EBN BAZZĀZ, DARVĪŠ TAWAKKOLĪ b. Esmāʿīl b. Ḥājī Ardabīlī, author of the Ṣafwat al-ṣafāʾ, a biography of Shaikh Ṣafī-al-Dīn Esḥāq Ardabīlī (d. 935/1334), founder of the Safavid order of Sufis and the eponym of the Safavid dynasty. Ebn Bazzāz was a disciple of Shaikh Ṣadr-al-Dīn Ardabīlī (d. 794/1391-92), the son and successor of Shaikh Ṣafī-al-Dīn. The work, also entitled al-Mawāheb al-sanīya fī manāqeb al-Ṣafawīya, deals mainly with Shaikh Ṣafī-al-Dīn’s miracles and sayings and contains little of a biographical nature (see Browne, Lit. Hist. Persia IV, pp. 38-39, for a list of its contents). Ebn Bazzāz completed this voluminous work (over 800 folios) around 759/1358, only twenty-four years after the death of Shaikh Ṣafī-al-Dīn. It is written in a straightforward style, without much rhetorical embellishment. Ideologically-motivated alterations were already present in a manuscript dated 914/1508, during the reign of Shah Esmāʿīl I (Aya Sofya 2123; Togan). Shah Ṭahmāsb (930-84/1524-76) ordered Mīr Abu’l-Fatḥ Ḥosaynī to produce a revised edition of the Ṣafwat al-ṣafāʾ. This official version contains textual changes designed to obscure the Kurdish origins of the Safavid family and to vindicate their claim to descent from the Imams.
