Hakkari

The Hakkari were a Kurdish tribal house, known to medieval Arab writers as al-Hakkariyya, who grazed their flocks between the Great Zab and Lake Urmia from at least the tenth century. They gave their name to the emirate centered on Çölemerik, also called Julamerk.

Their chief submitted to Imad al-Din Zengi in 1133, and the Hakkariyya regiment became a major Kurdish corps in Saladin's army, fighting at Acre in 1191. The hereditary emirate is documented from the 1380s under Izz al-Din Shir, who kept his throne by switching allegiance between the Timurids and Qara Qoyunlu until his death in 1423.

After Qara Iskander destroyed his heirs, a descendant, Asad al-Din Zarin Cang, returned from Egypt and rebuilt the principality. On the Ottoman-Safavid frontier, later emirs played the two empires off against each other, while family wars split the emirate into rival fiefs.