Talk:Safavid dynasty: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia

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The Safavid Empire is an important part of this era, for they were the last great patrons of classical Persian literature. I really do not care about the Safavids ethnic origins. I was taught that the Safavids were Turks, and I really do not care. What's important is not their ethnic origins or the languages the spoke, but their legacy and the influence they had on the region. And that influence was without doubt Persian, whether you like it or not. Many Persian nationalists of the past were not ethnic Persians. In fact, there is not really a Persian ethnicity, but a large cultural and historical identity that defines the Persians. Your understanding of the issue is totally wrong, because you try to explain the past with modern concepts. The concept of Persian ethnicty and Turkish ethnicity is the product of the 19th and 20th centuries and was totally irrelevant at the time of the Safavids and Ottomans. If you study the origins of the Safavids carefully, you will see that most of the kings had Turkmen mothers, almost all of them from the Black Sheep dynasty. However, if you study the origins of the Black Sheeps, you will see that they were not really Turkmens, but rather Greeks, because almost all of the ruling Khans had Greek mothers. And again, if you study the history of all of these dynasties, they all patronized Persian culture and literature, and none of them thought of it as a foreign language or culture. From the beginning of time, Turkish nomads had accepted the cultural dominance of the Persians, and this cultural dominance remains to this day. The Safavids may have been Turks, or maybe not. They may have been Kurds, or maybe not. But this is totally irrelevant, because the Safavids saw themselvs neither as Turks nor as Kurds, not even as Persians. They were a dynastic family with many different backgrounds. But they ruled an empire that was overwhelmingly Persian and had not lost the memories of its more than 3000 years lasting national history and identity. So, the Safavids were in fact Iranian nationalists, and Iraniannationalism is bond to Persian literature and mythology. This is absolutely normal in the region. If you look at Pakistan or Afghanistan today, the many different ethnic groups do not see each other as foreigners. And if they do, its a product of modern nationalism. Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, is an ethnic Pashtun and his native tongue is Pashto. But, like all the previous rulers in the region, he admires Persian literature and language, and almost all of his interviews and publications are in Persian. In Pakistan, Urdu is the unifying factor, and in America its the English language. Many Americans speak another language than English at home, but English remains the unifying and undisputed national language of America. The role of Persian language and identity in the region is far more impressive than that of English in America, because it has a continuous history of more than 2500 years as the unifying language between many different peoples. For this reason, it is known as Dari. No other language in the region, not even Arabic, has the same status in this regard.

I have no idea why you are so obsessed with Persians, but your attitude does not help anyone. All I was doing was trying to help by correcting mistakes and literally clean up this messed up article. I also added the paragraph about the Persian poetry of Sheikh Safi, because his Persian poetry (its only a very few verses) are important in understanding the old Azari language and, particularly, the dialect of Ardabil. The Sheikh's poetry does not really have religious or political importance, but linguistic importance. I added a link to Encyclopedia Iranica (the authority of this encyclopedia is undisputed among scholars!), because it explains the important role of his Persian verses: ''Of the written remains of AÚdòar^, the dobayt^s of Shaikh Sáaf^-al-d^n are the most important: They are relatively old, their linguistic area and their author are known, <u>and they are accompanied by a paraphrase in Persian which helps their understanding</u>. Despite Ardab^l's location at the eastern edge of Azerbaijan, in view of its significance both before and after the advent of Islam, its language must have been one of the more important dialects of AÚdòar^'' [http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/v3f3/v3f2a88b.html]. Please stop your aggressive attitude, and please stop accusing and insulting others. Wikipedia is a free dictionary, and everyone is allowed to improve articles. I have read the entire discussion, you debates with other Wikipedians, and I see no reason why this article should not be improved. Your debates with Ali were a good beginning, but both of you have ignored all the others. Again: I really do not care about the ethnic origins of the Safavids. Call them Turks if it makes you happy, call them Arabs if it makes you happy, or call them Russians if it makes you happy. I do not care! But certain information has to be mentioned, and this includes the purely Iranian identity of the Safavids, and the important Persian verses of their (alleged) ancestor Sheikh Safi. They Sheikh may have been the Safavids ancestor or not, we do not know. But his poetry is extremly important for studying the old Azari language, and this is all I am interested in. Many students from all around the world use Wikipedia a reference for their home works. Please do not delete important and reliable information, only because you, as an individual, are obsessed with certain words, peoples, or languages. Please stop it. Not everyone in here is obssessed with nationalities, and not everyone is interested in the Wikipedia community. I am not going to write anything else in the discussion, because everything has already been said. Good bye.

::Tajik, I don't care who you're personally, that's not my business. My concern is your POV pushing without facts at hand and vandalizing the pages using anonymous IP addresses, which is a violation of Wikipedia rules. Any word or statement can be interpreted completely different ways, by omitting words or taking them out of context. That's exactly what you do. It's well known to everyone that Safavids spoke Turkic and had primarily Azerbaijani identity, the way it's known today. Ismail wrote 1500 verses in Azerbaijani and only handful in Persian, and yet all this time yourself and few others were trying to dig up far minor details and bring them to front with only attempt to diminish his Azerbaijani identity and emphasize on Persian or Kurdish.

::I don't support the idea of ethnic nationalism, although many perceive edits this way. In fact, the same Qaraqoyunlu Turks that you cite fought against Mongols and Timurids, and yet Turks in Iran are being stereotyped and associated with Mongols, inferiority complex is being establish by making stupid jokes about them so that they start hating their own language and origin, and claim to be Aryan. This is a shame but it's more of a social problem. The concern here is not the general issue with perceptions or stereotypes, it's with the fact that you and few others see removing word Azerbaijani or Turkish, and replacing it with Persian or Kurdish as if it's a threat to Iranian identity. This form of complex, seeing everyone else other than Iranian speakers or non-Aryans, as enemies, is a tragic ideological damage inflicted upon many Iranians by 3 generations of self-invented Aryan ideology imposed on them. The truth is, if you're truely trying to build a unified Iranian identity or trying to contribute to unbiased and encyclopedic editing, whatever your goal is, acting on Turkophobic, Semitophobic or another pan-Aryan complexes will not help at all, it will only damage, diminish and fragment multicultural Iranian society and yours as well, apart from the fact that you're simply violating Wikipedia rules. [[User:Atabek|Atabek]] 18:56, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

== Anon IP socks ==