Mohammad Baqer Mirza

Mohammad Baqer Mirza better known in the West as Safi Mirza (15 September 1587, Mashhad – 2 February 1614, Rasht) was the oldest son of king (shah) Abbas the Great (r. 1588-1629), and the crown prince of the Safavid dynasty during Abbas' reign and his own short life.

Safi Mirza was caught in one of the court intrigues in which several leading Circassians were involved, which would eventually cost him his life, and his place in the line of succession to become the next Shah. His son became the next Shah, known by his dynastic name Safi (r. 1629-1642).

Background

Mohammed Baqer Mirza was born in September 1587 by either one of Abbas' Christian Circassian wives, or by Fakhr-i Jahan Begam, the daughter of Bagrat IV, King of Imereti. Of Abbas' five sons, three had survived past childhood, so the Safavid succession seemed secure. He was on good terms with Mohammed Baqer Mirza, his oldest son and crown prince. In 1614, however, during a punitive campaign in Georgia against two former loyal Georgian subjects, TeimurazI and LuarsabII, the shah heard rumours that the prince was conspiring against his life with a leading Circassian, Farhad Beg Cherkes. Shortly after, Mohammed Baqer broke protocol during a hunt by killing a boar before the shah had chance to put his spear in. This seemed to confirm Abbas' suspicions, causing him to sink into melancholy; he no longer trusted any of his three sons. In 1615 he decided he had no choice but to have Mohammed killed. Another Circassian, named Behbud Beg, carried out the Shah's orders, and the prince was murdered in a hammam in the city of Resht; he was buried in Ardabil. The shah almost immediately regretted his action and was plunged into grief.

In 1621 Abbas fell seriously ill. Thinking his father was on his deathbed, his son and heir, Khodabandeh Mirza, began to celebrate his accession to the throne with his Qizilbash supporters. But the shah recovered and proceeded to punish his son by blinding him, disqualifying him from ever taking the throne. The blinding was only partially successful, however, and the prince's followers planned to smuggle him out of the country to safety in a fabricated treason. But the plot was betrayed, the prince's followers were executed, and the prince himself imprisoned in the fortress of Alamut, where he would later be murdered by Abbas' successor, Shah Safi.

Unexpectedly, Abbas now chose as his heir the son of Mohammed Baqer Mirza, Sam Mirza, a cruel and introverted character who was said to loathe his grandfather because of his father's murder. It was he who succeeded Shah Abbas at the age of seventeen in 1629, taking the name Shah Safi.

Offspring

Safi married twice. His first wife was Fakhr Jahan Begum, a daughter of Shah Ismail II. They married in November 1601 in Isfahan. She was the mother of his son, Soltan Soleyman Mirza. He was blinded in 1621, and was killed in August 1632 at Alamut, Qazvin. His second wife was Dilaram Khanum, a Georgian. With her, he had a son, Soltan Abul-Naser Sam Mirza, who succeeded as Safi.

Sources

References

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* {{cite book , last = Savory , first = Roger M. , title = Iran under the Safavids , publisher = Cambridge University Press , location = Cambridge, UK , year = 1980 , isbn = 0-521-22483-7 , lccn = 78073817

Iranian people of Circassian descent
Safavid princes
1580s births
1610s deaths
Safavid governors of Mashhad
Safavid governors of Hamadan
16th-century people of Safavid Iran
17th-century people of Safavid Iran