In 1502, at the age of fifteen, Ismail declared himself Shahanshah of Iran. Shahanshah meant “king of kings.” It was the title the Sassanid monarchs had used, and the ancient Persian monarchs before them. In rejecting the titles of “khalifa” and “sultan,” Ismail was rejecting Arab and Turkish historical tradition in favor of a nativist Persian identity. In calling his realm Iran, he was invoking the ancestral king named in Firdausi’s epic of the Persian people, The Book of Kings. In fact, Ismail’s propagandists said he was related by blood to the Sassanid kings of yore.
