When Shi'ism became the official religion of Iran in the 16th century, Safavid rulers such as Shah Tahmasp I, patronized poets who wrote about the Battle of Karbala.[167] The genre of marthiya (poems in the memory of the dead, with popular forms of Karbala related marthiya being rawda and nawha),[168] according to Persian scholar Wheeler Thackston, "was particularly cultivated by the Safavids."[167] Various Persian authors wrote texts retelling romanticized and synthesized versions of the battle and events from it,[126][169] including Sa'id al-Din's Rawdat al-Islam (The Garden of Islam) and Al-Khawarazmi's Maqtal nur 'al-'a'emmah (The Site of the Murder of the Light of the Imams).