Ibrahim Mirza

Prince Ibrahim Mirza, Solṭān Ebrāhīm Mīrzā, in full Abu'l Fat'h Sultan Ibrahim Mirza (Persian: ابوالفتح سلطان ابراهیم میرزا‎) (April 1540 – 23 February 1577) was a Persian prince of the Safavid dynasty, who was a favourite of his uncle and father-in-law Shah Tahmasp I. He is now mainly remembered as a patron of the arts, especially the Persian miniature. Although most of his library and art collection was apparently destroyed by his wife after his murder, surviving works commissioned by him include the manuscript of the Haft Awrang of the poet Jami which is now in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

He was a grandson of the founder of the Safavid dynasty, Ismail I (1487–1524) by Ismail's fourth son, prince Bahram Mirza Safavi (1518–1550), who was governor of Khorasan (1529–32), Gilan (1536–37) and Hamadan (1546–49), and also a commissioner of manuscripts. Two of his uncles and two of his brothers were to rebel against Tahmasp, but Ibrahim Mirza, who grew up at court, was for long time a favourite, and was appointed governor of Mashhad at the age of sixteen, arriving there in March 1556. The appointment had a nominal element — Tahmasp himself had received his first governorship at the age of four — but was also political, connected to Ibrahim Mirza's mother, who came from the Shirvanshah dynasty.

In 1560 he married Tahmasp's eldest daughter Princess Shahzadeh Alamiyan Gowhar Soltan Beygom (1540 – May 19, 1577); they had one daughter, Gowhar Shad Begum (1561 – after 1582). Around the end of 1562 he was travelling to Ardabil to take up the governorship there, when he was reported to the shah for his reaction to a joke that angered the shah, and the appointment was switched to the much less important governorship of Qa'en in Khorasan. However, in 1564–65 he had to suppress a major tribal revolt of the Takkalu, who used a slave army numbering 10,000.

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