Aq Qoyunlu

Aq Qoyunlu
Aq Qoyunlu (Akkoyunlu) (“those of the White Sheep”).  Turkoman federation of the “Tribes of the White Sheep” rulers of eastern Anatolia, Azerbaijan, Persia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Turkestan which lasted from 1467 to 1502.   Their main capitals were Amid, and, from 1468, Tabriz.  Named after their original totem animal, a white sheep, they were Oghuz Turks.  The Aq Qoyunlu are usually regarded as a Sunni dynasty, although they had close links with the Shi‘ite Safavid family.

Around 1340, the Aq Qoyunlu began to carry out raids against Byzantium, Mesopotamia, and Syria, took control shortly thereafter of Diyarbakr with its center at Amid, and intermarried with the Christian Comnenes of Trabezond (later emperors of Byzantium).  Their first advance came under Qara Yuluk 'Uthman (Kara Usman) (1389-1435), who as an ally of Timur was appointed emir of Diyarbakr in 1402 and expanded its territory.  Qara Yuluk Uthman ruled for thirty-two years and transformed the Aq Qoyunlu from a tribal clan of little significance to a large principality impinging on the domains of its neighbors, the Qara Qoyunlu, or “Black Sheep,” as well as the major powers of the day, the Ottomans, the Mamelukes, and the Timurids. 

After 1435, the Aq Qoyunlus found themselves squeezed (due to territorial losses) by the rival Qara Qoyunlu.  The empire experienced its political zenith under Uzun Hasan (1453-1478), the grandson of Qara Yuluk 'Uthman.  Uzun Hasan transformed the Aq Qoyunlus into a major Islamic power, extending from Anatolia to Khurasan, Fars, Kerman, and the Persian Gulf.  He defeated his chief rival Jahanshah and annihilated the Qara Qoyunlu in 1467 and, by 1469, had seized the Qara Qoyunlu territories.  In 1469, he achieved a convincing victory over the Timurids, defeating Abu Sa'id.  After 1459, he conducted campaigns in Georgia, and conquered Hasankeyf (1462), and Harput (1465).  In 1471, he advanced into Karman (Anatolia) and fought against the Ottomans in an alliance with European powers in1473. 

Uzun Hasan was active in international diplomacy, allying with Venice against the Ottomans, his enemy in the west.  The Aq Qoyunlu had longstanding marriage ties with the Byzantine kings at Trebizond. There were also marriage ties to the Safavids.  Uzun Hasan was decisively defeated by the Ottomans at Bashkent in 1473.

The Turkoman culture flourished under Uzun Hasan and his son Ya'qub (1478-1490).  Ya'qub promoted high Islamic culture and carried on an ostentatious court life at his capital, Tabriz, but the fortunes of the dynasty never recovered. 

1490 marked the start of the struggle against the up-and-coming Safavids.  The succession crises arising from the death of Ya'qub was typical of Turkish dynasties which sapped the strength of the Aq Qoyunlu and facilitated the Safavid rise to power.  The last ruler, Sultan Murad, was defeated by the Kizilbash supporters of Shah Isma‘il and relinquished Azerbaijan to the Safavids in 1501.  Sultan Murad did, however, manage to hold on to some land in Iraq and Diyarbakr until 1508.  While the power of the Safavids, like that of the Aq Qoyunlu, was based at first on Turkic tribesmen, and continuity between the two dynasties was ensured by the Tajik bureaucracy, the Safavids were able to unify Iran in a way the Aq Qoyunlu could not. 


Akkoyunlu see Aq Qoyunlu
“those of the White Sheep” see Aq Qoyunlu
“Tribes of the White Sheep”  see Aq Qoyunlu
"White Sheep" see Aq Qoyunlu
Akgoyunly see Aq Qoyunlu

Anatolian Seljuks

Anatolian Seljuks
Anatolian Seljuks (also known as the Rum Seljuks).  Turkish dynasty in Anatolia (r. 1077-1308).  Their main capitals were Iznik (Nicaea) and, from 1116, Konya.  The Anatolian Seljuks are a branch of the Great Seljuks who occupied Anatolian territory after the victory of Malazgirt (1071).  Their founding father was Kutalmish, who was a cousin of the Seljuk rulers Tughril and Chaghri.  His son, Suleyman I (1077-1086), conquered Iznik in 1078.  Initially, under the formal authority of the Great Seljuks, the Anatolian Seljuks acquired far-reaching autonomy during the conflicts of the Crusades.  The first period of prosperity came under Kilic Arslan II (Qilij Arslan II -- 1156-1188/92), who until 1178 had control of the Danishmendids’ (Danishmend's) territory.  The fragmentation of the empire resulting from its division between his 12 sons in 1192 was consolidated only after 1204 under Giyath al-Din Kaikhusrau I (1204-1211).  Following a period of political and cultural prosperity under Izz al-Din Kaikavus I (1211-1219) and Ala al-Din Kaiqubad (1219-1237), the political decline began.  After 1240, there came territorial losses, a defeat by the Mongols (at Kose Dagi near Ankara, 1243), and the plundering of the Anatolian Seljuk lands, after which they retreated to Antalya.  From 1279, they were under the supreme authority of the Persian Ilkhanids, who made the Anatolian Seljuk territory a province of their empire in 1308. 

The Sultanate of Rûm was a Seljuk Turkic sultanate that ruled much of Anatolia in direct lineage from 1077 to 1308, with capitals first at İznik and then at Konya. Since the court of the sultanate was highly mobile, cities like Kayseri and Sivas also functioned at times as capitals. At its height the sultanate stretched across central Turkey from the Antalya-Alanya shoreline on the Mediterranean coast to the territory of Sinop on the Black Sea. In the east, the sultanate absorbed other Turkish states and reached Lake Van. Its westernmost limit was near Denizli and the gates of the Aegean basin.

The term "Rûm" comes from the Arabic word for Rome. The Seljuks called the lands of their sultanate Rum because it had been established on territory long considered "Roman", i.e. Byzantine, by Muslim armies.  Modern Turkish historians use the term Anadolu Selçukluları ("Anatolian Seljuk Sultanate") or, more recently, Türkiye Selçukluları ("Seljuks of Turkey"). The state is occasionally called the Sultanate of Konya or Sultanate of Iconium in older western sources.

The sultanate prospered, particularly during the late 12th and early 13th centuries when it took from the Byzantines key ports on the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts. Within Anatolia, the Seljuks fostered trade through a program of caravanserai-building, which facilitated the flow of goods from Iran and Central Asia to the ports. Especially strong trade ties with the Genoese formed during this period. The increased wealth allowed the sultanate to absorb other Turkish states that had been established in eastern Anatolia after the Battle of Manzikert: the Danishmends, the Mengücek, the Saltuklu, and the Artuklu. Seljuk sultans successfully bore the brunt of the Crusades but in 1243 succumbed to the advancing Mongols. The Seljuks became vassals of the Mongols, and despite the efforts of shrewd administrators to preserve the state's integrity, the power of the sultanate disintegrated during the second half of the 13th century and had disappeared completely by the first decade of the 14th.

In its final decades, the territory of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm saw the emergence of a number of small principalities or beyliks, among which that of the Osmanoğlu, known later as the Ottomans, rose to dominance.

In the 1070s, the Seljuk commander Suleyman bin Kutalmish, a distant cousin of Malik Shah and a former contender for the throne of the Great Seljuk Empire, came to power in western Anatolia. In 1075, he captured the Byzantine cities of Nicaea (İznik) and Nicomedia (İzmit). Two years later he declared himself sultan of an independent Seljuk state and established his capital at İznik.

Suleyman was killed in Antioch in 1086 by Tutush I, the Seljuk ruler of Syria, and Suleyman's son Kilij Arslan I was imprisoned. When Malik Shah died in 1092, Kilij Arslan was released and immediately established himself in his father's territories. He was eventually defeated by soldiers of the First Crusade and driven back into south-central Anatolia, where he set up his state with his capital in Konya. In 1107, he ventured east and captured Mosul but died the same year fighting Malik Shah’s son Mehmed Tapar.

Meanwhile, another Rum Seljuk, Melikshah (not to be confused with the Great Seljuk sultan of the same name), captured Konya. In 1116 Kilij Arslan's son, Mesud I took the city with the help of the Danishmends. Upon Mesud's death in 1156, the sultanate controlled nearly all of central Anatolia. Mesud's son, Kilij Arslan II, captured the remaining territories around Sivas and Malatya from the last of the Danishmends. At the Battle of Myriokephalon in 1176, Kilij Arslan also defeated a Byzantine army led by Manuel I Comnenus, dealing a major blow to Byzantine power in the region. Despite a temporary occupation of Konya in 1190 by German forces of the Third Crusade, the sultanate was quick to recover and consolidate its power.

After the death of the last sultan of Great Seljuk, Tuğrul III, in 1194, the Seljuks of Rum became the sole ruling representatives of the dynasty. Kaykhusraw I seized Konya from the Crusaders in 1205. Under his rule and those of his two successors, Kaykaus I and Kayqubad I, Seljuk power in Anatolia reached its apogee. Kaykhusraw's most important achievement was the capture of the harbor of Attalia (Antalya) on the Mediterranean coast in 1207. His son Kaykaus captured Sinop and made the Empire of Trebizond his vassal in 1214. He also subjugated Cilician Armenia but in 1218 was forced to surrender the city of Aleppo acquired from al-Kamil. Kayqubad continued to acquire lands along the Mediterranean coast from 1221 to 1225. In the 1220s, he sent an expeditionary force across the Black Sea to Crimea. In the east he defeated the Mengüceks and began to pressure on the Artukid.

Kaykhusraw II (1237–1246) began his reign by capturing the region around Diyarbekir, but in 1239 he had to face an uprising led by a popular preacher named Baba Ishak. After three years, when he had finally quelled the revolt, the Crimean foothold was lost and the state and the sultanate's army was weakened. It was under these conditions that Kaykhusraw II had to face a far more dangerous threat, that of the expanding Mongols. Mongol forces took Erzurum in 1242 and in 1243, the sultan was crushed by Bayju in the Battle of Köse Dag (a mountain between the cities of Sivas and Erzincan) and the Seljuks thereafter began to owe allegiance to the Mongols and gradually became their vassals. The sultan himself fled to Antalya after the 1243 battle. He died in Antalya in 1246. His death started a period of tripartite, and then dual rule that lasted until 1260.

The Seljuk realm was divided among Kaykhusraw's three sons. The eldest, Kaykaus II (r.1246–1260), assumed the rule in the area west of the river Kızılırmak. His younger brothers, Kilij Arslan IV (r.1248–1265) and Kayqubad II (r.1249–1257) were set to rule the regions east of the river under Mongol administration. In October 1256, Bayju defeated Kaykaus II near Aksaray and all of Anatolia became officially subject to Möngke Khan. In 1260 Kaykaus II fled from Konya to Crimea where he died in 1279. Kilij Arslan IV was executed in 1265 and Kaykhusraw III (r.1265–1284) became the nominal ruler of all of Anatolia, with the tangible power exercised either by the Mongols or the sultan's influential regents.

The Seljuk state started to split into small emirates (Beyliks) that increasingly distanced themselves from both Mongol and Seljuk control. In 1277, responding to a call from Anatolia, the Mameluk sultan Baybars raided Anatolia and defeated the Mongols, temporarily replacing them as the administrator of the Seljuk realm. But since the native forces who had called him to Anatolia did not manifest themselves for the defense of the land, he had to return to his homebase in Egypt, and the Mongol administration was re-assumed, officially and severely.

Towards the end of his reign, Kaykhusraw III could claim direct sovereignty only over lands around Konya. Some of the Beyliks (including the Ottomans in their very beginnings) and Seljuk governors of Anatolia continued to recognize, albeit nominally, the supremacy of the sultan in Konya, delivering the khutba in the name of the sultans in Konya in recognition of their sovereignty, and the sultans continued to call themselves Fahreddin, the Pride of Islam. When Kaykhusraw III was executed in 1284, the Seljuk dynasty suffered another blow from internal struggles which lasted until 1303 when the son of Kaykaus II, Mesud II, established himself as sultan in Kayseri. He was murdered in 1307 as well as his son Mesud III soon afterwards. A distant relative to the Seljuk dynasty momentarily installed himself as emir of Konya, but he was defeated and his lands conquered by the Karamanoğlu in 1328. The sultanate's monetary sphere of influence lasted slightly longer and coins of Seljuk mint, generally considered to be of reliable value, continued to be used throughout the 14th century, once again, including by the Ottomans.

The exceptional period that flourished in Anatolia in the 12th and the 13th centuries, between the Crusades and the Mongol invasion, is marked by outstanding works of architecture and decorative arts.  Among these, the caravanserais (or hans), used as stops, trading posts and defense for caravans, and of which about a hundred structures were built during the Anatolian Seljuks period, are particularly remarkable. Their unequalled concentration in time and in Anatolian geography represent some of the most distinctive and impressive constructions in the entire history of Islamic architecture.

The largest caravanserai is the 1229-built Sultan Han on the road between the cities of Konya and Aksaray, in the township of Sultanhanı, enclosing 3,900 square meters. There are two caravanserais that carry the name "Sultan Han", the other one being between Kayseri and Sivas. Furthermore, apart from Sultanhanı, five other towns across Turkey owe their names to caravanserais built there. These are Alacahan in Kangal, Durağan, Hekimhan and Kadınhanı, as well as the township of Akkale/Akhan within Denizli metropolitan area. The caravanserai of Hekimhan is unique in having, underneath the usual inscription in Arabic with information relating to the edifice, two further inscriptions in Armenian and Syriac, since it was constructed by the sultan Kayqubad I's doctor (hekim) who is thought to have been a Christian by his origins, and to have converted to Islam. There are other particular cases like the settlement in Kalehisar site (contiguous to an ancient Hittite site) near Alaca, founded by the Seljuk commander Hüsameddin Temurlu who had taken refuge in the region after the defeat in the Battle of Köse Dağ, and had founded a township comprising a castle, a medrese (madrasa), a habitation zone and a caravanserai, which were later abandoned apparently around the 16th century. All but the caravanserai, which remains undiscovered, was explored in the 1960s by the art historian/Ottoman archaeologist Oktay Aslanapa, and the finds as well as a number of documents attest to the existence of a vivid settlement on the site, such as a 1463-dated Ottoman firman which instructs the headmaster of the medrese to lodge not in the school but in the caravanserai.

As regards the names of the sultans, there are variants in form and spelling depending on the preferences displayed by one source or the other, either for fidelity in transliterating the Persian-influenced variant of the Arabic script which the sultans used, or for a rendering corresponding to the modern Turkish phonology and orthography. Some sultans had two names that they chose to use alternatively in reference to their legacy. While the two palaces built by Alaeddin Keykubad I carry the names Kubadabad Palace and Keykubadiye Palace, he named his mosque in Konya as Alaeddin Mosque and the port city of Alanya he had captured as "Alaiye". Similarly, the medrese built by Gıyaseddin Keyhüsrev I in Kayseri, within the complex (külliye) dedicated to his sister Gevher Nesibe, was named Gıyasiye Medrese, and the one built by Izzeddin Keykavus I in Sivas as Izzediye Medrese.

The Anatolian Seljuk sultans were:

Kutalmish 1060-1077 Contended with Alp Arslan for succession to Great Seljuk throne.
Süleyman I bin Kutalmish 1077-1086 Founder of Anatolian Seljuk Sultanate with capital in İznik
Kilij Arslan I 1092-1107 First sultan in Konya
Melikshah 1107-1116 
Masud I 1116-1156 
'Izz al-Din Kilij Arslan II 1156-1192 
Giyath al-Din Kaykhusraw I 1192-1196 First reign
Rukn al-Din Suleymanshah II 1196-1204 
Kilij Arslan III 1204-1205 
Giyath al-Din Kaykhusraw I 1205-1211 Second reign
'Izz al-Din Kayka'us I 1211-1220 
'Ala al-Din Kayqubad I 1220-1237 
Giyath al-Din Kaykhusraw II 1237-1246 After his death, sultanate split until 1260 when Kilij Arslan IV remained the sole ruler
'Izz al-Din Kayka'us II 1246-1260 
Rukn al-Din Kilij Arslan IV 1248-1265 
'Ala al-Din Kayqubad II 1249-1257 
Giyath al-Din Kaykhusraw III 1265-1284 
Giyath al-Din Masud II 1284-1296 First reign
'Ala al-Din Kayqubad III 1298-1302
Giyath al-Din Masud II 1303-1308 Second reign

Rum Seljuks see Anatolian Seljuks
Seljuks see Anatolian Seljuks

Amirids

Amirids
Amirids.  The viceroys of the Spanish caliphate (r. 978-1009) and rulers of the taifa kingdom of Valencia from 1016 (1021?) to 1085. The Amirids were a Hispano-Arabic dynasty of Yemeni origins and the family of the viceroy, Muhammad ibn Abu Amir, known as al-Mansur (r. 978-1002), and his eldest son, 'Abd al-Malik (r. 1002-1008).   'Abd al-Malik led the Spanish caliphate to a final period of prosperity through successful military engagement in Spain (by capture of Barcelona in 985 and Santiago de Compostela in 997) and in the Maghreb (by capture of Fez in 986).  Following the murder in 1009 of al-Mansur’s younger son, Abd al-Rahman, who had sought the rank of caliph, his son, Abd al-Aziz (1021-1061), moved to Valencia (administered by client lords after 1016), where he and his descendants were recognized as rulers.  After being expelled from Toledo by the Dhun-Nunids (Dhu’l-Nunids), they were then ousted by them in 1085.  Amirid client rulers established several fiefdoms in southeastern Spain, including Almeria (1012-1041), Murcia and Denia (1019-1076), Tortosa (1038-1061), and on the Balearics (1019-1114).   

'Adil-Shah

‘Adil-Shah
‘Adil-Shah. Muslim dynasty which ruled over Bijapur (r. 1489-1686).  They were great patrons of art and literature.

The Adil Shah dynasty ruled the Sultanate of Bijapur in the Western area of the Deccan region of Southern India from 1489 to 1686.  Bijapur had been a province of the Bahmani Sultanate (1347-1518), before its political decline in the last quarter of the 15th century and eventual break-up in 1518.  The Bijapur Sultanate was absorbed into the Mughal Empire on September 12, 1686, after its conquest by the Emperor Aurangzeb.