Shah Abbas survived a death order as a boy and remade Iran
In 1577 an order arrived in Herat to kill the six-year-old prince Abbas. His guardian stalled, saying an execution during holy days would be improper, and within weeks the shah who sent it was dead. The boy grew up to become Abbas the Great, the Safavid ruler who rebuilt Iran and made Isfahan his showpiece.
Abbas was born in Herat on 27 January 1571, third son of Mohammad Khodabanda, a prince so nearly blind that he was passed over for the throne. At about eighteen months the baby was made nominal governor of Herat while his parents moved to Shiraz; he never saw his mother again and did not see his father for fifteen years. Raised by guardians from the Qizilbash, the Turkic tribal warriors who formed the Safavid army's core, he learned soldiering, polo and hunting.
When Shah Tahmasp died without a named heir in 1576, the realm fell into civil war. The new shah, Ismail II, purged his relatives and sent the order for Abbas's death before dying himself. Abbas's father then took the throne in 1578 but proved weak. His strong-willed mother, Khayr al-Nisa Begum, ran the government and organised resistance to an Ottoman invasion, until Qizilbash amirs resentful of her power killed her in 1579. His elder brother Hamza, the crown prince, was murdered by his own barber in 1586. In 1588 a Qizilbash chief, Murshid Quli Khan, deposed Abbas's father and crowned the 16-year-old.
Abbas soon broke free of his sponsors and set about curbing the tribes. He greatly expanded the use of gholams, Circassian, Georgian and Armenian slave-soldiers, in the army and administration, and built a standing force answerable to him alone. With it he fought the Ottomans and Uzbeks and recovered lost provinces, at a heavy cost to conquered peoples such as those of Kakheti, who suffered massacres and mass deportation.
He centralised government, secured the borders, encouraged trade and farming, and built roads and public works on a new scale. Moving the capital from Qazvin to Isfahan, he turned the city into a masterpiece of Safavid architecture. His last years were darkened by suspicion; after a court intrigue he had his own sons killed or blinded. He died on 19 January 1629, remembered as the greatest ruler of his dynasty.
Source: Abbas the Great
