Analyzing and survey of the status royal hunting and various functions in the Safavid period

Hunting has been consistently renowned as one of the most important imperial pastimes among the ruling dynasties of Iran. The Safavid era was likewise no exception to this rule; hunting was embraced enthusiastically for the most part by the Safavid kings. The Safavids tried to benefit from diverse nature of this sport. Imperial hunting in the Safavid era was conducted using a wide variety of methods, which also had diverse applications. This paper attempts to investigate the position of imperial hunting and the variety of its applications in the Safavid era using the descriptive-analytical method based on archival texts. The findings of current research show that hunting was considered to be both the most important and also the most favored royal entertainment in the Safavid era, which took place using two primary methods annular or ring-formation hunting and free hunting. In this era, different living species such as wild animals, mammals, birds, and aquatic species were hunted. Hunting in this era had four important aspects, namely: recreational, artistic, subsistence-related, and politico-military