[1] Once a very large minority in Iran, nowadays due to being heavily assimilated over the course of time and the lack of censuses based on ethnicity, population estimates vary significantly.
In Persian, the word Cherkes (چرکس /tʃeɾˈkes/) is sometimes applied generally to Caucasian peoples living beyond Derbent in Dagestan,[4] which was the northernmost principal city of Iran prior to its ceding to Russia in the first half of the 19th century following the Treaty of Gulistan.
To a certain good extent, they shared the same role as their brethren who lived in neighbouring Ottoman Turkey; many were importees, deportees, slaves, but also made up many of the notable noble families in the empire, while many others were kingmakers, military commanders, soldiers, craftsmen, peasants, while they also composed many of the kings' wives and women in the harem.
[6] From the time of king (shah) Tahmasp I (r. 1524–1576), the Circassians started to play an important role in Iranian society,[6] and began to appear as a large ethnic group in the successive empires based in Iran.
This new layer, initiated by Tahmasp I, would be composed of many hundreds of thousands of Christian and pagan Caucasian, mostly ethnically Circassian and Georgian, deportees, importees, slaves, and migrants.
The gholam slave system, although initiated by Tahmasp I, was perfectioned and fully implemented by king Abbas I, and its rank and file were drawn from these massive amounts of ethnic Circassians, Georgians, Armenians and other peoples of the Caucasus, such as Lezgins.
Eventually, these large amounts of Circassians and other Caucasians, only loyal to the shah, replaced the Qizilbash and vied through the system with them for political hegemony and supremacy, and were to be victorious,[4] although sometimes they would vy against each other as well.
[10] The ones in the armies received, after advanced education, conversion to Islam, and upbringing by Muslim families, the best military training and equipment, and were the strongest force and class of the empire.