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Shah Ismail I

Shah Ismail I

1487 CE1524 CE · Tabriz

Shah Ismail I (1487–1524) founded the Safavid dynasty, proclaiming himself shah at Tabriz in 1501 while still a youth. He reunified Iran under a single crown and established Twelver Shiʿism as the state religion, a decision that shaped Iranian identity to the present day. Also a gifted poet in Azerbaijani Turkish, his expansion was checked by a major defeat to the Ottomans at Chaldiran in 1514.

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Tabriz

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Thinkers, teachers, and rulers whose lives overlapped with Shah Ismail I’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

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