Shah Abbas had one son killed and two blinded, and died with no son able to rule

Abbas I nearly died as a boy: his uncle Esmail II murdered or blinded at least nine relatives and ordered Abbas killed, and only Esmail's own assassination in 1577 saved him. He came to the throne in 1587 and made Isfahan his capital. Encyclopaedia Iranica says his early years left him with a "morbidly suspicious" fear that ambitious men would use his sons against him, as he and his brothers had been used against their father. He stopped sending princes to govern provinces and shut them in the harem. In 1615 his son Mohammad Baqer Mirza was murdered in a bathhouse in Resht by a Circassian, Behbud Beg, on the shah's order. In 1621 he had his son Khodabandeh and his grandson Soleyman Mirza blinded. Two other sons had died before him. Iranica's verdict: he put to death or blinded any family member who aroused his suspicion, and when he died on 19 January 1629 he had no son capable of succeeding him. On his deathbed he named Mohammad Baqer's son, Sam Mirza, who took the throne at seventeen as Shah Safi. Safi's reign saw the blinded Khodabandeh murdered at Alamut. Iranica calls the harem system one of the major causes of the Safavid decline.