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Вестник Института востоковедения РАН. No 4 (14)
Сoming to power of the Safavids Sufi dynasty in Iran (in the person of Shah Ismail I) in 1501
caused noticeable transformations in the political, social, cultural and religious life of the Near and
Middle East. This dynasty used the semi-nomadic tribes of the Oguz Turks (‘Kyzylbash’) as its main
support, which it managed to unite under the auspices of military Sufi order of Safaviyya. However, the
culture of the Safavid state was dominated by a high style associated with the classical era of the Persian
cultural area (‘Greater Iran’) of the 10th–15th centuries. The Iranian-Turkic synthesis that emerged in
previous centuries received a new form with the adoption by the Safavids of Twelver Shiism as an
official religious worldview. This put the neighboring Ottoman state in a difficult position, as it had to
borrow cultural codes from ‘heretics’. Nevertheless, the Ottomans could not refuse cultural interaction
with the Safavids, since they did not have any other cultural landmark in that era. This phenomenon led
to a number of collisions in the biographies of certain cultural figures who had to choose between
commonwealth with an ‘ideological enemy’ or rivalry, for the sake of which they often had to hide their
personal convictions and lead a ‘double life’. The fates of many people, from the crown princes to
ordinary nomads, were broken or acquired a tragic turn during the Ottoman-Safavid conflict of
‘spiritual paths’. However, many other poets, painters, Sufis sometimes managed to transform this
external opposition into the symbolism of religious and cultural synthesis. In scholarly literature, many
works explore certain aspects of the culture of the Ottoman Empire and the Safavid state separately,
but there are almost no works considering the synthesis of cultures of these two largest Muslim states.
Meanwhile, the author argues, that understanding the interaction and synthesis of the Ottoman and
Safavid cultures in the 16th century is a key moment for the cultural history of the Islamic world. The
article aims to outline the main points of this cultural synthesis, to trace their dependence on the
ideology of the two states and to identify the personality traits of a ‘cultured person’ that contributed to
the harmonization of the culture of two ideologically irreconcilable, but culturally complementary
empires. A comparative study of this kind is supported by Ottoman sources. In the future, the author
will continue this research, including the sources reflecting the perception of the Ottoman cultural
heritage by the Safavids.
