Patterns in the History of Turkic Literature in Safavid Iran

The paper draws a historical trajectory for Turkic literature in Safavid Iran from the beginning of the sixteenth century through roughly the turn of the seventeenth century. Concentrating on literary life at the court of the founder of the dynasty, Shah Ismail I (r. 1501-1524), as well as on the movement of poets and intellectuals between various courts, it will present a handful of poems from the divans of such Turkophone poets as Kishvari, Habibi, Gharibi and Shah Ismail himself as they were in conversation with each other, as well as their predecessors and contemporaries in Ottoman lands, Iran and Iraq. It argues that the Safavid Turkic literary idiom was the continuation of two previous traditions: the western Oghuz/Turkmen literary tradition, which was in vogue from the Balkans to Western Iran, from which Ottoman Turkic literature branched off in the sixteenth century; and the Chaghatay Turkic literary idiom, which the Safavids inherited from the Timurids. In addition, using the aforesaid examples, I will demonstrate how the Safavid Turkic literary idiom was supported by language ideologies and how such language ideologies were connected to sweeping confessional and political shifts in the era. By this token, I will finally argue that parallel to the crystallization of confessional and political identities in the Ottoman and Safavid empires and in Central Asia, this interconnectedness between the Ottoman and Safavid Turkic idioms changed from after the turn of the seventeenth century, when the marginalization of the Qizilbash Turkmen element in the Safavid polity changed the patronage supporting Turkic literary pursuits, and when Safavid Turkic litterateurs were looking for what they likely considered their own themes and models.