Uzun Hasan or Uzun Hassan (Persian: اوزون حسن; February or March 1425 – January 5, 1478) was a ruler of the Turkoman Aq Qoyunlu state and is generally considered to be its strongest ruler. Hasan was from the Bayandur tribe and presided over the confederation's territorial apex, when it included parts or all of present-day Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, Transcaucasia, and Syria.
The younger son of Ali Beg and Sara Khatun, Hasan rose to prominence during the protracted Aq Qoyunlu civil war of the 1440s and 1450s. He seized the confederate capital of Amid from his brother Jahangir in a bloodless coup in September 1452, and became undisputed ruler after defeating Jahangir and his Qara Qoyunlu allies at the Battle on the Tigris in May 1457. Over the following decade he secured his frontiers against the Ayyubids of Hisn Kayfa, the Kurdish principalities of Diyar Bakr, the Dulkadirids and the Karamanids, while conducting raids into Georgia that won him a reputation as a ghazi.
Hasan destroyed the Qara Qoyunlu at the Battle of Muş on November 10, 1467, killing their ruler Jahan Shah, and captured and executed the Timurid sultan Abu Sa'id Mirza in Qarabagh two years later. These victories brought western and central Iran, Fars, Kerman and Arab Iraq under his rule and transformed the Aq Qoyunlu from a regional principality into an empire, with its capital transferred from Amid to Tabriz. Allied with the Venetian Republic against the Ottomans, he invaded Anatolia and Mamluk Syria in 1472 but was decisively defeated by Mehmed II at Otlukbeli on August 11, 1473, a reverse that Woods regards as having ended Aq Qoyunlu expansion and damaged the religious claims underpinning Hasan's authority. His last years were consumed by the rebellion of his son Ughurlu Muhammad and by declining health. He died near Tabriz in January 1478.
Hasan is remembered chiefly for his attempt to convert a nomadic tribal confederation into a settled Perso-Islamic empire. He expanded the central bureaucracy, recruited Iranian administrative families, promulgated a body of commercial, civil, penal and fiscal law known as the qanun-namas, and cultivated the religious establishment and the Sufi orders, including the Safavid order, into which he married both a sister and a daughter. His grandson Ismail I founded the Safavid state in 1501.
The Aq Qoyunlu were a confederation of Turkoman clans of the Oghuz tradition, whose paramount clan, the Bayandur, had established itself in the Bayburt–Erzincan region and around Amid during the fourteenth century. Uzun Hasan's grandfather Qara 'Usman, also written Kara Yülük Osman (died 1435), built the principality out of his participation in Timur's Anatolian and Syrian campaigns. At Aleppo in 1400 Timur rewarded Qara 'Usman's eldest son Ibrahim with the fortified city of Amid, held by Timur since its capture from the Artuqid al-Zahir 'Isa in 1394; Amid remained the capital of the principality until Hasan's conquests of 1467–69, when it was replaced by Tabriz. Timur also recognized Qara 'Usman as legitimate ruler of the Aq Qoyunlu, and after the confiscation of the Samarqand spoils train left him sole leader of the confederation by removing his brothers Ahmad and Pir 'Ali. Ruha came to Qara 'Usman from the Mamluk sultan al-Nasir Faraj, as a reward for the death of the rebel Jakam.
Uzun Hasan was born in February or March 1425, the son of Ali Beg (died 1443) and of Sara Khatun, a daughter of the Bayandur chief Pir 'Ali; his elder brother Jahangir was born about 1417. Qara 'Usman's death in 1435 opened the Aq Qoyunlu Great Civil War, a struggle among his sons and grandsons that lasted more than two decades and drew in the Mamluks, the Ottomans, the Timurids and the rival Qara Qoyunlu confederation.
At the time of Hasan's ascension, Persia was divided between two rival Turkoman rulers, Jahan Shah of the Qara Qoyunlu (the Black Sheep Turkoman) and Uzun Hasan. After twenty years of fighting, Uzun Hasan eventually defeated Jahan Shah at the Battle of Chapakchur, near the sanjak of Çapakçur in present-day eastern Turkey on October 30 (or November 11), 1467. Upon the defeat of the latter, the Timurid ruler Abu Sa'id Mirza answered Jahan Shah's son's request for aid, taking much of Jahan Shah's former land and going to war with Uzun Hasan despite the latter's offers of peace. Uzun Hasan then ambushed and captured Abu Sa'id at the Battle of Qarabagh, whereupon he was executed by Yadgar Muhammad Mirza, a rival.
In 1463, the Venetian Senate, seeking allies in its war against the Ottomans, sent Lazzaro Querini as its first ambassador to Tabriz, but he was unable to persuade Uzun Hasan to attack the Ottomans. Hasan sent his own envoys to Venice in return.
In 1465, Hasan attacked and captured Harput from the Beylik of Dulkadir.
In 1471, Querini returned to Venice with Hasan's ambassador Murad. The Venetian Senate voted to send another envoy to Persia, choosing Caterino Zeno after two other men declined. Zeno, whose wife was the niece of Uzun Hasan's wife, was able to persuade Hasan to attack the Turks. Hasan was successful at first, but there was no simultaneous attack by any of the western powers.
Uzun Hasan met the Ottomans in battle near Erzincan in 1471, advanced as far as Akşehir, pillaging and destroying Tokat, and fought a battle at Tercan in 1473. He was defeated by Mehmed II at the Battle of Otlukbeli in the late summer of 1473.
In 1473, Giosafat Barbaro was selected as another Venetian ambassador to Persia, due to his experience in Crimea, Muscovy, and Tartary. Although Barbaro got on well with Uzun Hasan, he was unable to persuade the ruler to attack the Ottomans again. Shortly afterwards, Hasan's son Ughurlu Muhammad rose in rebellion, seizing the city of Shiraz.
After yet another Venetian ambassador, Ambrogio Contarini, arrived in Persia, Uzun Hasan decided that Contarini would return to Venice with a report, while Giosafat Barbaro would stay. Barbaro was the last Venetian ambassador to leave Persia after Uzun Hasan died in 1478. While Hasan's sons fought each other for the throne, Barbaro hired an Armenian guide and escaped.
Contarini, ambassador to Uzun Hasan's court from 1473 to 1476, described him as follows:
The king is of a good size, with a thin visage and agreeable countenance, and seemed to be about seventy years old. His manners were very affable, and he conversed familiarly with everyone around him, but I noticed that his hands trembled when he raised the cup to his lips.
His name means "tall", and Contarini reported that he was also "very lean".
The empire of Uzun-Hassan is very extensive and is bounded by Turkey and Caramania, belonging to the Sultan, and which latter country extends to Aleppo. Uzun-Hassan took the kingdom of Persia from Causa, whom he put to death. The city of Ecbatana, or Tauris, is the usual residence of Uzun-Hassan; Persepolis or Shiras ... which is twenty-four days journey from thence, being the last city of his empire, bordering on the Zagathais, who are the sons of Buzech, sultan of the Tartars, and with whom he is continually at war. On the other side is the country of Media, which is under subjection to Sivansa, who pays a kind of yearly tribute to Uzun-Hassan. It is said that he has likewise some provinces on the other side of the Euphrates, in the neighbourhood of the Turks. The whole country, all the way to Ispahan ... is exceedingly arid, having very few trees and little water, yet it is fertile in grain and other provisions.
His eldest son, named Ogurlu Mohamed, was much spoken of when I was in Persia, as he had rebelled against his father. He had other three sons; Khalil Mirza, the elder of these was about thirty-five years old, and had the government of Shiras. Yaqub Beg, another son of Uzun-Hassan, was about fifteen, and I have forgotten the name of a third son. By one of his wives, he had a son named Masubech, or Maksud beg, whom he kept in prison because he was detected corresponding with his rebellious brother Ogurlu, and whom he afterward put to death. According to the best accounts which I received from different persons, the forces of Uzun-Hassan may amount to about 50,000 cavalries, a considerable part of whom are not of much value. It has been reported by some who were present, that at one time he led an army of 40,000 Persians to battle against the Turks, for the purpose of restoring Pirameth to the sovereignty of Karamania, whence he had been expelled by the infidels.