As the eldest son of Safi and his Circassian wife, Anna Khanum, he inherited the throne when he was nine, and had to rely on a regency led by Saru Taqi, the erstwhile grand vizier of his father, to govern in his place.

In 1645, at age fifteen, he was able to remove Saru Taqi from power, and after purging the bureaucracy ranks, asserted his authority over his court and began his absolute rule.

Described by modern historians as the last strong king of the Safavid dynasty, he stood out from his father and his successors by being persistently concerned for state affairs.

A king known for his sense of justice, Western historians and observers often portrayed him as a magnanimous and tolerant monarch who ruled a kingdom which was free of rebellions and relatively safe to travel within.

[7] Ismail II's reign has been defined by two major events — his policy of remaking Sunnism the official religion of Iran, and his paranoia that led him to kill most of the royal family.

A weak-minded man lacking charisma, Safi manifested many problems that later plagued the Safavid empire during its decline, one of them being not preparing the crown prince for rule.

He excluded the Qizilbash influence in Safavid bureaucracy,[21] and instead allowed a coalition of concubines, eunuchs and ghulams to hold power during the last decade of his reign.

[23][b] The eldest son of Safi of Persia and Anna Khanum, he grew up in the royal harem, surrounded by women and eunuchs, and was tutored by Rajab Ali Tabrizi.

[24] On 15 May 1642, aged nine-and-a-half, the young prince ascended the throne, four days after the death of Safi, and following a meeting of the state council organised by Saru Taqi.

[23] At his coronation ceremony, Mohammad Mirza adopted the regnal name Abbas, and issued a tax remission of 500,000 tomans, in addition to a ban on the consumption of alcoholic drinks.

[25] Abbas, until now secluded from the outer world (as had his father), was sent to Qazvin to be educated as a king; the quick progress he made enabled him to be introduced to the religious texts.

[31] Jani Khan had over time implanted in Abbas' mind the idea that Saru Taqi was driving the realm into ruin and posed a threat to the shah himself.

He confiscated Saru Taqi's familial lands as his personal estates and throughout his reign also incorporated other cities such as Hamadan, Ardabil and Kerman into the royal domain.

[5] The rebels, led by Zaal of Aragvi, organised an alliance between the Georgian forces against the common enemy and attacked the Iranian fortresses of Bakhtrioni and Alaverdi, successfully driving out the Qizilbash tribes.

[52] Mohammad Beg's tenure saw an economic decline, mainly caused by Abbas' costly campaign to Kandahar and the scarcity of raw materials for the silk trade.

He made an effort to mine deposits of precious metals in the vicinity of Isfahan, and he employed a self-styled French expert named, Chapelle de Han, whose proved to be a fraud.

[61] Eventually, on 26 October 1666, while in his winter town, Behshahr, Abbas II died of various debilities and illnesses, including syphilis, and throat cancer, a result of his excessive drinking.

[67] However, the persecution of Sufis increased greatly during his reign and anti-Sufi writings by Shi'ia scholars such as Mir Lawhi and Muhammad Tahir Qummi rose in number.

[68] Abu Muslim, who was often seen as a messianic figure by the population, was targeted by Shi'ia essayists during Khalifeh Soltan's tenure, one of them being Ahmad ibn Muhammad Ardabili, who wrote Hadiqat al Shi'a.

In 1653, the shah was persuaded to give up drinking by a Shi'ia scholar, possibly Sabzevari, who argued that abstemious monarchs were stronger, happier, and more likely to live longer, an example being Tahmasp I.

[77] The Dutch and the English bought different types of silk such as brocade, taffeta, velvet and satin and in return, imported spices, sugar and textiles to Iran through the Persian Gulf.

The companies' presence sometimes proved troublesome, its peak being in 1645, when the VOC was prompted to lay a naval blockade around Bandar Abbas because of what they saw as unfavourable terms for the purchase of silk.

He was not tempted to expand his territory, for instance in Transcaucasia, where the risk of war was so acute that the governor of the Turkish border provinces had even evacuated the civilian population in expectation of an Iranian attack, or in Basra, where the shah's aid had been sought to settle a struggle for the succession.

[84] His construction in Isfahan led to the expansion of the city's public sphere, generating a lively coffeehouse culture combining royal patronage and popular entertainment in the form of Naqali (storytelling of Shahnameh).

The Persian miniature reached new heights of diversity with its leading figure Mo'en Mosavver, a student of Reza Abbasi, who contributed to at least five manuscripts of Shahnameh and was known for his single-page illustrations.

[86] The popular demand for traditional miniatures were also strong in this era; painters such as Afzal al-Husayni and Malik Husayn Isfahani produced works for Shahnameh and also pictures of young men seated with bottles of wine and fruit.

[91] These ceramics, made mainly in the Kerman workshops, were of sufficient quality to attract the attention of Dutch and English traders in Bandar Abbas who sought alternatives to Chinese porcelain that, following the Ming dynasty’s collapse in 1643–1645, stopped being exported until 1683.

He recruited them from diverse backgrounds that represented tribal, clerical, or ghulam interests, but primarily on the basis of their fiscal and administrative competence, and gave them enough influence to ensure their own policies could be implemented.

The Iranian chronicles describe a number of years of his reign, such as 1660 and 1669, as “uneventful” and Western observers were often astonished by the well-being of the rural population in Iran in contrast to the worse plight of the peasants in the West.

Modern historians, such as Hans Robert Roemer, call him a just, magnanimous and even liberal king, whose death marked the end of Safavid's long period of prosperity and peace.