In Safavid Iran, silver was almost as valuable as gold. While silver is present in Greater Iran, in the mines at Panjhir, Ilak, the River Talas, and in the Pamir Mountains, Safavid political control in these areas was not always secure. In addition, Iranian silver – obtained from veins of lead, known as argentiferous galena – required a significant amount of processing before any silver could even be obtained. One early Iranian author, Abu Dolaf, reports that he obtained 1 1/2 dangs of silver from each maund of lead ore; a rate of 1 g (0.03 oz) per 3,120 g (110 oz). Later, in the Nineteenth Century AD, British metallurgist James Mactear was able to extract 368 g (13 oz) from an Imperial ton (13,209 kg) of argentiferous galena. But Safavid Iran needed silver in huge quantities, to fuel the ever-important textile trade with India, to mint coinage, and to offer to European trading partners. Silver objects, then, were the ultimate in luxury, an extravagance in the silver-poor Safavid state. The prices of silver were therefore immense, many times the price in Europe in comparison to gold.

This exquisite silver bowl represents the highest achievements of the Safavid silversmith. Due to the pressing need for silver in Safavid Iran, even a small bowl such as this one would have been an important status-symbol. The effort taken to hand-engrave it reflects the respect that Safavid silversmiths had for their medium. The bowl itself is of a standard Safavid shape: a near-conical body, with a barely-delineated rim, rising from a ring foot cast separately and added later. Both the foot and body are dense with beautifully-engraved images of plants and abstract patterns. Around the foot, lotus flowers (Nelumbo nucifera) hang from abstract vines, intersperced with small leaves. The lotus itself was an extremely ancient symbol in Iran, which can be traced to the pre-Persian deity Anahita, and was the stylised national symbol of the Sassanian Empire, paraded on the royal standard. Above the foot, an abstract border of tongue-and-groove symbols delineates the main frieze: a rich foliate arabesque, consisting of flowers, leaves and tendrils, which interconnect and overlap. Another tongue-and-groove border separates the main frieze from an elaborate calligraphic frieze around the rim. Inside the bowl, the same tongue-and-groove pattern delineates the rim, followed by yet more exquisitely executed calligraphy, a further tongue-and-groove border, a frieze of foliate arabesques, another border, more calligraphy and – in the centre – a roundel with a stylised six-petalled flower. Flowers, in the Persian worldview, represented both purity and beauty, and were esteemed for their scent. A scented garden, like the one imagined in the arabesque frieze, was the ideal setting for the Iranian version of courtly love, the chaste affection between courting couples, as well as an ideal setting for enjoyment of leisure. This bowl, then, represents the freedom its wealthy owner had to enjoy life, and perhaps his romantic intentions.

The Safavids – the longest surviving and most powerful Persian dynasty since the fall of the Achaemenids to Alexander the Great in 332 BC – came to power under an energetic military man, Ismaīl I. Beyond founding his own dynasty, he also instigated the most significant change in Early Modern Iranian history: the conversion to Shi’a Islam. Persia had been, since the death of the Prophet Muhammad, a bastion of the Sunni faith. In fact, it was to Iran that the Ottoman Empire – the largest and most successful Sunni state of the period – sent its young men to be educated in Sunni scholarship. Ismaīl, who completed his conquest of Iran in AD 1510, was a fanatical Shi’ite, despite coming from what was originally a prominent Sunni family. He set about on a process of destroying the Sunni faith in Greater Persia, through forced conversions, the destruction of Sunni mosques, and the ritualised cursing of the first three Sunni Caliphs. Despite the protests of the Ottoman Sultan, Bayezid II, Ismaīl’s campaign was excessively violent, including numerous summary executions of Sunnis. Inviting Shi’a Muslims from across the region to move to Persia, he sought to create a Shi’a utopia. The Safavid conversion of Iran to the Shi’a branch of the faith was one of the most significant events in Muslim history, and continues to underscore the complex relationships between countries in the Middle East.