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Battle of Chaldiran
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The Battle of Chaldiran (also Chaldoran or Çaldiran) occurred on 23 August 1514 and ended with a decisive victory for the Ottoman Empire over the Safavids. As a result the Ottomans gained control over the north western part of Iran. The Ottomans had a larger, better equipped army numbering 100,000 to 200,000, while the Iranians numbered some 40,000. Shah Ismail I was wounded and almost captured in the conflict.
Background
After Selim I's successful struggle against his brothers for the throne of the Ottoman Empire, he was free to turn his attention to the internal unrest he believed was stirred up by the Shia Kizilbash, whom had sided with other members of the Dynasty against him and had been semi-officially supported by Bayezid II.
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Encyclopedia
The Battle of Chaldiran (also Chaldoran or Çaldiran) occurred on 23 August 1514 and ended with a decisive victory for the Ottoman Empire over the Safavids. As a result the Ottomans gained control over the north western part of Iran. The Ottomans had a larger, better equipped army numbering 100,000 to 200,000, while the Iranians numbered some 40,000. Shah Ismail I was wounded and almost captured in the conflict.
Background
After Selim I's successful struggle against his brothers for the throne of the Ottoman Empire, he was free to turn his attention to the internal unrest he believed was stirred up by the Shia Kizilbash, whom had sided with other members of the Dynasty against him and had been semi-officially supported by Bayezid II. Selim now feared that they would incite the population against his rule in favor of Shah Isma'il leader of the Shia Safavids, and by some of his supporters believed to be family of the Prophet. Selim secured a jurist opinion that described Isma'il and the Kizilbash as "unbelievers and heretics" enabling him to undertake extreme measures on his way eastward to pacify the country. In response, Shah Isma'il accused Sultan Selim of aggression against fellow Muslims, violating religious sexual rules and shedding innocent blood.
At the same time that Selim I marched west, the Safavids were invaded in the east by the Uzbek state recently brought to prominence by Abu 'I-Fath Muhammad who had fallen in battle against Isma'il only a few years before. In the course of this two front war, Isma'il had to employ a scorched earth policy against Selim in the west.
The terrain of eastern Anatolia and the Caucuses is extremely rough and combined with the difficulty in supplying the army in light of Isma'il's scorched earth campaign while marching against Muslims, Selim's army was discontented. The Janissaries even fired their muskets at the Sultan's tent in protest at one point. When Selim learned of the Safavid army forming at Chaldiran, he quickly moved to engage Isma'il in part to stifle the discontent of his army.
Battle
The Ottomans deployed heavy artillery and thousands of Janissaries equipped with gunpowder weapons behind a barrier of carts. Even though the Safavids had access to gunpowder technology, they chose not to use it because they believed it to be inhumane, and instead used qizilbash cavalry to engage the Ottoman forces. The advanced Ottoman weaponry was the deciding factor of the battle as the Safavid forces, who elected to use traditional weaponry, were decimated.
Aftermath
Following the victory Ottomans captured Tabriz, and Safavids did not threaten them again for nearly a century. It also brought an end to the Alevi uprisings in Ottoman Empire.
The Battle of Chaldiran demonstrated that firearms were a decisive factor in warfare. Prior to Chaldiran, the Safavid army (Qizilbash) refused to use firearms for they regarded this kind of warfare as cowardly and honorless.
The Qizlbasha chivalric code was called the jawanmardi.
The outcome at Chaldiran had many consequences. Perhaps most significantly, it established the border between the two empires, which remains the border between Turkey and Iran today. With the establishment of that border, Tabriz became a frontier city, uncomfortably close to the Ottoman enemy. That consideration would be a major factor in the decision to move the Safavid capital to Qazvin, in the mid-16th century, and finally to Isfahan, in 1598.
The Safavids made drastic domestic changes after the defeat at Chaldiran. The Safavids spoke a Turkic language. The Safavid royal family moved away from extreme, eschatological, Alevi sect and adopted Shia sect as the official religion of the empire - the position of the Shah as Mahdi being incompatible with the recent defeat . The Sunni Shafi`i majority of Iran was also forcibly converted to Ithna Ashari Shia while those, mostly Qizilbash, who refused to abandon the previous worship of the Shah were executed.
The Battlefield Today
The site of the battle is near Jala Ashaqi village, around 6km west of the town of Siyah Cheshmeh, south of Maku, north of Qareh Ziyaeddin. A large brick dome was built at the battlefield site in 2003 along with a statue of Seyid Sadraddin, one of the main Safavid commanders.
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