Safavid engraved gold and silver
damascened steel lidded bottles.
Drop-shaped body on spreading
trumpet foot rising to tubular neck
with everted rim, separate drop-
shaped stoppers.
Body engraved and decorated with
cusped bands, joined by palmettes.
The neck and the stoppers are also
decorated with palmettes.
Engraved and inscribed with floral
sprays outlined in gold-damascening.
The Safavid dynasty Persian:
Dudman e Safavi[24]) was one of the most
significant
ruling dynasties of Iran, often considered the
beginning of modern Iranian history. The Safavid
shahs ruled over one of the so-called gunpowder
empires. They ruled one of the greatest Iranian
empires after the 7th-century Muslim conquest of
Iran, and established the Twelver
school of Shia Islam as the official religion of the
empire, marking one of the most important
turning points in Muslim history.
The Safavid dynasty had its origin in the Safaviyya
Sufi order, which was established in the city of
Ardabil in the Azerbaijan region. It was of mixed
ancestry (Kurdish and Azerbaijani, which
included intermarriages with Georgian,
Circassian, and Pontic Greek
dignitaries). From their base in Ardabil, the
Safavids
established control over parts of Greater Iran and
reasserted the Iranian identity of the region, thus
becoming the first native dynasty since the
Sasanian
Empire to establish a unified Iranian state.
The Safavids ruled from 1501 to 1722
(experiencing a
brief restoration from 1729 to 1736) and, at their
height, they controlled all of modern Iran,
Azerbaijan,
Bahrain, Armenia, most of Georgia, the North
Caucasus, Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, as well
as
parts of Turkey, Syria, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and
Uzbekistan.
Despite their demise in 1736, the legacy that they
left
behind was the revival of Persia as an economic
stronghold between East and West, the
establishment of an efficient state and
bureaucracy
based upon "checks and balances", their
architectural innovations and their patronage for
fine
arts. The Safavids have also left their mark down
to
the present era by spreading Shi'a Islam in Iran, as
well as major parts of the Caucasus, Anatolia, and
Mesopotamia.
- (MS.598)
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