Safavid Azerbaijan Consolidated

1507

Shah Ismail I completed his conquest of Azerbaijan and marched west into Diyarbakir, absorbing the last Aq Qoyunlu remnants. Persian Shia authority now stretched from the Euphrates to Herat. The Sunni world, from Istanbul to Samarkand, began viewing the young shah as an existential threat. Ismail's transformation of Iran into a unified Shia state created a sectarian divide that persists in the twenty-first century.