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In 1494, in another world, a seven-year old boy named Ismail was pulled out of a house by soldiers in Tabriz, a city which, in our world, his actions would place in the west of Iran. In our world, the soldiers didn't find him. After being transfered from safehouse to safehouse by his followers in Tabriz, he escaped the city and came of age among Turkic tribesmen in the wilds of Azerbaijan. He took his rightful place as leader of the Safavids, a Sufi order lead by a hereditary line of masters, which over time had built up a rich treasury and its own private military, made up of fanatically devoted Azeri tribesman who considered the Safavid leaders to be the manifestations of God on Earth. The power of the Safavids led them to be alternately courted as allies and persecuted as dangerous enemies by the Aq Qoyunlu, the Turkic tribe that ruled Iran. Ismail defeated the Aq Qoyunlu in our world. He became known to history as Shah Ismail I of Persia, and he wrenched that country, long a stronghold of Sunnism, into the Shia branch of Islam, importing Ayatollahs from Lebanon and eastern Arabia to spread the faith to the people of Iran. His descendants ruled Iran until the 18th century.

Before that, however, he was a little boy, whose father and brother, the heads of the Safavid order, had been killed by the Aq Qoyunlu. And in another world, they got to him too. With its line of ruling masters extinct, the Safavid order imploded, its fearsome military turning in on itself and destroying itself in a struggle for power, and leaving the Aq Qoyunlu to continue ruling Iran, for a little longer. Shah Ismael and the Safavids were utterly lost to history. And for the peoples of the Middle East and Europe, that loss would make a very big difference indeed.

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Just to clarify, for those unfamiliar with Iranian history who may not have gotten the introduction: the POD is Shah Ismail I, the founder of the Safavid dynasty, getting killed by the by the Aq Qoyunlu as a young boy (as opposed to OTL, where he escaped the Aq Qoyunlu manhunt for the Safavid ruling family, the only member of them to do so). He thus doesn't go on destroy the Aq Qoyunlu in 1508-the first immediate effect being that Iran remains a Sunni country.
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