HISTORICAL STUDY OF WAR
Year:2019 | Volume:2 | Issue:4 (6) |Papers Count:8

From different perspective, the Safavid dynasty seems to have held an important position in the history of political developments in Iran. Among all the factors contributing to the establishment and consolidation of the Safavid government, the modern concept of discourse shift has great significance. This discourse shift, however, did not take place overnight; rather, a number of background factors as well as some measures taken by the Safavid kings helped the formation and consolidation of this political and identity discourse of the Safavid government. Using a discourse analysis method, the present study thus investigated the strategies the Safavid government adopted to stabilize and institutionalize its discourse. To make their discourse dominant, the research findings revealed, the Safavids took advantage of both a disciplinary face (macrophysics) as well as the micro face of power (microphysics). They gradually chose to stay away from the hard and material power and assumed cultural, spiritual, and soft hegemony. It was also found that among the Safavid kings, Shah Isma’ il represented the hard face of power and Shah Tahmaseb was credited with being the first to use the soft face of power for the stabilization of the Safavid political discourse.

The conquest of Iran by Muslim Arabs is one of the most important developments in Iran's history. Iran was completely conquered over two decades and the Sassanid government collapsed. There are still a lot of questions about this fall and its reasons. This article, which is based on the main resources of conquest of Iran, tries to present a new model for analyzing the course of the conquests. The main question of the study thus is if the conquests followed a particular pattern and if they can be presented in the form of a single theory. The second question concerns how the cities were conquered. Were they conquered through war or peacefully? In response to the above question, the hypothesis of this paper is formed. Iran was divided into eight regions, at the borders of which, one can see the greatest resistance of the Iranian military, which we call "border-threshold resistance". Once the borders were broken, the advance of Muslim Arabs was faster and with less fighting. As a result, the clashes are mostly generated by the military, and the general public are less involved at war. Understanding the speed and the quality of the Arab conquests of Iran is subject to understanding this pattern.

With the start of World War I and despite Iran's declaration of neutrality by Ahmad Shah Qajar, Iran became involved in the War and some Iranian cities were occupied by Russia, the Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire. Among the occupied territories, Azerbaijan and the city of Urmia and its environs deeply plunged into crisis due to ethnic variety, religious diversity, and differences in the way of life. The present article aimed to review and analyze the performance of the Iranian government in controlling the Urmia crisis. By studying the causes of the crisis in Urmia, this analytical descriptive research thus tried to answer the question that what the Qajar government did to control the crisis in Urmia and what the result of those measures was. The findings of the research show that the Qajar government made an effort to control the crisis through firstly negotiations with the occupying powers to withdraw their forces from Azerbaijan, secondly dispatching the crown prince to Tabriz, and thirdly changing the governors of Urmia. Nevertheless, due to the extreme weakness of the central government, an increasing financial crisis, and the lack of reliable military forces, it could not achieve much in managing the crisis.

The Fatimid Caliphate (297-567AH) enjoyed special military and political distinctions in the Islamic world. The reliance of the Fatimid caliphs on the organization of powerful land and naval forces led to the expansion of this caliphate and the achievement of political and military power in their struggle against the Abbasid caliphate. The present study seeks to evaluate the military organization and establishment of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt (567-358 AH). To this end, it aims to analyze and answer the following questions: First, how did the Fatimid Caliphate’ s army institution in Egypt contribute to the rise and fall of this government in the Muslim world during the fourth century AH to sixth century AH? Second, how did the structure of the Fatimid army form based on the need and pattern of Islamic governments? And third, which institutions were responsible for the administration of the enormous Fatimid army? The findings of this study indicate that the Fatimid army, with the backing of a coherent administrative structure and enjoying ethnic and racial diversity, became one of the most extensive military institutions within the governments of the Middle Ages. However, a relative weakness in maintaining a stable balance among different groups of soldiers made the state always vulnerable to garrison uprising.

The military unions of various rulers in monarchies always consisted of a combination of tribal and gunmen groups of various rural and urban areas of the country. Based on characteristics such as kinship or proximity with the ruling clan or the number of warriors, these groups had central or marginal roles in the military unions. The present research thus aimed to respond to this question that what type of political-military relations among different groups of the Zand military union vis-à-vis Qajar and Afghan military unions led to the rise to power of Karim Khan Zand. To answer this question, this study was performed using historical research and classifying internal relations in the Zand military union to as part of the analysis and interpretation of such features and their impacts on the accession of Karim Khan (1160- 1176). The findings show that the vand tribes such as Zand, Maafi, Nankali, Jalalvand, Behnavi, Salarvand and Jaaf, inhabiting Pari, Kamazan, Gilan and Kaverdan regions played a key role in the coalition of Karim Khan Zand, based on the ethnic connections such as laki language and the tradition of consultative command. Due to the relative lack of personal and collective interests, Karim Khan could, in critical circumstances, unite with other tribes and gunmen groups, and gain victory without eliminating groups within the military union.

Timur’ s era was the time of the conquest and evolution of the empire during which a military aristocracy played the most salient role in the structure of power. In Shahrukh’ s era, a kind of structural transformation occurred in the nature and manner of the exertion of power that could be considered as the passing of the power of Timurid Empire from a military-dominated discourse to a military-civil structured power. In this era, it seems that, for the first time throughout Iran’ s history, the governors and military agents distanced from the merely military functions and permanent stances of the men of the sword by engaging themselves in administrative and executive activities. The present study thus employed a descriptive analytic method to not only ponder on the administrative structure of the Timurid period, and the effort to a conflict between the literati and the men of the sword but also to address the major question of what the effects of the transformation of the political structure and the institutionalization of the Timurid power in Shahrukh’ s era on the function and stance of the military governors of that period were. The results of the research indicate that in the light of the realistic personality of Shahrukh and the institutionalization of power in his era, the administrative structure was improved so that some governors paid attention to official affairs and created a new political experience in the history of Iran’ s middle period.

After the migration of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) to Medina, about 80 battles happened between him and the infidel, out of which 30 battles are referred to as ghazawat. One of the ghazawat is known as Banū Qurayza. Following the Jewish violation of their treaty with the prophet, the prophet intended to punish them. There are two types of accounts in historical resources about the outcome of the resulting battle: a) killing of men and capturing of women and children, b) killing of the warriors and capturing of women and children. Some orientalists have used these reports as pretexts to try to present a violent and arrogant picture of the prophet of Islam. The present descriptive and analytical study attempted at a logical evaluation of the reports, comparing them with the sī ra of the prophet in wars, and contemplating the Qur'anic ayahs related to this war. The results reveal that no general massacre occurred in this ghazwa. Rather, some Jews were killed in the battlefield and during the battle and some others were captured.

This research aimed to identify and study the elements determining the fate of Sassanid wars with Muslims from Qā disiyyah to Nahā vand. The lack of theoretical studies in general and the lack of comparative studies of wars relying on contemporary warfare theories in particular required extra effort by the researcher to adapt historical reports based on one of the most important war theories to answer this question that what strategic factors Sassanians and the emerging Arab forces, as two major powers, used in their four battles that led to the victory of the Arabs. In response to this fundamental question, the data were analyzed and explicated using the fifteen key elements of Clausewitz's theory (in five main subjective, physical, mathematical, geographical and statistical domains). As a result, the present study found that the supremacy of the Muslim Arabs in subjective elements has played a decisive role in their victory, and that the influence of this superiority on other physical, mathematical, geographic and statistical elements has been manifested in the victory of the Muslims. Finally, referring to these strategic elements, the victory of the Muslims, instead of being merely attributed to supernatural and sacred factors, must have had to do with objective and historical factors that have to be taken into account.