• DOI:10.1163/002249910X12573963244449
• Corpus ID: 55237025

Was Safavid Iran an Empire

@article{Matthee2009WasSI,
  title={Was Safavid Iran an Empire},
  author={Rudi Matthee},
  journal={Journal of The Economic and Social History of The Orient},
  year={2009},
  volume={53},
  pages={233-265}
}

• R. Matthee
• Published 2009
• History
• Journal of The Economic and Social History of The Orient

Th is paper examines the organizing ideological and infrastructural principles of the Safavid state structure and questions whether the Safavid state had the capacity and universality to qualify as an empire. Until now, the Safavid state has only been given equal status to the Ottoman and Mughal state as a “gunpowder empire”. But with this approach some other aspects tip the balance towards the cohesion and coherence that enabled the Safavid Empire to function as an empire in spite of exiguous economic resources and the limitations of ideological underpinnings. When some of these aspects lost their force, this contributed to the dissolution of the glue that kept Iranian society together and to the demise of the Safavid state in the early eighteenth century. Le cadre de cette contribution est l’Etat safavide et elle en explore les principes de la structure etatique au niveau de l’organisation, de l’ideologie, et de l’infrastructure pour etablir si cet etat a ete un veritable empire au niveau de ses capacites et de son caractere universel. Jusqu’a maintenant l’Etat safavide s’est vu attribuer le statut ‘d’empire de poudre a canon’, pareil aux Etats ottoman et moghul. Mais en abordant ce theme du cote structure on apercoit quelques aspects qui font pencher la balance vers une coherence interne. C’est qu’en depit de ses faibles ressources economiques et tenant compte des limites du support ideologique en general, l’Empire safavide savait remplir son role d’empire. A mesure que la force cohesive s’aff aiblissait, la societe iranienne se dissolvait de facon a sonner le glas de l’Etat safavide au debut du dix -huitieme siecle.