Consider this description of a person living around 1600:

i earn a living weaving rugs for traders to sell along the persian gulf. though my family and i are christians, the shah and his soldiers mostly leave us alone. unfortunately, the same is not true for the sunni muslims i know. they refuse to become shia muslims, and as a result some of them have been jailed or beaten and threatened with worse.
where does this person live?

Safavid empire

Explanation:

The Safavid shahs ruled this Iranian empire after the 7th century Muslim conquest of Iran. The empire was famous for its goods and its trading network. This explains why the rugs that this person makes are being sold along the Persian Gulf. The empire also established Shia Islam as the official religion of the empire, which explains why the Sunni Muslims that the person knows are being persecuted for not converting to Shia Islam.

the dissolution of the soviet union[a] occurred on december 26, 1991, officially granting self-governing independence to the republics of the soviet union. it was a result of the declaration number 142-н of the supreme soviet of the soviet union.[1] the declaration acknowledged the independence of the former soviet republics and created the commonwealth of independent states (cis), although five of the signatories ratified it much later or did not do so at all. on the previous day, december 25, soviet president mikhail gorbachev, the eighth and final leader of the soviet union, resigned, declared his office extinct, and handed over its powers – including control of the soviet nuclear missile launching codes – to russian president boris yeltsin. that evening at 7: 32 p.m., the soviet flag was lowered from the kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary russian flag.[2]

previously, from august to december, all the individual republics, including russia itself, had either seceded from the union or at the very least denounced the treaty on the creation of the ussr. the week before formal dissolution, 11 republics signed the alma-ata protocol formally establishing the cis and declaring that the ussr had ceased to exist.[3][4] both the revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the ussr also marked the end of the cold war.

several of the former soviet republics have retained close links with the russian federation and formed multilateral organizations such as the commonwealth of independent states, eurasian economic community, the union state, the eurasian customs union, and the eurasian economic union to enhance economic and security cooperation. on the other hand, the baltic states have joined nato and th