The Horde of the Lord: A History of Asiatic Judaism
- Thread starter Gosing
- Start date
@ Dathi: I know. I was having a little fun (plus having a bizarre flash of imaginative fancy). 
To those who are curious, if you cut out everything related to the character Jochebed in the last update, what you'd get is more or less OTL (except for a few small things, like the story of the flooding of the crevice).
Thanks.
There'll be smiting, for sure. Righteous? Depends on if you're the smiter or the smitee.
what a wonderful conversion story
now I wonder how this is going to make things interesting
please continue posting!
Thanks.
Righteous smiting, me hopes!
There'll be smiting, for sure. Righteous? Depends on if you're the smiter or the smitee.
And Now For Something Completely Different...
The Old General was perched on the top of his horse at the base of the gate, smiling.
This terrified the hand-picked corps of lieutenants that sat on the horses around him. They had first joined the Old General when he was a young man, vicious, terrifying, and utterly unfunny. As his hair grayed and then disappeared he had found a sense of humor; instead of softening his personality as some of them had
hoped, it wound up making him even harsher and more terrifying.
Certainly the last Ayyubid hadn’t laughed.
The Old General kept his horse still, peering through the wide-open gate at the city beyond. His smile unchanging, he turned about, surveying the serried ranks of warriors behind him. He turned to the nearest tumen leader.
“During the campaign, I feared we would have to destroy the city in order to seize it.Now that we take it whole, I wonder if it would not have been better to burn it to the ground.”
“The infidels have indeed despoiled the city, Great Khan,” replied a nearby tumen leader with a long scare across his left cheek, “but now that it is restored to the people of the Lord it shall surely shine greater than it has since the days of the first Solomon.”
“You show great faith,” replied the Old General. “How much longer will it be?”
“Any moment.”
A few seconds passed, and then a bell rang out, resounding clearly through the unnaturally still night.
“I can’t believe I’ve made it,” muttered the Old General dreamily as he gathered his stirrups. Another tumen leader, an ornery old pagan who just snarled at all the attempts to convert him, raised his voice in protest.
“Great Khan, you have always asked me why I reject your religion. Well, now you say your religion tells you to walk into an unsecure enemy city at night with virtually no protection. It is obviously not my place to insult the faith of the Great Khan, but I assure you that Tenger would never make me do such a thing.”
“A good friend you are,” said the Old General lazily as he flicked a fly from his arm. “But have no fears. The years remaining to me are few; it wouldn’t be too great of a loss were I to fall today-especially here.”
“Come off it,” snarled the tumen leader with the scar, “we all know you’ll make it to Judgement Day.”
The Old General’s smile broke out into a grin. He seemed to be about to respond
when a cry came out from somewhere in the ranks of common soldiers.
“It is time!”
Slowly the great mass inched forward through the gate, with the Old General at the head. The streets were oddly quiet-all the civilians had either fled or were barricaded in their homes. As his horse passed through the gate and onto the dusty street, the Old General lifted his head and whispered, probably to God:
“L'shana haba’ah b'yerushalayim.”
Interlude I: 29th Adar II, 5011
The Old General was perched on the top of his horse at the base of the gate, smiling.
This terrified the hand-picked corps of lieutenants that sat on the horses around him. They had first joined the Old General when he was a young man, vicious, terrifying, and utterly unfunny. As his hair grayed and then disappeared he had found a sense of humor; instead of softening his personality as some of them had
hoped, it wound up making him even harsher and more terrifying.
Certainly the last Ayyubid hadn’t laughed.
The Old General kept his horse still, peering through the wide-open gate at the city beyond. His smile unchanging, he turned about, surveying the serried ranks of warriors behind him. He turned to the nearest tumen leader.
“During the campaign, I feared we would have to destroy the city in order to seize it.Now that we take it whole, I wonder if it would not have been better to burn it to the ground.”
“The infidels have indeed despoiled the city, Great Khan,” replied a nearby tumen leader with a long scare across his left cheek, “but now that it is restored to the people of the Lord it shall surely shine greater than it has since the days of the first Solomon.”
“You show great faith,” replied the Old General. “How much longer will it be?”
“Any moment.”
A few seconds passed, and then a bell rang out, resounding clearly through the unnaturally still night.
“I can’t believe I’ve made it,” muttered the Old General dreamily as he gathered his stirrups. Another tumen leader, an ornery old pagan who just snarled at all the attempts to convert him, raised his voice in protest.
“Great Khan, you have always asked me why I reject your religion. Well, now you say your religion tells you to walk into an unsecure enemy city at night with virtually no protection. It is obviously not my place to insult the faith of the Great Khan, but I assure you that Tenger would never make me do such a thing.”
“A good friend you are,” said the Old General lazily as he flicked a fly from his arm. “But have no fears. The years remaining to me are few; it wouldn’t be too great of a loss were I to fall today-especially here.”
“Come off it,” snarled the tumen leader with the scar, “we all know you’ll make it to Judgement Day.”
The Old General’s smile broke out into a grin. He seemed to be about to respond
when a cry came out from somewhere in the ranks of common soldiers.
“It is time!”
Slowly the great mass inched forward through the gate, with the Old General at the head. The streets were oddly quiet-all the civilians had either fled or were barricaded in their homes. As his horse passed through the gate and onto the dusty street, the Old General lifted his head and whispered, probably to God:
“L'shana haba’ah b'yerushalayim.”
You could definitely PM me what you have. I speak Hebrew (un a kleine bissel yiddish) but I know nil about Mandarin or Mongolian.
Your first substantive update is great! I like your use of the Hebrew calendar (including Adar II, a concept few people seem to grasp).
Is the Great Khan Temujin, still breathing and campaigning in 1250? OTOH, wiki says he was born in 1162 or 1155, which would make him 88 or 95 years old. (Edit: I see that you use the 1162 date, making him 88). Very few people lived to that age in Temujin's era and culture. But if is him... let the world tremble!
Is the Khanate moving its capital to Jerusalem? For that matter, can Jerusalem support a large enough city to rule an empire that large?
Tremble before Kohen Khan....
Genghis Cohen? Khubilai Kohen? Rather appropriate for Mongol Jews.
Except to have Mongol Kohanim, the Mongols will have to marry some Cohen women. The offspring will be Kohanim with the males elible to perform the priestly duty of a Kohen.
So Genghis doesn't get to be a Cohen.
So Genghis doesn't get to be a Cohen.
Except to have Mongol Kohanim, the Mongols will have to marry some Cohen women. The offspring will be Kohanim with the males elible to perform the priestly duty of a Kohen.
So Genghis doesn't get to be a Cohen.
Eh, if Genghis Khan wants to perform priestly duties, he'll conveniently discover that his mother Hoelun came from a long line of Cohen women.
1250? I was trying for 1251. Darn.
Well, that puts you ahead of me, who knows nothing but English and whatever Spanish I could learn from a German teacher.
I'll try to hammer my thoughts into a form coherent enough to put in a PM.
All I'll say about the Old General/Great Khan is that he is a) an OTL character (beliee it or not, Shlomo's reputation doesn't rest on conquest) b) not Temujin and c) wasn't a Khan in OTL.
Tremble before Kohen Khan....
What's that you say? He conquered all of Asia? Well, Asia Schmasia, his matzo taste like the fireplace after a fire.
Subutai, maybe. Not real important to know in terms of the story, I think.
Actually, kohen status is exclusively patrilineal (as was/is membership in each of the Twelve Tribes, including the Levites). There is no matrilineal or conversion route. All kohanim are, theoretically, direct patrilineal descendants of Aaron.
However, thats not much of a problem, because kohanim are exclusively spiritual, not political, leaders. In fact, the House of David is part of the Tribe of Judah, and the House of Saul was of the Tribe of Benjamin. Most of the Samaritan kings were, IIRC, from Ephraim and Menasheh (although they did and do have kohanim as well). The only time kohanim took political leadership was under the Hasmoneans, and even they didn't claim to have restored or usurped the Davidic dynasty - rather, they focused on the Hellenistic titles ethnarch, strategos, and basileios.
One interesting question - how does the Horde handle the the Exilarch (Resh Galuta)? At the time, he was universally recognized as the Davidic heir, and had significant influence particularly with Jews in the Islamic world. (Edit: it's not clear when the Exilarchy ended, but it's around 1200. So you can include such a figure in your TL or not, as you wish.)
Last edited:
Yes, you're right. My non-observant mistake. From genetic studies, almost all Kohanim have a common genetic marker, and the highest paternity-certainty rate ever recorded in population genetic studies to date!
FDW
Banned
Mandarin as we know it probably didn't exist at the time, the main dialect spoken by Chinese elites was probably closer to that of the Southern Chinese languages than Mandarin today. (Fun fact about Chinese: The Southern dialects are all much more archaic then the Northern ones, and this because of the Northern Chinese elite running to the South every time a group of barbarians decided they liked civilization.)
Mongolian on the other is part of Altaic language family, which depending on the definition you use, includes the Turkish, Tungusic (Manchurian), Korean, and Japanese language families. I say depending, because various linguists have repeatedly argued over whether the latter three belong in the group, which is made worse by the fact that they further back than the Indo-European languages and that all of them only got writing systems relatively recently in historical terms.
1250? I was trying for 1251. Darn.
It's March 1251. As a rule of thumb, add 3760 to the Christian year for all Hebrew months except Tishri, Heshvan, Kislev and Tevet; for those months, add 3759. Tevet usually goes into January of the following year, but like I said, it's a rule of thumb.
You can get a more exact conversion from this calculator.
Great concept, BTW.
I thought I did pretty well doing it in my head! Thanks for the calculator link.
Thanks for the calculator link.