REBIRTH 187Well, wouldn't you know it: the Ottoman sultan Selim the Grim retali-
ated by locking up or executing Shi'is living in his realm. Inevitably, as Sun-
nis fled west into Anatolia, Shi'is fled east into Persia. The whole process led
to an ever greater concentration of Shi'ism in the Safavid empire (and Sun-
nism in the Ottoman) and the Safavids did everything they could to pro-
mote this trend as well as to fuse Shi'ism with Persian culture. This fusion of
Shi'ism and Persian nationalism became the ideological foundation of their
new empire, the core of which later became the modern nation of Iran.
As part of this campaign, the Safavids elevated the Tazieh into ana-
tional ritual drama. The Tazieh was a cycle of Shi'ite passion plays re-
counting the martyrdom of Hussein at Karbala. The plays came out of a
mourning ritual conducted in special buildings called takiah khanas. Tra-
ditionally, on the tenth day of the month of Muharam (the day of Hus-
sein's martyrdom) Shi'i got together in these places to mourn communally:
the custom had been going on for centuries. During the mourning, any-
one who felt an urge to tell a piece of the story would jump up and do so
in order to arouse and stoke the grief. Shi'i became thoroughly familiar
with every detail of the martyrdom and every story that could possibly be
told about it. For the telling of these plays they developed a distinctive
style of oration designed to trigger lamentation. The collection of all these
stories constituted the Tazieh (many pieces were written down, but there
was no single written version) and every year, on the Tenth of Muharram,
now that the Safavids held power, Shi'i through the empire took to the
streets (not just to takiah khanas) for a cathartic outburst of public lamen-
tation and then made their way to state-funded theaters where government-
funded professionals enacted the ritual on stage.
When Ismail was twenty-seven years old, he discovered that he wasn't
God after all. The Ottomans dealt him this lesson by invading his realm.
Spoiling for a fight, Ismail rushed to meet them. The two armies clashed on
the plains of Chaldiran, near the city ofTabrez. The Ottomans had firearms,
but the Safavids thought they had something better: old-fashioned reli-
gious fervor and a divinely guided leader. This time, firearms proved more
useful. Selim crushed Ismail's forces, almost killed Ismail, and took his
capital ofTabrez.
The battle ofChaldiran was as seminal as the Battle ofHastings, which
marked the birth of England as a nation-state. Historians usually score