Ali Mirza Safavi (Persian: علیمیرزا صفوی), also known as Soltan-Ali Safavi (سلطان علی صفوی) (died 1494), was the penultimate head of the Safavid order. Having grown wary of his political power, Ali Mirza was captured by the Ak Koyunlu and spent several years in captivity in Fars before being released in 1493 by prince Rostam. In the ensuing period he and his men assisted the prince in defeating Baysonqor bin Yaqub. A year later however, in 1494, now perceiving the Safavid order as a threat to his own position, Rostam ordered for the execution of Ali Mirza Safavi. Realizing his inevitable fate, shortly before his death, Ali Mirza Safavi appointed his brother Ismail as his successor. Ismail, in turn, eventually came to establish the Safavid Empire, with the regnal name Ismail I (r. 1501–1524).
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👉 Ali Mirza Safavi in the context of Shaykh Haydar
Shaykh Haydar or Sheikh Haydar (Persian: شیخ حیدر Shaikh Ḥaidar; 1459–9 July 1488) was the successor of his father (Shaykh Junayd) as leader of the Safavid order from 1460 to 1488. Haydar maintained the policies and political ambitions initiated by his father. Under Sheikh Haydar, the order became crystallized as a political movement with an increasingly extremist heterodox Twelver Shi'i coloring and Haydar was viewed as a divine figure by his followers. Shaykh Haydar was responsible for instructing his followers to adopt the scarlet headgear of 12 gores commemorating The Twelve Imams, which led to them being designated by the Turkish term Qizilbash "Red Head".
Haydar soon came into conflict with the Shirvanshahs, as well as the Ak Koyunlu, who were allied to the former. Following several campaigns into the North Caucasus, mainly in Circassia and Dagestan, he and his men were eventually trapped in 1488 at Tabasaran by the combined forces of the Shirvanshah Farrukh Yassar and Ya'qub Beg of the Ak Koyunlu. In a pitched battled that ensued, Shaykh Haydar and his men were defeated and killed. He was succeeded by his son Soltan-Ali as leader of the order. Soltan-Ali was on his part succeeded by Haydar's younger son, who would become the founder of the Safavid dynasty, and known by his regnal name of Ismail I.
Ali Mirza Safavi in the context of Safavid order
The Safavid order (Persian: طریقت صفویه) also called the Safaviyya (Persian: صفویه) was a Sufi order (tariqa) founded by the mystic Zahed Gilani and named after his son-in-law and successor Safi al-Din Ardabili (1252–1334 AD). It held a prominent place in the society and politics of northwestern Iran in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but today it is best known for having given rise to the Safavid dynasty.
Starting in the early 1300s, the leaders of the Safavid movement clearly showed that they wanted political power as well as religious authority. This ambition made the rulers of western Iran and Iraq first feel uneasy, and later, they became openly hostile. Even though three Safavid leaders in a row (Junayd in 1460, Heydar in 1488, and Ali in 1494) were killed in battle, the movement was still strong enough to succeed and lead to the founding of the Safavid dynasty in 1501. The Safavid kings based their authority on three core beliefs: that they were divinely appointed to rule Iran, that they acted as the earthly representatives of the Muhammad al-Mahdi—the Twelfth Imam in Twelver Shi‘ism who is expected to return and bring about a just and peaceful world—and that they served as the moršed-e kāmel, or perfect spiritual guide, of the Safavid Sufi order. However, in the period just before the Safavid state was officially founded, their religious propaganda, known as da‘va, went beyond these claims. It asserted that the Safavid leader was not simply the Mahdi’s representative, but the Mahdi himself—or even a divine incarnation.