The British art scholar Basil William Robinson coined the term in the 1950s to differentiate this style from a more polished style made in courts of Timurid and Turkman rulers.
[1] In an effort to differentiate a specific painting style that flourished in Iran during the 15th-century in the paintings created under the Timurid Empire, Western historians coined the notion of Turkman style in the middle of the 20th-century.
He included the paintings made under the Qara Qoyunlu in the division of the "Tabriz School," and considered them as an evolution of the styles developed under their predecessors, particularly the Jalayirids, in his article in Pope and Ackerman's Survey of Persian Art (1938–1939).
With the publication of a study in 1954 by Basil William Robinson that offered stylistic standards for identifying what he termed "Turkman Commercial" and described its evolution up to 1505, the term became firmly established.
It nearly vanished after the Safavid dynasty toppled the Aq Qoyunlu at the start of the 16th-century, followed by a new painting style quickly emerged to take its place.