Ismail I

Ismail took control of the Safavid order as a child after his brother's death, leading Turkoman fighters called the Qizilbash who saw him as divinely guided. In 1501, at fourteen, he seized Tabriz and declared himself shah. Over the next decade he conquered the rest of Iran and pushed into Anatolia, proclaiming Twelver Shiism the official faith and destroying Sunni shrines in 1508, igniting sectarian fury across the region. The Ottomans crushed him at Chaldiran in 1514, ending his expansion. He sank into depression and drink, dying in 1524 at thirty-six. The dynasty he founded ruled for two centuries, and under the pen name Khaṭāʾī he left a body of Azerbaijani verse that shaped the language's literature.