Tamar Lekveishvili - Ilia State University, Georgia, Tbilisi

The thesis describes the decline of the Safavid dynasty. It covers very important issues around the reasons of the Safavid dynasty collapse. Sources provide rich references on foreign policy problems, arbitrariness of nobles, tax burden deterioration, social conflicts, feudal wars, poverty in peasantry and so on. However, when exploring the reasons of historical events, eyewitnesses in their works are confined by only describing personal characters of distinct historical figures. The historiography of that period, in general, does not strive for identifying reasons of social-economic and political developments and outlining interconnections between historical events. They give preference to personal factors. This tendency is discerned with all authors of primary sources: Iranian or Caucasian authors, Russian diplomats or European missioners. The thesis discusses and compiles sources of the last Safavids period and scientific literature related to that Period. As a result, we can observe the gradual decadency of the Safavid state and then comprehensive and evident picture of full destruction. Both historians of the 19th and 20th centuries and contemporary western and eastern researchers adhere to a certain consensus around this issue. Their opinion, in practice, does not differ from the Safavids contemporary historians’, but the accents outlined by scientists of various periods are also important.

The Last Safavids – decline