Ūzūn Ḥasan and Timurid Legitimacy

Some of the Turkmen polities that arose in the wake of the waning Chinggisid power in Western Asia sought legitimation by emphasizing their connections with the myths and traditions of Oghuz Khan, perhaps in emulation of the powerful ascriptive claims of the Chinggisid Golden Family (Altan Urūgh) itself. This was particularly true of such groupings (ulūs) as the Qarāquyūnlū and Āqquyūnlū. The latter, the Āqquyūnlū, framed an elaborate genealogy in which they claimed to belong to the lineage of Bāyandur Khan, who was, according to some historians, a grandson of Oghuz Khan and whose descendants were distinguished by specific designs or brands (tamghā). The Āqquyūnlū or Bāyanduriya rulers utilized these designs on coinage, documents, architectural monuments, and banners in appealing to these Oghuz traditions. In doing so, they seemed to have been primarily concerned with competition with their Turkmen rivals. Figure 1 shows the use of the Bāyandur tamghā on a coin of Ūzūn Ḥasan’s Grandfather Qarā ʿUsmān (ruled 780-839/1378-1435); Figure 2, the heading of a document issued by the chancellery of Ūzūn Ḥasan and dated 876/1471.The rise of Tīmūr and the evolution of the Timurid polity in Transoxiana and Khurasan had a significant impact not only on the balance of military and political power throughout Western Asia and the Caucasus region, but also exerted a strong influence on the manner in which later state formations fashioned structures of political legitimacy. Some of these notions, while not originating with Tīmūr and his successors, nevertheless gained great importance as a result of Tīmūr’s conquests and his legacy as it took shape under his son Shāhrukh. As noted by Christopher Markiewicz in the quotation at the beginning of this essay, Ṣāḥib-Qirān and Mujaddidare two of the most important concepts that became increasingly common in the political and religio-political discourse of the ninth-tenth/fifteenth-sixteenth centuries. Both terms will now be discussed in connection with the career of Ūzūn Ḥasan Bāyandur.