The Safavid Tribal Settlement Policy as a Political Strategy for Controlling Peripheral Spaces
Keywords:
Safavid, tribal settlement, state-building, spatial control, Shahsevan tribes, Turkmen tribes, border policyAbstract
This article analyzes the Safavid policy of tribal settlement as a strategy for the political control of peripheral spaces. Faced with ethnic, geographical, and security challenges, the Safavid state used the relocation and settlement of tribes as a mechanism to consolidate central authority, regulate borders, and manage unstable regions. Through a historical-interpretive analysis based on primary and secondary sources, the study demonstrates that the settlement of the Shahsevan, Turkmen, Kurdish tribes, and Georgian and Circassian slaves not only transformed local power structures but also accelerated the Safavid state-building process. The findings reveal that the objectives behind this policy included military control, economic exploitation, cultural homogenization, and the redefinition of political loyalties. Despite instances of local resistance, in the long term, this policy contributed to the formation of multiethnic communities, the consolidation of central sovereignty, and the restructuring of border spaces. The article concludes that tribal settlement policies were a fundamental pillar of Safavid state-building, leaving lasting impacts not only militarily but also socially and spatially. It is suggested that future research should undertake comparative studies of such policies during the Qajar and Ottoman periods to further explore the evolution of spatial control mechanisms in pre-modern states.
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