Tag Archives: Safavids

“Religion” is Not a Human Universal

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 26 April 2026

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A Note on the Concept of Sacral Monarchy in Iran

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 25 January 2026

The idea of sacral Monarchy stretches back to the foundations of the Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great, over 2,500 years ago, who ruled as Shahanshah (King of Kings), an office originating with the Zoroastrian deity Ahura Mazda, and all Kingly successes were attributed to this god. It is this sense of Persian Kings as vessels for divine will that explains why they are so anonymous when compared to, say, the Roman Caesars: what mattered was the role, not the idiosyncrasies of the individual playing it.

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The Establishment of the Qajar Dynasty in Iran

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 28 February 2019

Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar, founder of the Qajar dynasty (1794-1925) in Iran [source]

Gavin R.G. Hambly, a Middle East scholar and historian, wrote a paper in 1963 about the establishment of the Qajar dynasty, the second-to-last ruling House in Iran, and particularly about its first monarch, Agha Mohammad Khan. The paper is slightly revisionist about Agha Mohammad, countering the long-standing reputation of him as solely a ruthless despot. The Qajars, for all their faults, prevented the outright colonisation of Iran in the nineteenth century, and imposed an order that held the country together, albeit while losing tracts of territory on the periphery—the Caucasus and Turkmenistan to the Russians in the north, and areas in the east to the British, notably Herat, which was annexed to Afghanistan, and parts of Baluchistan and Sistan to what would later become Pakistan. This resilience of the Iranian state is largely ascribable to Agha Mohammad, argues Hambly, who showed a sense of public spirit he is rarely credited with in consciously making the lives of ordinary Iranians better. Continue reading →

The Islamic State Planned For Sectarian War in Iraq From the Beginning

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 13 October 2017

The Iraqi Kurdish authorities arrested Mustafa Haji Muhammad Khan (Hassan Ghul) on 23 January 2004. Khan had been dispatched to Iraq by Nashwan Abd al-Baqi (Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi), one of the key military officials of al-Qaeda “central” (AQC), to function as AQC’s intermediary with Ahmad al-Khalayleh (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), the founder of the Islamic State movement. Khan replaced Abdallah al-Kurdi, the first envoy sent by Abd al-Baqi. Al-Kurdi had failed to establish any footing to do his job effectively, but Khan, a battle-hardened jihadist from Baluchistan, earned a measure of respect from al-Khalayleh and facilitated a productive conversation between AQC and al-Khalayleh. Al-Khalayleh, possessed of a pathological anti-Shi’ism, wrote a seventeen-page memo to Usama bin Laden explaining his strategy to defeat the Americans by starting a total war between the sects in Iraq. That memo, in digital form, was given to Khan, and Khan had it in his possession when he was captured. A translation of the letter is given below with some interesting sections highlighted in bold.[1] Continue reading →