Moonlight in a Jar: An Al-Andalus Timeline
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This is interesting to see all the potential butterflies occurring in both America and the New World. Most of us on here have been butterflied out of existence, don’t know if it applies to me as well.
I doubt the Muslim traders/“conquistadores” will be able to leave a large force on the western coast of South America, particularly the Andes mountain region. At most, I can see them set up satellite states that allow for trade and influence from the several Muslim states to seep in.
I doubt the Muslim traders/“conquistadores” will be able to leave a large force on the western coast of South America, particularly the Andes mountain region. At most, I can see them set up satellite states that allow for trade and influence from the several Muslim states to seep in.
Are you sure? Again the turkic invasions will not happen nor will mughal, islamic power in india is much weaker here. Hindus are hard to convert, just because some muslim comes doesn't change that. Unless they were buddhist muslims were good at converting them.
(Wasn't complaing about of islamic conquest in india) True but they collapsed hindu dynasties will come back to power. Ghurid invasion is very underrated one they did alot of the converting.
Well, as the conquistadors OTL showed, once you have gained control of the local networks of labor and resource production there's no reason to keep native satellites around-- and dispensing with them may even be the more profitable decision. Hernan Cortes brought down the Aztecs with a coalition of native peoples, and yet his successor Nuno de Guzman repaid a powerful coalition member-- the Tarascans-- with a genocidal conquest. Horrible stuff, yes-- and yet not only did it come at no real cost to the Spaniards, it brought the silver mines in the region under Spanish control. So while I see where you're coming from about the logistics of supplying an isolated force, once that force can be reliably supplied locally that ceases to be a concern.
Also, the Andes aren't that isolated. Once the Andalusis build a portage system across Panama and a Pacific fleet, the region enters the reach of the existing colonial strongholds in the Caribbean.
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Hindus were only "hard" to convert because nobody made any proper effort. Most of the Islamic dynasties in India ruled through local proxies and alliances, maintaining Hindu structures. There was never a concerted top-down effort like we saw in the Middle East.
Also don't forget Indonesia was Hindu before converting to Islam.
The Thing is...the Muslim are happy to get new converts and more trade routes to exchange their wares for gold and silver and getting more 'exotic goods' that full conquest, of course we know what they do in Taino but that was different but in general muslim only go full attack unless they got attacked by the 'savage pagans' renegated the word of allah.
I think it would be cool if the emerging opposition between Western and Eastern Islam found expression in a grand conflict over the Indian Ocean, where enterprising Andalusis trade with/find employment in the Seuna kingdom or other Hindu entities so that they can resist attempts at conquest by Bataid- or Chinese-aligned actors.
On the topic of China more generally, I think we're imagining them as a world-conquering behemoth but, at least in the short term, there's little incentive for that. If the Europeans sailed around the entire world in search of spices, it is primarily because spices were so far from them-- but what is far for Europe is near for China. Furthermore, until the British introduction of opium, European trade with China wasn't European manufactures for Chinese manufactures, it was European raw resources (gold, silver) for Chinese manufactures. And it's not just China-- Indian textiles were once so competitive that English manufacturers sought to ban chintz throughout England.
While we tend to regard the Ming as shortsighted for stopping Zheng He's voyages, would you pay for voyages out into an ocean whose people already come to your ports/ports near you (Manila, Malacca) to buy stuff? It's like telling Walmart that it needs to look into door-to-door sales. So even as steamships begin to break the traditional dependency on trade winds/monsoons, Andalus can count on a breather while China launches anti-piracy expeditions against the Japanese and conducts gunboat diplomacy around the Malay isles, especially the ones near Papua that make the spices. In fact, I think that China is likely to discover Australia/New Guinea before it does the New World-- Makassarese fishermen harvested sea cucumbers off the north Australian coast in large numbers, leading to one of the few (if not the only) examples of sustained contact of Aborigines with outsiders before European colonization. If some enterprising merchant-guild decides to establish camps of Chinese fishermen/pearlers in those two awfully big islands to the south with the aid of Makassarese/Ternatean/Tidorean guides, well that's just business...
But once it becomes apparent just how much more efficient the Chinese are at buying goods and reselling them, especially when they no longer depend on winds, then the ranging-out into the Indian Ocean will begin and never stop. The British didn't just owe their dominance of the seas to their warships but also to their merchant marine, which allowed other nations to prosper by being plugged into the world economy, but also tied them to Britain specifically. This potential will likely be explored by freebooting individuals working with the resources of existing enterprises at first, but eventually the imperial state may take note of the prospects for a tributary system bigger than anything the old dynasties could have envisioned, a world order where the Son of Heaven truly is the lord of All Under Heaven.
On the topic of China more generally, I think we're imagining them as a world-conquering behemoth but, at least in the short term, there's little incentive for that. If the Europeans sailed around the entire world in search of spices, it is primarily because spices were so far from them-- but what is far for Europe is near for China. Furthermore, until the British introduction of opium, European trade with China wasn't European manufactures for Chinese manufactures, it was European raw resources (gold, silver) for Chinese manufactures. And it's not just China-- Indian textiles were once so competitive that English manufacturers sought to ban chintz throughout England.
While we tend to regard the Ming as shortsighted for stopping Zheng He's voyages, would you pay for voyages out into an ocean whose people already come to your ports/ports near you (Manila, Malacca) to buy stuff? It's like telling Walmart that it needs to look into door-to-door sales. So even as steamships begin to break the traditional dependency on trade winds/monsoons, Andalus can count on a breather while China launches anti-piracy expeditions against the Japanese and conducts gunboat diplomacy around the Malay isles, especially the ones near Papua that make the spices. In fact, I think that China is likely to discover Australia/New Guinea before it does the New World-- Makassarese fishermen harvested sea cucumbers off the north Australian coast in large numbers, leading to one of the few (if not the only) examples of sustained contact of Aborigines with outsiders before European colonization. If some enterprising merchant-guild decides to establish camps of Chinese fishermen/pearlers in those two awfully big islands to the south with the aid of Makassarese/Ternatean/Tidorean guides, well that's just business...
But once it becomes apparent just how much more efficient the Chinese are at buying goods and reselling them, especially when they no longer depend on winds, then the ranging-out into the Indian Ocean will begin and never stop. The British didn't just owe their dominance of the seas to their warships but also to their merchant marine, which allowed other nations to prosper by being plugged into the world economy, but also tied them to Britain specifically. This potential will likely be explored by freebooting individuals working with the resources of existing enterprises at first, but eventually the imperial state may take note of the prospects for a tributary system bigger than anything the old dynasties could have envisioned, a world order where the Son of Heaven truly is the lord of All Under Heaven.
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What prevents Kuntisuyu Freedom Press from being ran by Quechua trying to gain freedom from a (tyrannical?) Quechua government (think republicans trying to overthrow an empire)
We've to wait till planet of hats reveal some surprises.
Still, dunno now if my father line is even in Ribat-al-Mayrit to begin with...
Got a question reading some of the older updates, how are the sufis who went around converting america such as the otomi viewed by the modern world. The muslim explorers are seen as murders so what about sufis?
ACT VIII Part VII: Salamah and the Anicetians
Planet of Hats
Donor
Excerpt: Fractured Glass: Religious Schism in the Crossing Age - Paulo Munoz, Tomery Press, 2011
The end of the War of the Navarrese Succession left Hizamid Al-Andalus flush with the euphoria of victory. After generations of tension, the Muslims of Iberia had prevailed in their first outright conflict with France, rolling back their northern border and gaining control of lost lands in the process. The changes that came from the Treaty of Xavier had far-reaching ramifications for all sides, but shaped how Abd ar-Rahman the Seafarer and his successors would interact not only with their homeland, but the Gharb al-Aqsa.
Taxation in Al-Andalus had been a concern for some time, with the steady reduction in the Christian population - and the growth of the Muslim population - cutting into the Caliphate's revenue as a smaller and smaller proportion of people paid the jizya. The capture of the Duero Valley saw that trend rolled back. While a proportion of local Christians fled to Santiago, most could not afford to leave their farms behind, choosing instead to remain as dhimmi. All of a sudden, the Hizamids found themselves able to collect significantly more tax revenue from nearly 500,000 Christian subjects, further swelling coffers already flush with cash from taxation of trade.
Further, the terms of the Treaty of Xavier ensured that Al-Andalus would not interfere with the rights of pilgrims to travel to Santiago de Compostela - a limit which presented hurdles in the practice of the annual summer raids through which various hajibs would promote their own legitimacy. With the guarantee of pilgrims' rights in place, Abd ar-Rahman turned his attention from the defeated and divided Santiagonians, reducing the summer raids in severity and focusing instead on supporting what efforts existed in the Gharb al-Aqsa, namely the efforts of Hasan the Majestic to consolidate his hold on Zama and the surrounds.
By now, Hasan had spent two decades consolidating himself in Zama, waging small wars with the local Mayan powers. Campaigning in the Mayan peninsula was not easy due to the scarcity of provender, with watering provided mainly by what could be drawn from cenotes. Nevertheless, with the aid of kishafa and Maya allies, including some conversos, Hasan had managed to capture a few additional towns on the east coast and had gained control of the island of Kuzamil[1].
In the years following the War of the Navarrese Succession, though, Abd ar-Rahman gave Hasan the Hizamids' official sanction, deputizing him as wali of a new administrative division: The Wilayah of Al-Quwaniyyah. The troops the Hizamids sent over would not be numerous, mainly arriving in the summer, but they would provide new support to the effort to tame a region that had been far less receptive to Islam than the core of Anawak, where the Hizamids could rely on the Otomi Alliance's support and fealty to secure access to lucrative markets.
Abd ar-Rahman was not alone in eyeing the Farthest West as a pressure valve. With coastal merchants forming the backbone of the Asmarid dominion in the Maghreb, increased prosperity and wealth had enabled them to break the back of the Blue Army over prior generations, and the kingdom spent much of the 1380s and 1390s gradually expanding inland to regain control over Sijilmasa. That meant re-absorbing breakaway tribes of Veiled Sanhaja and other inland Berbers who had supported the uprising against the coastal traders. Many of these inland tribes were followers of more rigorist interpretations of Islam than the urban elites in Sale, with Zahiri Islam being particularly common among certain tribes of Masmudas and Sanhajas. These groups clashed with the primarily Maliki urban and ruling class, and agitators continued to roam the mountains and hinterlands, fomenting brushfire rebellions against the Asmarids.
The Asmarids dealt with some of these rebellions in a simple manner: They put them on boats and shipped them over the ocean, where they could govern themselves as they pleased, out of sight and out of mind.
Many of these dissidents ended up working as mercenaries in Anawak, but the most prominent group was the Yusufids, a group of Masmuda Berbers who adhered to an ultra-rigorist form of Zahiri belief similar to that held by the Al-Mutahirin of generations before. An uprising among them, led by the zealot Al-Mansur ibn Yusuf, was put down in 1390, but enough of the dissidents remained that further revolts could still have been possible. The Asmarids dealt with the issue by rounding up Al-Mansur and his followers, putting them on ships and sailing them off into the sunset, depositing them on a beach in a cove on the island of Burinkan.[2]
Deposited on the beach in 1391 with about a hundred of his followers and their goats, chickens and horses, Al-Mansur found himself on an island largely depopulated by plague, with only a small number of native Taino people surviving - an initial population of 25,000 to 50,000 had been reduced to less than 2,000 by the impact of diseases and occasional slave raids. The newcomers were forced to parley with the remaining natives. A few of the early settlers were killed in initial clashes, but Al-Mansur eventually managed to negotiate a peace with the remaining group, inviting them to a simple meal on the bay now known as the Khalij as-Salam.[3] This site would become the location of a simple village, home to this small group of Zahiri Berbers and a few surviving Taino allies - a village which would grow into the future city of Salamah.
While the Asmarids exported religious heterodoxy, among the Christian kingdoms, it lingered closer to home - and nowhere more closely than in the north of Iberia.
The Tellian movement, rooted in Tyrol, had been driven out decades prior through the efforts of the Church, with several key Tellian leaders executed as heretics and communities uprooted. Many of these Tellians took to the road as itinerant preachers, spreading across Europe and carrying the remnants of their ideology with them. There was no particular unity to these post-Tellian communities - they sprung up wherever they sprang up, with the ideas typically traveling along trade routes informally.
Tellian thought is likely to have been the source of several schismatic movements in Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. In the 14th century, a community known as the Helpfridites could be found in rural areas around Breisgau, adhering to an ethos of sinlessness and ecclesiastical poverty clearly derived from the Tellians. German chronicles describe these faithful as "Tirolen" - "Tyroleans" - and suggest they were tolerated only grudgingly.
Also described as "Tyroleans" are a more prominent group in northern Iberia known as the Good Men of Melide, though they're more commonly known as the Anicetians, after their founder, Anizetto das Colinas - or Anicette, as he was known in French. Anizetto, a Hispanicized Norman, was active in the late 1200s, apparently adopting his view on Christianity independently. Accounts from surviving early Anicetian texts report that he settled in the town of Melide in Santiago, where he surrendered all his earthly belongings and lived the life of an impoverished preacher. Despite opposition from the Church, Anizetto became something of a local saint. By all accounts, the people of Melide came to believe he was the holiest man alive, and it's reported that he cured a child of the plague simply by touching him.
By the time of Anizetto's death, he had amassed a significant lay following among the poor and common classes, spreading to smaller towns in the area and even building small churches. More critically, however, some of his followers took to traveling along the Way of Saint James, offering their services as healers, map-sellers, guides or even providers of rest for pilgrims. This handful of people had access to an enormous flow of pilgrims through Santiago - pilgrims who would sometimes ask them about their faith.
The Church itself viewed Anizetto and his movement as a nuisance. In 1322, Anizetto himself was arrested and thrown in jail by the ecclesiastical authorities. He died in prison, but his movement long survived him. By the time of the War of Navarrese Succession, it was prevalent in the western Cantabrian Mountains and rural Gallaecia, and Tellian minorities lived in the poorer parts of cities like Santiago and Astorga, where they were generally treated as undesirables. They were most numerous in the city of Lugo, where they came to enjoy the quiet protection of the city's sympathetic rulers.
Anicetian doctrine is well-documented and shares clear commonalities with the Tellians, but also appears to draw inspiration from very orthodox forms of Islam - an interesting example of cultural cross-pollination in Iberia. The Anicetians believed that man was created from sin and has an evil nature, and that the Old Testament God was in fact the creator of sin. They took a dualistic view of God in which the Old Testament God was the "Evil God" and the New Testament God was his good counterpart. By the Anicetian telling, Jesus was the Son of God, but he was fully human, but achieved salvation through his sinlessness and purity of heart, a process through which he attained divinity - an essentially adoptionist viewpoint.
Purity and sinlessness were core to Anicetian life. They maintained an ethos of simplicity, cleanliness and austerity. In their view of the world, God punished men for their sins, and the only way to avoid punishment was to live a simple, pure and sinless life. Part of this purity involved regular washing of the body and, for women, covering of the head to partially conceal the hair. Keeping the hair long - and for men, the beard - was seen as a mark of purity. Notably, Anicetian theology had no concept of indulgences or priestly forgiveness of sin, viewing absolution as a lifelong process of maintaining purity as best as possible, with only God capable of passing final judgment. It also had no bar against women becoming pure: The belief system was highly accessible to especially lower-class women, and many early Anicetians were peasant mothers who passed their beliefs on to their children. Women and men both served as spiritual leaders, often so chosen for their wisdom and age.
Most notable, however, was the Anicetian view on church authority: They viewed the Catholic Church itself as having lost its legitimacy by concerning itself more with wealth and the affairs of kings than with the salvation of humanity, and they viewed the Papacy as a corrupted institution and the actual spiritual leadership of Christendom as essentially vacant. The Anicetians viewed religious authority as residing with the commons, exercised in the form of ecumenical councils. Anicetian communities operated as early forms of council ecumenism, in which religious leaders and respected elders consulted together to make decisions and in which there was no figure analogous to the Pope.
It was this view of the Church that saw Anicetian beliefs explode in Iberia following the War of Navarrese Succession. The war had been a disaster for the Kingdom of Santiago, their kingdom soundly defeated by the southern Muslims. By the Anicetian telling, the defeat of Santiago - and the failure of the long-predicted Reconquista - was a consequence of Christianity's moral decline and the Church's descent into corruption. They viewed their Muslim neighbours as spiritually and morally superior to the corrupt institution of the Church, with a moral clarity that gave them an advantage over their corrupted northern neighbours. Many mainline Catholics, struggling with feelings of abandonment by France and the Church, found the Anicetians' philosophies to ring true.
As Santiago splintered into warring counties and duchies, the Anicetians found themselves with enormous influence over one of the most powerful lords. The Normando division of the former kingdoms of Gallaecia and Leon had carved out a number of duchies, and one of the most central was that of Felipe, Duke of Sanabria. While his seat lay at a Normando fort in Ribadelago on the coast of Lake Sanabria, his dominion extended to several key cities, encompassing Astorga, Ponferrada, Lugo and Braganza. Felipe himself was of Normando extraction, but his mother came from the Santiagonian royal family, giving him a distant claim to the throne.
Felipe's sympathies for the Anicetians were quiet, but evident. He made no moves to persecute them, permitting them to build their own churches in cities under his control, and he allowed them to serve as members of his council and appear at his court. They formed a key base of support for the ambitious duke's efforts to press his claim against the usurper king Bermudo III, who held Santiago, Ourense, Pontevedra and Corunna but had few allies east of that.
As the Anicetians grew in influence in Sanabria, more and more commoners took interest. The concept of conciliarism - the derivation of religious authority not from the church, but from councils of learned men - continued to spread to Europe as it gained exposure through meetings between Anicetians and pilgrims on the Way of Saint James. From the spread of Tellianism to Iberia, the seeds of pushback against Papal supremacy began to blossom.
[1] Cozumel.
[2] Puerto Rico.
[3] The Bay of Peace - today's Bahia de San Juan.
The end of the War of the Navarrese Succession left Hizamid Al-Andalus flush with the euphoria of victory. After generations of tension, the Muslims of Iberia had prevailed in their first outright conflict with France, rolling back their northern border and gaining control of lost lands in the process. The changes that came from the Treaty of Xavier had far-reaching ramifications for all sides, but shaped how Abd ar-Rahman the Seafarer and his successors would interact not only with their homeland, but the Gharb al-Aqsa.
Taxation in Al-Andalus had been a concern for some time, with the steady reduction in the Christian population - and the growth of the Muslim population - cutting into the Caliphate's revenue as a smaller and smaller proportion of people paid the jizya. The capture of the Duero Valley saw that trend rolled back. While a proportion of local Christians fled to Santiago, most could not afford to leave their farms behind, choosing instead to remain as dhimmi. All of a sudden, the Hizamids found themselves able to collect significantly more tax revenue from nearly 500,000 Christian subjects, further swelling coffers already flush with cash from taxation of trade.
Further, the terms of the Treaty of Xavier ensured that Al-Andalus would not interfere with the rights of pilgrims to travel to Santiago de Compostela - a limit which presented hurdles in the practice of the annual summer raids through which various hajibs would promote their own legitimacy. With the guarantee of pilgrims' rights in place, Abd ar-Rahman turned his attention from the defeated and divided Santiagonians, reducing the summer raids in severity and focusing instead on supporting what efforts existed in the Gharb al-Aqsa, namely the efforts of Hasan the Majestic to consolidate his hold on Zama and the surrounds.
By now, Hasan had spent two decades consolidating himself in Zama, waging small wars with the local Mayan powers. Campaigning in the Mayan peninsula was not easy due to the scarcity of provender, with watering provided mainly by what could be drawn from cenotes. Nevertheless, with the aid of kishafa and Maya allies, including some conversos, Hasan had managed to capture a few additional towns on the east coast and had gained control of the island of Kuzamil[1].
In the years following the War of the Navarrese Succession, though, Abd ar-Rahman gave Hasan the Hizamids' official sanction, deputizing him as wali of a new administrative division: The Wilayah of Al-Quwaniyyah. The troops the Hizamids sent over would not be numerous, mainly arriving in the summer, but they would provide new support to the effort to tame a region that had been far less receptive to Islam than the core of Anawak, where the Hizamids could rely on the Otomi Alliance's support and fealty to secure access to lucrative markets.
Abd ar-Rahman was not alone in eyeing the Farthest West as a pressure valve. With coastal merchants forming the backbone of the Asmarid dominion in the Maghreb, increased prosperity and wealth had enabled them to break the back of the Blue Army over prior generations, and the kingdom spent much of the 1380s and 1390s gradually expanding inland to regain control over Sijilmasa. That meant re-absorbing breakaway tribes of Veiled Sanhaja and other inland Berbers who had supported the uprising against the coastal traders. Many of these inland tribes were followers of more rigorist interpretations of Islam than the urban elites in Sale, with Zahiri Islam being particularly common among certain tribes of Masmudas and Sanhajas. These groups clashed with the primarily Maliki urban and ruling class, and agitators continued to roam the mountains and hinterlands, fomenting brushfire rebellions against the Asmarids.
The Asmarids dealt with some of these rebellions in a simple manner: They put them on boats and shipped them over the ocean, where they could govern themselves as they pleased, out of sight and out of mind.
Many of these dissidents ended up working as mercenaries in Anawak, but the most prominent group was the Yusufids, a group of Masmuda Berbers who adhered to an ultra-rigorist form of Zahiri belief similar to that held by the Al-Mutahirin of generations before. An uprising among them, led by the zealot Al-Mansur ibn Yusuf, was put down in 1390, but enough of the dissidents remained that further revolts could still have been possible. The Asmarids dealt with the issue by rounding up Al-Mansur and his followers, putting them on ships and sailing them off into the sunset, depositing them on a beach in a cove on the island of Burinkan.[2]
Deposited on the beach in 1391 with about a hundred of his followers and their goats, chickens and horses, Al-Mansur found himself on an island largely depopulated by plague, with only a small number of native Taino people surviving - an initial population of 25,000 to 50,000 had been reduced to less than 2,000 by the impact of diseases and occasional slave raids. The newcomers were forced to parley with the remaining natives. A few of the early settlers were killed in initial clashes, but Al-Mansur eventually managed to negotiate a peace with the remaining group, inviting them to a simple meal on the bay now known as the Khalij as-Salam.[3] This site would become the location of a simple village, home to this small group of Zahiri Berbers and a few surviving Taino allies - a village which would grow into the future city of Salamah.
*
While the Asmarids exported religious heterodoxy, among the Christian kingdoms, it lingered closer to home - and nowhere more closely than in the north of Iberia.
The Tellian movement, rooted in Tyrol, had been driven out decades prior through the efforts of the Church, with several key Tellian leaders executed as heretics and communities uprooted. Many of these Tellians took to the road as itinerant preachers, spreading across Europe and carrying the remnants of their ideology with them. There was no particular unity to these post-Tellian communities - they sprung up wherever they sprang up, with the ideas typically traveling along trade routes informally.
Tellian thought is likely to have been the source of several schismatic movements in Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. In the 14th century, a community known as the Helpfridites could be found in rural areas around Breisgau, adhering to an ethos of sinlessness and ecclesiastical poverty clearly derived from the Tellians. German chronicles describe these faithful as "Tirolen" - "Tyroleans" - and suggest they were tolerated only grudgingly.
Also described as "Tyroleans" are a more prominent group in northern Iberia known as the Good Men of Melide, though they're more commonly known as the Anicetians, after their founder, Anizetto das Colinas - or Anicette, as he was known in French. Anizetto, a Hispanicized Norman, was active in the late 1200s, apparently adopting his view on Christianity independently. Accounts from surviving early Anicetian texts report that he settled in the town of Melide in Santiago, where he surrendered all his earthly belongings and lived the life of an impoverished preacher. Despite opposition from the Church, Anizetto became something of a local saint. By all accounts, the people of Melide came to believe he was the holiest man alive, and it's reported that he cured a child of the plague simply by touching him.
By the time of Anizetto's death, he had amassed a significant lay following among the poor and common classes, spreading to smaller towns in the area and even building small churches. More critically, however, some of his followers took to traveling along the Way of Saint James, offering their services as healers, map-sellers, guides or even providers of rest for pilgrims. This handful of people had access to an enormous flow of pilgrims through Santiago - pilgrims who would sometimes ask them about their faith.
The Church itself viewed Anizetto and his movement as a nuisance. In 1322, Anizetto himself was arrested and thrown in jail by the ecclesiastical authorities. He died in prison, but his movement long survived him. By the time of the War of Navarrese Succession, it was prevalent in the western Cantabrian Mountains and rural Gallaecia, and Tellian minorities lived in the poorer parts of cities like Santiago and Astorga, where they were generally treated as undesirables. They were most numerous in the city of Lugo, where they came to enjoy the quiet protection of the city's sympathetic rulers.
Anicetian doctrine is well-documented and shares clear commonalities with the Tellians, but also appears to draw inspiration from very orthodox forms of Islam - an interesting example of cultural cross-pollination in Iberia. The Anicetians believed that man was created from sin and has an evil nature, and that the Old Testament God was in fact the creator of sin. They took a dualistic view of God in which the Old Testament God was the "Evil God" and the New Testament God was his good counterpart. By the Anicetian telling, Jesus was the Son of God, but he was fully human, but achieved salvation through his sinlessness and purity of heart, a process through which he attained divinity - an essentially adoptionist viewpoint.
Purity and sinlessness were core to Anicetian life. They maintained an ethos of simplicity, cleanliness and austerity. In their view of the world, God punished men for their sins, and the only way to avoid punishment was to live a simple, pure and sinless life. Part of this purity involved regular washing of the body and, for women, covering of the head to partially conceal the hair. Keeping the hair long - and for men, the beard - was seen as a mark of purity. Notably, Anicetian theology had no concept of indulgences or priestly forgiveness of sin, viewing absolution as a lifelong process of maintaining purity as best as possible, with only God capable of passing final judgment. It also had no bar against women becoming pure: The belief system was highly accessible to especially lower-class women, and many early Anicetians were peasant mothers who passed their beliefs on to their children. Women and men both served as spiritual leaders, often so chosen for their wisdom and age.
Most notable, however, was the Anicetian view on church authority: They viewed the Catholic Church itself as having lost its legitimacy by concerning itself more with wealth and the affairs of kings than with the salvation of humanity, and they viewed the Papacy as a corrupted institution and the actual spiritual leadership of Christendom as essentially vacant. The Anicetians viewed religious authority as residing with the commons, exercised in the form of ecumenical councils. Anicetian communities operated as early forms of council ecumenism, in which religious leaders and respected elders consulted together to make decisions and in which there was no figure analogous to the Pope.
It was this view of the Church that saw Anicetian beliefs explode in Iberia following the War of Navarrese Succession. The war had been a disaster for the Kingdom of Santiago, their kingdom soundly defeated by the southern Muslims. By the Anicetian telling, the defeat of Santiago - and the failure of the long-predicted Reconquista - was a consequence of Christianity's moral decline and the Church's descent into corruption. They viewed their Muslim neighbours as spiritually and morally superior to the corrupt institution of the Church, with a moral clarity that gave them an advantage over their corrupted northern neighbours. Many mainline Catholics, struggling with feelings of abandonment by France and the Church, found the Anicetians' philosophies to ring true.
As Santiago splintered into warring counties and duchies, the Anicetians found themselves with enormous influence over one of the most powerful lords. The Normando division of the former kingdoms of Gallaecia and Leon had carved out a number of duchies, and one of the most central was that of Felipe, Duke of Sanabria. While his seat lay at a Normando fort in Ribadelago on the coast of Lake Sanabria, his dominion extended to several key cities, encompassing Astorga, Ponferrada, Lugo and Braganza. Felipe himself was of Normando extraction, but his mother came from the Santiagonian royal family, giving him a distant claim to the throne.
Felipe's sympathies for the Anicetians were quiet, but evident. He made no moves to persecute them, permitting them to build their own churches in cities under his control, and he allowed them to serve as members of his council and appear at his court. They formed a key base of support for the ambitious duke's efforts to press his claim against the usurper king Bermudo III, who held Santiago, Ourense, Pontevedra and Corunna but had few allies east of that.
As the Anicetians grew in influence in Sanabria, more and more commoners took interest. The concept of conciliarism - the derivation of religious authority not from the church, but from councils of learned men - continued to spread to Europe as it gained exposure through meetings between Anicetians and pilgrims on the Way of Saint James. From the spread of Tellianism to Iberia, the seeds of pushback against Papal supremacy began to blossom.
[1] Cozumel.
[2] Puerto Rico.
[3] The Bay of Peace - today's Bahia de San Juan.
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Partial veil: on
Christian kings: deposed
Canadian election: over
yep... it's puerto-rican thanksgiving time
Christian kings: deposed
Canadian election: over
yep... it's puerto-rican thanksgiving time
Random question but how the hell do muslim emissaries/ diplomats work? Im assuming embassies don't exist. So how the hell do andalusian emissaries work? How do they grt to foreign courts? How they not killed by local christians and soldiers. Whats the difference between a raiding band and diplomaticatic one. They may be white but they don't dress white, so whats stopping them from being killed by stupid local population? How about from knights and soldiers. Are there states there not allowed to go to? Are muslim diplomats allowed to go to rome? Where do they sleep? How do muslim diplomats work in foreign courts? What do they eat? Are they mocked by Christian courts?
I need answers dammit!
I need answers dammit!
Planet of Hats
Donor
They get there the same way any other ambassador gets somewhere: They come bearing gifts and under a white banner. For the Umayyads and other powers in the region, they distinguish a white banner of truce from a white banner of the Umayyad Caliphate by instead carrying white shields. A white shield is seen as an indicator that the emissaries come in peace, though they're still suspect and likely to get nasty looks - but at least those in power are more likely to ask what's up rather than assume they're raiders. There are no permanent emissaries yet - modern diplomacy does not exist.
Raiders will usually come with weapons, heavy armour, painted shields and fast horses, and they will ride in fast and sack things.. Emissaries from the Caliph will usually come with regular clothes, gifts, white shields and riding horses, and they will stick to the roads and politely follow proper channels.
Nothing is stopping them from being killed by the stupid local population, but most people are not killers.
Wait... which God is punishing people for their sins again? Is it the True God or the Demiurge? And how long has the punishment lasted-- since the Fall? So does that mean Adam and Eve weren't wrong to disobey God and eat the fruit because that was a bad God, or are they still bad but the God that punished them is also bad because he set them up to fail? And why is the extent of the good God's intervention in the world limited to birthing Jesus-- and what took him so long to intervene? And if the angel sent to Mary to foretell Jesus's birth is from the good God, what about all the other angels? And what's Satan doing all the while?
I've never really thought about how badly Gnosticism breaks some of the fundamentals of Christianity as we understand it. One unfortunate side effect, it would seem, is way worse relations with the Jews. Now they're not just "killers of Christ" but also followers of the bad Old Testament God.
I've never really thought about how badly Gnosticism breaks some of the fundamentals of Christianity as we understand it. One unfortunate side effect, it would seem, is way worse relations with the Jews. Now they're not just "killers of Christ" but also followers of the bad Old Testament God.
Heresy Intensifies
In all seriousness though, great update glad to see this back in full swing now that the elections have finished.
A question from this update, and sparked by @LostInNewDelhi 's comment on Thanksgiving, awhile back Anadulsi explorers interacted with a moose up in the Saint Lawrence Bay area, since then has the Northern areas of the continent seen any more interaction? Or have things largely been quiet?
In all seriousness though, great update glad to see this back in full swing now that the elections have finished.
A question from this update, and sparked by @LostInNewDelhi 's comment on Thanksgiving, awhile back Anadulsi explorers interacted with a moose up in the Saint Lawrence Bay area, since then has the Northern areas of the continent seen any more interaction? Or have things largely been quiet?
Well its muslims, europeans were fine killing independent woman, jews and any person who was not white. Again peasant revolts were common nothing stopping these idiots from deus vulting again these are the people who did the children crusade.
Are muslim emissaries allowed to pray in other courts also has Andalusia had any diplo contact with the pope?
Side question for any smart people and anyone who knows latin american history. With the spanish conquest it saw alot of latin america become rainforest has farming land maintenance stopped. The andalusians have been less devastating (not because their nicer) so if more of latin america remains farmland and maintained what does that mean?
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