This 16th Century Battle Created the Modern Middle East

The pivotal legacy of the Battle of Chaldiran still reverberates 500 years later.
Akhilesh4
By Akhilesh Pillalamarri
August 21, 2014

haldiran ( )today is a small, sleepy town in northwestern

Iran near the Turkish border. Yet, nearly five hundred years ago to
the day, on August 23, 1514, the plains outside of Chaldiran groaned
under the weight of men and horses and thundered with the sound of
cannon-fire and muskets.
The Battle of Chaldiran is one of the most pivotal battles in the
history of the Middle East. Rather than being an obscure footnote in
history, it was a battle of pivotal importance, with results that
still reverberate in the modern Middle East. By determining the
borders and demographics of the Persian Safavid Empire and the Turkish
Ottoman Empire, the Battle of Chaldiran created the contours of the
modern Middle East.
In the early 16th century, two empires were competing for eastern
Turkey and the Fertile Crescent (Iraq and greater Syria). One of these
was
the
Sunni
Ottoman
Empire,
based
in
western
Turkey
and
Constantinople (Istanbul). While its ruling class was Turkish, the
majority of its subjects were still Christians from the Balkans. The
other empire was a new creation of the era the Safavid Empire. The
Safavid Empire was founded by the leader of the Shia Sufi Safaviyya
sect, Shah Ismail, who was of mixed Turkish, Persian, and Kurdish
descent. Starting a series of conquests from a small principality in
Azerbaijan in northwestern Iran, Ismail impressively won his first
battle in 1501 at the age of 14. By 1510, only nine years later, he
had conquered all of the Iranian Plateau and the city of Baghdad.
Ismails eastern campaigns checked Uzbek power and helped a prince
named Babur set up his Mughal Empire.
The sudden expansion of this Safavid Empire was a serious threat to
the Ottoman Empire territorially; the Safavids further destabilized
the Ottomans by propagating Shia Islam among the Turkish tribes of
eastern Turkey (much of Ismails forces consisted of Shia Qizilbash
Turks). The then Ottoman Sultan Selim I decided to confront the
Safavid threat directly by marching east, suppressing the Turkish
tribes of eastern Turkey and arriving at Chaldiran, where the Safavids
and Ottomans fought on August 23, 1514. The battle ended in a decisive
Turkish victory, aided by their mastery of gunpowder technology. Their
victory cemented permanent Ottoman rule over eastern Turkey, most of
Kurdistan (expect a portion that remained with the Safavids and became
mostly Shia), and Iraq. The Safavids, who had depended heavily on
cavalry and made minimal use of gunpowder, were shocked by their

defeat, which was Ismails first and last defeat. He never fought
another battle and spent the next ten years of his life drinking. He
died in 1524.
The Battle of Chaldiran had an enormous impact on shaping the modern
Middle East, its boundaries, and its demography. The most important
legacy of the Battle of Chaldiran is that it led to the creation of a
relatively compact, Persian-oriented, Shia nation-state on the Iranian
Plateau. The defeat of the Safavids at Chaldiran prevented them from
building a sprawling empire spanning much of the Middle East by
denying them control over eastern Turkey and most of Iraq. This led to
the border between modern Iran and Turkey and Iraq (successors of the
Ottoman Empire) today, and ensured that the vast majority of the
regions Arabs and Kurds remained Sunni.
Many historians are of the view that it was a good thing that the
Safavid Empire remained compact instead of sprawling over the Middle
East because then it would have overextended itself, only to collapse.
The relatively small size of the empire, as opposed to its larger
neighbors, the Mughal and Ottoman Empires, enabled the bureaucratic
consolidation of a region that has previously experienced several
hundred years of political instability. As a result, the state of Iran
has a greater coherence to it than its neighbors do, many of whom were
ruled indirectly by the Ottomans through tribal intermediaries.
More important than the consolidation of a nation-state in Iran, the
battle ensured the spread of Shia Islam within the Safavid Empire.
After the battle, the Safavids aggressively promoted Shia Islam within
their territories in order to consolidate and separate their empire
from its Sunni neighbors. Although this lead to the Safavid Empire
being surrounded by a sea of Sunni Islam, historians also believe it
ensured that the empire was not absorbed by the Sunni Ottomans. To
make sure that Shia Islam became irrevocably accepted by the
population, Ismail made it mandatory for Shias to curse the first
three Sunni Caliphs, offending Sunnis and leading to continuing
antagonism between the Sunnis and Shias throughout the region.
Although many Iranians might regret the manner in which Iran became
Shia, they accept their Shia identity with pride as a marker of their
distinct identity.
It is important to note that Ismail decided to impose Shia Islam on
his territories partly due to religious reasons as well. While it is
widely known that Iran is Shia today, what is not as widely
appreciated is that it was not so until the Safavid Empire came to
power. Sunni Islam (and Zoroastrianism before it) was the norm in Iran
as it was throughout the Islamic world, with Shias scattered
throughout the Islamic world in small, local concentrations similar
to the way in which Jews were concentrated in certain areas throughout
Europe without forming a majority in any one region. Ismails
conquests had the effect of creating a large Shia block in the midst
of a previously Sunni region and were essentially the expansion of one
small concentration of Shia Islam in northwestern Iran.

The majority of regions today that feature geographically concentrated

heavily Shia populations today are those that were either part of or
influenced by the Safavid Empire. These regions include Iran,
Azerbaijan,
Bahrain,
southern
Iraq,
and
western
and
central
Afghanistan. These regions are almost completely surrounded by Sunni
majority regions that begin almost exactly where the Safavid Empires
boundaries ended. Ironically, the exception to this rule is southern
Afghanistan as it was the Safavid Empires attempt to forcibly convert
the Pashtun Afghans of Kandahar to Shia Islam that sparked the
rebellion that led to the Safavids downfall in 1722.
Thus, the Battle of Chaldiran is responsible for the where and why
of most Shia Muslim populations in the Middle East today.
On the other hand, the Battle of Chaldiran led to the transformation
of the Ottoman Empire and its dominance of most Arab lands. As the
Ottomans secured their eastern flank by annexing Kurdistan and Iraq,
they were able to turn west, conquering Egypt and the Levant in 1517.
In just a few short years, the Ottomans acquired an Arab Muslim
population that vastly outnumbered the ruling Turks and the Christians
who had previously made up the majority of the empire. The majority of
Arabs thus lost their independence to the Ottomans as the direct or
indirect consequence of Chaldiran. Additionally, the Ottoman Empire
became more solidly Muslim, orthodox, and traditional as a result,
decreasing its ability to absorb lessons from Europe.
Ottoman rule maintained Sunni Islam (the Ottoman Sultan claimed to be
the Caliph, after all) over most of the Arab heartland but also led to
the relative neglect of Arabs and the Arabic language. The Ottomans
tended to rule the Arabs indirectly unlike their Turkish heartland,
which was administered thoroughly. This was perhaps a consequence of
having such a large, sprawling empire. The legacy of this lack of
state-building is evident in Arab countries to this day.
Today, as the 500th anniversary of this epochal battle approaches, we
should reflect on its outcome and how it created the modern Middle
East. When we consider the various tribal, ethnic and religious
cleavages that make up the Middle East, as well as the relatively
successful formation of the Turkish and Iranian states, we see the
results of the Battle of Chaldiran. Although the battlefield itself is
not commemorated with any monument save for the tomb of two of
Ismails viziers, its impact can be remembrance enough.