Today is the anniversary of a battle that had far-reaching implications for the Middle East, but that gets relatively little recognition if you’re not a specialist in either Ottoman or Safavid history. The 1514 Battle of Chaldiran determined, among other things, that the Safavids would not be invading Anatolia, and it established the basic template of the Ottoman-Safavid relationship, by which I mean that the Ottomans, with very few exceptions, would spend the next couple of centuries having their military way with the Safavids whenever the mood struck.
This is just a placeholder. If you’d like to read the rest please check out my new home, Foreign Exchanges!
The Foreign Exchanges Companion 