Abbas I the Great and the Safavid Collapse

Abbas I (r. 1587-1629) inherited a territorially reduced and militarily weakened empire, its monarchy overshadowed by the autonomous power of qizilbash tribal chiefs whose loyalty was fundamentally tribal rather than personal to the shah. Learning the lesson of Chaldiran, he created a new military corps of "ghulams" — slave-soldiers of Georgian, Armenian, and Circassian origin, converted to Shia Islam and loyal exclusively to the crown — alongside new corps of musket infantry (tofangchis) and artillery (topchis). He hired European advisers, notably the English brothers Anthony and Robert Shirley from 1598, to train these forces in modern tactics, decisively modernizing an army that had previously depended on traditional cavalry.