The Aq Qoyunlu or the White Sheep Turkomans (, آغقویونلولار; ) was a culturally Persianate,; "Christian sedentary inhabitants were not totally excluded from the economic, political, and social activities of the Āq Qoyunlū state and that Qara ʿOṯmān had at his command at least a rudimentary bureaucratic apparatus of the Iranian-Islamic type. ... With the conquest of Iran, not only did the Āq Qoyunlū center of power shift eastward, but Iranian influences were soon brought to bear on their method of government and their culture."Kaushik Roy, Military Transition in Early Modern Asia, 1400–1750, (Bloomsbury, 2014), 38; "Post-Mongol Persia and Iraq were ruled by two tribal confederations: Akkoyunlu (White Sheep) (1378–1507) and Qaraoyunlu (Black Sheep). They were Persianate Turkoman Confederations of Anatolia (Asia Minor) and Azerbaijan." Sunni IslamMichael M. Gunter, Historical dictionary of the Kurds (2010), p. 29 Turkoman
By the end of the Ilkhanids period in the mid-14th century, the Oghuz tribes that comprised the Aq Qoyunlu confederation roamed the summer pastures in Armenia, in particular, the upper reaches of the Tigris river and winter pastures between the towns of Diyarbakır and Sivas. Since the end of the 14th century, Aq Qoyunlu waged constant wars with another tribal confederation of the Oghuz tribes, the Qara Qoyunlu. The leading Aq Qoyunlu tribe was the Bayandur tribe.
Uzun Hasan used to assert the claim that he was an "honorable descendant of Oghuz Khagan and his grandson, Bayandur Khan". In a letter dating to the year 1470, which was sent to Bayezid II, the then-governor of Amasya, Uzun Hasan wrote that those from the Bayandur and Bayat tribes, as well as other tribes that belonged to the "Oghuz il", and formerly inhabited Mangyshlak, Khwarazm and Turkestan, came and served in his court. He also made the tamga (seal) of the Bayandur tribe the symbol of his state. For this reason, the Bayandur tamga is found in Aq Qoyunlu coins, their official documents, inscriptions and flags.
According to Professor G. L. Lewis:
According to the Kitab-i Diyarbakriyya, the ancestors of Uzun Hasan back to the prophet Adam in the 68th generation are listed by name and information is given about them. Among them is Bey Tur-Ali, the grandfather of Uzun Hasan's grandfather, who is also mentioned in other sources. But it is difficult to say whether Pehlivan Bey, Ezdi Bey and Idris Bey, who are listed in earlier periods, really existed. Most of the people who are listed as the ancestors of Uzun Hasan are names related to the Oghuz legend and to Oghuz rulers.
After the death of Jahan Shah, his son Hasan Ali, with the help of the Timurid ruler Abu Sa'id Mirza, marched on Azerbaijan to meet Uzun Hasan. Deciding to spend the winter in Karabakh, Abu Sa'id was defeated by the Aq Qoyunlu at the Battle of Qarabagh in 1469.
Uzun Hasan supported a new Timurid ruler in Yadgar Muhammad Mirza, and gave him military assistance in occupying greater Khorasan, and temporarily capture Herat in July 1470 from Sultan Husayn Bayqara.Uzun Hasan was also able to take Baghdad along with territories around the Persian Gulf. However, around this time, the Ottoman Empire sought to expand eastwards, a serious threat that forced the Aq Qoyunlu into an alliance with the Karamanids of central Anatolia.
As early as 1464, Uzun Hasan had requested military aid from one of the Ottoman Empire's strongest enemies, Venice. Despite Venetian promises, and the visit of Venetian ambassadors at the court of Uzun Hasan,
this aid never arrived and, as a result, Uzun Hasan was defeated by the Ottomans at the Battle of Otlukbeli in 1473, though this did not destroy the Aq Qoyunlu.In 1469, Uzun Hasan sent the head of the Timurid Sultan, Sultan Abu Sa'id, with an embassy to the court of the newly ascended Qaitbay in Cairo. With these presents came a fathnama, in Persian, explaining to the Mamluk sultan the events leading up to the Aq Quyunlu—Timurid conflict approximately five months earlier, emphasizing in particular Sultan-Abu Sa'id's plans of aggression toward the Mamluk and Aq Quyunlu dominions—plans that were thwarted by Qaitbay's loyal peer Uzun Hasan. Despite the negative response from Qaitbay, Uzun Hasan's continued correspondence to the Mamluk Sultanate were in Persian.
In 1470, Uzun selected Abu Bakr Tihrani to compile a history of the Aq Qoyunlu confederation. The Kitab-i Diyarbakriyya, written in Persian, referred to Uzun Hasan as sahib-qiran and was the first historical work to assign this title to a non-Timurid ruler.
Uzun Hasan preserved relationships with the members of the popular dervish order whose main inclinations were towards Shia Islam, while promoting the urban religious establishment with donations and confirmations of tax concessions or endowments, and ordering the pursuit of extremist Shiite and Antinomianism. He married his daughter Alamshah Halime Begum to his nephew Shaykh Haydar, the new head of the Safavid Iran sect in Ardabil.
Ya'qub, who reigned from 1478 to 1490, sustained the dynasty for a while longer. However, during the first four years of his reign there were seven pretenders to the throne who had to be put down. Unlike his father, Ya'qub Beg was not interested in popular religious rites and alienated a large part of the people, especially the Turks. Therefore, the vast majority of Turks became involved in the Safawiya order, which became a militant organization with an extreme Shiite ideology led by Shaykh Haydar. Ya'qub initially sent Sheikh Haydar and his followers to a holy war against the Circassians, but soon decided to break the alliance because he feared the military power of Sheikh Haydar and his order. During his march to Georgia, Sheikh Haydar attacked one of Ya'qub's vassals, the , in revenge for his father, Shaykh Junayd (assassinated in 1460), and Ya'qub sent troops to the , who defeated and killed Haydar and captured his three sons. This event further strengthened the pro-Safavid feeling among Azerbaijani and Anatolian Turkmen.
Following Ya'qub's death, civil war again erupted, the Aq Qoyunlus destroyed themselves from within, and they ceased to be a threat to their neighbors. The Safavid dynasty, who were followers of the Safaviyya religious order, began to undermine the allegiance of the Aq Qoyunlu. The Safavids and the Aq Qoyunlu met in battle in the city of Nakhchivan in 1501 and the Safavid leader Ismail I forced the Aq Qoyunlu to withdraw.
In his retreat from the Safavids, the Aq Qoyunlu leader Alvand Beg destroyed an autonomous state of the Aq Qoyunlu in Mardin. The last Aq Qoyunlu leader, Sultan Murad, brother of Alwand, was also defeated by the same Safavid leader. Though Murād briefly established himself in Baghdad in 1501, he soon withdrew back to Diyar Bakr, signaling the end of the Aq Qoyunlu rule.
Baysungur was dethroned in 1491 and expelled from Tabriz. He made several unsuccessful attempts to return before he was killed in 1493. Desiring to reconcile both his religious establishment and the famous Sufi order, Rustam (1478–1490) immediately allowed Sheikh Haydar Safavi's sons to return to Ardabil in 1492. Two years later, Ayba Sultan ordered their re-arrest, as their rise threatened the Ak Koyunlu again, but their youngest son, Ismail I, then seven years old, fled and was hidden by supporters in Lahijan.
According to Hasan Rumlu's Ahsan al-tavarikh, in 1496–97, Hasan Ali Tarkhani went to the Ottoman Empire to tell Sultan Bayezid II that Azerbaijan and Persian Iraq were defenceless and suggested that Ahmed Bey, heir to that kingdom, should be sent there with Ottoman troops. Bayezid agreed to this idea, and by May 1497 Ahmad Bey faced Rustam near Araxes and defeated him.
After Ahmad's death, the Aq Qoyunlu became even more fragmented. The state was ruled by three sultans: Alvand Beg in the west, Uzun Hasan's nephew Qasim Bey in an enclave in Diyarbakir, and Alvand's brother Mohammad in Fars and Persian Iraq (killed by violence in the summer of 1500 and replaced by Morad Mirza). The collapse of the Aq Qoyunlu state in Iran began in the autumn of 1501 with the defeat at the hands of Ismail Safavi, who had left Lahijan two years earlier and gathered a large audience of Turkmen warriors. He conquered Iraq-Ajami, Fars province and Kerman in the summer of 1503, Diyarbakir in 1507–1508 and Mesopotamia in the autumn of 1508. The last Aq Qoyunlu sultan, Sultan Murad, who hoped to regain the throne with the help of Ottoman troops, was defeated and killed by Ismail's Qizilbash warriors in the last fortress of Rohada, ending the political rule of the Aq Qoyunlu dynasty.
Uzun Hasan's conquest of most of mainland Iran shifted the seat of power to the east, where the Aq Qoyunlu adopted Iranian customs for administration and culture. In the Iranian areas, Uzun Hasan preserved the previous bureaucratic structure along with its secretaries, who belonged to families that had in a number of instances served under different dynasties for several generations. The four top civil posts of the Aq Qoyunlu were all occupied by Iranians, which under Uzun Hasan included; the vizier, who led the great council ( divan); the mostawfi al-mamalek, high-ranking financial accountants; the mohrdar, who affixed the state seal; and the marakur "stable master", who supervised the royal court.
Culture flourished under the Aq Qoyunlu, who, although of coming from a Turkic background, sponsored Iranian culture. Uzun Hasan himself adopted it and ruled in the style of an Iranian king. Despite his Turkoman background, he was proud of being an Iranian. At his new capital, Tabriz, he managed a refined Persian court. There he utilized the trappings of pre-Islamic Persian royalty and bureaucrats taken from several earlier Iranian regimes. Through the use of his increasing revenue, Uzun Hasan was able to buy the approval of the ulama (clergy) and the mainly Iranian urban elite, while also taking care of the impoverished rural inhabitants.
In letters from the Ottoman Sultans, when addressing the kings of Aq Qoyunlu, such titles as "King of Iranian Kings", "Sultan of Iranian Sultans", Shāhanshāh-e Irān Khadiv-e Ajam " of Iran and Ruler of Persia", Jamshid shawkat va Fereydun rāyat va Dārā derāyat "Powerful like Jamshid, flag of Fereydun and wise like Darius I" have been used., pp. 193, 274, 315, 330, 332, 422 and 430. See also: Abdul Hussein Navai, Asnaad o Mokatebaat Tarikhi Iran (Historical sources and letters of Iran), Tehran, Bongaah Tarjomeh and Nashr-e-Ketab, 2536, pp. 578, 657, 701–702 and 707 Uzun Hassan also held the title Padishah-i Irān "Padishah of Iran", which was re-adopted by his distaff grandson Ismail I, founder of the Safavid Empire.H.R. Roemer, "The Safavid Period", in Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. VI, Cambridge University Press 1986, p. 339: "Further evidence of a desire to follow in the line of Turkmen rulers is Ismail's assumption of the title 'Padishah-i-Iran', previously held by Uzun Hasan."
The Aq Qoyunlu realm was notable for being inhabited by many prominent figures, such as the poets Ali Qushji (died 1474), Baba Fighani Shirazi (died 1519), Ahli Shirazi (died 1535), the poet, scholar and Sufism Jami (died 1492) and the philosopher and theologian, Jalal al-Din Davani (died 1503).
Uzun Hassan also created the Uzun Hasan Mosque in his capital of Tabriz, a large and splendid mosque with two minarets, where Uzun Hasan and his son Yaqub were buried.
Contributions to religious architecture continued under the descendants of Uzun Hasan, as for the Kushk Gate in Isfahan, commissioned under Rustam Beg, son of Uzun Hasan (r.1493-1496).
The celebrated Hasht Behesht ("Eight Paradises") Palace in Tabriz was also created by Uzun Hasan and completed by his son Yaqub Beg. It was represented in various manuscripts of the period, such as Khamsa of Nizami of 1481 commissioned by Yaqub Beg, and was influential in the development of the Hasht Behesht architectural style in Iran, including the Hasht Behesht in Isfahan.
Nur al-Din 'Abd al-Rahman Jami dedicated his poem, Salāmān va Absāl, which was written in Persian, to Yaʿqūb. Yaʿqūb rewarded Jami with a generous gift. Jami also wrote a eulogy, Silsilat al-zahab, which indirectly criticised Yaʿqūb immoral behavior. Yaʿqūb had Persian poems dedicated to him, including Ahli Shirazi's allegorical masnavi on love, Sham' va parvana and Bana'i's 5,000 verse narrative poem, Bahram va Bihruz.
Yaʿqūb's maternal nephew, 'Abd Allah Hatifi, wrote poetry for the five years he spent at the Aq Qoyunlu court.
Uzun Hasan and his son, Khalil, patronized, along with other prominent Sufis, members of the Kobrāvi and Neʿmatallāhi tariqats. According to the Tarikh-e lam-r-ye amini by Fazlallh b. Ruzbehn Khonji Esfahni, the court-commissioned history of Yaqub's reign, Uzun Hasan built close to 400 structures in the Aq Qoyunlu region for the purpose of Sufi communal retreat.
Another famous painting created under the patronage of Yaqub Beg is that of the Hasht Behesht Palace in Tabriz, a palace started by Uzun Hasan and completed by his son Yaqub Beg. Here, Yaqub's palace in Tabriz is used as the setting for the Classical composition of the romantic scene Khosrow under the windows of Shirin.
Shaykhi, one of the main painters at the court of Yaqub, is also well-known for making Chinese-style paintings, to which he sometimes afixed his own signature, such as [[:File:Chinese style scene, Aqqoyunlu Turkmen, signed by Shaykhi, ca. 1480. Tabriz. Topkapı Palace Library, H.2153, fol. 146v.jpg|''Two Young Women in Chinese Style Costume Seated on a Sofa ]] or Nobles beneath a Blossoming Branch''.
Turkmen artists were generally prompt to experiment with new ideas, including Chinese ones or the works of Muhammad Siyah Qalam, in contrast with the more timid style of the Timurid court. Another characteristic of Turkmen miniatures, and particularly those of Shaykhi, compared to Timurid ones, is the rise of single-sheet illustrations, meaning that many paintings were no longer devoted to simply illustrating a given text, but were stand-alone artistic endeavours, creating images "of epic size and ambition".Besides these miniatures in fine court style, there was also a quantity of more prosaic contemporary illustrated manuscripts, using a simpler and more stereotypical artistic idiom, belonging to the Turkoman Commercial style, and often centered around the city of Shiraz.
Sultan Khalil, is known to have commissioned a rare but refined illustrated manuscript in "Azarbayjani Turkish", the Diwān of Hidayat (Chester Beatty Library, MS 401). An adaption in Oghuz Turk of the Dīwān of ‘Alī Shīr Nawā’ī (1441-1501), the greatest representative of Chagatai literature who was active in the Timurid Empire in Herat, is also known to have likely been commissioned by Sultan Khalil. It is sometimes called The Dīwān of the Aq Qoyunlu admirers.
Some of the works commissioned by Yaqub Sultan were in Chagatai (Eastern Turkic), such as a Divan of Ali-Shir Nava'i, or a Makhzan al-asrar made in Tabriz, "painted with Chinese landscapes, flowering trees, and birds in gold".
Following their surprise victory over the Qara Qoyunlu confederation, many tribes previously under Qara Qoyunlu control joined the Aq Qoyunlu. The conquering armies of Uzun Hasan grew tremendously in size, probably exceeding 100,000 men. Even Sultan Khalil, as Aq Qoyunlu Governor of Fars, is reported to have had a force of 25,000 cavalry and 10,000 infantry, plus auxiliaries. The core power of this large military resided in the strength of its cavalry, while the absence of firearms was its principal weakness.
== Coinage ==
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