The March to Erzurum

May 1501

In late spring, Ismail Safavid marched west from Ardabil. With his Qizilbash and a gathered host of the Shirvanshah, they set out towards Erzurum and Erzincan, lands which had been taken from the Aq Qoyunlu by Şehzade Selim of the Ottoman Empire. In the same month, a Turkmen rebellion broke out in Anatolia of men looking to Ismail for support against the Ottomans. This ousted Şehzade Ahmet from his seat in Amasya, who had to gather a host in Sinop and began to fight against the rebels. Meanwhile, Selim fortified Erzurum and Erzincan, fearing an expansion of the rebellion.

At the same time in May, Alvand bin Yusuf Shah (or Alvand Shah) had returned from Egypt and was recruiting in Diyarbakir from the Turkmen clans loyal to him, although loyal was a stretch. The Bayandur-Afshar faction was incredibly fickle, and the Mawsillu had been in the pocket of Qasim less than a year ago. Loyalty lasted only as long as your latest victory, and Alvand knew it. He had been in the right place at the right time many times so far, but one wrong place or wrong time would be the end of him. As such, he was happy to learn that Al-Ashraf Qansuh al-Ghuri, Sultan of Egypt, had gathered a force of over 20,000 men in Syria. However, for now they would only listen to the news from the north, as they still had some months before their host was ready, and Ismail had his attention focused elsewhere.

As the month came to a close, the Ottomans under Ahmet retook Amasya following small skirmishes with the rebels. About half of the Turkmens on the eastern side of the rebel region had united under a warlord called Şahkulu, whose father had served Ismail’s father, and as so his loyalties were not in doubt. He seemed unwilling to give battle, though he did not immediately make east for Erzincan to meet up with Ismail. Instead, he set his forces on raiding Ahmet and making the heartland of Anatolia as hostile as possible.

Meanwhile, Ismail reached the Turkish conquests, having marched his army through Armenia. Here, the first serious setback of his campaign struck: Ismail, having made deals with the Georgian kingdoms, saw the agreements collapse. King Alexander II of Kakheti had orchestrated a coalition of the Georgian realms to invade and liberate Armenia from the Aq Qoyunlu, having obtained Ismail’s blessing to do so. In exchange, the Georgians would assist Ismail against the Ottomans and Alvand Shah. However, Alexander had underestimated the faithfulness of both the Georgians and the Qizilbash. He and Ismail found captains on both sides categorically refusing to march together, in tandem, or even against the same foe. Small skirmishes between Georgian knights, fighting on behalf of Christendom, and the Qizilbash, who burned and raided Christian Armenian villages just as much as they raided Sunni Muslims, almost escalated to battles.

Ismail Shah cut his losses, but left Armenia with a sour taste left behind regarding the Georgians. He would soon give battle to Selim. The Georgians, as such, reigned free north of Ismail’s path. Aq Qoyunlu governors in the area pledged their loyalties to him, but as he marched west to Erzurum, the Georgians simply subjugated the area, killing the Aq Qoyunlu administrators who did not run, and replaced them with Christians of Georgian or Armenian origin. Armenians, for their part, threw in their lot with the Georgians quite eagerly: local headmen worked happily with the invaders, welcomed them into their communities (with the blessing of the Georgian patriarch, the Georgians partook the communion in Armenian churches), and generally prepared themselves to be a part of this new Christian condominium.

The Battle of Hasankale

June 1501

East of Erzurum, near the fort of Hasankale, a derelict ruin that Selim was trying to rebuild, Ismail Shah met the Ottomans in battle for the first time. On an open plain south of the ruin, both sides had all the room needed to maneuvre. Ismail’s forces numbered just over 10,000, including 7,000 Qizilbash. The majority of the remaining army consisted of light infantry supplied by Shirvan. They were placed on the flanks, where in the north a river and in the south hills demarcated the plain. Conversely, the Ottomans, who slightly outnumbered the Safavids, placed their 1,500 janissaries in the centre surrounded by a force of 5,000 azabs. Their cavalry instead guarded the flanks, with artillery behind. Furthermore, the Ottomans used war wagons as obstructions against the Qizilbash charges.

On its own, the order of battle looked good for Selim, but he was nervous nevertheless. His rear was so exposed to Şahkulu and his rebels that it meant that a retreat would be very dangerous. He would have preferred to march west, but realised too late that Ismail was coming straight for him and not towards Diyarbakir. This anxiety, shared by his soldiers, was facing the Qizilbash to whom they were an obstacle in the way of connecting with Şahkulu – Ismail’s ambition to link up with the rebels was no secret to them. They were looking for this battle. And they were also looking for Selim’s head.

The Qizilbash attacked immediately, suffering only a single Ottoman artillery bombardment. The light delis surged forward on the Ottoman flanks as well, and clashed into the Caucasian light infantry from Shirvan. However, despite the strengths of the Ottoman centre, reinforced with wagons and interspersed with janissaries, the host of azabs was a sweet target for the fanatical Qizilbash and the janissaries were too few to stand up to them. As such, the middle began to fold. As a response, the Ottoman cavalry turned back into the centre to outflank the Qizilbash, but they were able to withstand the soldiers that came against them; much of the Ottoman cavalry instead got sidetracked routing the Safavid infantry, and missed the conclusion of the battle.

Selim, with most of the cavalry intact, had to march west and fast as his formation crumbled. With almost all of his infantry and artillery gone, he could no longer oppose Ismail this far west, and instead had to save his own skin. Ismail, on his end, had seen the Caucasian light infantry melt in battle as they had distracted the Ottoman cavalry and paid the price for it. His Qizilbash, victorious, were nearly unscathed. To his deep regret, Selim lived, but Erzurum and Erzincan lay wide open and it was time to face his real enemy, Alvand Shah.

The Anatolian Qizilbash

July – September 1501

Following the Battle of Hasankale, Selim retreated west, past Erzincan, and then north into the Trebzond region. There he met with Ahmet, whose army was still intact. His pride and ego bruised, Selim had no choice but cede control to his older brother. With Selim as his second in command, and the news of Ismail moving south, Ahmet sought to interdict any attempt by Şahkulu to march east and link with Ismail. However, Şahkulu did not attempt this. Instead, he used the supposed weakness of the Ottomans to recruit and organise among the rebel lands and found another 4,000 soldiers for an army that was growing more and more.

However, Şahkulu still did not want to face Ahmet in battle. He stayed put around Corum as Ahmet marched down to Sivas and then around to Bozak, slowly stealing away the lands the rebels depended on. However, just as Ahmet had grown complacent with Şahkulu’s inaction, he gathered up his forces and a whole host of women and children, and marched east. Ahmet and Selim, both realising that nothing now stood between the rebels and Erzincan, rushed after them. Nevertheless, they had been caught out and were stuck clearing rebel pockets as Şahkulu and a host of about 7,000 Turkmen horsemen reached Erzincan. Upon vowing his loyalty to Ismail, he was received with honours. The city was reached in the middle of September.

Meanwhile, Ahmet fought battles against the remaining rebels, though only at Tokat did he encounter major resistance. A rival of Şahkulu, Kur Güze, had gathered roughly 1,000 loyal men around Tokat Castle. Ahmet had the artillery shoot the castle apart and then ordered the azabs to soften up the defenders. Finally, with a charge by the janissaries, the fortress was taken and the defenders all killed. With that, the Turkmen Revolt had ended, but its biggest leader and most of his supporters had simply migrated away. It would take a long time for the region to recover from this event.

Encounter at Bingöl

July 17th, 1501. Ismail’s birthday

Ismail went south. Alvand north. Halfway between Diyarbakir and Erzurum was a relatively unimportant valley called Bingöl. Long ruled by local emirs, as vassals to whoever was ascendant, they had recently exchanged Qasim bin Jahangir for Alvand Shah. Now, a year later, they had to make a bet. With Ismail coming from the north, fresh off a victory against the Ottomans, and Alvand coming from the south with a host five times bigger than Ismail’s. Perhaps influenced by the fact that Ismail’s more nimble force got there first, they threw in their lot with him.

With the guidance of the locals, Ismail set up his camp at the southern end of the valley. On his right, steep hills limited the field of battle for cavalry. His left flank was covered off by the Bayram, a small stream but cut relatively deep into the soil. On the other side of the stream he placed Ahmad Beg, Shah of Shirvan, to guard the flank. What remained was just wide enough for most of the Qizilbash to fight, as Ismail had planned for his massively outnumbered army to be able to fight on equal footing.

The Mamluks travelled behind the Aq Qoyunlu, and not together, because it was important for Alvand Shah to prove that his own authority was legitimate. This meant that despite the fact that the Mamluk army was twice his size, they were the back-up army. Another concern was that the Mamluks had enlisted 8,000 Turkmens as mercenaries in their army, but these soldiers were mainly the ones left over after Alvand had done his recruiting. As such, they were mostly the political enemies of Alvand that had not switched sides and survived the typical purges. Alvand found them dangerous, and did not want them somewhere they could easily switch sides.

After having met in Cairo and then in Diyarbakir, the Mamluk sultan Al-Ghuri conferred with Alvand Shah not long after the Aq Qoyunlu arrived near Bingöl. He tried to talk Alvand out of attacking Ismail here, but the tribal leaders of the White Sheep were anxious. Rather than professional Mamluks, the feudal-tribal structure of the Aq Qoyunlu, especially since the death of Uzun Hassan, had been one of fickle loyalties. Strength and victory was needed to keep your men. Weakness and defeat meant that they would turncoat: remaining on the side of a loser was a certain path to getting purged. The best moment to betray a losing leader was, historically, at the first moment of weakness. The headmen and Alvand himself feared that turning away from an army so much smaller than their own would be such a moment of weakness. By the time they returned to Diyarbakir, half his army might have already deserted.

As such, the battle began. The day was July 17th and Ismail had turned fourteen. His birthday present: 32,000 horsemen after his head. 6,000 Mamluk horse archers, 8,000 Turkmen light cavalry of the Dulkadir and Qasimic-Mawsillu, 8,000 Mamluk heavy cavalrymen, and 10,000 Turkmens from the Bayandar and and Alvandic-Mawsillu. Ismail offered almost 7,000 Qizilbash and a paltry auxiliary of infantry and horse from Shirvan.

Alvand lead the Bayandur and Mawsillu down into the valley. The second line consisted of the Mamluks’ Turkmen cavalry, because Al-Ghouri did not trust them either. He kept his own Mamluks and horse archers in reserve, as Alvand had asked. There was no space to outflank the enemy, except across the river. With some healthy hesitation, Al-Ghouri sent some light cavalry to attack the forces from Shirvan.

From a hill to the southeast, the Mamluk rearguard could see the maneuvres of the Qizilbash. Two major battles against a more numerous enemy they had now won, first at Lankaran, then at Hasankale. Ismail was with them and they genuinely believed themselves to be incapable of defeat, and they did everything he asked of him. And so the centre of the line retreated in the face of the Aq Qoyunlu charge; a perfect feint. Alvand knew it, but his charge could not be stopped. His soldiers were a loose confederation of tribes that fought each other whenever there was nothing better to do. They did not trust each other, and only the hype and fanaticism around Alvand – which was based on very little actual accomplishments – kept them aligned together. There were no maneuvres in their repertoire. There was only a charge, straight ahead. Pure mass and numbers would win Alvand they day. They had to.

They would not. Funneled into a gap between the Qizilbash flanks, the first wave of the White Sheep was caught in a trap. The Safavid centre turned around and charged towards Alvand. Their flanks fell in on the Aq Qoyunlu, and to the rear was only the buzzing mass of more and more and more horsemen. It was a slaughter and it lasted for hours. The maw of the Qizilbash could not stop cutting and the corpses literally piled up around them. The situation was too packed for a rout, too panicked for a renenewed attack, and too chaotic to do anything at all.

After several hours, Al-Ghouri realised that his Mamluks would be the next line into the breach. He thought not. Alvand was almost certainly dead in the writhing mass of men and horse ahead. The call for Jihad was one thing, but the Sultan of Egypt was not going to die in a valley with the ignoble name of Bingöl fighting a kid who, despite his heresy, was making an awfully convincing case that Allah was indeed with him. He sounded the retreat, carefully, and left before his Turkmen allies could realise the Mamluks were not coming in to die with them.

At the end of the day, Ismail had lost almost two thousand of his trusted Qizilbash. However, when their butchering work had finally come to an end, the Safavids found their comrades strewn along the corpses of 12,000 dead enemies. Chief among them was Alvand Shah.

Subjugations and Battles

August – October 1501

Following the Battle of Bingöl, Al-Ghouri retreated to Diyarbakir. He sent missives to Sultan-Murad, the last credible Aq Qoyunlu pretender, and offer him the Caliph’s blessing in Baghdad. Sultan-Murad accepted reluctantly; he was not going to march against Ismail as long as the Qizilbash leader left him alone.

Ismail, however, marched east. Securing Diyarbakir was less important now that Alvand was dead, and 8,000 Mamluks made the city look rather costly to take. He now had some important prizes: Erzincan, Erzurum, and Alvand’s head. With that, the Aq Qoyunlu governors in Alvand’s former domain bowed down to him one by one. He entered Tabriz alike a god in August. He spent a month instituting reforms and settling his administration.

Initially, Ismail debated marching against Sultan-Murad immediately, but since the Puppet of Shiraz did not appear to be making a move, he gathered his forces and set out west for Diyarbakir and Al-Ghouri. From Erzincan, he called on Şahkulu to march down with as many men as he could spare too. In late September, Ismail entered Arbil. Continuing northwest, they took Mardin and arrived at Diyarbakir in October. Şahkulu and Ismail met outside the walls, the Şahkulu kneeled deeply. They debated how to progress the siege, as Ismail had very inferior artillery. Meanwhile, the Mamluks had lined the walls with cannons and 8,000 heavily armed mamluk soldiers were known to be inside the city, on top of 6,000 archers. Against the now 12,000 Qizilbash, more than half of whom were untested in battle, a direct assault against the walls was an unappetising suggestion.

The Siege of Erzincan

November 1501

Meanwhile, Şehzade Ahmet did not linger. After the Siege of Tokat had concluded, he travelled east to shore up the border but also to retake Erzincan. Last he had heard, Ismail had gone east and might be unable to return before winter set in. His artillery blasted the walls and the small garrison was defeated. However, Ismail was a bit closer than Ahmet had thought.

When news of this reached Ismail in Diyarbakir, all he heard was that Ahmet was coming. Ignorant of the siege with which the Turks could take cities if they wanted to, he assumed he would still have time. However, hhe knew he had to make a choice, as marching to Erzincan would be the last long march before winter, and with it the snow, would set in the mountains of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Anatolia. Ismail decided to travel north, and figured that perhaps he could negotiate with Al-Ghouri. However, by the time he reached Erzincan, it had already fallen to Ahmet.

Playing cat and mouse, Ahmet did not want to follow his brother into infamy and he graciously bestowed Selim with his own command and hightailed it out of Erzincan. Selim, who could not on his honour reject the assignment, convinced Ahmet to leave him as much artillery as possible in exchange for some of Selim’s sipahi, and he put them on the walls. He had lost the Battle of Hasankale and he would not run away from a rematch, given the opportunity by his cowardly brother. However, the walls and defenses had been damaged when Ahmet took the city. Selim did what he could, but Ismail arrived with a domineering army nonetheless.

Faced with a much more enticing prize than Diyarbakir, Ismail ordered for a siege assault to be prepared. While the Ottoman cannons were more numerous, the Qizilbash worked day and night to prepare ladders and begin an assault of bodies. Furthermore, there were still weak points in the walls, barely filled with wood and debris. Over the course of three assaults, the Qizilbash were repelled, as they fought dismounted, by the energetic janissary defenders. However, they bled and had less to bleed than the enemy did. Ismail himself led the fourth assault (from the rear) and this finally broke into the city. Loyalties and promises to the citizenry were forgotten and a violent retribution replaced just occupation as the citizens of Erzincan suffered the same fury as the remaining defenders. The fight took much out of the Qizilbash and left the city nearly depopulated. In the end, 3,000 of them were lost against half as many defenders, but among them, Şehzade Selim was dead.

Ismail, victorious, returned to Tabriz with a small retinue.

Final Steps

November 1501

In Tabriz, Ismail laid the foundations for a new empire and organised the former Aq Qoyunlu lands.

In Diyarbakir, Al-Ghouri solidified his gains and secured his rearguard. The Jihad had failed, but at least he still had an army.

In Armenia, Georgian kings and Armenian nobles founded a new condominium, a Christian island, fragile and brittle, in the middle of a sea of Islam.

In Sivas, Ahmet was conflicted. His brother was a rival who’s own failure at Hasankale had led to his death. This was good for Ahmet, eventually. However, the sting of defeat could be felt throughout the Ottoman Empire, and a new power, a true rival that could challenge them, had risen in the east.

Losses

Ismail Safavid

• 1500 event-Qizilbash cavalry
• 4000 normal Qizilbash cavalry (but also 7000 gained)
• 300 horse archers
• 2 siege cannons

Shirvan

• 2200 Caucasian light infantry
• 300 mercenary archers
• 20 mamluks
• 50 sappers

Imereti

• 70 feudal knights

Kakheti

• 50 levy pikemen
• 70 levy archers
• 10 levy cavalry
• 20 feudal knights
• 200 Caucasian light infantry

Mamluks

• 8,000 Turkmen light cavalry
• 200 mamluks
• 500 mercenary horse archers

Ottomans

• 50 sappers
• 140 war wagons
• 1,800 janissaries
• 6,000 azabs
• 900 Anatolian timarli sipahi
• 600 Rumelian timarli sipahi
• 1100 delis
• 400 akinjis
• 12 sahi guns
• 5 zarbuzans
• 36 bacaloska

Results

• Aq Qoyunlu (Alvand Shah) is no more. Alvand Shah is dead.
• Diyarbakir, Urfa and a number of other areas are taken by the Mamluks.
• Armenia taken by the Georgian kingdoms of Imereti, Samtskhe, Kartli and Kakheti in condominium.
• The rest of Alvand’s lands fall to Ismail.
• Ottomans lose Erzurum and Erzincan to Ismail.
• Turkmen revolt in Anatolia suppressed, although large parts of the rebels manage to link up with Ismail.
• Şehzade Selim of the Ottoman Empire, son of Bayezid II, is dead.

Situation in December 1501 (no occupation because Aq Qoyunlu is no more)