Encyclopedia of Islam

with arrests totaling nearly 1,600. These purges
added fuel to the fire, and, on October 6, Sadat
was assassinated in cairo during a parade com-
memorating the 1973 war. The assassin was
Khalid Islambouli, a member of Islamic Jihad. It
could be said that the Islamist movement in Egypt
reached its maturity under Sadat’s presidency.

Joshua Hoffman

Further reading: Kirk J. Beattie, Egypt during the
Sadat Years (New York: Palgrave, 2000); Raymond A.
Hinnebusch, Egyptian Politics under Sadat: The Post-
Populist Development of an Authoritarian-Modernizing
State (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1988);
Anwar El Sadat, In Search of Identity: An Autobiography
(New York: Harper and Row, 1978).

Saddam Hussein See hUsayn, saddam.

Safavid dynasty
The Safavid dynasty ruled iran from 1501 to
1722, and it was the first to institute Shii Islam as
the official state religion. Although the founder of
the Safavid dynasty was likely Safi ad-Din Ishaq
(b. ca. 1252), head of a mysterious paramilitary
Sufi order in Gilan called the Safawiyya, it was not
until one of Safi ad-Din’s heirs, a 15-year-old boy
named Ismail (d. 1524), defeated the rival tribes
in iran and declared himself shah in 1501 that the
Safavid dynasty was born.
Shah Ismail was a charismatic figure who
proclaimed tWelve-imam shiism the official state
religion and declared a brutal Jihad against Sunni
Islam both within his lands and in the neighboring
Ottoman Empire. The young king was unmoved
by arguments against the legitimacy of a Shii state
in the absence of the Hidden Imam, simply declar-
ing himself to be the long-awaited mahdi. Safavid
extremism ended under Ismail’s successors, but the
ideological and religious nature of the state he had
founded continued throughout the Safavid era, so
that shiism is to this day the state religion of Iran.
The Safavid state flourished for two centuries
after Ismail’s death, reaching its zenith at the

end of the 16th century under the reign of Shah

Abbas I (r. 1587–1629). Abbas not only created

a strong bureaucratic state backed by a power-

ful military force, but he also turned his capital,

Isfahan, into one of the most prosperous and re-

splendent cities in the Middle East. Indeed, many

of Islam’s greatest and most lasting contributions

to architecture, the arts, and the sciences were de-

veloped in Isfahan under Safavid patronage.

By the beginning of the 18th century, however,

a number of internal and external factors resulted

in a massive decline in the state’s economy. Upris-

ings throughout Iran ultimately led to the destruc-

tion of the Safavid dynasty in 1722, but it was not

until 1773 and the ascension of Nadir Shah as the

first ruler of the Afsharid dynasty that the Safavid

state ceased to exist.

See also qaJar dynasty; sUFism; UsUli school.

Reza Aslan

Further reading: Marshal Hodgson, The Venture of

Islam. Vol. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1974); Charles Melville, ed., Safavid Persia (London:

I.B. Taurus, 1996); Roger Savory, Iran under the Safavids

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

sahaba See companions of the prophet.

sahur See ramadan.

saint

The Arabic word usually translated as saint,

wali, refers primarily to the quranic verse 10:62:

“Indeed, on the friends of God (awliya Allah)

there is no fear, neither shall they grieve.” Two

words derived from walī are generally taken to

refer to sainthood, wilaya and wa l aya. Medieval

Muslim scholars, as well as contemporary observ-

ers of Islam, have debated which of these two

terms is the most appropriate, for they can be

understood to have different meanings: wilaya

connotes power, while walaya generally indicates

closeness. While Muslim scholars have differed as

K 598 Saddam Hussein