The first Safavid shah, Ismail I (r. 1501–1524), came to power in Iran with the military support of a set of Turkic tribes called the Qizilbash. After an initial period of conquest, Ismail set about regularizing Safavid rule by putting Persian urban notables in key administrative positions. Historians up to now have portrayed early Safavid politics as driven in large part by Qizilbash resentment of the role of Persians in the government. An example that historians give as evidence of Qizilbash resentment is the Safavids' Khurasan campaign of 1512. In response to Uzbek incursions, a Qizilbash force crossed the Amu Darya and drove toward Bukhara. Although the Safavid force consisted of Qizilbash amirs leading Turkic troops, the overall commander was Ismail's vakil, Najm-i Thani, who was a Persian notable rather than a Turk. At the fortress of Ghijduvan near Bukhara, the Qizilbash amirs strongly disagreed with the vakil over strategy and some of the amirs withdrew. The following day the Uzbeks soundly defeated the Safavids in battle and ended the offensive. According to the conventional interpretation, the Qizilbash resented being commanded by a Persian to such an extent that some of them preferred to abandon him to defeat rather than fight alongside him. In this paper I will argue against this interpretation of the Battle of Ghijduvan. Ismail had been appointing Persians to the office of vakil since 1508, without any other incident of insubordination being recorded. Moreover, dissension in the ranks at Ghijduvan can be explained by considering the strategic position facing the Safavids at that moment, without appealing to an assumption of ongoing ethnic tension. Several sixteenth-century chroniclers recount this expedition. The two earliest and most important, which I use as the basis of my study, were written during the reign of Shah Ismail: the Futuhat-i Shahi by Amini Haravi, and the Habib al-siyar by Khwandamir.