Tahmasp I

Tahmasp I (Persian: شاه تهماسب یکم‎‎; Azerbaijani: Şah I Təhmasib) (22 February 1514 – 14 May 1576) was an influential Shah of Iran, who enjoyed the longest reign of any member of the Safavid dynasty. He was the son and successor of Ismail I.

He came to the throne aged ten in 1524 and came under the control of the Qizilbash, Turkic tribesmen who formed the backbone of the Safavid power. The Qizilbash leaders fought among themselves for the right to be regents over Tahmasp, and by doing so held most of the effective power in hands in the empire. Upon adulthood, however, Tahmasp was able to reassert the power of the Shah and control the tribesmen with the start of the introduction of large amounts of Caucasian elements, effectively and purposefully creating a new layer in Iranian society, solely composed of ethnic Caucasians. This new layer, also called the third force in some of the modern day sources, would be solely composed of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Circassians, Georgians and Armenians, and they would continue to play a crucial role in Persia's royal household, harems, civil and military administration, as well as in all other thinkable and available positions for centuries after Tahmasp, and they would eventually fully eliminate the effective power of the Qizilbash in most of the functioning posts of the empire, by which they would also become the most dominant class in the meritocratic Safavid kingdom as well. One of his most notable successors, the greatest Safavid emperor, Abbas I (also known as Abbas the Great) would fully implement and finalize this policy and the creation of this new layer in Iranian society.