The function of religious identity in the materialization of the Iran’s geographical boundaries in the Safavid era

The establishment of the safavid dynasty in Iran, in the form of Davazdah Emami Shia state, is one of the longest and most fascinating chapters on the Islam and Iran history. Because the follower of this religion continued to the struggle for nine centuries until was declared Shia as official religion of Iran. Since the Safavid dynasty is a turning point in the history of Iran, many phenomena of political geography evaluated in Iran. So, in this study have been tried to investigate how religious identity affected objectivity of Iran’s geographical boundaries and also investigate interaction of the political boundaries with religious identity. This paper seeks to explore and answer to questions like these that what had different political boundaries of Iran before the Sfavid with the boundaries of the Safavid dynasty? What religious identity has made substantive changes in political-geographical boundaries of Iran that many of Iranian history researchers know this period of Iran’s history as began the political-geographical integrity of Iran? The results show that it is in this period that for the first time a cultural-political factor called religious identity has been able to separate the borders and peripheral areas of Iran from non-Iranians and more or less guarantee their existence until the formation of a modern state in Iran.