CHALDIRAN, BATTLE OF

(Aug. 23, 1514), military engagement in which the Ottomans won a decisive victory over the Safavids of Iran and went on to gain control of eastern Anatolia. In 1514 the Ottoman sultan Selim I launched a campaign against Shah Esma'il I, founder of the Safavid dynasty, to put an end to Safavid influence among the Turkmen tribes (the Kizilbash [Red Heads]) who were in open revolt against Ottoman domination and who expressed their discontent by defying orthodoxy. The Safavid state, based on mysticism, and the Turkmen in Azerbaijan and Iran, offered the Anatolian Turkmen religious and political alternatives, and Safavid envoys conducted extensive missionary activity throughout Anatolia. Selim first subdued the Anatolian Kizilbash, then proclaimed that his expedition against the Shah was a holy war against heretics who were corrupting Islam. The two armies finally met at Chaldiran, northeast of Lake Van in eastern Anatolia. Selim, taking precautions against followers of the Shah among his own troops, ordered an immediate attack on August 23 and won an overwhelming Ottoman victory. Although Selim entered Tabriz in western Iran (September 7), the victory did not lead to immediate Ottoman conquest because of unrest among the Janissaries (elite Ottoman troops). Selim soon returned to Anatolia. The most significant outcome of the Battle of Chaldiran, however, was the subsequent incorporation into the Ottoman state of the Kurdish principalities in eastern Anatolia and the Turkmen principality of Dulkadir in the Maras-Elbistan region (1515). Thenceforth Ottomans not only had a rampart against eastern invaders but also controlled the Tabriz-Aleppo and Tabriz-Bursa silk trade routes.