Durmish Khan Shamlu

Lawa'ih (Effulgences of light) by Jami (d.1492). Copy commissioned by Durmish Khan Shamlu (d. 1525), ca.1521–1525 in Herat. Durmish (Dormish) Khan Shamlu (; died 1525) was a Qizilbash officer of Turkoman Shamlu ethnicity, who occupied high offices under Shah Ismail I (r. 1501–1524), the founder of the Safavid dynasty, and his son Shah Tahmasp I (r. 1524–1576).

Biography Durmish Khan was the son of Abdi Beg Shamlu, while his mother was a sister of shah Ismail I. Furthermore, Durmish Khan had a brother named Hoseyn Khan Shamlu. In 1503, Durmish Khan was appointed as the governor of Isfahan, but chose to stay in the Safavid capital of Tabriz and appointed Mirza Shah Hossein as his vizier. Durmish Khan commissioned and funded Mirza Shah Hossein Isfahani, the greatest architect of the period, to build in particular the Mausoleum of Harun-e Vilayat in 1512–1513, and the Ali Mosque (1522), the only mosque built in Iran in the first half of the 16th century. Under Durmish Khan's patronage, Fakhri Heravi translated Ali-Shir Nava'i's Chagatai Turkic text, Majalis al-Nafais, a biographical account of Turkic and Persian poets and scholars, into Persian under the title Lata'ef-nama in 1524.

In 1514, while the Safavid forces were at Chaldiran and planning on how to confront the Ottomans, who had declared war against the Safavid Empire. Mohammad Khan Ustajlu, who served as the governor of Diyarbakır, and Nur-Ali Khalifa, a commander who knew how the Ottomans fought, proposed that they should attack as quickly as possible. However, this proposal was rejected by Durmish Khan, who rudely said that Muhammad Khan Ustajlu was only interested in the province which he governed. The proposal was also rejected by Ismail himself, who said; "I am not a caravan-thief, whatever is decreed by God, will occur." A battle shortly ensued, which, however, resulted in an absolute disaster for the Safavids, who lost most of their troops and commanders.

In 1518/9, Durmish Khan suppressed several rebellions in Mazandaran, and later in 1520 he was sent to Baghdad to defend the city against the Ottoman sultan Selim I, who, however, died of sickness before he managed to reach the city. In 1521, Mirza Shah Hossein, who now served as Ismail's vizier and had become so powerful that he chose to send Durmish Khan far away from the Safavid court—to Herat in Khorasan, where he was forced to serve as its governor. When Durmish Khan arrived to the city, he appointed Ahmad Sultan Afshar as the governor of several districts of the province. In May 1522, the Mughal ruler Babur seized Qandahar from Durmish Khan. In 1523/4, Herat was attacked a by a group of Uzbeks, which Durmish Khan managed to repel.

Durmish Khan later died in 1525 and was succeeded by his brother Hoseyn Khan Shamlu.