Mohammad Baqer Mirza

Mohammad Baqer Mirza better known in the West as Safi Mirza (15 September 1587, Mashhad – 25 January 1615, Rasht) was the oldest son of king (shah) Abbas the Great and the crown prince of the Safavid Dynasty during Abbas' reign and his own short life.
Safi Mirza was caught in one of the court intrigues in which several leading Circassians were involved, which would eventually cost him his life, and the row for becoming the next Shah. His son would become the next Shah, known by his dynastic name Shah Safi.

Mohammed Baqer Mirza was born in September 1578 by one of king Abbas' Circassian wives. Of king Abbas' five sons, three had survived past childhood, so the Safavid succession seemed secure. He was on good terms with Mohammed Baqir Mirza, his oldest son and crown prince. In 1614, however, during a punitive campaign in Georgia against his two formerly most loyal Georgian subjects Teimuraz I and Luarsab II, the shah heard rumours that the prince was conspiring against his life with a leading Circassian, Farhad Beg Cherkes. Shortly after, Mohammed Baqir broke protocol during a hunt by killing a boar before the shah had chance to put his spear in. This seemed to confirm Abbas' suspicions and he sunk into melancholy; he no longer trusted any of his three sons. In 1615, he decided he had no choice but to have Mohammed killed. Another Circassian, named Behbud Beg, executed the Shah's orders and the prince was murdered in a hammam in the city of Resht. The shah almost immediately regretted his action and was plunged into grief.

In 1621, Abbas had fallen seriously ill. His heir, Mohammed Khodabanda, thought he was on his deathbed and began to celebrate his accession to the throne with his Qizilbash supporters. But the shah recovered and punished his son with blinding, which would disqualify him from ever taking the throne. The blinding was only partially successful and the prince's followers planned to smuggle him out of the country to safety in a forged treason. But the plot was betrayed, the prince's followers were executed and the prince himself imprisoned in the fortress of Alamut where he would later be murdered by Abbas' successor, Shah Safi.

Unexpectedly, Abbas now chose as heir the son of Mohammed Baqir Mirza, Sam Mirza, a cruel and introverted character who was said to loathe his grandfather because of his father's murder. It was he who in fact did succeed Shah Abbas at the age of seventeen in 1629, taking the name Shah Safi.

Safi Mirza married (1st) at Esfahan, 1601, Princess Fakhri-Jahan, daughter of Ismail II. Married (2nd) Del Aram, a Georgian. Married (3rd) Marta daughter of Eskandar Mirza. He had issue, two sons:

• (By Del Aram) Prince Shahzadeh Soltan Abul-Naser Sam Mirza, succeeded as Safi.
• (By Fakhri-Jahan) Prince Shahzadeh Soltan Soleyman Mirza (k. August 1632 at Alamut, Qazvin).