Şah İsmail’in Üvey Annesi Anahatun

The Safavid chronicles usually do not provide satisfactory information about the biographies of women belonging to the dynasty. This gap can be filled with the help of official documents. Unfortunately, however, the archives of the Safavid period have not survived in an organized form to this day. Despite this, the documents to which we have access today play an important role in illuminating many dark moments of the historical process. An example in this regard is the life story of Anakhatun (Banafsha Khatun), one of the concubines of Sheikh Haydar. This woman, brought to Ardabil as a captive from Dagestan by Sheikh Haydar in the mid-1480s, was taken into the sheikh’s harem and gave birth to a son named Suleiman Mirza. After the murder of Sheikh Haydar in Shirvan (1488), she continued to remain in Ardabil. At the end of 1513, her son Suleiman Mirza rebelled in Ardabil against his brother Shah Ismail, marched on Tabriz and was killed there. According to the documents testifying to the period, after this incident, both Shah Ismail and Shah Tahmasb did not fail to show respect for Anakhatun, took her under their protection and defended her. Anakhatun’s biography is notable for the fact that it provides a general framework for understanding the fate of the mothers of murdered princes in the Safavid Empire.