Safavid dynasty

And what's interesting about that is that's where we get the term assassins, because the Mongols were the first group that could subdue the assassins coming out of the Shia environment.

But by 1501, about the same time as the Ottoman Empire is evolving up north in Turkey, and then spreading down into the southern part of of what was Western Arabia, I'm sorry, Western parts of the Middle East, you see the Safavid Empire.

And historian Marshall Hodgson called the Ottomans, the Safavids in Iran, the Ottomans in Turkey, and the Mughals out of India, the gunpowder Muslim empires.

And this is because the Safavids were able to use the cannon to expand Iranian influence.

And also this leads to the problem that Edward Ludwock, who's an Israeli-American historian, worked for Ronald Reagan in what we now call the War Department back in the 80s, has said, we have a Shia imperialism.

There's a real animosity the Western media doesn't talk much about, and that is Sunnis versus Shia, Sunnis with Mecca and Arabia, and along that Persian Gulf, which is relevant to this conflict today between the U.S. and Iran, and Israel's been a part of since early February.

But bringing up Salafism reminds me that this story started even before the Second World War and its aftermath, because Salafism, Islamism, pan-Islamic solidarity, the global Ummah, these ideas first emerged in the late 19th century.

as Muslims who were living in weakening traditional imperial monarchical states, like the Ottomans, like the Safavids, like the Mughals.

These states were weakening, and in the midst of the onslaught of that wave of global liberalization at the hands of the British Empire, Muslim thinkers began to hearken back to the period of the Salaf, the pious ancestors, when Muslims were martial and militarily strong and courageous and willing to fight and die in battle and push their advantage on the battlefield, etc.

So the point is that 9-11 is not anything new at all.

The Ottomans had successfully infiltrated European politics and muscled in on Mediterranean trade and the beginning of the 16th century saw them dominate Islamic power.

Under Selim I, the defeat of the Safavids at Chaldiran in 1514 secured Ottoman control over Eastern Anatolia and Kurdistan.

Just a couple of years later Selim turned south and defeated the Mamluks in Syria and Egypt, wiping Mamluk Egypt off the map and bringing the holy cities of Mecca and Medina under Ottoman rule.

The conquest of Egypt provided access to vast resources and control over the spice trade.

In 1521 he captured Belgrade and the following year he expelled the Knights Hospitaller from Rhodes.

Victory at Mohacs against the Hungarians led to the collapse of their kingdom in 1526.

At Baghdad in 1534, victory over the Safavids solidified Ottoman rule over the Tigris-Euphrates basin.

Under the command of Hayreddin Barbarossa, the Ottoman fleet achieved dominance in the Mediterranean after the Battle of Preveza in 1538 where they defeated a Christian coalition.

Marco Polo, 13th century, refers to the major products of Persia, including cotton.

John Chardin, a French traveler of the 17th century who visited Safavid Persia, spoke approvingly of the vast cotton farms of Persia.

The Greeks and the Arabs were not familiar with cotton until the wars of Alexander the Great, as his contemporary Megasthenes told Seleucus I Nicator of there being trees on which wool grows in Indica.

This may be a reference to tree cotton, Gossypium arboreum, which is native to the Indian subcontinent.

And frankly, in our tradition, we have actually dealt with it far better than, uh, Christianity because we have hardly ever had...

And the Sunni, uh, Shia wars that have happened, uh, are rare, the Safavids and now.

Otherwise, as a rule, we haven't had war, Inshallah.

With this, Inshallah, we'll see you all next week for, uh, a class on the principles of sectarianism.

often had their blood spilled in this cause.

Individuals like Mu'ayduddin ibn al-Hafidh, Sayfuddin al-Taftazani, we mentioned in our earlier discourse, during the Safavid period, they were beheaded in the Masjid ibn al-Hafidh before the entire congregation on Jumu'ah, refusing to curse the Sahaba.

A short while after that, Sayfuddin, the grandson of Sa'duddin al-Taftazani, he was martyred.

So this was individuals who defused to be pressured into submission, who defused to compromise on their principles.