Moonlight in a Jar: An Al-Andalus Timeline

Good update. Wondering how long before Christian Europa start catching up on seatravel, or are they distracted on other fronts?
 
btw whats happening in Bohemia?

Good update. Wondering how long before Christian Europa start catching up on seatravel, or are they distracted on other fronts?
north america is theres no question. Andalusia is simply not as powerful as spain. Also they little reason to go even though they have nordic England, trade would be little and they probably cant conquer the new lands either.
 
ACT VII Sidebar: Clarimonde of France
Good update. Wondering how long before Christian Europa start catching up on seatravel, or are they distracted on other fronts?
Christendom is at a controversial period: The Bataids are a major threat that's swallowing much of the Haemus, while in the west, there's a lot of grumbling that the Church is becoming too powerful.

France, meanwhile, is grappling with fallout from the War of Five Flowers: King Bernard was elevated to the throne around 1330 but had no direct male-line heir, and all the other male-line options were quite distant. He managed to hold on until 1341 but could not father a boy-child before his death. An attempt to revert to elective succession deadlocked when five dukes were nominated and none could win over a majority. This led to a three-year interregnum while every duke in Francia launched a bloody civil war over who would be king. The conflict was resolved in an unusual way: The Pope stepped in and supported Richard I's daughter, firstborn and sole surviving child - 18-year-old Princess Clarimonde - as a compromise candidate. This proved to be controversial and deeply precedent-setting. While the Salic Law has been used in property law for generations, there was no precedent as to whether agnatic succession also applies to the crown. (OTL, this was decided in 1316 in favour of Philip V; the Salic Law is not actually mentioned until this time.) Her biggest supporter was Aimeric, Abbot of Cluny, a former Richard supporter who wrote a long legal and theological opinion supporting the position that agnatic primogeniture did not apply to the crown, as it was not land. With the support of the Pope and the Church Knights, Clarimonde came to the throne with little real land in hand, with her holdings concentrated mainly in the Ile de France. A few nobles also supported her, partly because she was weak and would be unable to keep them from doing whatever they wanted, but mostly because they thought they could get the young queen married off to one of their sons and thereby gain control of France. By contrast, the Grand Duke of Provencia (already a French vassal in name only) refused to acknowledge her and has taken to calling himself the King of Provencia, and many viewed the entire scheme as a plot by the Pope to weaken France and benefit Provence, which has long been a source of bishops prominent in the "Strong Pope" cabal which currently calls the shots at the Lateran. One of the malcontent French dukes promptly ordered a hit on the Pope, which failed when the would-be assassins were spotted and captured by the Church Knights.

Complicating matters was that Clarimonde turned out to be shockingly competent and extremely cunning. She played her dukes against each other for years in an elaborate game of courtship as various highborn dandies vied to win her hand in marriage. The period is endlessly romanticized in later literature as the golden age of courtly love, with Clarimonde herself idealized as a paragon of beauty and wits. Both have some basis in fact, but in reality her biggest skill is being able to navigate interpersonal politics and take the blood out of the internecine wars for the throne, reducing them to a bunch of terrible flirting. Her biggest play was teasing a marriage to a son of the Holy Roman Emperor, which infuriated all her dukes, as it would've led to France passing into German hands - but she eventually made a big show of acceding to their concerns. She turned around and married Jocelyn de Rouen, son of Arnaut II, the Duke of Normandy. Arnaut is the most powerful duke in France, and Normandy is extremely rich due to its prominence in the sea trade. This - and the fact that she pulled back from a foreign marriage - allayed the concerns of neutral nobles and bought her an alliance with her strongest duke and his own network of allies, while infuriating the Dukes of Anjou and Burgundy. Jocelyn had to dodge assassins at his and Clarimonde's wedding and for four years afterwards before he was able to sire a child with her, a baby boy also named Jocelyn... who promptly died after mysteriously somehow smothering himself with a pillow. Two years later, Clarimonde had twins - a boy and a girl, Jocelyn and Ermessentz respectively - and ensured they were placed under heavy guard at all times.

The year 1360 finds Anjou at war with Normandy, while France herself remains under a co-monarchical situation. While Clarimonde is the queen regnant, she has declared King Consort Jocelyn her co-ruler, and he exercises many of her powers due to jure uxoris - but she's the mind behind him. France looks likely to pass to the De Rouen dynasty once she dies and little Jocelyn II inherits, giving him control of both the Ile de France and - once his dad dies - his family's significant and wealthy holdings in Normandy. He'll be the first French monarch in generations with real power in his hands, but it's still up in the air what kind of man he'll be.
 
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Good update. Wondering how long before Christian Europa start catching up on seatravel, or are they distracted on other fronts?

Given the lack of a Spain and Portugal in the initial push and close relations due to the same religion, I say Christian Europe would be a century or two behind since there's no actual need to go west and going around Africa means dealing with Andalusian ships and their allies in the typical rest spots.

Closest thing to a possible colonial rival this early would be Scandinavia or England, just to reach Vinland or Heavenland as said by their exploring ancestors. Problem is the end of the Medieval Warm Period means Greenland gets colder and harder to use and keep as a rest stop.

If news reaches Europe and accepted as a possible thing to do instead of being seen as Muslim nonsense, they might colonize slightly earlier.
 
north america is theres no question. Andalusia is simply not as powerful as spain. Also they little reason to go even though they have nordic England, trade would be little and they probably cant conquer the new lands either.
Though if Christians only go to NAmerica around 1500-1600, they'll probably need to fight disease-immune hybrid Andalusi-Arabic-West African-Native American societies, which would delay European colonisation immensely- though not to the point of, say, Africa or Asia.

Having a world-sailing Muslim civilisation will help in delaying Europeans from snowballing too. As mentioned in the text, Late Medieval exploring countries got into positive feedback loop of exploiting virgin territories with loads of natives, then trade and conquest which lead to richer mother country society who can then upgrade for another cycle of explore, exploit, expand, and "exterminate".

If news reaches Europe and accepted as a possible thing to do instead of being seen as Muslim nonsense, they might colonize slightly earlier
IIRC Muslims only managed to get info on the New World around 1550-1600 IOTL, and that's from Barbary Pirates raiding Spanish Imperial shipping. ... There's no good geography for a piratical nation in Western Europe. Maybe Galicia but Andalusi can always punish them by land then...

Edit: oh sorry, here's Piri Reis map made in 1512:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Piri_reis_world_map_01.jpg
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For a moment, I thought this was a Game of Thrones reference, though the War of Five Flowers is a really cool name for a conflict. Dammit brain.
Nah, the War of Five Flowers is what happened after 1308, when King Foulques V died and left behind five daughters, only for his cousin and his bastard to fight over the throne. France has had a lot of blood spilled this century over the issue of female inheritance, really.
 
Will the Andalusians coopt some elements of Mesoamerican architecture and combine it with their own style of architecture sort of analogue to OTL Indo-Saracenic architecture where the British combined the already syncretic Mughal architectural style with the Neo-Classical style.

This sort of thing has been done in the Islamic East for some time: the "big rectangle" style of mosque entrances is characteristic of the Persian tradition of mosque-building (Picture 1 is the Great Mosque of Isfahan, 2 is the Bibi Khanym mosque in Uzbekistan). Interestingly, they also pop up in Zoroastrian temples (3 from Baku, 4 from Kerman).
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This sort of thing has been done in the Islamic East for some time: the "big rectangle" style of mosque entrances is characteristic of the Persian tradition of mosque-building (Picture 1 is the Great Mosque of Isfahan, 2 is the Bibi Khanym mosque in Uzbekistan). Interestingly, they also pop up in Zoroastrian temples (3 from Baku, 4 from Kerman).
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I'd expect something similar to happen in Mesoamerica.

Suspiciously pyramidal mosques....
 
I think thats pushing it. The natives are goths. Roman culture is very diluted the last time it was mentioned pre slave rule. There no reason for pagan temples which few became churches to have any impact in design.


What I meant was a European influence on the local Andalusian style specifically Gothic architecture being an influence. However, wouldn't elements of Roman architecture influence the local architecture, albeit very little? Yeah, I forgot how far removed Andalusian culture is from the Roman era.
 
However, wouldn't elements of Roman architecture influence the local architecture, albeit very little?
First is there any in good enough condition. Second is it worth it? Mosques have certain things needed you then have to combine this with roman designs which would be a headache. Then you have the issue is it practical. Why roman houses roman building was very intensive and grand. That would cost alot and take alot of time.
 
I can imagine that Andalusian mosques probably have a somewhat Classical Greco-Roman aesthetic as well.
Not quite. Think Moorish architecture for what's built in Andalusia. Lots of crenellated arches, ogee arches, horseshoe arches, dramatically-coloured voussoirs, lancet arches... look, it's a lot of arches. And a lot of gardens. No Andalusian alcazar is complete without spectacular gardens. Charbagh-style gardens are just a thing you have if you're an Andalusian of sufficient wealth to own a big property. Spectacular gardens with water features, fountains, arcades, splendid paving patterns and fragrant, colourful plants are more common in Andalusia and distinguish it from how Christians tend to build. There's even a public garden in Isbili that functions as sort of an early form of civic park.

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Moroccan influence is also pretty common. One of the most notable influences in Andalusian architecture right now comes from the Blue Period: Moroccan-style blue zellige mosaics.
 
Suspiciously pyramidal mosques....

Ah, I can imagine it already...

Although, I think only the entrances or front-facades of the mosques should be pyramidal. If you look at the Persianate mosques pictured earlier, their faces are very Zoroastrian-chic but their insides are the classic mosque layout of rectangle courtyard with all the requisite bits on their various sides. The Blue Mosque in Edirne is similar-- big bombastic Byzantinesque front, but the interior still looks like you zoomed-and-enhanced Muhammad's house in Medina.

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Otomi Ajami done! It's based on Mezquital Otomi, the largest dialect surviving today. It quite different from OTL precolonial Otomi, but since Hats also seems to be using Mezquital for his Otomi names and words I'm at least consistent with TTL's Otomi.

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The romanization on the consonants is lifted directly from the Mezquital orthography, which is based on Spanish. X is "sh", J is "kh", and so on.

An interesting feature of written Mezquital is that it usually doesn't mark tones; tones are listed in the dictionary, but normal writing (road signs, books, etc.) won't include them. The reasoning is that native speakers will already know what tones go with what words, and that as a result they not only know what tones to assign to an unmarked word but also frequently forget to mark tones while writing quickly. I initially had this whole thing planned where Otomi Ajami would have "consonant series" like Ottoman Turkish. Turks used consonant choice to shed light on what vowels were used in the word-- kaf and qaf both sounds like /k/, but kaf is usually followed by front vowels while qaf is usually followed by back vowels--as a way to accomodate Turkish's 8 spoken vowels within the paltry 3 vowels of the Arabic script. I planned to have similar sounding consonants grouped in series based on the tone (low/high) they produced, and had this whole chain of transmission of the "series" concept from Central Asia to Fatimid Egypt to Andalus to Anahuac... but there weren't nearly enough consonants to actually create a full series for low tone, never mind rising. Plus, actual native speakers probably wouldn't bother with something like that, and the unifying characteristic of Ajami scripts is that they are by-and-large invented by (and for) native speakers of a non-Arabic tongue.

Instead of all that baggage, there are two tone marks. These marks occur frequently in the Naskh calligraphy of the late Abbasid period as purely aesthetic space-fillers, and they'd have plenty of time to diffuse across to Andalus. They are used to help outsiders (and natives) eliminate ambiguity about tones when coming across new words. Dictionaries and learner's manuals will make good use of them, but expect their influence outside that to be somewhat limited.
 
Otomi Ajami done! It's based on Mezquital Otomi, the largest dialect surviving today. It quite different from OTL precolonial Otomi, but since Hats also seems to be using Mezquital for his Otomi names and words I'm at least consistent with TTL's Otomi..
Otomi is one of those languages that's hard to pin down. It's obscure!

This is pretty astounding and I wish I had that talent with languages. Truly I can only ever be an admirer of the AHMADI-CRUZ PARLANTE GANG.
 

jocay

Banned
I think thats pushing it. The natives are goths. Roman culture is very diluted the last time it was mentioned pre slave rule. There no reason for pagan temples which few became churches to have any impact in design.
'

It probably wouldn't be common but I'm sure someone in TTL Andalusia would've done it. The El Rahman Mosque in Cherchell, Algeria was a former Christian church, itself built over a Roman temple.

RomanMosque.jpg
 
'

It probably wouldn't be common but I'm sure someone in TTL Andalusia would've done it. The El Rahman Mosque in Cherchell, Algeria was a former Christian church, itself built over a Roman temple.

RomanMosque.jpg
Yes but that exist in part due to Byzantium and it rule keeping it in shape hispania hasn't been in roman rule for a while and successor state did not continue roman building of maintenance. Also you need existing structure theres no desire to build a 'roman mosque' on practically cost a fortune for something the conservatives will hate.
 

jocay

Banned
Yes but that exist in part due to Byzantium and it rule keeping it in shape hispania hasn't been in roman rule for a while and successor state did not continue roman building of maintenance. Also you need existing structure theres no desire to build a 'roman mosque' on practically cost a fortune for something the conservatives will hate.

Neither was Algeria. As for the second part of your statement, that's untrue. As the Germanic states were essentially Romanized institutions from the get-go, they not only maintained Roman buildings but built new ones, albeit in a smaller scale. The Visigoths, the predecessors to Al-Andalus, were certainly among these. Early Islamic architecture was based off architectural motifs followed by both the Byzantines and Persians; there's even Greco-Roman style mosaics dating to the Ummayad era. The Abbasids themselves were very keen into Sassanid art styles. I don't quite follow you.

Islam now may frown upon visual representations but it wasn't quite like that for the first few centuries. In an alternate history, who's to say things can be a little bit more liberalized?

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