Aq Qoyunlu

The Aq Qoyunlu, the White Sheep Turkomans, were a Turkoman tribal confederation, culturally Persianate and Sunni Muslim, whose ruling family came from the Bayandur clan of the Oghuz Turks. Founded in the Diyarbakir region by Qara Yuluk Uthman Beg, they ruled parts of what is now eastern Turkey from 1378 to 1508, and in their last decades also held Armenia, Azerbaijan, much of Iran, Iraq and Oman, where the ruler of Hormuz acknowledged their suzerainty. Byzantine chronicles place them north of the Pontic range from the 1340s, with Tur Ali Beg ruling the Turks of Amid already as an amir under the Ilkhan Ghazan, and their leaders married Byzantine princesses. They lived between summer pasture in the upper Tigris and winter pasture around Diyarbakir and Sivas, and from the late fourteenth century they fought continuously with the other Oghuz confederation, the Qara Qoyunlu. The empire reached its zenith under Uzun Hasan: in 1467 his armies defeated Jahan Shah of the Qara Qoyunlu, and in 1468 he beat the Timurid Abu Sa'id, taking Baghdad and the Gulf coast and reaching east into Khurasan. Pressed by the Ottomans he made allies of the Karamanids, Venice and the papacy, and Venice promised arms that never arrived, so at the battle of Tercan in 1473 Ottoman cannon and muskets destroyed his light cavalry in a single day. When he died in 1478 his sons and grandsons divided the realm, and Ismail I ended the dynasty in 1508.