Latest / The Safavid Empire: Persia's Return to Greatness — Fexingo History
Safavid Justice: The Qazi Courts That Bound an Empire
When Shah Ismail I conquered Tabriz in 1501, he inherited a patchwork of legal systems: Sunni qadi courts, customary Turkic law, Sufi brotherhoods with their own codes, and local sayyid arbiters. The Safavids didn't just impose Twelver Shiism — they built a new judicial hierarchy. This episode traces how Shah Tahmasp and Shah Abbas I restructured the qazi courts, created the office of sadr (chief religious judge), and used law as a tool of centralization. We look at a famous 1598 case in Isfahan where a qazi ruled against a royal gholam for land seizure, the role of shar'ia in disciplining…
The skinny
The skinny isn't ready yet — notes appear once the transcript is processed.