Editing Safavid order (section)

==Foundation and evolution==
The Safaviyya, while initially founded by Safi-ad-Din Ardabili under the [[Shafi'i]] school of [[Sunni Islam|Sunni]] Islam, later adoptions of [[Shia Islam|Shia]] concepts by the children and grandchildren of Safi-ad-Din Ardabili resulted in the order becoming associated with [[Twelver]]ism.<ref name=":0" /><ref name="R.M." />  Safi-ad-Din's importance in the order is attested in two letters by [[Rashid-al-Din Hamadani]].<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /> In one, Rashid al-Din pledges an annual offering of foodstuffs to Safi-al-Din, and in the other, Rashid al-Din writes to his son, the governor of Ardabil, advising him to show proper respect and comportment to the mystic.<ref>G. E. Browne, ''Literary History of Persia'', vol. 4, 33–4.</ref>

After Safi-ad-Din death, leadership of the order passed to his son, [[Sadr al-Dīn Mūsā|Sadr al-Din Musa]], and subsequently passed down from father to son, and by the mid-fifteenth century, the Twelver Safawiyya changed in character, evolving into an [[Safavid conversion of Iran to Shia Islam|extreme and intolerant]] form of Twelver Shi'ism, becoming militant under [[Shaykh Junayd]] and [[Shaykh Haydar]] by proclaiming [[Jihad]] against the Christians of [[Georgia (country)|Georgia]], and becoming [[ghulat|exaggerative]] by adopting [[messianism|messianic beliefs]] about its leadership and [[antinomianism|antinomian]] practices outside of the norm of Twelver Islam at the time.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" />

Junayd's grandson, [[Ismail I|Ismail]], further altered the nature of the order when he founded the Safavid empire in 1501 and proclaimed Twelver Shi'ism as the state religion, at which point he imported Twelver Shia ''[[ulama]]'' largely from [[Lebanon]] and [[Syria]] to transform the order into a Twelver [[Shia Islam|Shi'i]] dynasty.<ref name=":1">{{cite book|last1=Floor|first1=Willem|last2=Herzig|first2=Edmund|title=Iran and the World in the Safavid Age|date=2015|publisher=I.B.Tauris|isbn=978-1780769905|page=20|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HZNpBgAAQBAJ&q=safavids+imported+lebanon|quote=In fact, at the start of the Safavid period Twelver Shi'ism was imported into Iran largely from Syria and Mount Lebanon (...)}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{cite book|last1=Savory|first1=Roger|title=Iran Under the Safavids|date=2007|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|isbn=978-0521042512|page=30|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v4Yr4foWFFgC&q=safavids+imported+syria}}</ref><ref name=":3">{{cite web|last1=Abisaab|first1=Rula|title=JABAL ʿĀMEL|url=http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/jabal-amel-2|website=Encyclopaedia Iranica|access-date=15 May 2016}}</ref><ref name=":4">{{cite book|last1=Alagha|first1=Joseph Elie|title=The Shifts in Hizbullah's Ideology: Religious Ideology, Political Ideology and Political Program|date=2006|publisher=Amsterdam University Press|location=Amsterdam|isbn=978-9053569108|page=20|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IWxZAQAAQBAJ&q=safavids+jabal+amil}}</ref>