Open your treasury and distribute your wealth. Make your subjects rejoice. When you have many followers, make holy war and fill your treasury. The concern of the common people is always with their bellies... do not withhold their food and drink.

• Yūsuf Balasaguni, Kutadgu Bilig, 11th century

When the Turkic peoples of the steppes and the mountains of the east conquered westward, they found themselves the new lords of vast urban centers, great marbles palaces, bazaars with with merchants from foreign lands, and their new subjects who feared them. Their nomadic ways of governance were inadequate to meet the challenges of these vast new empires, and so came forth a new culture for the conquerors: one that merged Irano-Islamic and Turkic traditions on the steppes, its methods wisely recorded to the pages of the Kutadgu Bilig.

One such example of this tradition was the practice of Turkic rulers hosting traditionally Turkic feasts in the centers of their traditionally Iranian cities. Subjects from all corners of their vast empires were invited to come celebrate their leaders as well as to directly petition them with any troubles that had arisen in the frontier provinces. The Turko-Iranian Shaybanids were no strangers to such traditions as they had continued the feasts in their great cities as had been done by the Turko-Iranian rulers before them. But this particular feast would be marred by a great number of petitioners, all hailing from the western provinces of Persia.

1512

After pillaging the lands of the rival militant Shia Musha'sha' dynasty, Safavid raiders returned to their lands to celebrate their victories. But Ismail Safavid, the great warrior that he was, was unsatisfied with a victory over such a meager opponent, and he looked to the east for an even larger challenge. He ordered a premature end to the festivities and rallied his raiders to strike at the western provinces of the Shaybanids.

The raids were swift, brutal, and entirely one-sided. In the name of holy war and plunder, the Safvaid raiders poured across the frontier and laid waste to these lands. Unlike their raids against the Musha'sha', the defenders were incompetent, and so an even greater victory was made. The newly-appointed Shaybanid governor of the western provinces was not a man who was quick to act nor particularly interested in the ways of war,. This was a man who shied away from schemes, a man who had been placed on the far-flung frontier so that he could not pose a threat to the the Khan in Samarkand, Muhammad Shaybani.

Ismail's victorious raiders returned home, their raids more troubled by the logistics of transporting such vast quantities of loot than the feeble defense presented by the governor's militias. And so, the survivors buried their dead, made plans to rebuild and to get revenge, and chose representatives to travel east to Bukhara to petition the Khan for aid and a replacement governor.

The believers are but one brotherhood, so make peace between your brothers. And be mindful of Allah so you may be shown mercy.

• Verse of Brotherhood, Al-Hujurat (Q49:10)

And so the survivors went to Samarkand during the traditional time of feast, to celebrate and to petition their great Muhammad Shaybani. The survivors were welcomed and their pleas heard by the Khan, who pledged that he would take action, the survivors left, pleased with this pledge, but had they known their Khan's next move they would not have left his feast so peacefully.

"All Muslims are brothers," so said Muhammad Shaybani. "I shall write to my brother Ismail Safavid and solve this by reminding him of his duty to Islam."

The Khan, like the ineffective governor before him, was unable to fully understand the rising threat of the warlord to the west, Ismail Safavid. This flame that guided Ismail was not one that could be extinguished by words, especially the word of a Sunni Muslim. But the letter was sent, the governor was replaced, and Muhammad Shaybani looked forward to peaceful negotiations.

1513

A second Safavid raiding force charged into the Shaybanid lands, this host larger and better supplied for raids deeper into Shaybanid territory. At the head of this army was Ismail Safavid himself, his followers carrying the banners of his Knightly Order, his followers, his empire, and a new banner which held the tattered shreds of the letter sent by Muhammad Shaybani. This was Ismail's response to a Sunni calling a Shia to peace.

The Shaybanid defenses were better prepared this time around, but the Safavid army was bigger, and once again a great victory was gained by Ismail as his raiders charged further into Persia, with one particularly zealous group even nearing Khorasan. Eventually his great host reached a small castle, one not yet pilfered by his armies. Ismail approached this castle under a banner of truce, and he offered to the inhabitants of this castle to spare their lives and their wealth if they were to deliver a chest to the Khan.

The chest was filled with bundles of papers composed by Ismail and his followers, papers denouncing the call for peace, poems proclaiming holy victory of the Shia faithful over the Safavids, and challenges to the Shaybanid Khan to meet Ismail in the field of battle. All of these papers were bloodied by the heads of Shaybanid governors, which had also been placed in the chest.

The inhabitants of the castle agreed to deliver this chest, and so, Ismail, true to his word, ordered his army to return to his own lands. The chest was sent eastward to Samarkand on roads crammed with refugees and petitioners seeking the shelter and action of the Khan.

1514

The following spring, both the Shah and the Khan ordered their armies to muster, for this would be the time that the two would finally meet in battle. Though both had wanted to meet the prior year, neither was able to properly meet his opponent in the field of battle. For one, Ismail was unable to continue to campaign in Persia as his supplies were dwindling and his armies, victorious as they were, were composed of light horsemen and therefore judged to be incapable of victory in battle against a proper opponent. Muhammad's own realm had suffered from a shortage of horses, and so much of the prior year was spent on importing a great number of these beasts to his capital to ready his armies for the coming campaign, while a relatively small reprisal raid was ordered to strike at the Safavid realms.

Ismail's great army was composed of thousands of his Qizilbash followers, horse archers, the fanatically loyal gholam slave-soldiers, heavily armored, Georgian mercenaries, hired European engineers and sappers, conscripts wilding swords, spears, and shields, and a great number of Arab mercenaries. He had drained his coffers and strained the state in a quest to acquire loans to fund such a force, and even then, it would not be as large as his opponent's massive army.

Muhammad would meet this force with thousands of cavalry horse archers, lancers, and knights and even many footsoldiers wielding all manner of swords, pikes, hammers, axes, and clubs. Though he and his generals were used to a much more mobile army not normally composed with such an unfavorable ratio of footsoldiers, the merchants and treasurers of his realm had failed to acquire such a quantity of horses to equip such an oversized army.

Many months were spent with the two armies marching to and fro across the Persian plateau, with neither side agreeing to meet his opponent in the field until a suitable spot to make war could be found. Recognizing that his smaller army had the advantage of greater maneuverability, the Safavaid armies wore down their opponents by forcing them to make chase. By the summer of 1514, the Khan convened his generals to rework his strategy. The decision was made that the cavalry would detach from the infantry and make chase with greater speed. By chasing down Ismail in this fashion, now the Shaybanids would be the ones who had the advantage of maneuverability and battle would soon be made.

Under the scorching summer sun, a superior attempt at a chase was made, and within days the Khan had trapped the Shah. In a credit to their superior speed and determination, the Shaybanid cavalry had caught their opponent scattered across a plain, unprepared for battle as they made a hasty attempt at outmaneuvering.

Again, the Khan consulted with his generals as he had done before. But as it would be speed that had given the Khan this great advantage, it would be his lack thereof that would curse him with disadvantage. The Khan and his generals debated on whether to wait for the infantry to rejoin the army or to charge now while the opponent was scattered across the field. It was only after this moment of fatal hesitation that the decision was made to make battle now.

And so, the Shaybanid cavalry was not unsupported by the infantry and lacking in a numerical advantage over the Safavid forces. Battle was then made and decisively won by Ismail. The Safavid Shah, with his army complete and undivided by tension between generals, was able to use its combined forces of cavalry and infantry to crush the Khan and his own army. Muhammad Shaybani, undone by his hesitation in 1512, 1513, and now here in 1514, was found to be dead on the battlefield, filled with cuts and stabs from many sabers. News of this defeat made its way to second army, which then scattered in defeat.

Shah Ismail then continued his campaign across Persia, capturing a great number of castles and cities in his name. His war was only halted when he received a letter from Samarkand, offering the surrender of Persia to their Shia Safavid enemies. Shah Ismail, recognizing that he could go no further, agreed to this peace.

Thus, the story that has been told before has been told again: the fall of one Turko-Iranian realm to another. May Shah Ismail Safavid and his descendants be better rulers of Persia than those that came before.

M: Ismail Safavid has conquered Persia. Indian Ocean map to come.