The Safavid Empire developed in present-day Iran around 1501 and continued to prosper until the 1700s and its downfall occurred in 1736. Since the arrival of Islam in Iran, the Safavids succeeded in establishing Shi’ite Islam as the dominant Islamic sect in Iran and went on to create the largest Persian Muslim Empire in the world. The Safavids redefined the Persian culture and became the first dynasty since the fall of the Parthinian Empire to unite all of Persia under their rule. The empire began when a sixteen year old boy named Ismail from a militant Sufi brotherhood called the “Safaviya” declared himself the shah of Iran in 1502. With this utterance and their strong beliefs in Shi’a Islamic faith, Ismail and his son Tahmasp engaged in a century long war that displaced Sunni followers from Iran and firmly established the Shiite Islam in Iran. This created a rift between Iran and its Arab neighbors and created a unique resurgence of Iranian culture that continues to this day. The Iranian culture was farther differentiated from rest of the Arab world when Shi’ite Islam beliefs became so strong that the idea of the “Hidden Imam” developed and the religious institutions did not become subordinate to the political authority.

In the Ottoman Empire, the ulama was subject to the emperor while in Iran, the opposite happened as the ulama was seen as the temporary caretakers of Islam until the return of the Hidden Imam. To mark even a greater difference, the Iranian Shah Abbas I declared the capital of his empire to be Isfahan in 1598 when the rest of the Islamic world followed their capital in Istanbul. Unlike the women in Istanbul and the Ottoman Empire, the strict nature of Shi’ite Islam meant that the women were restricted to their quarters at home which prevented them from entering into any real meaningful involvement in society. In the Ottoman Empire, women were found to be active in real estate, in their homes and in some cases, at court but men did dominate a major portion of public life. Decline and signs of it began to show when the Iranian manufacturing and carpet business did not yield enough profits and the labor was not organized. The tribal leaders and the nomads did not establish a stable agricultural society thus food production was also low and no technological development in the sector occurred.

Just like the Ottomans, the soldiers were not interested in using firearms and western technology but unlike the Ottomans, the Safavids made a slave corps of professional soldiers who wielded firearms. By the late 1600s, tensions were rising within the country as the injection of cheap new world silver began to cause steep inflation and an unstable economy. Tensions with the Europeans were rising as well due to frustrations of the Shah at European unwillingness to help with the wars against Ottoman Empire and in 1622; the Portuguese were kicked out from Iran. The lack of a Safavid navy and the failure of the land trade routes all lead to hostile chaotic conditions within the empire and in 1722, Afghan invaders succeeded in toppling the Safavid Shah. Even though the Shah remerged in 1736-1747, the empire was effectively powerless to stop its decline.