Shaykh Ali Khan Zanganeh ( fa, شیخ علی خان زنگنه, died 1689), was an

Iranian Iranian may refer to: * Iran, a sovereign state * Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran * Iranian lan ...

statesman of

Kurdish Kurdish may refer to: *Kurds or Kurdish people *Kurdish languages *Kurdish alphabets *Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes: **Southern Kurdistan **Eastern Kurdistan **Northern Kurdistan **Western Kurdistan See also * Kurd (dis ...

origin, who served as the grand vizier of the Safavid king (''

shah Shah (; fa, شاه, , ) is a royal title that was historically used by the leading figures of Iranian monarchies.Yarshater, EhsaPersia or Iran, Persian or Farsi, ''Iranian Studies'', vol. XXII no. 1 (1989) It was also used by a variety of ...

'') Suleiman I (r. 1666–1694) from 1669 to 1689. Due to his efforts in reforming the declining Iranian economy, he has been called the "Safavid

Amir Kabir Mirza Taghi Khan-e Farahani ( fa, میرزا تقی‌خان فراهانی), better known as Amir Kabir (Persian: ‎, 9 January 1807 – 10 January 1852), also known by the title of ''Amir-e Nezam'' or ''Amir Nezam'' (), was chief minister t ...

" in modern historiography.

Family

A native of the Kermanshah Province, Shaykh Ali Khan was the son of Ali Beg Zanganeh, and belonged to the Zanganeh tribe, a Sunni Kurdish tribe, which was part of the

Qizilbash Qizilbash or Kizilbash ( az, Qızılbaş; ota, قزيل باش; fa, قزلباش, Qezelbāš; tr, Kızılbaş, lit=Red head ) were a diverse array of mainly Turkoman Shia militant groups that flourished in Iranian Azerbaijan, Anatolia, t ...

. Shaykh Ali Khan had two brothers named Najaf Qoli Beg Zanganeh and Shahrokh Sultan Zanganeh and also had several sons, whom were: Hossein Ali Khan Zanganeh, Suleiman Khan Zanganeh, Ismail Beg Zanganeh, Abbas Beg Zanganeh, Abbas Qoli Beg Zanganeh, and the most prominent one being Shahqoli Khan Zanganeh, who would also later serve as grand vizier of the country.

Biography

Shaykh Ali Khan's destiny is similar to that of many other Iranian grand viziers—from Hasanak under the Ghaznavids to

under the

Qajars The Qajar dynasty (; fa, دودمان قاجار ', az, Qacarlar ) was an IranianAbbas Amanat, ''The Pivot of the Universe: Nasir Al-Din Shah Qajar and the Iranian Monarchy, 1831–1896'', I. B. Tauris, pp 2–3 royal dynasty of Turkic origin ...

—and is owing, in an established sense, to the ambivalence of the grand vizier's position in the Iranian bureaucratic practice. Shaykh Ali Khan served as the commander of the empire's musketeer corps ('' tofangchi-aghasi'') from 1668 till June 1669.

References

Sources

* * * * * * * * People from Kermanshah Iranian Kurdish people Grand viziers of the Safavid Empire History of Kermanshah Province Safavid governors Zanganeh 1610s births 1689 deaths Safavid generals Tofangchi-aghasi 17th-century Iranian politicians 17th-century people of Safavid Iran {{Kurd-bio-stub