The campaign of Shaykh Djunayd Ṣafawī against Trebizond (1456 AD/860 H)

Abstract

Trebizond, on the southern coast of the Black Sea is separated by the distance of nearly one thousand kilometres from Ardabīl, the native town of Safawids, situated not far from the Caspian Sea. Despite that, in the midst of the 15th century fate amazingly brought together two royal families: the Grand Komnenoi of Trebizond and the Safawids of Iran. Shāh Ismācīl (1501–1524), the founder of the Safawid state was born in 1487/892 of Halima-begum, the daughter of the Trepezuntine despoina Theodora and the Aq Quyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan (1457–1478). Shaykh Djunayd Ṣafawī (d. 1460), the grandfather of Shāh Ismācīl, had nearly seized the city of Trebizond, about thirty years before the birth of his famous grandson. The Trapezuntine nobles left their sovereigns, the emperor John IV (1429–1459) and, likely, his sister Theodora, the future wife of Uzun Ḥasan and grandmother of Ismācīl. Trebizond remained unprotected and, if shaykh Djunayd were more persistent in his attempts to capture the city, who knows what would be the future of both celebrated dynasties.

Cashing in on land and privilege for the welfare of the shah: Monetisation oftiyūlin early Safavid Iran and eastern Anatolia

“…29 The likely prospect of the Qizilbāsh conquest of Trabzon in the wake of Selim I's departure to Istanbul must have driven Shah Ismā'īl to capitalise on inter-tribal divides between the Chapnīs of both cities. About half a century prior to this, Shaykh Junayd (d. 860/1456) and his disciples had laid a very successful siege to Trabzon and captured the city briefly before the outbreak of a plague epidemic forced them to leave the region for Georgia and Dagestan on a campaign of looting against non-Muslim denizens of both provinces (Shukurov 1993). But so far as Shah Ismā'īl's in-the-making campaign against the Ottoman garrison in Trabzon is concerned, all these proved to be a political miscalculation.…”