TLIGGT: A Giant Leap For Mankind

I wonder how the Pope would react to a pagan horde from across the world 600 miles from Rome, at the doorstep of Italy. IMO, Sicily is the most underused point of invasion into Europe, the others being Gibraltar and the Bosphorus.
 
I wonder how the Pope would react to a pagan horde from across the world 600 miles from Rome, at the doorstep of Italy. IMO, Sicily is the most underused point of invasion into Europe, the others being Gibraltar and the Bosphorus.

They actually won't go all that close to Italy- the Mongols have no Mediterranean naval presence at the start, have existing contacts in the Latin world and early diplomatic missives, and Tripoli for them is rather far away- from Cairo, even, to say nothing of Shiraz, or the capital of the Great Khan.

The Catholics are rather pleased- while Cyprus gets savaged, the Kingdom of Jerusalem pledges to the Mongols as vassals and even gains land. They also don't realize that Mongol Christians are all dyophysite heretics. But so long as the Khan is screwing over all the Muslims, the Pope can't be too pissed.

As for the vastness of the Mongol conquests, various writers, both ecclesiastical and otherwise, definitely note it in between pious crowing over the fate of the Muslims (and worrying that Mongol persecutions could eventually fall on Christian heads)...

TTL, the Mongols never really attack Bulgaria, and don't go far enough to reach the Bosporus (they temporarily vassalize the Laskarids and extract tribute from the Bulgarian Empire of the Romans).

So while it may be a possibility in the back of the Pope's mind, it is nowhere near as worrisome as it is to the inhabitants of Tunis or the Maghreb, all of which could be invaded by land.

Poland, Hungary, and the various Baltic knightly orders on the other hand...
 
Supplement I: DISCORD IN THE HOUSE OF PEACE

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Guyuk Khan was the wrath of God made man, a thunderbolt in flesh, the demon at the heart of Muslim nightmares for generations. He strode into the heart of Arab world, the Sunni world, and wrecked it utterly. In the span of four years, the great cities of Islam's golden age were torn asunder, their mosques and madrassas burnt as streets flowed with the blood of the faithful.

Baghdad, the city of the Abbasid renaissance and cultural capital of the Muslim world, went violently into the Arabian night- it was razed to the ground. The House of Wisdom was ransacked, with most of its books taken back to Guyuk's capital in Shiraz. The cities key irrigation canals were destroyed, its gardens burnt and its mosques stripped of all finery. In the center of the city, Guyuk ordered the skulls of the dead to be fashioned into a great pyramid. This singular act of savagery, amidst the wider destruction of the city, would become a large part of Islam's collective image of the man and would even make its way into European knowledge, inspiring Meinhard Mengs' famous 1689 painting of the pyramid amidst the representation of a burning Baghdad.

Other indignities were perpetrated on the notables of the city. In Mengs' second painting in his "Baghdad" series, he portrays the legendary execution of the last Abbasid caliph, al-Mutasim, by having molten gold poured upon his head. In the painting, Guyuk does it personally, although it is doubtful he personally carried out the execution. His family was trampled to death whilst wrapped in carpets; his nobles were locked in a room full of treasure to starve to death.

After the sack, only the half-burnt wrecks of the greater buildings remained in the city. With the local agriculture ruined, Baghdad would never be rebuilt, its ancient ruins complementing Ctesiphon and the lost city of Babylon. Mongol trade routes would instead run through Karbala and Mosul, and the region around Baghdad would economically stagnate. Later Christian writers in particular would connect Baghdad with Babylon- both were associated with decadence and sin, and Guyuk was portrayed as the physical manifestation of the wrath of God.

Baghdad was but the first city destroyed, located as it was on the frontier between Mongol Iran and the Near East. In a piece of symbolism noted by a number of Muslim writers (including the Muhajirun who fled the Mongol conquests into the Maghreb), Guyuk next sacked Damascus, the ancient city of the Ummayad caliphate.

The sack there was, comparative to the apocalypse perpetrated on Baghdad, not as severe- the ancient Ummayad Mosque survived relatively intact- but it was still a catastrophic event nonetheless. The city's population was halved, and many of its other buildings were stripped of books, precious metals, jewelry, and other artifacts. The sack of Dimashq also increased the local power of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which had pre-emptively pledged allegiance to Guyuk, and whose soldiers participated in future sacks of other cities.

Guyuk's lieutenants would sweep from there into Northern Syria, sacking Aleppo and other towns. Famously, Homs and Hama were essentially razed to the ground after putting up stiff resistance- and the invasion of Cyprus, which had not submitted, was also famously brutal. The invasions of Syria was largely what inspired the Cilician Armenians to pledge vassalage to Guyuk Khan as well, sparing them the worst of his invasion of Anatolia.

After Damascus, Guyuk marched into the Holy Land. Influenced by Christian generals and his Christian wife, Guyuk largely spared the vast majority of the Christian holy sites (at least, spared comparative to what befell the Muslims), instead choosing to focus on larger towns. Guyuk's Crusader vassals, themselves bolstered by a few new crusaders, actually were able to enlarge themselves, seizing land all the way down to Caesarea. The Crusader state would stretch from Tortosa to Caesarea up until its last years.

Guyuk's conquest of Jerusalem was spiritually devastating to the Muslim and Jewish faithful. The Western wall was pulled apart, brick by brick, by the Crusaders, ending the last remnant the Jews had of the ancient temple of Jerusalem. Guyuk, echoing the city's earlier conquests, turned al-Aqsa into a stable- but respected the Dome of the Rock, which by the end of the sack stood as one of the few mosques left in the city. Guyuk did not grant the Crusaders control of the city, but some Latins would end up being governors over it in the years before the Mongols in Egypt converted to Islam.

The other great sack in the Palestinian campaign was the razing of Gaza, which, like Homs, Hama and Baghdad, had resisted heavily in the face of Guyuk.

After ravaging Syria and Palestine, Guyuk, who had also been fighting the Ayyubids in between these sieges, swept into Egypt. Egypt at the time was suffering from internal turmoil- the Mamluk generals were discontent with the Egyptian state at the time, and the ravages of the Fourth Crusade were still felt in the Nile Delta. Guyuk, taking advantage both of his superior armies and this turmoil, entered Egypt without much resistance. Alexandria surrendered before he could besiege the city, earning themselves a good deal of mercy. The larger cities to the south- mainly Cairo- were more obstinate, and would thus earn the same wrath that had been meted out to other cities that resisted.

In the works of the Muhajirun, Cairo was the third city in the "Caliphal Trinity"- Damascus of the Umayyads, Baghdad of the Abbasids, and Cairo of the Fatimids. By the time of the Mongols, of course, both Damascus and Cairo were controlled by the Ayyubids or Ayyubid vassals, but the more poetic interpretation rang through.

As the siege of Cairo wore on, Mamluks inside the city launched a coup d'etat. Infuriated at the executions of the general Baybars and others (on largely trumped-up charges), the Mamluks slaughtered the remains of the Ayyubid royal family and took control of the city. Messengers were sent to other cities, hoping to lead the other Mamluk commanders in unison in fighting back Guyuk.

Instead, they fatally weakened the city's defenses, and Guyuk was able to enter the city. Although Old or Coptic Cairo came out relatively well (Copts had been useful in clandestine operations during the siege) the rest of the city was sacked completely. The population of newer Cairo was reduced to one-tenth of its previous size, and by the end of the sack, only two mosques, that of al-Hakim and the Lulua Mosque, remained standing. The sack of al-Azhar provided a complement to the prior pillaging of the House of Wisdom- books from that library were also taken back to Shiraz. The palaces were not only robbed of their riches but burnt, the servants and notables trapped inside.

The Mamluk insurrectionists tried escaping in drag, but were caught by Guyuk's forces soon afterwards. They were placed under a large platform during a feast hosted by Guyuk- and were thusly crushed to death.

Guyuk's final campaign did not in fact feature him- he returned to Shiraz to govern the vast areas he had seized in the past four years campaigning- but instead featured a coterie of Jurchen and Oirat warriors conquering Libya and sacking Tripoli and razing Benghazi therein. Muslims in Tunis, already facing the prospect of Louis IX finally going on crusade, were terrified that these forces would turn north into Ifriqiya. Some, already inclined to think it was the end of days, suspected Guyuk would come and conquer North Africa all the way to the Atlantic.

It was not to be- Tripoli and its environs would be the frontier of the Mongol Empire in North Africa, and would be the border between the Ilkhan in Cairo (meaning subordinate Khan of the Blue Horde in Shiraz and then the Great Khan) and the Maghreb.

The conquest of Tripoli would not be the last conquest Guyuk would make in the wider Middle East- there was the crushing of the Rum Seljuks and the invasion of Anatolia two years later- but it represented the end to Mongol expansion in the Arab world. By the time Guyuk died, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia and non-Roman Anatolia were all under Mongol rule; the Hashimids in the Hejaz and the Arab gulf states all paid homage to Cairo and Shiraz respectively.

Guyuk's death would also divide these conquests, which ranged too far away from each other to be properly administrated from Hejaz. The realm was divided into two ulus- that of the Blue Horde (Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Iran, Afghanistan) and that of the Ilkhans (Egypt, Palestine, Syria, the Hejazi vassals, Libya). The border was by no means definitive at the time- and both Khoja in Shiraz and Khoku in Cairo still paid homage to the Great Khan, whose control of the other khanates still existed.

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The conquests of Guyuk, and particularly the sack of Quds and the "Three Great Capitals" of Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, would weigh heavily on the Muslim and Christian consciousnesses. Guyuk in the West was portrayed largely in relation to Babylon- as either the Wrath of God destroying it or, rarely, as a new Ashurbanipal or Nebuchadnezzar coming from it to sack Jerusalem. The Westerners also favored Guyuk for his favorable treatment of Christians; the Crusader state acted as the Western port of call to the wider East up until the split between Cairo and Shiraz truly crystallized.

In the Sunni and Arab worlds, Guyuk was a mix of both, a damned conqueror but also a sign of God's displeasure. The rigorism and literalism endemic to Maghrebi Islam dates back to this period- Guyuk was said to have been sent by Allah, to punish the decadence and skepticism of earlier eras. The sacks of the cities were well-recorded and disseminated- later travelers, including the legendary Halef Da'ud ibn Abbas al-Ghossarah (known as al-Ghossarah) and Mansa Yahya, would reference the sacks during their travels.

The intellectual center of the Arab world was shattered- few were able to escape to Tunis and Algiers, and the great majority of Muslim scientific, cultural and philosophical works were instead transported to Shiraz, where the Blue Horde would lead a flowering of Persian Ismaili culture and science. Trade also suffered- Christian merchants were able to monopolize the Eastern Mediterranean for decades, and their naval clout was used multiple times to enforce that supremacy. Compared to what had been destroyed, the Maghreb was a backwater that largely traded across the desert rather than across the ocean.

The psychological effect was devastating. Although the Crusades had produced some turmoil in the Dar al-Islam, it was otherwise at the near-height of its overall power culturally. It controlled key trade routes and had a material and literary culture that definitively exceeded the Firanj. They had known of the Mongols from the destruction of Khwarezm, but never had they expected carnage on the level that they received.

It was received as an apocalyptic event, a sure sign of the end of days. As the Mongols approached, millennial hysteria gripped cities across the Middle East, and then across Africa. The most dramatic of these happened in Constantine in Ifriqiyah, where millenialist fears and hopes for the Mahdi culminated in a riot that burned half the city to the ground.

The loss of knowledge, prestige, and cultural artefact paled in comparison to the spiritual blow the fall of Quds produced. People were sure Mecca and Medina would be sacked, for if one holy city had fallen to the pagan and the Crusader, why wouldn't Allah forsake all of the cities? The use of the term Muhajirun also suggests the despair that befell Muslims after the campaigns of Guyuk- they too were on a Hijra, cut off from the rest of the Muslim world and despairing of stories of savagery from those lucky few who escaped the Mongol yoke.

It was very disorienting- to go from such heights to such depths in such a short amount of time. As opposed to the Romans, who decayed from within slowly, the Mongols came all at once and acted very swiftly. The fall of Khwarezm and the fall of Tripoli-in-Libya all happened within the span of 25 years. In the quarter of a century, the most developed parts of Muslim world, their most prestigious cities and greatest accumulations of wealth and knowledge, fell.

They were also fearful of the Catholic west. Cordoba, by the time of Guyuk, was on the precarious frontier between Catholicism and Islam in al-Andalus. Louis IX of France had only been prevented from his long-developing crusade in Africa by disease. And, with pagans coming from the West and Catholics pressing from the north, it felt as if the world was crumbling in on them.

Muslims could not know that the Mongols would, in time, convert to Islam and wider Islamic culture. They could not know that their fears of a Catholic Quds would never again come true.

The Muslim world would recover financially and culturally in time- the wonders of Blue Horde Iran, and the cosmopolitanism of the Muslim gunpowder empires four centuries later proved that. But the psychology of loss, of sudden conquest, of millennial hysteria and dour reaction against decadence out of the fear of God, would never quite leave the Arab-Sunni world.

In particular, the Maghreb- which had avoided conquest but which had also avoided the particularly tolerant brand of Islam present in Anatolia and Iran- would become the hotbed of tribal reaction within Islam. Many Muhajirun jurists postulated the nascent threads that would, under the duress of colonialism centuries later, coalesce into Sunni fundamentalism. It was not just resentment of Europe that led to Sunni literalism- it was fear of foreign devastation, of a new Guyuk, of an equally swift and violent loss of livelihoods, that led to the rise of those currents in what would become political Islam.

The end of the Muslim Golden Age would later be put within a demeaning Orientalist context- that Islam's greatest years were snuffed out, and that Arabs descended into a lesser, pale distortion of past glories, a descent that justified colonialism. While cultural and intellectual output never reached the levels of Abbasid Baghdad or Fatimid Cairo again (particularly in Egypt and the Levant, which would be devastated by years of post-Mongol civil war, famine and plague), Muslim culture on its surface was not altogether widely altered by the Mongol conquests. The architecture, aesthetics, music and poetry, all of that survived and, with Mongol patronage, thrived yet again.

Islam would also thrive militarily again, and would be spread once more outside of the Middle East. It is the failure to regain top status- particularly in the light of European dominance later in history- that proved most humiliating. The gunpowder empires were impressive, but compared to the globe-spanning and Muslim-defeating empires of former backwater Europe, they were less satisfactory.

In terms of Muslim literature, no other culture event, not even colonialism, would produce more content than the fall of the Middle East to Guyuk. From post-Mongol chronicles to modern novels, Guyuk stands in Sunni and Arab writings as an allegory and totem for all sorts of disorienting phenomenons. When used as a character, Guyuk rarely received nuance- he was the symbol par excellence of barbarity.

Guyuk's treatment in Shiite Islam, especially in Iran, is much more nuanced. Although Muslim writers condemn his slaughter, his sparing of Alamut (which pledged vassalage), his bringing of capital back into Iran, and his patronage of Iranian culture all turn him into a nuanced figure there. Some sectarian extremists, ignoring the sack of Quds, even write of him in the way Christians did- saying that the Sunnis earned the punishment they received because of doctrinal incorrectness. He was often claimed alongside great Sassanids and Alexander the Great as a mighty-if-pagan ruler.

In Turkey, he is admired for his military prowess, but is also condemned for his sacks of various cities in Anatolia and for what he perpetrated on Quds.
 
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Ok, I was wrong. This has more than just promise.

:D

Ah thanks! :D Just wait until the non-supplemental updates start!

That- and others- hopefully will flesh out details that happened before and outside the exploration-heavy focus of this TL. That, and after the back-and-forth with Xenophonte I wanted to explain more of the world of the TL.
 
Very interesting POD, and phenomenal job developing the supplemental description of Guyuk's conquests and their legacy! Quick question, how do these alternate Mongol conquests in the West affect the establishment of the Yuan dynasty? Also looking forward to a description of the ill-fated Mongol expedition into the Sudan :D

I'll also be interested to see how/if *Tordesillas plays out, and the pattern of Portuguese exploration and settlement in the Americas. Will we see a greater Portuguese North America in this TL?

Excellent work, looking forward to seeing more. Subscribed!
 
Very interesting POD, and phenomenal job developing the supplemental description of Guyuk's conquests and their legacy! Quick question, how do these alternate Mongol conquests in the West affect the establishment of the Yuan dynasty? Also looking forward to a description of the ill-fated Mongol expedition into the Sudan :D

I'll also be interested to see how/if *Tordesillas plays out, and the pattern of Portuguese exploration and settlement in the Americas. Will we see a greater Portuguese North America in this TL?

Excellent work, looking forward to seeing more. Subscribed!

Ah thanks!

The Yuan dynasty, for one, is differentiated by the longer life of Genghis, the relatively rule of Jochi (TTL born three months later and thusly avoiding paternity questions), the Jochid civil war and then the final conquest of the rest of the Song by Batu. Genghis takes and ravages northern China worse than OTL (Dadu will be majority Mongol for centuries), Jochi takes central China, and Batu both defeats Berke and then seizes the rest (the independent Dali kingdom and the Song territories of Guangdong, Guangxi and Guizhou).

And I'll definitely describe the Ethiopian war, don't you worry. The Mongols never bother with Japan TTL (too poor, focused on Indochina), but the Cairo Mongols will have their own follies in Africa...

There won't be a Tordesillas, in part because Castille will be later to the game (they have less ports, and focus mainly on the Muslims).

As for North America, Portugal won't be settling anywhere north of Mexico for any long period of time. They'll have other colonies- including parts of the Caribbean and greater involvement in African affairs...
 
Supplement II: I, GELAWDEWOS

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The Mongols had, in their history as a world empire, only ever lost to two enemies without later returning in vengeance and victory.

The Japanese, and the Abyssinians and their Solomonid emperors.

By the 1320s, the Ilkhans of Cairo were not only independent of the Blue Horde, but were Arabized and Sunni as well. They controlled parts of Syria, Palestine and Libya, and were involved in constant fights with their now-independent Crusader vassals, and with the Iranized, Shia Blue Horde.

Like other Egyptian rulers in the Muslim era, they also sought to conquer and Islamise the Nubian kingdoms. While Nobatia had already been Islamized, Alodia and Makuria remained Christian, and furthermore vassals of the Christian Negus Negast in Aksum. These Christian kingdoms made occasional raids into the southern extremities of the Ilkhanate.

In 1326, it was decided that Allah would be brought South- to Nubia, and to Abyssinia.

The timing of this was a mistake- Abyssinia had been re-centralized after the Solomonid restoration, and the Negus at the time was the young virs militarus Gelawdewos I. Gelawdewos had spent his early adulthood fighting the Somali sultanates in the Horn of Africa, and had largely driven them back away from Abyssinia. Furthermore, Gelawdewos was a beneficiary of contact with wider Christianity, including the ever-truculent Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The ruler of the Ilkhanate, on the other hand, was Abd al-Muttalib ibn Fahd ibn Haidar. Unlike his father and grandfather, who had kept peace with the Crusaders and subdued rebellious Bedouin tribes, Abd al-Muttalib was a decadent dilettante unsuited to war. His brothers had died in battle and intrigue- Abd al-Muttalib was, at the least, a skilled politician.

After one particularly grievous raid into al-Maris (formerly Nobatia), the man decided to exact vengeance on the Miaphysite kings to his south. An expedition was formed, one that would, in the propaganda of the chroniclers, bring Tawhid and Allah to the Christians in the south. Persecution of the Copts increased noticeably during this time.

In early 1327, the expedition sailed and marched south down the Nile, with Abd al-Muttalib at its head. The first great error was a failure to account a) for raids by the Christian Beja and b) for the desert. After months of attrition, they at last reached the outskirts of Dongola, where they started a siege. This was also a mistake- they did not have the supplies necessary, and were largely left exposed. Both of these errors can largely be attributed to the distracted, headstrong leadership of Abd al-Muttalib.

Back in Cairo, Abd al-Muttalib's nephew, Yaqub ibn Yusuf ibn Fahd (better known by his Mongol name, Toghtogha), ruled the capital and kept control over the "Mongol" faction, which kept to the older ways despite their allegiance to Sunni Islam. Many capable military leaders had been left in Cairo, ostracized by a paranoid Abd-al-Muttalib who feared being assassinated by his political enemies whilst on campaign. Yakub would not normally have been so close to power- the fifth son of a fifth son- but events, and his strategic alliances with many factions within the Ilkhanate, brought him tantalizing close to the seat of power.

It would be Yaqub that received the famous Hajj of Mansa Yahya- the gifts of gold were much appreciated by the struggling state.

In Africa, the armies of the Ilkhan were about to be given an awful surprise. Abyssinia had decided to intervene in this war; Gelawdewos, ever the pious Christian, wanted to defend the beleaguered Miaphysite faith from Islam, in battle. In January 1327, the armies of Abyssinia set out to relieve Dongola.

The siege had kept progressing in the mean time, but skirmishes with the Beja and bandits had occupied the Ilkhan's army. The city continued to hold out, as Christians smuggled in food to supplement the stores the city already had.

It was the night of February 7th, 1328, that Gelawdewos struck. The camp of abd-al-Muttalib, drunk on date wine and distracted, was caught completely off-guard. Most of the army was slaughtered in their sleep, and abd-al-Muttalib was captured, famously in the company of a coterie of little boys.

Gelawdewos, having won the battle, set out to defeat the fleeing remnants of the army. On May 5th, Gelawdewos found and crushed their army near Qasr Ibrim, wiping out the last of the Mongol forces in Nubia.

Gelawdewos had achieved a great victory- his Beja allies, and his more-integrated Nubian vassals, had defeated a force known even in Abyssinia as bloodthirsty monsters. He then sent for ransom from Yaqub, hoping to benefit further from his capture of the Ilkhan.

Up north, Yaqub was consumed with another sort of Christian nuisance. The Kingdom of Jerusalem had struck south, hoping to use the distraction of the Ilkhans to seize the Holy City, or at least the Galilee, where their rights had been abridged by Ilkhan Fahd ibn Haidar.

Yaqub didn't really have enough forces available- most men had been tied up in the conquest of Abyssinia. He scrabbled together the Mongol diehards, and some Bedouins and Libyan tribes, and went off to fight the Crusaders.

The ransom note got to Cairo just after Yaqub left; it sat unanswered past Gelawdewos's deadline. Abd al-Muttalib, and his surviving favorites, were put in a cage before most of the Abyssinian army, and were set on fire. Word was sent north of the fate of Abd al-Muttalib.

Yaqub, for his part, defeated the Crusaders at Yarmouk (the site was not left un-noted by chroniclers), and managed to relieve Jerusalem. He was prepared to strike and "drive the Firanj into the ocean", but then word of what happened to Abd al-Muttalib got to him from Cairo. He made a status quo ante bellum peace, apparently with great reluctance, and decamped back to Cairo in late 1328.

His absence was not good for the Ilkhanates internal stability- an opposing faction, made up of anti-Christian imams and promoted Arabs, had taken control. They had held their noses at the decadent Abd al-Muttalib, but didn't want the pious-but-tolerant Yaqub in control, either, especially considering his preference for Mongols, Turks and other tribes.

A civil war broke out, between Yaqub, advanced in front of other Mongolist claimants by his military acumen, and Abd al-Muttalib's eldest surviving son, Abd al-Wahid. The war would last until March 1331, at which point the Ilkhanate was militarily and agriculturally exhausted. In addition, the Hajj of Mansa Yahya had massively inflated the Egyptian dirham, hurting the economy.

Yaqub was victorious, and the Ilkhanate was restored to good administration and peace. Nonetheless, the disastrous expedition to Abyssinia - which cost the Ilkhans somewhere between 45,000 and 70,000 troops - weakened the state in the long run, and weakened Egypt overall. Gelawdewos, who struck as far as the Thebaid, was able to seize a lot of treasure from the baggage train of Abd al-Muttalib, and was furthermore able to use his victories as a counterweight to noble complaints.

The weakness of the Ilkhans also allowed their Arabian vassals to break free. This was a mistake- Gelawdewos would launch his expeditions in Arabia in 1344, and his 1350 sack of Mecca and Medina would be one last humiliation for the Arab/Sunni world. The successors to Gelawdewos the Great wouldn't be able to keep their Arabian lands, but they did manage to control the Bab el-Mandeb, and weaken both their Somali and Egyptian enemies.

The Ilkhanate, for its troubles, would be the first of the great khanates to collapse. As the Black Plague ravaged Cairo and Alexandria, Yaqub died "as Pericles did", in the words of later Occidental writers- and the realm fell back into civil war. By the end of Rajab in 1338, the Ilkhanate had fallen entirely, divided between a number of tribal rulers and city states. The short duration of the Ilkhanate (less than a century), combined with Guyuk, are marked in Egyptian historiography as a dark period, and are ultimately credited, through long-ranging aftereffects, with Muslim Egypt's weakness in the modern period.
 
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When Mansa Musa visited, his gifting of gold greatly decreaded it's value in the Middle East for a generation, so I think that might make it worse.

I mention that- Mansa Yahya's hajj devalues the gold Egyptian dirham, which ends up really hurting Egypt after the Black Death and the collapse of the Ilkhanate.
 
Supplement III: AT THE CROSSROADS OF THE ORIENTS


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The rapid and vast extension of Mongol suzerainty across the breadth of Eurasia revived and strengthened the old Silk Road. Of course, neither the Han or the old Romans, or any of the states that succeeded them, could have imagined the breadth and consistency of the Mongol trade monopolies; trade stretched, through Mongol vassals and directly-held lands, from Galich to Goa, from Kiev to Korea, from China to Libya, from Beirut to Burma. A panoply of peoples, speaking myriad tongues and worshiping various religions, crossed the continent by foot and boat, to trade and interact with the other subjects of the Great Khan.

There was also the trade generated by independent neighboring states. Venice and Europe traded extensively through the Crusader ports, and West Africa received Mongol trade via the Sahara. The entire Eurasian continent, and the northern half of Africa, joined together in one interconnected network of commerce. Although Portugal is widely credited as the first global empire due to the nature and wider breadth of its empire (including parts of the New and Old Worlds), there is a great case to be made that the Mongol Empire, through its subsidiaries, was the first great global empire. Buried goods have been found all across this vast range, indicating the breadth and wealth of the Silk Road and Indian Ocean trades under Mongol rule.

This trade also fostered religious exchange, mainly in China, where the conditions were ripe for the introduction of foreign, universal religions. The Yuan emperors patronized various faiths, including the famous introduction of Hinduism into rural parts of northern and western China, and the spread of Zoroastrianism in the cities of the Yangtze and China's central coast. In the western part of the Mongol realms, fierce competition from conquered Islam, and the Christian sects, largely prevented the widespread dissemination of Buddhism and Hinduism. That being said, foreign religious texts did manage to get into Europe; the famous translations of Sun Tzu, the Arthashastra and the Kama Sutra being the prime examples. The Arabs, of course, had been intellectually exchanging with the Indians for centuries by that point; a Ash'ari Muslim translation and response to Confucius was produced around this time in Fez.

The regions to benefit the most from the vast trade were those in the Transoxus and the Near East. While these regions had been ravaged by Ogedei and Guyuk (only the conquest of the Jin and northeast India come close), they also stood at the center of the various branches of the Mongol trade system. These regions had India and the wider Indosphere to the southeast, East Africa and Arabia to the south, West Africa to the southwest, the Maghreb and Western Europe to the West, Russia and Eastern Europe to the north, the Mongol homeland to the northeast, and China and the wider Orient to the east.

Iran prospered the most- the capable rule of the Blue Horde, and Iran's central location, made it the benefactor of the most trade, as a terminus, middle-point and starting point for all sorts of trade. al-Ghossarah would describe Shiraz' bazaar as the meeting-place of the world, noting that peoples from across Africa and Asia met with Arabs and Persians and even the occasional European. al-Ghossarah also noted the other great cities of Iran, such as Rayy and Isfahan, and then noted the renaissance of Central Asia, still under distant Chinese control and, as he noted, the last redoubt of Zoroastrian rule in Asia. Samarqand and other cities had been rebuilt on trade, the threat of nomads largely neutralized by the powerful writs of the Great Khan. Central Asia was the great nexus of the northern trade, where Muslim Iranians, Christian Russians, Indians and Chinese met under Yuan control in cities otherwise controlled by the Zoroastrian majority.

The Crusader state was also strengthened- treaties with Venice and other republics made it the center of Euro-Asian trade at the time. Tyre became the great trading city of the Outremer, bringing to mind its past glories as a Phoenician trading center. The great Christian travelers of the age, including the famous Ulrich of Ulm, all went to Asia through Tyre. The Kings of Jerusalem used trade as an opportunity; the influx of knights and wealth helped protect a state that otherwise would have fallen to the revived threat of Sunni (or even Shia) Islam.

Tyre offered Europe its first full taste of the goods the rest of the world had to offer. Although crusaders had brought back goods and knowledge before, Tyre offered a more thorough sampling of the products of not just the Near East, but India and the Far East as well. European chronicles of all sorts mention these products, and some even made their way into Europe- coffee, cotton, the hookah and the smoking of cannabis all originate with Tyre, and all later worked their way into the European cultural consciousness. The smoking of cannabis, attested in ancient chronicles, became particularly re-popularized, especially in the warmer parts of southern Europe; King Denis the Poet, of Portugal, had an entire series of poems glorifying the use of hookahs, hashish and cannabis, including a few written in Arabic. It also became a popular medical remedy, for a variety of ailments; a status it enjoys, albeit with more medical knowledge, into the modern day.

Cairo also regrew; in the absence of Libyan Tripoli, it acted as the far-flung trade center for most of the land-based African trade. The Kanem-Bornu Empire grew off of West African merchants going to far-off Egypt, and Abyssinian Christians often travelled north in search of the Holy Sites, and in search of trade.

The boom, however, was not to last. Although the system could handle the sub-khanates asserting their independence- the Red Horde preserved protections for merchants even after leaving Chang'an's orbit - it could not handle the Black Plague and the breakdown of order decades later in the late 14th and early 15th centuries.

By 1400, the Ilkhanate and Blue Horde in Iran had both fallen, and the White Horde was on its last legs. The Chinese commanderies in Central Asia had all broken away, and the various cities were already being ravaged by the re-assertion of nomadic warfare and of Shi'a Islam from the south. The Yuan had turned inward, becoming ever the more Chinese even as their ethnic hierarchy survived; only Mongolia and Asian vassals answered the call of Chang'an anymore, and the kurultai, which was already ignored by Cairo and Tver, was abolished in the midst of the Black Plague.

The Europeans also lost access to the east; the Aysinghur tribe of Jurchens had conquered the successors of the Egyptian Ilkhanate in the 1380s, before setting their sights on the Crusaders and independent Arab Sunni states in Syria. The Crusader state was not militarily strong enough to withstand the tide; the Black Plague had weakened Europe's ability to salvage their Crusader allies, and the nobility had weakened royal authority so much that mounting military resistance was made much more difficult. War was launched in 1387- and by 1399, the Crusader states had been fully conquered. Many European exiles, promised tolerance in exchange for Jizya, stayed and Arabized, all the while staying Catholic. Others fled back to Europe, bringing with them the cultural memory of the Near Orient, a memory that would last for centuries.

The loss of the Crusader state also lost Europe its access to Asian trade. The markets of Europe hungered for goods, and the loss of its entrepot was devastating to an already-damaged European economy.

The void was set, for another power to re-open markets lost to Europe. Portugal had already discovered the Azores, and there were ideas in Western Europe about finding ways to circumvent the Italian republics and the Crusaders. The Silk Road had gone away, but the next phase of global trade, the traversing of the world's oceans, had only just begun...
 
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Excellent descriptions, I'm really enjoying reading this timeline :)

al-Ghossarah also noted the other great cities of Iran, such as Rayy and Isfahan, and then noted the renaissance of Central Asia, still under distant Chinese control and, as he noted, the last redoubt of Zoroastrian rule in Asia. Samarqand and other cities had been rebuilt on trade, the threat of nomads largely neutralized by the powerful writs of the Great Khan. Central Asia was the great nexus of the northern trade, where Muslim Iranians, Christian Russians, Indians and Chinese met under Yuan control in cities otherwise controlled by the Zoroastrian majority.

What's the POD for the continued prevalence of Zoroastrianism in Central Asia? In OTL, Central Asia was largely Islamized by the 9th Century.

Also, how long after Talas did China re-establish authority in the region ITL?
EDIT: Ah, by Chinese control, do you mean Yuan?
 
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Excellent descriptions, I'm really enjoying reading this timeline :)

What's the POD for the continued prevalence of Zoroastrianism in Central Asia? In OTL, Central Asia was largely Islamized by the 9th Century.

Also, how long after Talas did China re-establish authority in the region ITL?
EDIT: Ah, by Chinese control, do you mean Yuan?

My understanding is that Zoroastrianism persisted as a minority faith until Timur; the Mongol dynasty there converts, and with so many Muslims killed in the conquests...

And by China, I do mean the Yuan. Essentially, Muslim Central Asia is devastated, Mongkeids end up converting to Zoroastrianism and send a lot of Muslims south and east (or, rather, the Yuan welcome them in), and end up vassals to the Yuan. The Zoroastrian majority is something like 55% in most places (and then, on average, 40% Muslim and 5% other, normally Nestorians)

Imagine a mix between Perso-Islamic culture, Zoroastrian faith, Chinese administration, and Mongols: that's Mongol Central Asia. The Zoro renaissance doesn't last forever; the Muslim Blue Horde kind of forces Islam back on Central Asia in the mid-14th century.

Very glad you enjoy it!
 
Good start Tsar Gringo!
I like TTL.

Still, maps are beautiful and useful.

You may need to cover some aspects in the European history:
- how big the Black Death hit Europe and what are the consequences/differences between OTL?
- is a HYW in TTLL?
- What will happens in the British islands?
- What are the consequences of France being bigger? Will English loose the continental possession earlier? will France focusing more on the rich Low Countries/pushing frontier to Rhine? or to the rich and prestigious Italy? or both? :cool:
- how the HRE will develop? Interregnum ? Will it centralize or desegregate even more?
- Is the North Africa subject of European expansion early on? (Portugal, Castile and France could be very interested about this...)
- How things are in Eastern/South Europe?

Thanks!
 
Good start Tsar Gringo!
I like TTL.

Still, maps are beautiful and useful.

You may need to cover some aspects in the European history:
- how big the Black Death hit Europe and what are the consequences/differences between OTL?
- is a HYW in TTLL?
- What will happens in the British islands?
- What are the consequences of France being bigger? Will English loose the continental possession earlier? will France focusing more on the rich Low Countries/pushing frontier to Rhine? or to the rich and prestigious Italy? or both? :cool:
- how the HRE will develop? Interregnum ? Will it centralize or desegregate even more?
- Is the North Africa subject of European expansion early on? (Portugal, Castile and France could be very interested about this...)
- How things are in Eastern/South Europe?

Thanks!

Glad you enjoy the timeline. Some European supplemental updates will come, but let me answer the questions that won't be covered in supplemental updates and that won't be answered within the TL itself.

I can tell you North Africa won't be subject to any more European expansion than OTL during the period- attempts to seize ports, et cetera. Actually moving into the hinterland will have to wait for the late 18th and 19th centuries TTL.

The Black Death happens TTL as well, and hits different places. All the major cities of the Mongol and European world are hit, but certain places get off better than others. Germany gets hit less hard, but Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, all of which avoided more of the plague OTL, will get hit hard by Red Horde Russia's biological warfare.

In fact, the disease will spread slightly differently. It'll probably enter Western Europe via trade in the Eastern Mediterranean, esp. with the state at Acre. In northern Europe, its the Danish monarchs, not the Ynglings, who are decimated by plague.

The British Isles- some different people survive; a King Alphonso, grandson of Henry III, marries an Ingibjorg, Maid of Norway, and they unite the main British isle. Irish wars come afterwards.

The Holy Roman Empire will devolve away from centralization, as in OTL; the internal politics are different in the details, but generally it is still neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.
 
Glad you enjoy the timeline. Some European supplemental updates will come, but let me answer the questions that won't be covered in supplemental updates and that won't be answered within the TL itself.

I can tell you North Africa won't be subject to any more European expansion than OTL during the period- attempts to seize ports, et cetera. Actually moving into the hinterland will have to wait for the late 18th and 19th centuries TTL.

The Black Death happens TTL as well, and hits different places. All the major cities of the Mongol and European world are hit, but certain places get off better than others. Germany gets hit less hard, but Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, all of which avoided more of the plague OTL, will get hit hard by Red Horde Russia's biological warfare.

In fact, the disease will spread slightly differently. It'll probably enter Western Europe via trade in the Eastern Mediterranean, esp. with the state at Acre. In northern Europe, its the Danish monarchs, not the Ynglings, who are decimated by plague.

The British Isles- some different people survive; a King Alphonso, grandson of Henry III, marries an Ingibjorg, Maid of Norway, and they unite the main British isle. Irish wars come afterwards.

The Holy Roman Empire will devolve away from centralization, as in OTL; the internal politics are different in the details, but generally it is still neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.


Thanks!
It sound good...
No words about France... Should I understand by that that they will be a main protagonist in the TL? :D
I look forward for new updates.
 
I don't think any power will be a "protagonist" in that sense; empires will rise and fall. Portugal, for example, will be a major player early in the TL, but, like in real life, Portugal will lose a lot of ground as time goes on, and it gets replaced by newer powers.

France will, true to form, be a major power; I still have to decide how France is going to play out overall, which is why I don't have more information.
 
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