The Battle of Sufiyan took place on 6 November 1605, during the Ottoman–Safavid War of 1603–1618. The Safavids, under King (Shah) Abbas I (1588–1629), beat a numerically superior, fully-fledged Ottoman army. It was one of King Abbas I's greatest military victories. According to Colin Imber: "For the Ottomans the battle of Sufiyan was a greater disaster than anything they had experienced in Hungary, where the war which had begun in 1593 had revealed Ottoman military deficiencies in the face of new European weapons and tactics." Prelude In 1603, Abbas I recaptured Tabriz and Nakhchivan from the Ottomans, territories which the Safavids had been forced to cede in 1590. In the same year, the Ottomans were already fighting on two fronts—in Hungary against the Habsburgs and in Anatolia against the Jelalis. Abbas I proceeded to recover Erivan the next year, in June 1604. In the same month, the Ottomans dispatched Cığalazade Yusuf Sinan Pasha (hereafter, simply "Sinan Pasha") from Constantinople, Istanbul, towards Erzurum with a large number of janissaries to fight Abbas and his men. Around the time of Sinan Pasha's march, Abbas I had reached Kars, at the frontier of Georgia. He ordered the destruction of the countryside between Kars and Erzurum, employing similar scorched earth tactics his grandfather Tahmasp I (1524–1576) had employed against the Ottomans. When Abbas realized that Sinan Pasha did not intend to spend the winter in the region before continuing the campaign in the spring and was therefore moving straight towards Kars, he ordered the immediate mass evacuation "of the entire population, most of them Armenian Christians, over a wide area to the north of the Aras River, and embracing the three towns of Erivan, Nakhichivan and [Old] Julfa". By November 1604, the Turks led by Sinan Pasha reached Kars, which the Iranians had evacuated. Though Sinan Pasha wanted to continue towards Shirvan, his officers forced him to move south across the Aras. He established his winter encampment at Van, awaiting reinforcements. Safavid spies informed Abbas of Sinan Pasha's decision; he immediately ordered general Allahverdi Khan to attack the town of Van before the reinforcements could arrive. Upon reaching Van, Allahverdi Khan defeated a Kurdish force outside its citadel, a sortie of Ottoman troops inside, and routed some Ottoman troops who attempted to link up with Sinan Pasha. Sinan Pasha subsequently withdrew to Northern Mesopotamia. Allahverdi Khan returned to Abbas I with the severed heads