Qizilbash

Qizilbash or Kizilbash[Note 1] were a diverse array of mainly Turkoman[1] Shia militant groups that flourished in Azerbaijan,[2][3] Anatolia, the Armenian highlands, the Caucasus from the late 15th century onwards, and contributed to the foundation of the Safavid dynasty in early modern Iran.

The expression is derived from their distinctive twelve-gored crimson headwear (tāj or tark in Persian; sometimes specifically titled "Haydar's Crown" تاج حیدر / Tāj-e Ḥaydar),[Note 2] indicating their adherence to the Twelve Imams and to Shaykh Haydar, the spiritual leader (sheikh) of the Safavid order in accordance with the Imamate in Twelver doctrine.

[9][10] The origin of the Qizilbash can be dated from the 15th century onward, when the spiritual grandmaster of the movement, Shaykh Haydar (the head of the Safaviyya Sufi order), organized his followers into militant troops.

[11][12] Connections between the Qizilbash and other religious groups and secret societies, such as the Mazdaki movement in the Sasanian Empire, or its more radical offspring, the Khurramites, and Turkic shamanism, have been suggested.

Apart from Turkomans, the Qizilbash also included Kurds, Lurs, Persians, and Talysh after Shah Abbas's military reform in the beginning of the 17th century.

As murids (sworn students) of the Safavi pirs, the Qizilbash owed implicit obedience to their leader in his capacity as their murshid-e kāmil "supreme spiritual director" and, after the establishment of the kingdom, as their padishah (great king).

[30] In 1501, 7,000 Qizilbash defeated the 30,000-strong army of Sultan Alvand Ak-Koyunlu, and after the coronation in Tabriz, the young Sheikh Ismail became the first Shahanshah of Azerbaijan from the Safavid dynasty.

[9][10] The religion of the Qizilbash resembled much more the heterodox beliefs of northwestern Iran and eastern Anatolia, rather than the traditional Twelver Shia Islam.

[38] In the 15th century, Ardabil was the center of an organization designed to keep the Safavi leadership in close touch with its murids in Azerbaijan, Iraq, Eastern Anatolia, and elsewhere.

The Safavi presence in eastern Anatolia posed a serious threat to the Ottoman Empire because they encouraged the Shi'i population of Asia Minor to revolt against the sultan.

By 1510, Ismail and his Qizilbash had conquered the whole of Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan,[41] southern Dagestan (with its important city of Derbent), Mesopotamia, Armenia, Khorasan, Eastern Anatolia, and had made the Georgian kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti his vassals.

[45] This defeat put an end to Safavid expansion and influence in Transoxania and left the northeastern frontiers of the kingdom vulnerable to nomad invasions, until some decades later.

Even more alarming for the Ottomans was the successful conversion of Turcoman tribes in Eastern Anatolia, and the recruitment of these well-experienced and feared fighters into the growing Safavid army.

To stop Safavid propaganda, Sultan Bayezid II deported large numbers of the Shi'i population of Asia Minor to Morea.

Two years later, the Qizilbash defeated the Uzbeks at Merv in Central Asia, killing their leader Muhammad Shaybani and destroying his dynasty.

He was the ward of the powerful Qizilbash amir Ali Beg Rūmlū (titled "Div Soltān") who was the de facto ruler of the Safavid kingdom.

During the reign of Shah Tahmasp, the Qizilbash fought a series of wars on two fronts and – with the poor resources available to them – successfully defended their kingdom against the Uzbeks in the east, and against the arch-rivals of the Safavids – the Ottomans – in the west.

[54] During Tahmasp' reign, he carried out multiple invasions in the Caucasus which had been incorporated in the Safavid empire since Shah Ismail I and for many centuries afterward, and started with the trend of deporting and moving hundreds of thousands of Circassians, Georgians, and Armenians to Iran's heartlands.

These new Caucasian elements (the so-called ghilman / غِلْمَان / "servants"), almost always after conversion to Shi'ism depending on given function would be, unlike the Qizilbash, fully loyal only to the Shah.

In order to weaken the Turcomans – the important militant elite of the Safavid kingdom – Shah Abbas further raised a standing army, personal guard, Queen-Mothers, Harems and full civil administration from the ranks of these ghilman who were usually ethnic Circassians, Georgians, and Armenians, both men and women, whom he and his predecessors had taken captive en masse during their wars in the Caucasus, and would systematically replace the Qizilbash from their functions with converted Circassians and Georgians.

[26] By 1598 already an ethnic Georgian from Safavid-ruled Georgia, well known by his adopted Muslim name after conversion, Allahverdi Khan, had risen to the position of commander-in-chief of all Safavid armed forces.

[68][69] Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone described the Qizilbash of Kabul in the beginning of the 19th century as "a colony of Turks," who spoke "Persian, and among themselves Turkish.

During Abdur Rahman Khan's massacre of the Shi'i minorities in Afghanistan, the Qizilbash were declared "enemies of the state" and were persecuted and hunted by the government and by the Sunni majority.

[78][79] The Qizilbash conceal their real identity, outwardly professing to be orthodox Sunnis to their Turkish or Bulgarian neighbours, or alternatively claim to be Bektashis, depending who is addressing them.

[77] Between the late seventeenth century and 1822, the term "Qizilbash" was also used in Ottoman administrative documents to identify Twelver (Imami) Shiites in what is today Lebanon.

The Ottomans were aware they had no link to the Anatolian or Iranian Qizilbash, employing the term only as a means to delegitimize them or justify punitive campaigns against them.

[83] The Kurdish Alevis are known locally by the term Kızılbaş, associating them with the Qizilbash in the Safavid dynasty, although their exact origins are unclear and subject to debate.

[85] It has been reported that, among the Ottoman Turks, kızılbaş has become something of a derogatory term and can be applied to groups that aren't necessarily associated with the Kazilbash of Central Asia.

Faruk Sümer is right to emphasize that without the help of thousands of Qizilbash followers from Anatolia, Shah Ismaʿil would not have been able to defeat Aqquyunlu leaders and achieve these momentous victories.

He did not enjoy that kind of support in Iran and even faced the resentment and hatred of the majority Sunni Iranians.The Qizilbash, or "Red Heads," were Turkic warriors-turned-Persian who had arrived in Afghanistan in numbers after Nadir Shah's and other Persian debacles.Some of Nadir's Qizilbash soldiers settled in Afghanistan where their descendants had successful careers in the army (until the end of Dost Muhammad's rule), government, the trades, and crafts.In 1996, approximately 40 percent of Afghans were Pashtun, 11.4 of whom are of the Durrani tribal group and 13.8 percent of the Ghilzai group.