WI the Safavid win the Ottoman wars

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Deleted member 14881

The Safavids were fighting the ottomans ,and most of the time lost with some victories. Is it possible for them to win against the Ottomans ,and have them survive until now?
 
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as stated above, is it even possible for the Safavids to even win without ASB intervention?

Probably not, the Ottoman Empire had a much larger population (and thus a much bigger army) than the Safavids, had a much more advanced army (as far as military equipment was concerned) and was more politically stable than the early Safavid empire.

The amazing thing about the Persian-Ottoman wars, when you think about it, is not that the Persians lost some territory, its that they came out of it as well as they did considering the other side's advantages.
 

Deleted member 14881

yeah but how would you make the Safavids not fall by the 18th century?
 
yeah but how would you make the Safavids not fall by the 18th century?

Umm, it wasn't the Ottomans that killed the Safavids-the Safavids held them off, utimately without any major territorial losses (besides Iraq) after the early 1500's.

Basically, after Abbas I, all their kings were raised in the harem, without any real education or preperation for rule. Naturally, none of them (except Abbas II, who became King at around 8 and was give a first-rate education by his regents) were any good. Eventually, the Safavids got defeated in 1722 by an Afghan tribe (that they far outnumbered and should have wiped the floor with if their leadership hadn't degenerated), and said Afghan tribe was unable to hold Iran together, so the whole country basically went through 70 years of chaos* until the Qajars pieced everything back together in the 1790's.

Of course, the reason the Safavids kept their heirs in the harem was so they would have less chance of fighting amongst themselves or overthrowing their father, so a good POD would be to have them solve this problem some other way. Maybe adopt the Ottoman practice of the King executing all his brothers once he attained the throne to prevent them from trying to oust him later. Pretty grisly by modern standards, but effective.

*Well, that might be an oversimplification, as I'm leaving out the reign of Nader Shah, who did reunite Iran during his lifetime, but whole thing came apart again after his death
 
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Very unlikely. The Ottomans were expanding at the time. It was strange that the Ottos didn't bother conquering Persia.
 
Maybe adopt the Ottoman practice of the King executing all his brothers once he attained the throne to prevent them from trying to oust him later. Pretty grisly by modern standards, but effective.
That doesn't solve the problem either of course. From what I understand, freaked out the Ottoman populace so much that it was the Ottomans that adopted harem-raising Sultans rather than the other way around. Sometimes they did lots of executing, but it became rare after it ended up that there was only 1 Ottoman male remaining alive.

Meh, I've always believed that Persia is simply too far from Constantinople to have any kind of lasting control over it, be it the Romans, Byzzies or Ottomans.
 
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