Ak Koyunlu

(Relationship): The Safavids drove out the Āq Qoyunlu from Persia with the help of Qezelbāš tribal forces. They installed themselves as Shahs, princes etc and Qezelbāš were given regional governorships. They declared the new regime to be Shi’i and the existing Sunni population was "persecuted, driven out, or killed". ^[1] Evidence for this is material cultural e.g. new coins minted and texts such as chronologies. ^[1] "the Safavids were themselves the posterity of the Aq Qoyunlu, not only in a genealogical sense, but also as heirs to a tribally constituted military elite". ^[2] Ismail began from a power base in the Caspian region, before moving into western Persia and Azerbaijan after defeating the the Āq Qoyunlu. ^[3] , The Safavids drove out the Āq Qoyunlu from Persia with the help of Qezelbāš tribal forces. They installed themselves as Shahs, princes etc and Qezelbāš were given regional governorships. They declared the new regime to be Shi’i and the existing Sunni population was "persecuted, driven out, or killed". ^[1] Evidence for this is material cultural e.g. new coins minted and texts such as chronologies. ^[1] "the Safavids were themselves the posterity of the Aq Qoyunlu, not only in a genealogical sense, but also as heirs to a tribally constituted military elite". ^[2] Ismail began from a power base in the Caspian region, before moving into western Persia and Azerbaijan after defeating the the Āq Qoyunlu. ^[3]
(Entity): "Having lived under the protection of the ruler of Gilān for five years, in 1499 Esmāʿil emerged from the Caspian region, defeated the Širvānšāhs, and set out to wrest control of western Persia from the Āq Qoyunlu. In 1501, the Safavid army broke the power of the Āq Qoyunlu by defeating their ruler, Alvand (r. 1497 in Diārbakr [q.v.], and then in Azerbaijan until 1502, d. 1504), in the Battle of Šarur, in the Aras valley." ^[1] Core region: Anatolia and Azarbaijan: "A once parochial and religiously ambiguous millenarian movement that had depended heavily on the nomadic elements of the Anatolian and Azarbaijani environments now inherited the dynastic infrastructures of two well-established empires (the Aq Qoyunlus and Timurids) and annexed cities and territories from equally centralized polities, such as the Ottomans and the Mamluks." ^[4]

[1]: Rudi Matthee ‘SAFAVID DYNASTY’ http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/safavids.

[2]: (Melville 1998) Melville, Charles. 1998. From the Saljuqs to the Aq Qoyunlu (ca. 1000-1500 C.E.). Iranian Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3/4 (Summer-Autumn), A Review of the "Encyclopaedia Iranica", Taylor & Francis Ltd. pp.473-482

[3]: Rudi Matthee ‘SAFAVID DYNASTY’ http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/safavids; E Eshraghi, ‘PERSIA DURING THE PERIOD OF THE SAFAVIDS, THE AFSHARS AND THE EARLY QAJARS’, in Chahryar Adle and Irfan Habib (eds), History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Vol. V The Sixteenth to the Mid-Nineteenth Centuries (Paris: Unesco, 1992)pp. 250-75.

[4]: (Mitchell 2009, 44-45) Mitchell, Colin P. 2009. Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran, The: Power, Religion and Rhetoric. I.B. Tauris. London.