Black Sheep Turkomans ruled from Van to Baghdad
The Qara Qoyunlu—Black Sheep Turkomans—were a Persianate Muslim dynasty of Oghuz stock who held lands spanning today’s Azerbaijan, Armenia, northwestern Iran, eastern Turkey, and Iraq. Named for black sheep on their banners, they rose, fled Timur, then roared back after 1405.
Their rulers sprang from the Baharlu of the Yıwa Oghuz, holding country north of Lake Van and around Mosul by the fourteenth century, joined by tribes such as the Saadlu. Scholars link their East Oghuz speech to later Azerbaijani. A Duharlu branch appears in Michael Panaretos’s Trebizond chronicle, likely pushed west during the Mongol age.
Jalayirid sultans in Baghdad and Tabriz battered them: in 1366 Shaykh Uways defeated Birdi Khwaja at Mosul and Bayram Khwaja at Mush, turning the Turkomans into vassals. In 1400 Timur crushed the confederation; Qara Yusuf fled to Mamluk Egypt and shared Damascus exile with Ahmad Jalayir until Timur’s 1405 death freed them. Back in Anatolia, Yusuf forced Timur’s Van governor to submit, beat Abu Bakr at Nakhchivan on 14 October 1406, and seized Azerbaijan.
By 1410 Armenia and Baghdad were under Black Sheep control, hastening the Jalayirids’ end. Armenian writer Tovma Metsopetsi recorded heavy taxes yet relatively orderly early years. Under Georgia’s Alexander I the Turkomans stepped up raids, including Yusuf’s 1416 strike on Akhaltsikhe, part of invasions running from 1407 to 1502. When Yusuf died in December 1420, Timurid Shah Rukh exploited the succession scramble.
Jahan Shah later made peace with Shah Rukh in 1436 and was crowned on 19 April 1438. After Shah Rukh died in 1447 he ruled independently, annexing parts of Iraq, the eastern Arabian coast, and western Iran, then taking Isfahan, Shiraz, and Yazd in 1452–53; in 1458 he even held Herat for a few months. His forces also sacked the Armenian monastery of Tatev. An attempt on Diyarbakır against the rival White Sheep went disastrously wrong, and he died at Chapakchur in 1467.
Source: Qara Qoyunlu
