>n 1597, as Abbas I of Safavid sought to establish an alliance against his arch rival, the Ottomans, he received Robert Shirley, Anthony Shirley, and a group of 26 English envoys in Qazvin. The English delegation, also well aware of the Ottoman threat, were more than glad to have Persia as an ally against the Ottoman threat. Shah Abbas warmly received the delegation and took them as his guests with him to Isfahan, his new capital.
>Soon, the Shirley brothers were appointed by the Shah to organize and modernize the royal cavalry and train the army (most notably the elite "Ghulam" slave soldiers, consisting of en masse deported and imported Circassians, Georgians, and Armenians and other Caucasians by the Shahs). The effects of these modernizations proved to be highly successful, as from then on the Safavids proved to be an equal force against their arch rival, immediately crushing them in the first war to come (Ottoman–Safavid War (1603–1618)) and all other Safavid wars to come. Many more events followed, including the debut of the British East India Company into Persia, and the establishment of trade routes for silk though Jask in the Strait of Hormuz in 1616.
we saved IRAN bros...