1887.] 
E. E. Oliver —The Safwi By nasty of Persia. 
47 
Christians. In his own family he seemed to have fits of absolute mad¬ 
ness, but he was substantially a good ruler to his country. He made 
several wars, but he finally established a tranquillity unknown for cen¬ 
turies, and as Chardin observes, “ When this great Prince ceased to live 
Persia ceased to prosper.” 
He died on the 23rd Jamada-l-ula, 1037 H. in his favourite palace 
at Farahabad in Mazandaran at the age of 70. He had been nominally 
ruler almost from his youth, and was sovereign of all Persia for 43 
years. 
SAFI'. 
• 
To the great ’Abbas succeeded a series of weak and debauched 
monarchs, who may be briefly dismissed. Hitherto the Safwis had 
mainly been brought up as soldiers ; henceforward as a rule they were 
taken from the seclusion of the harem. Reared among women and 
eunuchs, they proved effeminate and incompetent, with no experience 
of government or capacity for war; and, as was to be expected, the 
power of Persia rapidly declined in their hands. For some years the 
nation lived on its reputation, but every season saw its decline, and 
almost every reign witnessed provinces lost. Sam Mirza, the son of 
the murdered Safi, succeeded his grandfather, as Shah Safi. Brought 
straight out of the haram at 17, “ where,” says Han way, “ he had no con¬ 
versation except with eunuchs, was taught nothing save to read and 
write, and allowed no diversion other than shooting with a bow or riding 
in the garden on an ass,” his thirteen years of reign were a succession of 
barbarous cruelties. He began by ordering the eyes of his brother to 
be cut out, his blind uncles to be cast from a rock, the leading minis¬ 
ters to be either blinded or executed, and a batch of ladies of the haram 
to be buried alive. Some authors include among these his mother, and 
Tavernier says, “when in his cups he stabbed his favourite Queen.” 
Finally he ordered an iron to be run across the eyes of his own son, 
’Abbas, an order which the eunuch humanely carried out with a cold 
instead of a hot one. Imam Quli, the general of his grandfather, the 
conqueror of Lar and of Hurmuz, was among his subsequent victims. 
Once more the Uzbaks invaded Khurasan, and Qandaliar was lost. The 
Turks under Murad,* returned to A'zarbaijan, and recaptured Ba gh dad, 
1044 H. But even a bad king cannot at once ruin a disciplined army, 
and less mischief was done than might have been expected. Safi’s 
object appeared to be to destroy his aristocracy, by whom he was even 
* Murad IV bin Ahmad, 1032 to 1049 H. 
