Originally Posted by
Nabatea1
They were indeed Persianates. They barely had anything Turkic lol. The most famous of these the Safavids had a Kurdish paternal ancestor, and the rest got mixed with Circassian, Pontic Greeks,Georgians, Persians, and so on. The Safavid direct paternal ancestor was Saif Al-Din Ardabili he was originally a leader of Sufi Shafi order known as the Saffyiah. The Saffyiah eventually changed into Shia Sufi order who had taken a lot of influence from native Iranian believes, and they were inspired by the Khurmuia movement which was a mix of Shia Islam and native Iranian believes. They were rebel movement against Arab rule, look at Babak Khormaddin and Sunpdah. The Saffiyah also became a political order and many tribes joined in, they were called the Qizilbash or the redhats/redturbans. They often had 12 stars, which symbolized the 12 Imams. They were very divergent from mainstream Shiaism, that eventually when Shah Ismail took power, he imported Lebanese Shias and Eastern Arabians Shias to propagate mainstream 12er Shiaism. They were also very little Turkic influence, other than the language which they adopted, but the culture was very Persian, and the religion was clearly Arab influenced.
The same is also true of Black sheep and White sheep Turkmens, their name just had Turkmen in it, but they looked like Persians, and they were heavily Persianized. The same is also true of the Afshars who would create a very powerful empire and also rivals to the Ottomans.
To say their Turkic culturally, or saw themselves as Turk is nothing more than pan-Turkic propaganda. At best it's to call them Turko-Persian.