EBN BAZZĀZ, DARVĪŠ TAWAKKOLĪ b. Esmāʿīl b. Ḥājī Ardabīlī, author of the Ṣafwat al-ṣafāʾ, a biography of Shaikh Ṣafī-al-Dīn Esḥāq Ardabīlī (d. 935/1334), founder of the Safavid order of Sufis and the eponym of the Safavid dynasty. Ebn Bazzāz was a disciple of Shaikh Ṣadr-al-Dīn Ardabīlī (d. 794/1391-92), the son and successor of Shaikh Ṣafī-al-Dīn. The work, also entitled al-Mawāheb al-sanīya fī manāqeb al-Ṣafawīya, deals mainly with Shaikh Ṣafī-al-Dīn’s miracles and sayings and contains little of a biographical nature (see Browne, Lit. Hist. Persia IV, pp. 38-39, for a list of its contents). Ebn Bazzāz completed this voluminous work (over 800 folios) around 759/1358, only twenty-four years after the death of Shaikh Ṣafī-al-Dīn. It is written in a straightforward style, without much rhetorical embellishment. Ideologically-motivated alterations were already present in a manuscript dated 914/1508, during the reign of Shah Esmāʿīl I (Aya Sofya 2123; Togan). Shah Ṭahmāsb (930-84/1524-76) ordered Mīr Abu’l-Fatḥ Ḥosaynī to produce a revised edition of the Ṣafwat al-ṣafāʾ. This official version contains textual changes designed to obscure the Kurdish origins of the Safavid family and to vindicate their claim to descent from the Imams.
Bibliography
(For cited works not given in detail, see “Short References.”)
E. Glassen, “Ibn al-Bazzāz al-Ardabīlī” in EI2, supp., pp. 382-83.
Storey, pp. 939-40.
For mss. and the question of alterations, see Z. V. Togan, “Sur l’Origine des Safavides,” in Mélanges Louis Massignon, Damascus, 1957, III, pp. 345-57.
For the authenticity of the Safavid genealogy given in the Ṣafwat al-ṣafāʾ, see S. A. (Kasrawī) Tabrīzī, “Nežād o tabār-e Ṣafawīya,” Āyanda II, 1306-07 Š./ 1927-28, pp. 357-65, 489-97.
Idem, “Bāz ham Ṣafawīya,” ibid., pp. 801-12.
Idem, Šayḵ Ṣafī wa tabār-aš, Tehran, 1323 Š./1944.
M. M. Mazzaoui, The Origins of the Safavids. Šīʿism, Ṣūfism, and the Ġulāt, Wiesbaden, 1972, pp. 47, n. 3, and 50, n. 7.