A Look into the History Of Iran and the Take over of Persia by the Shi'a Hyena's

A Look into the History Of Iran and the Take over of Persia by the Shi'a Hyena's

The Rise of the Safavid Rafidah (1501–1514)

In the early sixteenth century, the establishment of the Safavid polity had a major effect upon the political fortunes of Twelver Shi‘ism, previously existing as a tolerated but oppressed religious community, and greatly transformed the relationship between Sunnis and Shi’is in the Islamic world. It was essentially the militant espousal of Twelver Shi’ism by the Safavids and the sporadic, yet devastating, wars with the Ottoman Empire which played a key role in the confessionalization of the Near East into two distinctive sectarian camps. It was during the reign of Shāh Ismā‘īl (r. 1501–1524) that Iran was conquered by the Safavids, Shi’ism established as the official religion, and the ritual cursing of sacred Sunni personages(Sahabah), namely the Companions of the Prophet(sallallahu alayhi wa salam), institutionalized. Over the course of the sixteenth century, the most confrontational attitudes within the Sunni and Shi’i traditions—exemplified by takfīr and sabb (ritual cursing of the sahabah)—were appropriated, developed and deployed by the Ottomans and Safavids respectively. The practice of sabb, in particular, played a central role in the development of early modern Iranian Shi‘i religious identity and greatly informed the attitude of the Ottomans towards the Safavid state. In order to better grasp the process and implications of this transformation, it is important to revisit the circumstances surrounding the rise and establishment of the Safavids in Iran.

Since at least the mid-fifteenth century, the Safavid order, which was established by Ṣafī al-Dīn of Ardabil (d. 1334) as an ostensibly Sufi ṭarīqah (Sufi order), had become increasingly important as a political force in the territories of the Aqquyūnlū in Iraq, Anatolia, and Azerbaijan.[i] It was during the period when Junayd ibn Ibrahīm (d. 1460) assumed leadership of the Safavid order that it became explicitly Shi‘i and closely affiliated with the more ghulātī (extremist/heterodox) strands of Shi‘ism.[ii] It was also during this period when the Safavids were fully transformed from a mystical order into a militant organization which actively engaged in politics and conquest, but whose leaders nevertheless maintained their spiritual importance and sacral authority as leaders of the ṭarīqah.[iii] Junayd, who now claimed the title “sultan” as well as “shaykh”[iv], thereby underscoring this major transformation of the order, acquired a strong following among the pastoral tribes of eastern Anatolia, Syria and Iraq and entered into an alliance with Uzūn Ḥasan (d. 1478), the ruler of the Aqquyūnlū confederation.[v] The militarization and politicization of the Safavid order continued under the leadership of Junayd’s son, Ḥaydar (d. 1488), who eventually established his base at Ardabil in Azerbaijan with the assistance of Uzūn Ḥasan, and continued to attract followers to his cause.[vi]

During Ḥaydar’s leadership of the Safavid order, the Turcoman tribes adopted the distinctive twelve-pointed red head-gear (known as the tāj-i ḥaydarī), signifying allegiance to the Twelve Shi‘i Imāms, for which they became known in Turkish as the Kizilbash (“red-heads”).[vii] . It appears that many of Ḥaydar’s followers adopted extremist Shi‘i beliefs (intermixed with shamanism and other ideas) and deified their leader, believing him to be a manifestation of God. According to Fazlallāh ibn Rūzbihān Khunjī (d. 1517), “it [was] reported that [the Kizilbash] considered [Ḥaydar] as their god and, neglecting the duties of namāz and public prayers, looked upon the Shaykh as their qibla and the being to whom prostration was due.”[ix] During Ḥaydar’s reign as head of the Safavid order in the late fifteenth century, it was transformed into a fully independent political and military force, a fact which generated much anxiety among Uzūn Hasan’s son, Sultan Ya‘qūb who sought to curb the power of Ḥaydar and his followers.[x] Before long, the Kizilbash, whose numbers were significantly augmented by even more Turcoman tribesmen from Iraq and Anatolia, were in open conflict with both the Shirvanids and the Aqquyunlu, and Ḥaydar himself was killed fighting against their combined forces in 1488.[xi] Although this defeat temporarily halted the rise of Kizilbash, it did not permanently end the threat emanating from the Turcoman tribes and the Safavid order.

Between 1501 and 1510, Ḥaydar’s son, Ismā‘īl utilized this spiritual authority to mobilize his Kizilbash followers to conquer all the regions between eastern Anatolia and Khurasān. He successfully overthrew the remnants of the Aqquyūnlū dynasty and set out to conquer a large swathe of territory, seizing the Shirvanid capital of Baku (1500), Tabriz (1501), Isfahan (1503), as well as the old ‘Abbāsid capital of Baghdad (1508), and established his sovereignty over Persia, Azerbaijan, Eastern Anatolia, and Iraq, effectively unifying the old territories of Iran for the first time in centuries.[xii] In 1510, he defeated and killed the Uzbek ruler Shaybānī Khān (d. 1510) and extended his rule into Khurāsān and brought both Mashhad and Herat under his control.[xiii] Following his conquests, he established Twelver Shi‘ism as the state religion throughout his domains, and violently imposed this creed upon his (largely Sunni) subjects in Iran, Iraq, and Azerbaijan by introducing the Shi‘i call to prayer and instituting the practice of sabb whereby the first three Caliphs, the Prophet’s wife ‘Ā’isha, and a number of the Prophet’s Companions were ritually cursed and vilified.[xiv] This practice was particularly emphasized in regions where the majority of the population was Sunni, and most of the population was forced to engage in it or face persecution. There are examples of several prominent clerics being executed for their refusal to publicly participate in this practice. Sufis, in particular, were the target of violence as a later Safavid Shi‘i source indicates: “Isma‘il crushed all the silsilahs (Sufi orders); the graves of their ancestors were destroyed, not to mention what befell their successors…he eradicated most of the silsilahs of sayyids and shaykhs.”[xv] Moreover, Ismā‘īl’s conquests were accompanied by mass violence against Sunni communities, the devastation of their property, and the destruction of Sufi shrines,including those of the important figures of Abu Ḥanīfa (d. 767) and ‘Abd al-Qādir Gīlānī (d. 1166) in Baghdad.[xvi]

Various massacres also took place: 10,000 were executed near Hamadan in 1503; 4000 members of the Kaziruni Sufi order were murdered in Fars, while all the tombs of rival Sufi orders were desecrated; ten thousand refuges and dissenters who took up refuge in Asta were put to the sword; the entire cities of Yazd, Tabas and Abarquh was slaughtered, tens of thousands of people in these three cities alone according to Safavid chronicles; in Khurasan, the tomb of Abd al-Rahman Jami (d. 1492) was destroyed and the entire population of Qarshi—about 15,000 people—massacred.[xvii] The violent institutionalization of Shi‘ism and the brutal eradication of Sunni Islam in the lands under Safavid rule was meant to announce the arrival of a new dispensation, one which was predicated on the defeat of bāṭil (“falsehood”; identified with Sunni Islam) and the elevation of ḥaqq (“truth”, which could only be Shi’ism). The Sunni and the Sufi community of Iran, which had existed for centuries in the country, was permanently destroyed between the early sixteenth and late seventeenth centuries through a sustained process of mass violence, forced conversion, exile, the destruction of religious institutions (Sufi orders, mosques, and networks of scholars), and a concentrated program of religious propaganda aimed at transforming the country into a bastion of Twelver Shi‘ism. By the late seventeenth century, the only Sunni communities that remained were those residing along Iran’s frontiers and they were treated with varying degrees of toleration.

Confrontation with the Ottomans

While Ismā‘īl, now king of Iran, was expanding his empire eastwards, his deputies (known as khulafā’) sought to agitate the Turcoman tribes of central and western Anatolia into rebellion against the Ottomans in order to expand Safavid domains westward. Rather than actively confront the Kizilbash militarily, Bayezid II took a more diplomatic approach and wrote Ismā‘īl a letter in which he scolded the latter for the excesses of his followers, his betrayal of the Sufi path by seeking worldly power, and for his role in dividing the Muslim community.[xviii] Perhaps encouraged by the relative inaction of the Ottomans, a massive Kizilbash uprising, under the direction of Shāh-kulu (“slave of the Shāh [Ismā‘īl]”), erupted across western and central Anatolia in 1511.[xix] Largely as a result of Bayezid’s perceived inability to suppress the Kizilbash uprisings, Selīm I acceded to the Ottoman throne in 1512 and proceeded to crush the revolt, massacring nearly 40,000 Shi‘is accused of being Kizilbash or Safavid agents, and imprisoning or deporting thousands of others Alhamdulillah.

This massive repression of the Kizilbash in Anatolia was a serious blow to the prestige of the Safavids. In August 1514, Selīm I marched eastwards to confront Ismā‘īl himself and engaged the Safavids at the Battle of Chaldiran, which ended in a decisive victory for the Ottomans, who then proceeded to establish their authority over eastern Anatolia and to occupy the Safavid capital at Tabriz, which was abandoned shortly thereafter.[xxii] Shāh Ismā‘īl’s defeat at Chaldiran necessitated a retreat from the more extravagant claims which were previously espoused—including pretensions to divinity—and an emphasis upon more normative modes of legitimacy. It was in this context that the Twelver Shi’i Rafidah, among whom ‘Alī ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Karakī (d. 1534) was considered the most prominent, began to play an increasingly important role in defining the legitimacy of the state and disseminating a correct understanding of orthodox Shi’ism among the populace.[xxiii] Al-Karakī, who had joined the court of Shāh Ismā‘īl around 1508, was present at the Safavid capture of Herat in 1511.[xxiv]

The Institutionalization of Sabb(cursing the sahabah)

It would be over simplistic to characterize the institutionalization of ritual cursing in Safavid Iran merely as an outgrowth of the messianic and heterodox tendencies of the Kizilbash, although this was certainly a factor in its institutionalization. The ritual cursing of the first two caliphs, viewed as usurpers and oppressors by Twelver Shi’is, has an important history which long precedes the Safavids. However, due to the relative paucity of sources, it is unclear whether the implementation of this practice—at Tabriz in 1501, and then across Iran—was a product of this ancient tradition or merely a political tool which was utilized in order to undermine the established Sunnism of the Iranian populace and facilitate the adoption of Twelver Shi‘ism as the state religion.[xxv] In any case, the institutionalization of sabb was an unprecedented development in Shi‘i history and was a major violation of the normative practice of taqīyya(deception/lying). Neither the Fatimids nor the Buyids, both Shi‘i states in the Middle Ages, had ever instituted such a practice.

Tazkarat_al-Fuqaha

In several ways, the early Safavid period represents a major break with classical Shi’ism with regard to the issue of tabarru’(which means they became only more heretic as time went on). Based upon my reading of the literature and the primary sources consulted, the institutionalization of the practice of public vilification of the Companions of the Prophet—who were considered to be sacred personages by the Sunnis—was a bold move and a clear abandonment of taqīyya or precautionary dissimulation. Although the traditional view among Shi’is was that it was wisest to await the arrival of the Mahdī or Qā’im, who would exact retribution upon the enemies of the faith and reveal the truth of all things to them(dig up the sahabah and punish them, then kill all of the sunnis their scholars first then their laymen men woman and children), the establishment of the Safavids in Iran was a major development which prompted an increasingly activist approach, especially among figures such as al-Karakī who viewed the Safavids as the means by which the faithful would be empowered and enabled to manifest their faith openly. Following al-Karakī’s lead, many prominent Shi’i scholars during the Safavid period—including Nūr Allāh al-Shushtarī (d. 1610) and Muḥmmad Baqir al-Majlisī (d. 1699)—would compose major works demonstrating the invalidity of Sunnism, the merits of cursing the Companions of the Prophet, and the necessity of openly confronting the vast majority of “misguided Muslims” about these facts.[xlviii] Indeed, al-Shushtarī is a particularly interesting case since he was active in an explicitly non-Shi’i state—Mughal India—but nonetheless proclaimed that he “threw away the scarf of ṭaqīyya and, taking with me an army of arguments, I plunged myself into jihād against the ‘ulamā’ of this country.”[xlix] Shushtarī’s statement about casting aside taqīyya was a direct reference for his insistence upon the public cursing of the Prophet’s Companions and the exposure of their historical injustices against the Family of the Prophet. The career of Shushtarī, like that of al-Karakī, reinforced the association between public anti-Sunni activities and the abandonment of taqīyya. Both were conscious actions and militated against the prevailing wisdom which had hitherto dominated medieval Shi’ism.

Needless to say, the forced conversion of Iran to Shi’ism and the institutionalization of ritual cursing was not received well by the Sunni world. The existence of this practice became the explicit casus belli of the Safavid-Ottoman wars throughout much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Various fatwas were issued by the Ottoman religious establishment emphasizing the complete infidelity of Safavid Iran and the necessity of all faithful Muslims to wage war against it in order to defend the honor of the first three caliphs and the Companions of the Prophet.[l] The Sunni juristical discourse of takfīr was placed in the service of the Ottoman state, which deployed it against the Safavids (and other Shi’ite groups) as it deemed fit. This gave the wars between the Ottomans and Safavids a strongly religious and sectarian character and was instrumental in the confessionalization of the Near East during the early modern period.

So we can see clearly the reality of the Rafidah shi'i of Iran and what these Hyenas have in store for the muslim by only taking a look at their history from the very beginning up until our era.We see how the calls of the Sufi tariqas worked alongside these rafidah and share many of their beliefs and although the sufis call the lay muslims to their orders and to unity with the shi'a, we can quit clearly see what the shi'a have in store for the sufis once again along with the muslims, may Allah protect us from both of these sects. Likewise we cannot leave out ikhwan-ul-muslimeen (the muslim brotherhood) and hizbut-tahrir and the likes of yasir qahdi who call to unity with the Rafidah hyenas. I think the above history and beliefs of Iran and their current history and beliefs are a clear proof and evidence against this manhaj (methodology) of Unity upon disunity. The reality is truth and falsehood can never be unified. May Allah give the victory to the Muslims of Iraq Syria Yemen and Lebanon and Humiliate and defeat the Rafidah Hyenas.