During the Safavid period Azerbaijani Turkish, or, as it was also referred to at that time, Qizilbash Turkish, occupied an important place in society, and it was spoken both at court and by the common people. Although Turkish was widely spoken in Safavid Iran this fact is rarely mentioned. Usually neither Persian nor European authors mention in which language people communicated with each other. The Turkish spoken in Safavid Iran was mostly what nowadays is referred to as Azeri or Azerbaijani Turkish. However, at that time it was referred to by various other names. It would seem that the poet and miniaturist Sadeqi Afshar (1533–1610), whose mother tongue was not Azerbaijani Turkish, but Chaghatay (although he was born in Tabriz), was the first to refer to speakers of Qizilbashi (motakallemin-e Qizilbash), but he, and one century later ‘Abdol-Jamil Nasiri, were the exception to this general rule of calling the language “Turki.”1 The Portuguese called it Turquesco. Other Europeans and most Iranians called it Turkish or Turki. For the sake of simplicity and to avoid confusion we call the Turkic language used in Safavid Iran, Azerbaijani Turkish.