It has been suggested that this name refers to old totemic symbols, but according to Rashid al-Din Hamadani, the Turks were forbidden to eat the flesh of their totem-animals, and so this is unlikely given the importance of mutton in the diet of pastoral nomads.

[24] In these chronicles, Tur Ali Beg was mentioned as lord of the "Turks of Amid [Diyarbakir]", who had already attained the rank of amir under the Ilkhan Ghazan.

It was in 1403 that they ceased to be tribal chiefs and became Sultans, so we may assume that their official genealogy was formulated round about that date.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.

[31][page needed][32] After the defeat of the Timurid leader, Abu Sa'id Mirza, Uzun Hasan was 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.

Despite Venetian promises, this aid never arrived and, as a result, Uzun Hasan was defeated by the Ottomans at the Battle of Otlukbeli in 1473,[33] though this did not destroy the Aq Qoyunlu.

[35] When Uzun Hasan died early in 1478, he was succeeded by his son Khalil Mirza, but the latter was defeated by a confederation under his younger brother Ya'qub at the battle of Khoy in July.

Therefore, the vast majority of Turks became involved in the Safawiya order, which became a militant organization with an extreme Shiite ideology led by Sheikh Haydar.

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.

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.

[41] The Bayandurs behaved like statesmen rather than warlords and gained the support of the merchant and feudal classes of Transcaucasia (present-day Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia).

[42] 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.

[3] 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.

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.

[44] 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.

[43] The Aq Qoyunlu patronized Persian belles-lettres which included poets like Ahli Shirazi, Kamāl al-Dīn Banāʾī Haravī, Bābā Fighānī, Shahīdī Qumī.

[53] 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.

[53] In 1469, Uzun Hasan sent the head of the Timurid Sultan, Shāhrukh II bin Abu Sa'id, with an embassy to the court of the newly ascended al-Ashraf Qaytbay in Cairo.

The ethnic background of Aq-Qoyunlu troops were quite heterogeneous as it consisted of 'sarvars' of Azerbaijan, people of Persia and Iraq, Iranzamin askers, dilavers of Kurdistan, Turkmen mekhtars and others.