- 26 - 2003
- 4. Histoire, Période Musulmane
- 4.2. Histoire du XVe au XIXe siècle
- 4.2.1. Safavides et Qâjârs
246
Savory, Roger
« Tajlu Khanum: Was She Captured by the Ottomans at the Battle of Chaldiran? », in : Éva M. Jeremiás, ed., Irano-Turkic Cultural Contacts in the 11th – 17th Centuries. Piliscsaba, [2002] 2003, pp. 217-232.
One of the noteworthy aspects of the battle of Chaldiran (1514) is that women fought in it alongside men and that, following the Iranian defeat, no less than Tajlu Khanom, Shah Isma‘il’s wife, supposedly was among the prisoners taken by the Turks. This articles probes the various questions surrounding the divergent accounts of this phenomenon, which is not mentioned by any of the Persian sources. Previous historians, relying on Portuguese and Ottoman sources, have concluded that two of the shah’s wives were captured. Weighing the evidence provided by the Ottoman chronicles, the author dispels the notion that there were two wives with the same name, and seriously doubts that the wife who was captured by the Ottomans was Tajlu Khanom. It is much more likely that the woman in question was one of Isma‘il’s other wives, Behruza Khanom, who was never returned to Iran.

