The Safavid dynasty links medieval with modern Iran. The Safavids reigned supreme in Iran for more than 200 years and Safavid society witnessed wide-ranging developments in politics, warfare, science, philosophy, religion, art and architecture. But how did this dynasty manage to produce the longest lasting and most glorious of Iran's Islamic-period eras?_x000D__x000D_Andrew Newman offers a complete re-evaluation of the dynasty's place in history as it presided over these extraordinary developments and the wondrous flowering of Iranian culture. In the process he focuses on the reasons for its longevity and dissects the Safavid story, from before the 1501 capture of Tabriz by Shah Ismail (1488-1524), the point at which Shi`ism became the realm's established faith, through the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries dominated by Shah Abbas (1587-1629), whose patronage of art and architecture from his capital of Isfahan embodied the Safavid spirit and culminating with the reign of Sultan Husayn (reg. 1694-1722). By this time the Safavid project enjoyed the recognition and support of foreign commercial, political and religious interests as well as a wide range of Turkic and non-Turkic tribes, Tajiks, the ghulam military, the political, administrative and other court interests, not to mention indigenous Muslim, Christian and foreign artisans and merchants._x000D__x000D_Safavid success , in Newman's analysis, came from court efforts both to give voice to the interests and 'agendas' of its subjects and to portray the shah as the simultaneous spokesman for, and transcendent ruler over, the entire nation. Twelver Shi`ism emerges as a contested arena in this process but less intolerant than is often supposed._x000D__x000D_Throughout, Newman questions the continued reliance on frequently contradictory and unevenly informed contemporary European accounts and on Persian language sources often written well after the events in question. Based on meticulous scholarship, he shows the extraordinary development and achievement of the period and offers a valuable new interpretation of the eventual demise of the Safavids in the eighteenth century._x000D__x000D_Safavid Iran, with its fresh insights and new research, is the definitive single volume work on the subject._x000D_