A Safavid silk textile showing courtiers leading captives
Safavid Courtiers Leading Georgian Captives, mid-16th century
Marked Isfahan

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

Safavid Isfahan

The Safavid shahs made Shia Islam the faith of Iran. Shah Abbas I rebuilt Isfahan around a vast square with mosques, a palace and a bazaar; people said “Isfahan is half the world”.

Date
1501 to 1736IX · Oceans crossed
Place
Isfahan · Tabriz · New JulfaThe Middle East
Laid out as
A cityOne city, district by district, from its centre outwards.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IIsmail and a new faith for Iran
  2. IIShah Abbas
  3. IIINaqsh-e Jahan Square
  4. IVCarpets and silk
  5. VArmenian merchants of New Julfa
  6. VIThe Afghan siege

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Ismail I
  • Abbas I
  • Reza Abbasi

Objects

  • The Ardabil carpet
  • The Shah Mosque tiles

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1501 to 1736. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?