Impact of Safavid kings’ acts of power on the divergence of minorities in the second period of the Safavids based on the reports of travel logs

Writers of the travel logs in the second period of Safavid rule have given narrative accounts of the status of ethnic-religious minorities, through which the identity issue of minorities and its role in diverging them from the body of government can be identified. In these narratives, both the minority groups that entered into Iran as a result of Shah Abbas's structural policies, and the ethnic-religious minorities inside Iran, which had been marginalized as a result of the domination of Shiite-ideological discourse of Safavids, were separated from the governing body and eventually played a major role in the collapse of the government. According to writers of travel logs, dominance of the religious-ideological attitudes of Safavids, disregard of the identity of ethnic-religious minorities, ineffectiveness of kings’ acts of power after Shah Abbas, and authority of parallel centers of power made the government unable to converge with minorities, and at the same time, provided space for minorities to act influentially in the process of the fall of Safavids. The results of this research, which has been done with a descriptive-analytical method, show that according to writers of travel logs, the methods of exercising power and ideological approaches of the Safavid kings after Shah Abbas brought about the divergence of ethnic-religious minorities from the body of the government and made it a very important challenge. Furthermore, ignoring the issue of minorities led to the revival of ethnic-religious identity among these minorities and eventually accelerated the fall of the Safavids.