Aq Qoyunlu

Aq Qoyunlu
آق قویونلو
1378–1503[a]
A flag (sanjak) belonging to Uzun Hasan (the original here)
Tamga of Bayandur used by the Aq Qoyunlu[2] of Aq Qoyunlu
Tamga of Bayandur
used by the Aq Qoyunlu[2]
The Aq Qoyunlu confederation at its greatest extent under Uzun Hasan in 1478
The Aq Qoyunlu confederation at its greatest extent under Uzun Hasan in 1478
StatusConfederate Sultanate
Capital
Common languages
Religion
Sunni Islam[8]
GovernmentMonarchy
Ruler 
• 1378–1435
Qara Yuluk Uthman Beg
• 1497–1503
Sultan Murad
Legislature
  • Kengač (legislative)[3]
  • Boy ḵānları (military)[3]
Historical eraMedieval
• First raid on the Trapezuntine Empire by Tur Ali Beg[9]
1340
• Siege of Trebizond[9]
1348
• Established
1378
• Coup by Uzun Hasan[3]
Autumn 1452
• Reunification[3]
1457
• Death of Ahmad Beg, division of the Aq Qoyunlu[3]
December, 1497
• Collapse of the Aq Qoyunlu rule in Iran[3]
Summer 1503
• End of the Aq Qoyunlu rule in Mesopotamia[3]
1508
CurrencyAkçe[10]
Ashrafi[10]
Dinar[10]
Tanka[10] Hasanbegî[11] (equal to 2 akçe)
Preceded by		 Succeeded by
Qara Qoyunlu
Safavid Empire
Ottoman Empire

The Aq Qoyunlu or the White Sheep Turkomans[c] (Azerbaijani: Ağqoyunlular, آغ‌قویونلولار; Persian: آق‌ قویونلو) was a culturally Persianate,[15][16] Sunni[8] Turkoman[17][18] tribal confederation. Founded in the Diyarbakir region by Qara Yuluk Uthman Beg,[19][20] they ruled parts of present-day eastern Turkey from 1378 to 1503, and in their last decades also ruled Armenia, Azerbaijan, much of Iran, Iraq, and Oman where the ruler of Hormuz recognised Aq Qoyunlu suzerainty.[21][22] The Aq Qoyunlu empire reached its zenith under Uzun Hasan.[3]

  1. ^ Charles Melville (2021). Safavid Persia in the Age of Empires: The Idea of Iran. Vol. 10. p. 33. Only after five more years did Esma'il and the Qezelbash finally defeat the rump Aq Qoyunlu regimes. In Diyarbakr, the Mowsillu overthrew Zeynal b. Ahmad and then later gave their allegiance to the Safavids when the Safavids invaded in 913/1507. The following year the Safavids conquered Iraq and drove out Soltan-Morad, who fled to Anatolia and was never again able to assert his claim to Aq Qoyunlu rule. It was therefore only in 1508 that the last regions of Aq Qoyunlu power finally fell to Esma'il.
  2. ^ Daniel T. Potts (2014). Nomadism in Iran: From Antiquity to the Modern Era. p. 7. Indeed, the Bayundur clan to which the Aq-qoyunlu rulers belonged, bore the same name and tamgha (symbol) as that of an Oghuz clan.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "AQ QOYUNLŪ". Encyclopaedia Iranica. 5 August 2011. pp. 163–168.
  4. ^ Arjomand, Saïd Amir (2016). "Unity of the Persianate World under Turko-Mongolian Domination and Divergent Development of Imperial Autocracies in the Sixteenth Century". Journal of Persianate Studies. 9 (1): 11. doi:10.1163/18747167-12341292. The disintegration of Timur's empire into a growing number of Timurid principalities ruled by his sons and grandsons allowed the remarkable rebound of the Ottomans and their westward conquest of Byzantium as well as the rise of rival Turko-Mongolian nomadic empires of the Aq Qoyunlu and Qara Qoyunlu in western Iran, Iraq, and eastern Anatolia. In all of these nomadic empires, however, Persian remained the official court language and the Persianate ideal of kingship prevailed.
  5. ^ a b Erkinov 2015, p. 62.
  6. ^ Lazzarini, Isabella (2015). Communication and Conflict: Italian Diplomacy in the Early Renaissance, 1350–1520. Oxford University Press. p. 244. ISBN 978-0-19-872741-5.
  7. ^ Javadi & Burrill 2012.
  8. ^ a b Michael M. Gunter, Historical dictionary of the Kurds (2010), p. 29
  9. ^ a b Faruk Sümer (1988–2016). "AKKOYUNLULAR XV. yüzyılda Doğu Anadolu, Azerbaycan ve Irak'ta hüküm süren Türkmen hânedanı (1340–1514)". TDV Encyclopedia of Islam (44+2 vols.) (in Turkish). Istanbul: Turkiye Diyanet Foundation, Centre for Islamic Studies.
  10. ^ a b c d "Coins from the tribal federation of Aq Qoyunlu".
  11. ^ a b Faruk Sümer (1988–2016). "UZUN HASAN (ö. 882/1478) Akkoyunlu hükümdarı (1452–1478).". TDV Encyclopedia of Islam (44+2 vols.) (in Turkish). Istanbul: Turkiye Diyanet Foundation, Centre for Islamic Studies.
  12. ^ Seyfettin Erşahin (2002). Akkoyunlular: siyasal, kültürel, ekonomik ve sosyal tarih (in Turkish). p. 317.
  13. ^ International Journal of Turkish Studies. Vol. 4–5. University of Wisconsin. 1987. p. 272.
  14. ^ Cite error: The named reference woods was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  15. ^ "Aq Qoyunlu" at Encyclopædia Iranica; "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."
  16. ^ 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."
  17. ^ Mikaberidze, Alexander (2011). Conflict and Conquest in the Islamic World: A Historical Encyclopedia, vol. 1. Santa-Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio. p. 431. ISBN 978-159884-336-1. "His Qizilbash army overcame the massed forces of the dominant Ak Koyunlu (White Sheep) Turkomans at Sharur in 1501...".
  18. ^ The Book of Dede Korkut (F.Sumer, A.Uysal, W.Walker ed.). University of Texas Press. 1972. p. Introduction. ISBN 0-292-70787-8. "Better known as Turkomans... the interim Ak-Koyunlu and Karakoyunlu dynasties..."
  19. ^ Erdem, Ilham. "The Aq-qoyunlu State from the Death of Osman Bey to Uzun Hasan Bey (1435–1456)." (2008). “The creator of the Aq-Qoyunlu principality founded in the region of Diyarbakır was Kara Yülük Osman Bey, a member of the Bayındır tribe of the Oghuz.”
  20. ^ Pines, Yuri, Michal Biran, and Jörg Rüpke, eds. the limits of universal rule: Eurasian empires compared. Cambridge University Press, 2021. "the Aq Qoyunlu, like the Ottomans, began life as a collection of loosely organized band of pastoral nomadic Oghuz raiders in the Diyarbakir region of eastern Anatolia"
    "the dynasty controlled territory in their eastern Anatolian homelands"
  21. ^ Potts, Daniel T. Nomadism in Iran: from antiquity to the modern era. Oxford University Press, 2014.
  22. ^ Wink, André. Indo-Islamic society: 14th–15th centuries. Vol. 3. Brill, 2003.


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