Rustam Khan (Sipahsalar)

For the 17th-century king of Kartli, see Rostom of Kartli. For the 18th-century royal, see Prince Rostom of Kartli.

Rustam Khan (Persian: خان جودکي‎‎) or Rostom-Khan Saakadze (Georgian: როსტომ-ხან სააკაძე) (c. 1588 – 1 March 1643) was an Iranian Safavid military commander (sipah-salar) of Georgian origin, prominent in the service of the shahs Abbas I and Safi. He was accused of treason and executed under Shah Abbas II. He features in the contemporary Persian and Georgian chronicles and is also a subject of the 17th-century Persian biography written by a certain Bijan for Rustam Khan's grandson, his namesake and a high-ranking officer in Iran.

Career

Rustam Khan was a son of the Georgian nobleman Bijan Beg (Bezhan), of the Saakadze clan, who attended the Georgian prince Bagrat Khan of Kartli in his exile to Safavid Iran after the Ottoman invasion of the Georgian lands in 1578. He had two younger brothers named Aliqoli and Isa. Rustam Khan was brought up Muslim and entered the court service under Shah Abbas I at the age of 11 in 1599. Having distinguished himself in the campaigns against the Ottoman armies and rising through the ranks, he became yasawal i suhbat (personal attendant) to the shah in 1603–4, sardar (general) in 1623–4, diwan-begi (chancellor) in 1626–7, sipah-salar (commander-in-chief) and beglarbegi (governor) of Azerbaijan in 1632–3.

Involvement in Georgia and last years

At the head of an Iranian army, Rustam Khan helped a fellow Muslim Georgian in the Safavid service and a younger brother of his father's suzerain Bagrat Khan, Khusraw Mirza, secure the throne of Kartli, which Khusraw Mirza officially acceded to under the name of Rustam on 18 February 1633. However, Rustam Khan Saakadze's excesses in dealing with the Georgian opposition, especially his devastating raid into the Tsitsishvili family estates, occasioned the split between the two. The contemporary Georgian accounts attribute Rustam Khan's relentlessness to his painful childhood memories associated with the persecution of his family.

Recalled from Kartli by the Iranian government, Rustam Khan Saakadze was commander in Khurasan at the accession of Shah Abbas II in 1642. In early 1643, he was based in Mashhad to organize an effort to retake Qandahar from the Mughal Empire. The new shah's vizier Saru Taqi considered him a personal rival and secured a decree to put him to death for having refused to obey an order from the capital. Rustam was executed in Mashhad, while his brother, the diwan-begi Ali Quli, was dismissed from his post. Rustam Khan's son Safiqoli would later hold influential positions in the Safavid ranks as well.