Chaldoran 1514 AD



It was late summer in the year 1514, and Iran had a new dynasty in power(The Safavid 1501-1722). The distinctive difference here was the fact that the Safavids were the first "Shia" dynasty that used all methods in the book to convert all Iranians into a homogeneous religion, since the "Iranshahr" factor (which was the name that Iranians used for their country) did not seem enough to mobilize a sense of national unity to refute new national threats, mainly the Afghans and the Turks. The Safavid used issues like the marriage of "BiBi-Shahrbanu" (sister of the last Sassanid King) with "Imam Hussain" and the fact that the fourth Shia "Imam Zein-Ol-Abedin" had not only prophet blood, but also Iranian Royal blood, which stimulated nationalistic feelings of even the most fanatic Sunni Iranians to convert. Furthermore the most convincing argument, was the sword and the famous sentence attributed to the founder of this dynasty was "Either they convert or their heads will role"

Nevertheless, the Ottoman empire was not amused by the spread of the Shia religion and the consequences of this rapid spreading and stabilization of the Iranian empire was causing Kurdish and other minorities in the Ottoman empire to cause a lot of anxiety for the Ottoman Sultan " Salim the First" who decided to handle before it was too late. The Iranian King "Shah Ismael" had a very traditional and honorable view of war and weapons, he refused to use Cannons and considered them weapons of mass destruction, his view of normal firearms, was not much better, he considered them to be a weapon for cowards.He stubbornly refused to use these modern weapons to reach his objectives,and it was so that Iranians and Turks faced each other at "Chaldoran" on the 23 of August 1514.

Iranians did not have a standard army, they were tribal warriors,just under 30,000 in number and they were facing an army of over 100,000 Turkish soldiers, equipped with Cannons and all the modern war machineries of the day.The bravery of the Iranian army in this historic face off resulted in a massive loss of life on both sides and the Turkish army did not dare move on before all Iranians were dead, stories of the Iranian cavalry charges that decapitated the Cannon men, had traumatized the Turkish army. But as all such uneven wars ends, so did the Chaldoran war, Shah Ismael of Iran should have resorted to asymmetric warfare, other words a "Partisan" warfare (another invention of Iranians of Parthian descent that resisted the Greeks of Alexander for 80 years and lastly established the "Ashkanian" dynasty )but Shah Ismael learned, and as the Turkish Ottoman army reached "Tabriz" , they were forced to retreat and their (Ottoman) military adventure failed in Iran. This costly war for the Ottomans, forced them to turn to Europe for further expansion and leave Iran alone.

The important lesson of the Chaldoran war is, never to compromise the military forces of any country for personal and humanitarian philosophies, because the enemy does not have the same values, be prepared and get yourself the best, by todays standards, it could be called a "deterrent". Iran should know better, than give any of its hard won technological achievements away, just to safeguard the other sides advantage.

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