Abu Sa'id Mirza was the Ruler of the Timurid Empire during the mid-fifteenth century, and he was the paternal grandfather to the Mirza Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur Badshah Ghazi whos founding the Moghul Empire in South Asian Subcontinent in 1526 AD, Abu Sa'id born a minor prince of the Timurid dynasty, Abu Sa'id quickly established himself as the most prominent among his warring relations. Over the course of two decades, he reunified much of the Timurid Empire, which had become fractured in the aftermath of the death of his great-uncle Shah Rukh. However, Abu Sa'id's hopes of restoring the empire to its former extent at the time of Timur ultimately failed after he was killed during an invasion of what is now western Iran.

The Aq Qoyunlu or the White Sheep Turkomans was a culturally Persianate, Sunni Turkoman tribal confederation. Founded in the Diyarbakir region by Qara Yuluk Uthman Beg, they ruled parts of present-day eastern Turkey from 1378 to 1503, and in their last decades also ruled Armenia, Azerbaijan, much of Iran, Iraq, and Oman where the ruler of Hormuz recognised Aq Qoyunlu suzerainty. The Aq Qoyunlu empire reached its zenith under Uzun Hasan.