The Safavids make Iran Shia
A dynasty converts a country by policy, and the modern religious map of the Middle East is set.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 221 years
- Known to
- ± 2 years
- Era
- Early Modern, Holocene
Ismail I takes Tabriz in 1501 and imposes Twelver Shia Islam on a largely Sunni population, importing clerics from Lebanon and Bahrain to staff the new establishment. The change is deliberate state policy and it succeeds: Iran has been overwhelmingly Shia ever since, and the Sunni-Shia frontier with the Ottomans hardens into a geopolitical fault line still visible today. Abbas I later builds Isfahan into one of the world's great cities.