Abbas II (; born Soltan Mohammad Mirza; 30 August 1632 – 26 October 1666) was the seventh Shah of Safavid Iran, ruling from 1642 to 1666. As the eldest son of Safi and his Circassian wife, Anna Khanum, he inherited the throne when he was nine, and had to rely on a regency led by Saru Taqi, the erstwhile grand vizier of his father, to govern in his place. During the regency, Abbas received formal kingly education that, until then, he had been denied. In 1645, at age thirteen, he was able to remove Saru Taqi from power, and after purging the bureaucracy ranks, asserted his authority over his court and began his absolute rule.
Abbas II's reign was marked by peace and progress. He intentionally avoided a war with the Ottoman Empire and his relations with the Uzbeks in the east were friendly. He enhanced his reputation as a military commander by leading his army during the war with the Mughal Empire and successfully recovering the city of Kandahar. At his behest, Rostom Khan, the King of Kartli and a Safavid vassal, invaded the Kingdom of Kakheti in 1648 and sent the rebellious monarch Teimuraz I into exile. In 1651, Teimuraz tried to reclaim his lost crown with the support of the Russian Tsardom, but the Russians were defeated by Abbas' army in a short conflict fought between 1651 and 1653. The war's major event was the destruction of the Russian fortress on the Iranian side of the Terek river. Abbas also suppressed a rebellion led by the Georgians between 1659 and 1660, in which he acknowledged Vakhtang V as the king of Kartli, but had the rebel leaders executed.
From the middle years of his reign onwards, Abbas was occupied with a financial decline which would plague the realm until the end of the Safavid dynasty. In order to increase revenues, in 1654 Abbas appointed Mohammad Beg, a distinguished economist. However, he was unable to overcome the economic decline. Mohammad Beg's efforts often damaged the treasury. He took bribes from the Dutch East India Company and assigned his family members into various positions. In 1661, Mohammad Beg was replaced by Mirza Mohammad Karaki, a weak and ineffective administrator. He was excluded from the shah's private affairs in the inner palace, to the point that he was ignorant about the existence of Sam Mirza, the future Suleiman and the next Safavid shah of Iran.
Abbas II died on 25 September 1666, aged thirty-four. Described by modern historians as the last strong king of the Safavid dynasty, he stood out from his father and his successors by being persistently concerned for state affairs. A king known for his sense of justice, Western historians and observers often portrayed him as a magnanimous and tolerant monarch who ruled a kingdom which was free of rebellions and relatively safe to travel within. Some historians have criticised him for acts of cruelty similar to his father and forcing conversion upon the Iranian Jews, but most have noted his tolerance towards Christians. After the fall of the Safavid dynasty in 1722, he is remembered as a forceful ruler who temporarily reversed the decline of the Safavid state and created a period of prosperity, stability and peace that with his death ended once and for all.
Background The Safavid dynasty rose to power in 1501, when Ismail I took the city of Tabriz from the Aq Qoyunlu Turkomans and proclaimed himself the Shah of Iran. He was succeeded by his son, Tahmasp I, whose reign saw the long Ottoman-Safavid war of 1532–1555. He was able to safeguard his father's empire from collapsing even though he lost lands in Mesopotamia to the Ottomans. Tahmasp established a new polity for the Safavid state; he decreased the Qizilbash influence on the Iranian bureaucracy.; He developed a "third force" containing Georgian and Armenian slaves who he brought from Caucasus to reduce the Turkoman and the Iranian influence in the court.
Tahmasp died in 1576 after a long reign. He did not choose any of his thirteen sons as his heir by the time of death, thus paving the way for civil war. Eventually, his second born son, Ismail II, became the king with the support of the majority of the Qizilbash tribes after his brother, Haydar Mirza, was eliminated. Ismail II's reign has been defined by two major events — his policy of remaking Sunnism the official religion of Iran, and his paranoia that led him to kill most of the royal family. He died after a short reign in 1577 after consuming poisoned opium, a supposed plot by his sister, Pari Khan Khanum and the Qizilbash leaders.
Ismail II was succeeded by his blind brother, Mohammad Khodabanda, whose reign was one of continuous instability. In 1578, the Ottomans declared war on the weakened Safavid state and conquered the Safavid lands in the Caucasus and even managed to seize most of Azerbaijan. Mohammad Khodabanda was overthrown by his youngest son Abbas I in 1587. Abbas I projected great military power, regained most of the lands lost by his predecessors, and adopted a set of forward-looking policies designed to optimise military strength, centralise state control, and expand Iran's internal and international commercial scope. He paired ruthlessness with justice and dealt harshly with threats to his power, while remaining in touch with his people. All these qualities eventually entitled him to be styled as Abbas the Great.
Abbas the Great was succeeded by his grandson, Safi. A reclusive and passive character, Safi was unable to fill the power vacuum which his grandfather had left behind. His officials undermined his authority and revolts constantly broke out across the realm. The continuing war with the Ottoman Empire, started with initial success during Abbas the Great's reign, but ended with the humiliating defeat of Iran and the Treaty of Zuhab, which returned much of Iran's conquests in Mesopotamia to the Ottomans.
In order to assert his authority, Safi purged every potential claimant to his throne, including the sons of the Safavid princesses, and the sons of Abbas the Great, who were blinded and thus were unqualified to rule. The purge also saw the deaths of the leading figures of the realm. An example of Safi's cruelty occurred on the night of 20 February 1632, also known as the Bloody Ma'bas (named after Ma'bas), in which he had forty women of the harem put to death. The last act of his bloodshed was the killing of his grand vizier, Mirza Taleb Khan Ordubadi, who was replaced with a gholam (military slave) named Mirza Mohammad Taqi Khan, more famously known as Saru Taqi.
As a eunuch, Saru Taqi had access to the royal harem, and used this ability to forge relations with the shah's concubines. He influenced Safi, persuading him to increase the crown domains (khasseh) by incorporating the Fars province into it. He imposed heavy taxes throughout the realm, especially on Isfahan's Armenian population, and investigated the revenue flows of the previous governor of Gilan. He was described as greedy and was accused by Western observers of accepting bribes. In 1634, Saru Taqi appointed his brother, Mohammad Saleh Beg, as the governor of Mazandaran to counteract the Mar'ashi Sayyid line. Saru Taqi's family held the province's governorship until the end of Safi's reign.
Safi died from excessive drinking on 12 May 1642, leaving behind a country smaller than it was when he inherited it. A weak-minded man lacking charisma, Safi manifested many problems that later plagued the Safavid empire during its decline, one of them being not preparing the crown prince for rule. He excluded the Qizilbash influence in Safavid bureaucracy, and instead allowed a coalition of concubines, eunuchs and gholams to hold power during the last decade of his reign.
Ascension and regency According to a report by the Dutch East India Company (VOC), Soltan Mohammad Mirza was born on 30 August 1632 in Qazvin. The eldest son of Safi of Persia and Anna Khanum, he grew up in the royal harem, surrounded by women and eunuchs, and was tutored by Rajab Ali Tabrizi. His mother, a Circassian concubine, only gained political standing in the harem and thus distinguish herself from other nameless concubines because she had produced the shah's male heir. Saru Taqi had a close relationship with Anna Khanum, as observed by travellers such as Jean Chardin. He was an agent and confidant to her, and the queen mother ruled the realm through him upon Mohammad Mirza's ascension.
Safi sought to have Mohammad Mirza and his brothers blinded, but thanks to the sympathy of a eunuch whose job was to blind the princes, Mohammad Mirza retained his sight by feigning blindness. He did this until the end of his father's reign. This deception partly explains why he was still illiterate at the age of ten.
On 15 May 1642, aged nine-and-a-half, the young prince ascended the throne, four days after the death of Safi, and following a meeting of the state council organised by Saru Taqi. At his coronation ceremony, Mohammad Mirza adopted the regnal name Abbas, and issued a tax remission of 500,000 tomans, in addition to a ban on the consumption of alcoholic drinks. The grand vizier maintained his position in a smooth transition of power, later removing rivals such as Rustam Bek, an influential Georgian figure during Safi's reign, to consolidate his grip on power. Abbas, until now secluded from the outer world (as had his father), was sent to Qazvin to be educated as a king; the quick progress he made enabled him to be introduced to the religious texts. Abbas forged a lifelong interest in theology; this may have been the result of his reading a new Persian translation of Al-Kafi. In addition to his studies (on a variety of subjects), the shah also learned riding, archery, polo and other equestrian games.
Throughout the first years of his reign, a coalition of Saru Taqi, Jani Beg Khan Shamlu, the qurchi-bashi and Mohammad Beg, a statesman and the future grand vizier, effectively ruled Iran. In addition, Saru Taqi and Jani Khan had a family alliance through the marriage of Mirza Qasem, the former's nephew, to the daughter of Jani Khan. However, this alliance did not save the grand vizier from assassination. On 11 October 1645 Jani Khan and five other conspirators attacked and murdered him on his house. Jani Khan had over time implanted in Abbas' mind the idea that Saru Taqi was driving the realm into ruin and posed a threat to the shah himself. He murdered Saru Taqi by the authority of the shah. His death gave the shah the confidence to assert his authority over the court; that year he purged the ranks of bureaucracy just as his father had done. According to Dutch observers, Abbas's purge was no less bloody than Safi's purge, with between 8,000 and 10,000 people killed in the aftermath of Saru Taqi's assassination. One of the victims was Jani Khan, who was poisoned by the royal sommelier, Safi Quli Beg. Jani Khan's death was endorsed by Anna Khanum who, saddened by Saru Taqi's death, also ordered the purge of Jani Khan's tribe, the Shamlu.
In need of a regent, Abbas called for Khalifeh Soltan to serve him as the grand vizier. Khalifeh Soltan had been the grand vizier to both Abbas the Great and Safi, from 1623 to 1632. The first cleric to become the grand vizier, he was concerned with enacting the sharia, but only succeeded in the matter of prohibiting visual misrepresentations of the religious law. Even then, he could never eliminate the widespread habit of drinking wine, only partially controlling the habit by imposing harsh penalties. One of his more successful policies was the banning of prostitution. By his insistence, Abbas issued a firman, in which he prohibited public prostitution, although prostitutes were still allowed to work in their clients' houses.