Minarets of Atlantis
The Expulsion of the Atlanteans
Mahdia, Emirate of Bayouk
Ramadan/Yenayir 1116 AH (December 1704 AD Gregorian)*
Soufiane and Maimona sat, slowly beginning to sip on their shouqatl naa’na, the hot chocolate-mint beverage so loved by the Atlanteans as the call to sunset prayer rang from the Grand Mosque of Mahdia. The local Baywanis did not care much for the drink, no more than they cared for the Atlanteans themselves. Unlike across the oceans where in Fes, Marrakech and Constantinople many sympathizers could be found (and where found indeed, helping resettle the Atlanteans after their expulsion by the Spaniards decades earlier), the Baywanis had their own history and memory of expulsion which earned them only their lives, what they could carry on their backs, and ships to the unknown New World of which the young turcophile Moroccan Sultan, Abu Marwan Abdelmalik, had been eager to claim a stake. No, the Baywanis, descendants of the Mudéjar, twice expelled, felt little sympathy for the descendants of Berber and Corsair merchants and Aztec elites, expelled from what the Muslims called Atlantis to the more northerly dominions of Islam in the New World.
To the sound of canons blasting to announce the breaking of the fast, Maimouna closed her eyes briefly, inhaling the scent of cacaou, and imagined herself as a child in Atlantis. Many decades before, as with this year, the Holy Month of Ramadan coincided with Yenayir, the Berber New Year.
Overlooked by the ulema in Atlantis, to whom Islam was brought by Berbers themselves, its celebration rivaled that of the Eids or the Moulid, the celebration of the birth of the Prophet. Draped in their finest gowns and shawls of jaguar skin, the Atlanteans would make their way to the Grand Mosque of Yahya At-Teyokali, a corruption of the indigenous Aztec Huei Teocalli to give thanks to the Almighty for salvation of Aztec temple and capital from the Spaniards by the alliance between their ruler Moqtezouma, and bands of marooned Iberian and North Africans, sure that this sun-worshipping civilization was Atlantis, if not the descendants of antediluvian Irem of Arabian legend.
The subsequent adoption of Islam by this empire and Berberization of its elite made it a prime destination for Berber nobles as the Saadi dynasty ascended in Morocco and as the Ottomans displaced the Zayyanids and Hafsids to the east, both of whom encouraged the migration to the New World for the displaced Berber elites and Mudéjar arrivals alike. In Atlantis, for over a century the Berbers and natives resisted the encroachments of the Spaniards all around, with much assistance from Corsairs. From Atlantis to Mesopotamia, the alliance between the Arab dynasty in Morocco and the Ottomans plagued the Spaniards and allowed for the development of Atlantean society, as well as the exploration more north and settlement of Mudéjars, who would Islamize the local Balaqman people and create what would become Bayouk - a poor colony at the mouth of the Greater Nile, compared to the richness of Atlantis; but incomparably larger thanks to the friendly reception the Muslims received on the interior, and the Anglo-Moroccan alliance at sea.
Maimouna opened her eyes again as Soufiane held her aging hand with his own and fed her a date.
Adjusting her long-ago worn out jaguar skin shawl to keep her warm.
“Bennayu,” he whispered, wishing his wife a bonnus annus**, even if they were the last of a generation to remember the celebrations of Yenayir in Atlantis.
A local boy walking with his parents near where the aging couple sat tugged on his mother’s shawl pointing to Maimouna’s jaguar skin one. The elderly two laughed and smiled, the child’s parents scowling and muttering in Arabic at the unjustness of the wealth and flaunting of it on the part of the Atlantean expulsees in Bayouk. To the poorer Arabophone Baywanis, the Atlanteans were seen as the offspring of Berbers and Pagans, who had received for almost a century aide from the Moroccan sultan and later Ottoman caliph assistance for survival - something Iberian Baywanis' ancestors could only have dreamt of. To the Baywani elite, and the local emir however, the Atlanteans were a welcome source of wealth, education and a connection to trade across the various islands ruled by Europeans in the seas of the New World.
“Sana tayeba,” Soufiane shouted to the family, wishing them a good year and laughing with his wife.
The moment’s mood quickly lightened with the arrival of the couple’s sons, son-in-laws and grandsons who had been in the mosque, greeted with the ululations of their daughters, daughter-in-laws and granddaughters who had finished preparing the meal. They were a family ahead of their time, one of the few Atlantean clans who’s children had intermarried with Baywanis. Their eldest, Ahmed, approached first to kiss their foreheads and present his children before the iftar was served.
“Mowlati,” he addressed his mother regally, symbolically kissing her hand and pressing it to his forehead.
Maimouna's father had been a notable in Atlantis, the son of a Zayyanid noble before the arrival of the Ottomans in the Algiers Regency and his Aztec wife, Maimouna’s maternal grandmother. Her mother was the daughter of a Kouloughli, the creole descendants of janissaries and Algerian women in the Algiers Regency, some of whom would be sent to Atlantis from time to time to maintain the Ottoman-Moroccan presence in the ever-enclosed city. Ahmed, his children, and Soufiane and Maimouna’s other children likewise, approached the old couple, receiving their blessing, and finally they went inside to break the fast.
They may not have been the minarets of their long-gone Atlantis, Soufiane thought to himself; but those of Mahdia would do their job just as fine: proclaiming the Oneness of God to the pagans of the vastly undiscovered interior against a bulwark of colonies of the crusaders, ever-growing.
___________
*The Berber Calendar is said to be the continuation of the Julian, a Roman leftover in Berber North Africa. I had not thought of this originally, and so after much research and calculation, the AD Gregorian date for this opening story would have been around the end of December 1704, to allow for it to have been Yenayir (January) in the Berber calendar and simultaneously Ramadan in the Arabo-Islamic one.
**Bennayu is said to also be a Berber inheritance from the Roman presence in North Africa, "bonnus annus," Happy New Year.
The Expulsion of the Atlanteans
Mahdia, Emirate of Bayouk
Ramadan/Yenayir 1116 AH (December 1704 AD Gregorian)*
Soufiane and Maimona sat, slowly beginning to sip on their shouqatl naa’na, the hot chocolate-mint beverage so loved by the Atlanteans as the call to sunset prayer rang from the Grand Mosque of Mahdia. The local Baywanis did not care much for the drink, no more than they cared for the Atlanteans themselves. Unlike across the oceans where in Fes, Marrakech and Constantinople many sympathizers could be found (and where found indeed, helping resettle the Atlanteans after their expulsion by the Spaniards decades earlier), the Baywanis had their own history and memory of expulsion which earned them only their lives, what they could carry on their backs, and ships to the unknown New World of which the young turcophile Moroccan Sultan, Abu Marwan Abdelmalik, had been eager to claim a stake. No, the Baywanis, descendants of the Mudéjar, twice expelled, felt little sympathy for the descendants of Berber and Corsair merchants and Aztec elites, expelled from what the Muslims called Atlantis to the more northerly dominions of Islam in the New World.
To the sound of canons blasting to announce the breaking of the fast, Maimouna closed her eyes briefly, inhaling the scent of cacaou, and imagined herself as a child in Atlantis. Many decades before, as with this year, the Holy Month of Ramadan coincided with Yenayir, the Berber New Year.
Overlooked by the ulema in Atlantis, to whom Islam was brought by Berbers themselves, its celebration rivaled that of the Eids or the Moulid, the celebration of the birth of the Prophet. Draped in their finest gowns and shawls of jaguar skin, the Atlanteans would make their way to the Grand Mosque of Yahya At-Teyokali, a corruption of the indigenous Aztec Huei Teocalli to give thanks to the Almighty for salvation of Aztec temple and capital from the Spaniards by the alliance between their ruler Moqtezouma, and bands of marooned Iberian and North Africans, sure that this sun-worshipping civilization was Atlantis, if not the descendants of antediluvian Irem of Arabian legend.
The subsequent adoption of Islam by this empire and Berberization of its elite made it a prime destination for Berber nobles as the Saadi dynasty ascended in Morocco and as the Ottomans displaced the Zayyanids and Hafsids to the east, both of whom encouraged the migration to the New World for the displaced Berber elites and Mudéjar arrivals alike. In Atlantis, for over a century the Berbers and natives resisted the encroachments of the Spaniards all around, with much assistance from Corsairs. From Atlantis to Mesopotamia, the alliance between the Arab dynasty in Morocco and the Ottomans plagued the Spaniards and allowed for the development of Atlantean society, as well as the exploration more north and settlement of Mudéjars, who would Islamize the local Balaqman people and create what would become Bayouk - a poor colony at the mouth of the Greater Nile, compared to the richness of Atlantis; but incomparably larger thanks to the friendly reception the Muslims received on the interior, and the Anglo-Moroccan alliance at sea.
Maimouna opened her eyes again as Soufiane held her aging hand with his own and fed her a date.
Adjusting her long-ago worn out jaguar skin shawl to keep her warm.
“Bennayu,” he whispered, wishing his wife a bonnus annus**, even if they were the last of a generation to remember the celebrations of Yenayir in Atlantis.
A local boy walking with his parents near where the aging couple sat tugged on his mother’s shawl pointing to Maimouna’s jaguar skin one. The elderly two laughed and smiled, the child’s parents scowling and muttering in Arabic at the unjustness of the wealth and flaunting of it on the part of the Atlantean expulsees in Bayouk. To the poorer Arabophone Baywanis, the Atlanteans were seen as the offspring of Berbers and Pagans, who had received for almost a century aide from the Moroccan sultan and later Ottoman caliph assistance for survival - something Iberian Baywanis' ancestors could only have dreamt of. To the Baywani elite, and the local emir however, the Atlanteans were a welcome source of wealth, education and a connection to trade across the various islands ruled by Europeans in the seas of the New World.
“Sana tayeba,” Soufiane shouted to the family, wishing them a good year and laughing with his wife.
The moment’s mood quickly lightened with the arrival of the couple’s sons, son-in-laws and grandsons who had been in the mosque, greeted with the ululations of their daughters, daughter-in-laws and granddaughters who had finished preparing the meal. They were a family ahead of their time, one of the few Atlantean clans who’s children had intermarried with Baywanis. Their eldest, Ahmed, approached first to kiss their foreheads and present his children before the iftar was served.
“Mowlati,” he addressed his mother regally, symbolically kissing her hand and pressing it to his forehead.
Maimouna's father had been a notable in Atlantis, the son of a Zayyanid noble before the arrival of the Ottomans in the Algiers Regency and his Aztec wife, Maimouna’s maternal grandmother. Her mother was the daughter of a Kouloughli, the creole descendants of janissaries and Algerian women in the Algiers Regency, some of whom would be sent to Atlantis from time to time to maintain the Ottoman-Moroccan presence in the ever-enclosed city. Ahmed, his children, and Soufiane and Maimouna’s other children likewise, approached the old couple, receiving their blessing, and finally they went inside to break the fast.
They may not have been the minarets of their long-gone Atlantis, Soufiane thought to himself; but those of Mahdia would do their job just as fine: proclaiming the Oneness of God to the pagans of the vastly undiscovered interior against a bulwark of colonies of the crusaders, ever-growing.
___________
*The Berber Calendar is said to be the continuation of the Julian, a Roman leftover in Berber North Africa. I had not thought of this originally, and so after much research and calculation, the AD Gregorian date for this opening story would have been around the end of December 1704, to allow for it to have been Yenayir (January) in the Berber calendar and simultaneously Ramadan in the Arabo-Islamic one.
**Bennayu is said to also be a Berber inheritance from the Roman presence in North Africa, "bonnus annus," Happy New Year.
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