Factors of political & social degeneration of governments and strategies to deal with them (A Case Study of the Safavid Dynasty;An analysis of Teb-ol Mamaalek)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 PhD student, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Islamic Studies and Political Science, Imam Sadegh University, Tehran, Iran.

2 Associate Professor, Department of Islamic Revolution Studies, Faculty of Islamic Studies and Political Sciences, Imam Sadegh University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Introduction: Characterized by its Shiite background and the interdependence of religion and politics in governance, the Safavid government bear some significant similarities to the Islamic Republic of Iran and played an important role in shaping Iran's political and social history. The aim of the present research is to examine the causes of the decline and fall of the Safavid government and to investigate the strategies that could have served as a solution to this decline for the Safavids To this end, after a historical investigation, Resaale-ye Teb-ol Mamaalek (the Treatise on State Medicine) written by Qutb al-Din Nayrizi has been chosen as the textual reference to analyze and achieve the research goal. This selection is of great importance due to Qutb al-Din Nayrizi's religious status and his contemporaneity with the reign of Shah Sultan Hussein Safavid (during whose period the fall of the Safavids occurred), and it can significantly reflect the political and social conditions of that era and elucidate Nayrizi's prescriptions for strengthening the political and social foundations of Safavid Iran and overcoming the state of weakness.
Method: Due to the text-oriented nature of the current research, the authors will use the thematic analysis, which is more applicable to written sources. Accordingly, the materials related to the topic were extracted, categorized and coded. Relying on the stated methodological steps, in order to discover the existing topics of the text of  Resaale-ye Teb-ol Mamaalek (the Treatise on State Medicine), the extraction and coding process of the topics in each section has been done by the researchers. Therefore, using MaxQDA software, categories related to the factors of decline and the strategies to prevent it were marked with the symbols Fa and So, and the coding process was carried out.
Findings: In the end, the extracted themes were categorized under two main headings: causes of decline and strategies for overcoming the crisis. Through this process, the influential factors in each of these two headings were identified from Qutb al-Din Nayrizi's perspective, and the position of various factors in his thought was recognized. According to the author of this treatise, if the scholars, as one of the important social groups, are weak-willed, worldly, hypocritical, followers of the Sultan, and inactive, the groundwork for societal decline is laid. Nayrizi also mentions "environmental factors," including widespread famine and foreign territorial expansionism, and "divine trials and traditions" as causes of societal decline.
 Conclusion: According to the findings, it can be concluded that this religious thinker classified the factors of degeneration into the following five categories: factors related to the  public, factors related to scholars, factors related to governance, environmental factors, and also divine traditions; he also classified the solutions to deal with it under four categories: solutions related to the  public, solutions related to the scholars, solutions related to governance, and finally, transcendental solutions or divine aid.
 

Keywords

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