SAFAVID TABRIZ, IRAN, DATED 25 SAFAR AH 914 / 4 JULY 1508 AD

This early firman composed on behalf of Shah Isma'il I Safavi Khata'i, founder of the Safavid dynasty, is a rare survival of a transitionary form between the chancellery practices of the Qara and Aq Qoyunlu and those of the later Safavids. Notably, the presence of the phrase khutima bi'l-khayr written perpendicular to the eleventh line is a last trace of a formal concluding prayer used by the former bureaucracies. As it is traditionally written on the final line as a method of preventing unauthorized amendments, B.G. Martin has suggested that lines ten and twelve are later interpolations. They mention the prominent Qizilbash leader Husayn Beg La'la', who played a key role in the early Safavid movement by helping the young brothers Isma'il and Sulayman Mirza - mentioned in the firman - evade the Aq Qoyunlu authorities. As such, this rare surviving document provides a valuable insight into the early Safavid political struggle between the Qizilbash Turkomans and the settled bureaucracy of Azerbaijan.

This firman is one of twenty surviving documents which can be connected to Shah Isma'il and dateable to his lifetime. Four of these are unfinished drafts of letters without a seal or tughra. Eight, now in the Topkapi Palace Museum archive, deal with diplomatic and political subject matters. The final eight deal with property rights (guaranteeing or confirming proprietorship, exemptions or immunities on land revenues, and freeing property from the control of the state or its agents). Three of these eight documents are fragmentary or incomplete, including a partial firman in the British Museum (published www.asnad.org/en/document/274; accessed 21 March 2024). Our firman is the earliest known which is both complete and retrains the seal and tughra. It is the only surviving document relating to a member of Isma'il's family.

The full transcription and commentary are published in B.G. Martin, 1965, and are available upon request.