“GEGHARD”
SCIENTIFIC ANALYTICAL
FOUNDATION
2026
2026
2026-08-20
The Azerbaijani propaganda machine seems to have mobilized one of its online figures, notorious for manipulative and often cynical rhetoric and for misleading audiences unfamiliar with history. But the attempt was ultimately futile. In a response to the Geghard Foundation’s video examining Shah Abbas’s origins, he not only failed to address the substance of the video but also exposed his own lack of historical knowledge through a series of glaring errors. In just two minutes, while attempting to ridicule the criticism of Azerbaijani historians’ historical-propaganda narratives, Razmovar managed to confuse a country with a state, a dynasty with an army, the Qara Qoyunlu with the Aq Qoyunlu, and the sixteenth century with the twentieth.
Let us turn to the pearls of wisdom by the “great expert” in applied Azerbaijani studies, Kyamran Razmovar:
Thesis No. 1: “Armenia did not exist under the Safavids.”
Yes, there was no unified independent Armenian state during the reign of Shah Abbas. However, the absence of a sovereign state does not mean that a historical country, its population, and its institutions ceased to exist. Italy, too, was not a unified state until 1861, but no one claims that Dante lived in a place that did not exist.
The Encyclopaedia Iranica explicitly states that the Ottomans and Safavid Iran were competing for control of Yerevan and “the whole of Eastern Armenia.” Under the 1590 Treaty of Constantinople, Shah Abbas ceded Armenia and other territories in the South Caucasus to the Ottomans. Apparently, in Kyamran Razmovar’s version of history, he somehow managed to cede a territory that did not exist. Meanwhile, the Catholicosate of Etchmiadzin and Armenian monasteries, local Armenian melikdoms continued to function in Armenia. Therefore, the historically accurate formulation is that there was no independent Armenian state; saying that “Armenia did not exist” simply conflates the concept of a country with that of a state.
Thesis No. 2: “Shah Abbas simply relocated Armenians from time to time.”
This is a cynical formulation, as if the Shah was simply moving Armenians from one shelf to another. In 1604, while retreating ahead of the Ottoman army, Shah Abbas pursued a scorched-earth policy. Cities and villages were destroyed, crops and pastures were laid waste, and the population of Eastern Armenia was forcibly driven across the Arax River into the interior provinces of Iran. As a result, Old Julfa was completely devastated and its inhabitants were forcibly deported. It was in the aftermath of this deportation that New Julfa emerged near Isfahan. Sources speak of hundreds of thousands of people being forcibly displaced. This is known as the Great Surgun (forced deportation)—not as “occasionally relocating people.”
Thesis No. 3: “The Safavids and the Qizilbash were one big family”
The Qizilbash were a military-religious confederation composed primarily of Turkmen, Turkic-speaking tribes that became the main power base of the Safavids. The Safavids were a ruling dynasty that emerged from a Sufi order and established its rule in Iran. The military force that supported a dynasty is not the same thing as the dynasty itself, and the Qizilbash army had absolutely nothing to do with the Safavid family tree.
According to one of the most widely accepted theories in the scholarly literature, the Safavids were of Kurdish origin. Persian was the principal language of literature and administration, while the Safavids also spoke Turkic. These facts are not contradictory: ancestry, language, and political affiliation are distinct concepts.
The facts leave little room for such ignorance. Shah Abbas curtailed the power of the Turkmen Qizilbash and sought to counterbalance them by relying on Georgians and Armenians. Apparently, this “family” was so united that the Shah had to use his own army to protect himself from his “relatives.”
Thesis No. 4: Shah Ismail allegedly “fought against the Qara Qoyunlu.”
Here Razmovar makes a genuine “discovery,” sending Ismail to war before he was even born. The absurdity is that the Qara Qoyunlu had already been defeated by Uzun Hasan in 1468, whereas Ismail was born in 1487. How the face of Azerbaijani propaganda managed to have Ismail “fight” the Qara Qoyunlu when he had not even been born yet remains a mystery to scholarship...
Thesis No. 5: “The name Iran originated in 1935.”
This is simply factually incorrect. The name Ērān is attested as early as the 3rd century, in the titulature of the Sasanian king Ardashir I. Safavid rulers bore the title “Shahanshah of Iran,” and even Ottoman sultans referred to them as the “kings of the Iranian lands” and the “kings of kings of Iran.” Iran did not acquire a new name in 1935. The government of Reza Shah merely asked foreign states to use the country’s traditional endonym, Iran, instead of the name “Persia,” which had been more common in the West. This was a change in international usage, not the country’s “birth certificate.”
Therefore, the term “Safavid Iran” is entirely legitimate in academic literature. The Cambridge History of Iran likewise describes the Safavids as the founders of a powerful state in Iran. Apparently, even Cambridge has fallen under the influence of the “Armenian Wikipedia.”
To make matters even more embarrassing, this representative of Azerbaijani propaganda cannot distinguish Shah Abbas I from Shah Abbas II and, in his video, confuses the two—apparently relying on his favorite source, “Wikipedia,” itself.
In summary, Razmovar presents the absence of an independent Armenian state as the “non-existence of Armenia,” describes a mass forced deportation as merely a “relocation,” treats the Qizilbash as part of the Safavid dynasty’s genealogy, sends Ismail to war against a state that had collapsed decades before his birth, and moves the emergence of the name “Iran” from the 3rd century to 1935. Yet, while quoting Wikipedia himself, he accuses others of relying on “Wikipedia.”
This is the kind of “intellectual brilliance” one gets from Kyamran Razmovar—a self-proclaimed historian-geographer and, apparently, a “social sciences mechanic”—who sells masterclasses in what he calls “applied Azerbaijanology.”