace, dazzled and unsure what to do with the responsibility thrust upon him. He was seized with panic when asked to appear before the throne room for the coronation, and reluctantly accepted the invitation because he assumed that he was being lured there simply to be murdered or blinded.
On 1 November 1666, six days after Abbas II's death, Sam Mirza was crowned king under the name Safi II, after his grandfather, Safi I, at one o’clock in the afternoon in a ceremony persisted by Mohammad Bagher Sabzevari, the shaykh al-Islam of Isfahan.; . The new king received the heads of killed Uzbeks and rewarded the slayers with money. He also allotted money to 300 Turkish refugees from the Ottoman Empire, who had sought shelter in Isfahan. As a sign of smooth transition of power, Isfahan remained peaceful: the shops remained open and started doing their business with the new coins of Safi II, and everyday life remained unchanged. Foreign residents, who had locked their houses in fear of uprisings and looting, again emerged into the city.
Turmoil and disasters
Soon after his coronation, Safi faced problems. Two barren harvests left the central parts of the realm under famine and an earthquake in November 1667 in Shirvan led to the death of more than 30,000 in the villages and around 20,000 in its capital city, Shamakhi.; . In the following year, the Northern provinces of the realm endured raids by Stenka Razin's Cossacks, whom the Safavid army was unable to subdue. The Cossacks had raided these provinces before, in 1664, when they were defeated by local forces. Now, under the leadership of Razin, they ransacked Mazandaran and attacked Daghestan.; . Razin went to Isfahan to ask Safi for land in his realm in exchange for loyalty to the shah, but departed to the Caspian Sea for more pillaging before they could reach an agreement. The tsar of Russia, Alexis, sent a delegation to Isfahan in order to apologise for the damages done and later in 1671, hanged Razin as a rebel.
Meanwhile, there were internal problems. Safi caught an unspecified illness, which by August 1667, had convinced everyone that he might die, causing the grandees of the court to arrange a public prayer for his well-being while giving out 1,000 tomans to the poor. The shah squandered his government’s resources as part of endowments to the poor. As a result of his naive belief that the royal coffers could never end, the treasury became empty and the money, already scarce in Isfahan, became even scarcer.; .
Second Coronation During Safi's time of illness, a physician who was trying to cure the shah suggested that his misfortune must have come from a miscalculation in determining the date of the coronation. Soon, a court astrologer confirmed this assumption, and the court, the queen mother, Nakihat Khanum, and the leading eunuchs, with the consent of the shah, concluded that the coronation should be repeated and Safi should be crowned king under a new name.; . Thus, in March 1668, at nine o'clock in the morning, simultaneously with Nowruz, a second coronation for the shah was held in the Chehel Sotoun Palace.; . The ceremony was preceded by an unorthodox ritual. As told by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who witnessed it, a Zoroastrian, "descended from the old kings", was put on the Shah's throne with his back tied to a wooden statue. The attendants paid their respects to him until an hour before sunset, the time for the real coronation. At that point an official came up from behind and cut off the head of the statue, whereupon the Zoroastrian fled and Safi II appeared. The Safavid bonnet was next put on his head, and he was girded with a sword, and Safi II took on the name Abu'l-Muzzafar Abu'l-Mansur Shah Suleiman Safavi Mousavi Bahador Khan, with the name Suleiman referring to King Solomon.
After the coronation, new royal seals and coins were made under the name Suleiman I and within twenty-four hours a large quantity of new money was struck. At the same time, a comet appeared in the sky, which was taken as a sign of the event's auspiciousness.
Reign as Suleiman I
Royal isolation