War between the Turks and the Persians- Conflict and Religion in the Safavid and Ottoman Worlds

Between 1501, the year when the Safavid dynasty established a state in Persia, and 1639, the
year when the Persians and the Ottomans gave up fighting each other by concluding a peace
accord that proved to be definitive, these two states were engaged in no less than six major
wars. All of these stretched out over multiple years and involved numerous campaigns and
battles as well as the repeated invasion and conquest of the frontier zones lying astride the territory
of the two states – Armenia and Georgia – located in the piedmont of the Elbruz mountain
range, the mountainous terrain of eastern Anatolia and the lowlands of Mesopotamia.
Launched and fought over the types of interests that have ignited wars since the dawn of
time – territory, resources, kingly glory – the various instalments of the protracted Ottoman–
Safavid conflict were articulated in religious terms, in a way that bears more than a little
resemblance to the wars of religion that raged in contemporary Europe. The Ottomans saw
themselves as the champions of Sunni Islam; the Safavids went into battle under the banner
of Islam’s Shi‘i variant; and each party vilified the other as heretical, the representative of
irredeemable evil and utter depravity.