 Pir Ali was himself the son of the Aq Qoyunlu ruler Fakhr ad-Din Qutlu by his Pontic wife Maria Comnena, sister of Alexios III of Trebizond.Franz Babinger speculates that Sara Khatun was an Aramaic Christian who had grown up near Diyarbakir, but this speculation is based on an earlier assumption by Vladimir Minorsky which he later renounced.Sara Khatun married her paternal cousin Ali, the son of the leader of the Aq Qoyunlu federation Qara Osman.