| The Shiite Safavids ruled Iraq in the late 1500s and early 1600s under Shah Abbas. |
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| To promote Shi'ism the Safavids brought in scholars from Shi'ite countries to form a new religious elite. |
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| The establishment of the Shi'a faith as the official religion brought the Safavids into conflict with the Sunni Ottomans. |
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| In specifically religious terms the Safavids not only persecuted Sunni Muslims, but Shi'ites with different views, and all other religions. |
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| It was completely devastated by Turkmen tribes, the hordes of Tamerlane, and the Persian Safavids. |
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| If the Safavids did retain a certain degree of independence, that independence was heavily prejudiced by a great deal of dependence. |
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| The Safavids also rejected existing Shiite pockets, especially those surrounding Qom such as the Qyzyl Bash orders. |
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| The same happened in Iran under the Safavids, in India under the Mughals, in the Middle East, Central Asia, Balkans and Eastern Europe under the Ottomans. |
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| Maps of the area are littered with the names of battlefields where Romans fought against Parthians, Ottomans against Safavids, and British against Turks. |
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| Shiism was made the state religion at the beginning of the sixteenth century by a new dynasty, the Safavids, who needed to dig in against the Ottoman Turks. |
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| As guardians of the ancient artistic traditions of Iran rather than innovators in their own right, the Safavids facilitated the emergence of a refined, sumptuous, courtly art in which poetry and literature flourished. |
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| Their expanding empire butted into the Ottoman empire in the Zagros mountains where the small Kurdish principalities that had managed to survive were devastated both by the Turkic Ottomans and the Persian Safavids. |
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| The Ottomans, a Sunni dynasty, fought several campaigns against the Safavids. |
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| The Safavids Shi'ified Iran in the 16th century, as existing Sufi and Sunni orders drifted into Shiism and became increasingly militarised and very dangerous to the neighbouring Ottomans. |
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| By the 17th century, the frequent conflicts with the Safavids had sapped the strength of the Ottoman Empire and had weakened its control over its provinces. |
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| Nader Shah, who overthrew the Safavids, attempted to improve relations with Sunnis by propagating the integration of Shiism by calling it the Jaafari Madh'hab. |
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| Problematic for the Safavids was the powerful Ottoman Empire. |
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| From the earliest 16th century, in 1508, as with all territories of the former White Sheep Turkmen, Iraq fell into the hands of the Iranian Safavids. |
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