This presentation will examine the nuanced and evolving responses of Persian scholars to the rise of Shah Ismail as emperor of Iran by considering the life and work of Idris Bidlisi (1457-1520). Bidlisi’s status as a dynamic scholar and statesman of the Aqquyunlu and Ottoman courts who recorded, interpreted, and strove to shape the tumultuous events of his lifetime render him one of the most enduring intellectual figures of the early sixteenth century. Through his authorship of the Salimshahnama, a chronicle celebrating the conquests of the Ottoman sultan Selim I (r. 1512-1520) in western Iran and elsewhere, Bidlisi has been cited frequently in modern scholarship as one of the principal architects of the Ottoman ideological response to the Qizilbash threat in Anatolia and Iran in the first two decades of the sixteenth century. While it is certainly true that Bidlisi became a vocal and persuasive advocate of an aggressive policy of Ottoman conquest during Selim’s reign, his religious background and personal circumstances in Iran point to a more gradual trajectory to vehement ideologue than is suggested by an examination of his later writings in isolation. Idris’ initial response to the political mission of the Safavi Sufi order was conditioned by his religious and intellectual upbringing within the Nurbakhshi Sufi tradition and by his professional work within the Aqquyunlu chancery. His religious upbringing under the supervision of his father emphasized a reverence for Ali ibn Abi Talib and the Twelve Imams, which in certain respects accorded well with Shah Ismail’s message. In contrast, the evolving attitude of the Aqquyunlu court to the Safavi order conditioned Bidlisi to assess Shah Ismail’s threat primarily within a political framework. Indeed, all of Idris’ unedited works and poetry from the years immediately following 1501 reflect this nuanced and subtle attitude to Shah Ismail, and stand in stark contrast with his later writings. In this manner, Bidlisi’s evolving attitude toward the Qizilbash in the years following his immigration to Ottoman lands responded to an ideological shift within the Ottoman court in the first decade of the sixteenth century. The example of Bidilsi and other Persian scholars like him is therefore instructive. While intellectuals certainly shaped the rhetorical parameters of debate on Shah Ismail, their views on the matter were equally susceptible to the wider political contexts in which they lived and worked.