The Kiyayi dynasty came to power in Gilan, a region located on the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, in the fourteenth century. The Kiyayis remained in control of the eastern parts of Gilan for over two hundred years, until the Safavid Shah ‘Abbas I conquered and incorporated Gilan into the growing Safavid realm. The interplay between local political events and Safavid intervention is part and parcel of the larger Safavid project of expansion and state formation. The incorporation of Gilan into the Safavid domain was a gradual process that had begun long before the ascension of Shah ‘Abbas, during the reign of his predecessors. After the demise of the Kiyayi dynasty and the gradual incorporation of the qizilbash in Gilan during the reign of ‘Abbas, the then loosely incorporated province was to witness several uprisings and local disturbances. Local Gilani and Safavid chronicles, in conjunction with travelogues and court documents, show a complex and multi-faceted relationship between local political actors and Safavid agents at this juncture. The occasional uprisings had different goals ranging from the re-establishment of Gilan’s semi-autonomous status to the scoring of political and economic points aimed at short-term crisis management. The economic incentives were high for both the locals and the Safavids, as Gilan was a silk-producing region with one of the highest outputs of silk in the empire. The disgruntled local elite were usually the central actors in these uprisings, yet the peasants were also present as participants. The long-standing tradition of a local structure of power centered on the division between Eastern and Western Gilan was more conducive to disunity than it was to coalitions among local elites, which meant for the most part these scattered rebellious movements did not achieve their intended goals. An overview of these uprisings will put into perspective the center-periphery relations in the early years of the seventeenth century and demonstrate the alliances and schisms that shaped the political landscape of Gilan as different antagonized classes navigated the new reality of the Safavid presence in the province.