Battle of Chaldiran

The Battle of Chaldiran (23 August 1514) was fought between the Ottoman Empire of Selim I and the Safavids in the area of Chaldiran, in the eastern Anatolian plateau. The Ottomans won and so they took eastern Anatolia and northern Iraq from the Safavids. The loss of Anatolia was a turning point for Safavid history.^[1]

Battle of Chaldiran
Part of Ottoman Persian Wars
The location of Chaldiran is marked by a red dot on the right-hand side of the map.
Date 1514 Location Chaldıran,Van Result Ottoman Victory[2]
Belligerents
Ottoman Empire	Safavid Iran
Commanders and leaders
Selim I Hersekzade Ahmed Pasha Dukaginzade Ahmed Pasha[3] Hadım Sinan Pasha Mustafa Paşa Zeynel Paşa Bıyıklı Mehmet Paşa Hasan Pasha  † Malkocoglu Ali Beg  †[4] Malkocoglu Tur Ali Beg  †[4]	Shah Ismaıl (WIA) Kose Hamza † Mohammad Khan Ustajlu  † Pir Umar Beg Shireci  † Nur-Ali Khalifa Mir Abdulbaki Korchubaşı Saru Pire Lala Hüseyin Bey Avsar Sultan Ali Mirza Mir Seyyid Şerif Hulefa Bey
Strength
60,000[5] 100,000-212,000[6][2][7][8][9] Or 300,000[6]	30,000[6] 40,000[6][10] Or 80,000-150,000[7][8]
Casualties and losses
Low[6] or 8,000-40,000[6]	Low[6] or 2,000-80,000[6]

One feature of the battle was that the Ottomans used guns and cannons to defeat the cavalry corps. However, the Ottomans led more than twice as many troops as the Safavids, and it said that the difference in troop strength made the difference between victory and defeat.^[11] The defeat of the Safavids in the battle destroyed the myth of Ismil I's supremacy and had historical significance by switching of the Kurds from being under the Safavids to being under the Ottomans. The Kurdish sheikhs, who had initially accepted Safavid suzerainty, recognised that the power of the Safavid dynasty had begun to wane because of Ismail's defeat at Chaldiran and so began to assert their independence. Then, Selim won the loyalty of the Ottomans by providing financial and military support to the Kurdish sheikhs.^[12]

Background

In the early 16th century, the Muslim world was dominated by three major empires. The Ottoman Empire had conquered Constantinople and controlled the Balkans and Anatolia. The Safavid Empire had conquered a large territory under Ismail I and expanded its power in Iran by using Turkic cavalrymen known as the Qizilbash. The Mamluk Sultanate ruled Egypt, the Levant and Hejaz.^[13]

A severe threat to the Ottomans was the Safavids. After the Battle of Chaldiran, the Ottomans would turn their attention to conquering the holy Islamic cities of Mecca and Medina from the Mamluk Sultanate. The Safavids would recover from the defeat and become one of the three major empires of the Islamic world with the Ottoman Empire and the Mughal Empire, the last of which controlled South Asia.

Safavid dynasty

The Safavid dynasty was founded in March 1501 by Ismail I, a 15-year-old descendant of the Safavid family from Azerbaijan, Iran.^[11] The Safavids were hostile to the Ottoman Empire, which was Sunni, as their state religion was Shi'a. Furthermore, the Safavids became a threat to the Ottoman Empire because of the growing support among the Turkic nomads of eastern Anatolia.^[14][8]

Ismail aimed to create a Shia society, and forced conversions took place. There was a massacre of Sunnis who rebelled against the policy in the Tabriz.^[15] In addition, Ismail expanded his control by annexing Azerbaijan and large parts of Iran, Baghdad, Khorasan, and Diyarbakr.^[16]

Ottoman Empire

When Sultan Selim I ascended to the Ottoman throne in 1512, relations between the Ottoman Empire and the Safavid dynasty changed radically.^[8] He gained the position of sultan after a power struggle with his brothers. One after the other, he eliminated his brothers who were rivals for the throne, and one of them fled to Ismail I.^[17] Furthermore, Selim ruled Trabzon for nearly 25 years from 1487 and was based in Trabzon to fight the Safavid invasion.^[18] That experience also contributed to Selim's conviction that the Safavid threat was the most important problem for the Ottoman Empire.^[19] In 1514, Selim launched a campaign against the Safavids against Ismail to conquer eastern Anatolia, including Erzurum and Erzincan.^[8][20]

Battle

Battle of Chaldiran: the gun-carrying soldiers in the bottom right are Ottoman Janissaries, and the Safavid soldiers are on the left.

The Ottoman army was dominated by elite janissaries and included an additional 200 cannons, 100 field guns and 8 000 camels. In contrast, the Safavid cavalry was less than half of the Ottoman army.^[11] In the battle, the Safavid cavalry of Qizilbash attacked in a mass assault, and the Ottoman Army then responded with artillery fire.^[8]

Ismail I had been given the idea of surprising the Ottomans before they had finished their positions, but he scoffed at that proposal and decided to wait for the enemy's positions and to have a direct attack.^[1] The battle opened with a wave of attacks by Safavid cavalry, and in the first half of the cavalry battle, the Safavids held the upper hand. However, in the second half of the battle, the battle tilted in favor of the Ottomans, who had superior firepower by mobilizing not only rifles but also artillery. In the end, the Safavid army fell to the firepower of the Ottomans, fled westward and left Tabriz in their hands.^[19]

Disparity in Troops

Ottoman Empire	Safavid Iran
Leader
Sultan Selim I	Shah Ismail I
Strength
160,000[11] or 100,000[8] or 120,000 ~ 212,000[9]	20,000[11] or 80,000[8] or 12,000~20,000[9]

Aftermath

Ottoman Empire

Selim was unable to capitalise on the victory. Despite chasing the Iranians to Tabriz, he allowed Ismail to escape.^[8] Furthermore, his original plan was to spend the winter in Tabriz and to fight the Safavids again in the spring. However, the soldiers were so exhausted from the previous battles that he could not get their approval. Therefore, he had to retreat and return to Istanbul.^[18]

However, the Ottomans' victories can be said to have extended their power. After annexing eastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia, they controlled the Central Asian trade route between Tabriz and Bursa. The following year, the Ottomans annexed the Mamluk dynasty of Syria and Egypt and brought the Holy Land of the Hejaz under their control.^[21]

Ottoman tile panel from Iznik in the 16th century

During the siege of Tabriz, the Ottomans brought many merchants and ceramic artisans.^[22] The artisans belonged to a pottery factory in Istanbul and had become responsible for decorating the tiles on most of the buildings thaï were constructed by the Ottoman Empire by the 1550s. That is said to have contributed significantly to the development of Iznik pottery.^[23]

Safavids dynasty

The Safavids lost eastern Anatolia to the Ottomans, which had been an important source of troops from the Ottoman army. Thousands of Qizilbash tribesmen were also killed. Although Ismail himself was wounded and managed to escape after terrible hardships, he lost his prestige in Iran since he had been believed to be invincible.^[8] He lost confidence in himself and never led his troops into battle again.^[1] Tribal leaders were given authority, and the struggle for control over them became the central political issue of the Safavid dynasty and changed the balance of power within the coalition. A power struggle ensued, which lasted until the reign of his son and successor, Tahmasp I.^[24]