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Environmental Crises at the End of Safavid History: The Collapse of Iran's Early Modern Imperial Ecology, 1666–1722

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2022

James Gustafson Open the ORCID record for James Gustafson [Opens in a new window]  and
James Speer
James Gustafson*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN47809, USA
James Speer
Affiliation:
Department of Earth and Environmental Systems, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN47809, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The 17th century was a period of transition in world history. It was marked globally by social movements emerging in response to widespread drought, famine, disease, warfare, and dislocation linked to climate change. Historians have yet to situate Safavid Iran (1501–1722) within the “General Crisis.” This article, coauthored by an environmental historian and a climate scientist, revisits primary sources and incorporates tree-ring evidence to argue that an ecological crisis beginning in the late 17th century contributed to the collapse of the imperial ecology of the Safavid Empire. A declining resource base and demographic decline conditioned the unraveling of imperial networks and the empire's eventual fall to a small band of Afghan raiders in 1722. Ultimately, this article makes a case for the connectedness of Iran to broader global environmental trends in this period, with local circumstances and human agency shaping a period of acute environmental crisis in Iran.

Keywords

climate changedendrochronologyenvironmental historyfamineSafavid Empire
Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , February 2022 , pp. 57 - 79
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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3 On the second coronation of Shah Sulayman, see especially Rudolph Matthee, “The Safavid King Who Was Crowned Twice: The Enthronement of Safi Mirza as Shah Safi II in 1077/1666 and as Shah Sulayman in 1078/1668,” in Mapping Safavid Iran, ed. Nobuaki Kondo (Tokyo: Tokyo Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 2015). The tenth volume of Chardin's Voyages is devoted to a lengthy description of this coronation; John Chardin, Voyages du Chevalier Chardin en Perse et Autres Lieux de l'Orient, vol. 10 (Paris: LeNormant, 1811), 1–140.

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26 See, for instance, the detailed geographical focus of the work of one of the founding figures of the Annales school in Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2 vols. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009).

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34 Safavid administrative manuals include the frequently referenced Vladimir F. Minorski, Tadhkirat Al-Mulūk: A Manual of Safavid Administration, circa 1137/1725 (Cambridge, MA: E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 1980).

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36 Mitchell, Practice of Politics, 180.

37 Floor, Safavid Government Institutions, 3. Tuyul grants were a form of land grant, usually granting tax farming rights over a territory in lieu of salary for administrative and military officials, similar to the iqta system of previous periods; W. Floor, “Fiscal System iv. Safavid and Qajar Periods,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, online edition: https://iranicaonline.org/articles/fiscal-system-iv-safavid-and-qajar-periods.

38 Matthee, Politics of Trade.

39 Laurence Lockhart, The Fall of the Safavi Dynasty and the Afghan Occupation of Persia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1958). See also the Cambridge History of Iran account of late Safavid history, which explains the empire's “decline” as a result of the inattention of Safavid shahs, the growing influence of women in the harem, and unchecked incursions along the frontiers under Sulayman and Sultan Husayn; H. R. Roemer, “Safavid Period,” 306–13. This narrative parallels Bernard Lewis's famous modernization theory narrative of Ottoman decline, first published in 1961; The Emergence of Modern Turkey (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

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53 We conducted a principal component analysis (PCA) with varimax rotation on the fourteen chronologies that made it through our dating and standardization filters. This combined the common signal from related chronologies by weighting them as significantly unique eigenvectors. All eigenvectors with a sum of squares loading greater than 1.0 were examined for a climate response using KNMI Climate Explorer. The first and second eigenvectors (that carried most of the signal from the combined chronologies) were significantly correlated with a three-month average of the Standardized Precipitation Evaporation Index (SPEI 03; Fig. 2) and the July temperature from the Climate Research Unit T4.0 data set, respectively.

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63 Chardin, Voyages, vol. 8, 435.

64 Ibid., vol. 8, 130. Chardin also notes a “plague” gate, the finest city gate that led directly to its main thoroughfare, which the townspeople dared not open out of fear it would lead to a return of plague. He claims that Shah Abbas I built a new grand entrance to the city to humor the locals and their superstition. Ibid., vol. 8, 132–33.

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67 Chardin, Voyages, vol. 10, 2.

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77 Khatunabadi, Vaqayiʿ al-Sinin, 537–44. This account is corroborated by VOC (Dutch East India Company) papers; see Matthee, Persia in Crisis, 215.

78 Khatunabadi, Vaqayiʿ al-Sinin, 539–40.

79 Ibid., 544.

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95 Krusinski, Late Revolutions, vol. 2, 6.

96 Krusinski, Late Revolutions, vol. 2, 90.

97 David Morgan, Medieval Persia, 1040–1797 (Harlow, UK: Longman, 1988), 151.

98 Parker, Global Crisis.

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