The Islamic World to 1600

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The Uzbeks were a Turkish community on the steppes of Central Asia west of the Caspian Sea, which first rose to prominence in the early 15th century for overthrowing Timur's successors from the Chagatai Khanate. They claimed to be descendants of Sheiban, a brother of the original Golden Horde ruler, Batu Khan, and they had adopted Islam before the Mongol invasions of the 13th century.

By the time Ismail I became Shah of Persia under the Safavid dynasty, the Uzbeks had built a powerful empire of their own in Central Asia. They controlled the main Islamic Central Asian cities of Bukhara, Samarkand, Kabul, and Herat, and they successfully resisted the frequent attempts by Babur, the future founder of the Mughal Empire in India, to capture Samarkand. In 1508, the Uzbeks ousted the last Timurid ruler from Khurasan, an eastern province of Persia, and occupied it. In 1510, however, Shah Ismail brought his loyal Qizilbash army to meet the Uzbeks at Khurasan, and the ensuing battle proved devastating to the Uzbeks. Their ruler was killed, and they were forced to give up Khurasan, including the artistically renowned city of Herat, to the Safavids.

Throughout the 16th century the Uzbeks remained a major Safavid enemy, and Khurasan changed hands many more times after battles between the two. Often, the Uzbeks would take advantage of Safavid preoccupation with its other major enemy, the Ottoman Empire to the west, to launch an invasion from the east. The dilemma of how to adequately defend its two fronts was one that the Safavids never entirely solved.

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