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I was thinking it would be an autonomous province, with foreign policy and the military under central authority; with Ottoman backing, Aceh would become more centralized than it was historically before the Dutch invasion. Pan-Islamism is generally overblown. The West always feared it (and...

So the Ottomans depriving a weak power of a tiny corner of Sumatra is a "wank"? Isn't that a bit ridiculous? The Dutch took 40 years to subdue Aceh, and even then, never managed it completely. We're not talking about the Ottoman fleet sailing to Batavia with the inhabitants tossing roses at...

You seem to be taking the position that all Muslims in the entire world are motivated by the same things and have the same interests. Did you notice the failure of the entire Muslim world to answer the call to Jihad in WWI, even after the massive Ottoman victories at Gallipoli and Kut, and...

Any Ottoman intervention would have to be timed to make it acceptable to the British. In this case diplomatic isolation and general European hostility due to a Boer War in the late 90s. There is no real piracy in 1897, and what there is is due to the vacuum of power created by the Dutch...

"I put "Batakland" in quotes, because I haven't thought of a name for it yet, although the Dutch might call it something like that. Only the Toba used the name Batak. The Bataks are largely (and only nominally) Christian now (in the northern areas), but in 1897 they were mostly pagan, with...

The idea that AHII starved the navy because of paranoia is ridiculous. He did it because there was no money to support it. Instead he concentrated on torpedo craft to defend the Straits. I don't think his OTL autocracy can work in the ATL empire, larger with more of its politically advanced...

The Dutch made no effort to understand Aceh and Islam at all, until the late 1890s. The Achinese at every stage attempted to negotiate a relationship with the NEI, including vassaldom, but the Dutch were driven to attack by Aceh's diplomatic outreach to the USA (of all places!) In the late...

I'm making a guest appearance for Ridwan Asher. For the OTL Ottoman Empire, this would be ASB. Abdul Hamid would never even think of such a thing given the empire's historical resources and geo-strategic position. The problems with the navy were that there wasn't enough money to support...

Aden was considered the most hellish spot on earth and everyone dreaded being posted there. It's perhaps the worst conceivable spot for a settler colony, being horrendously hot and arid, with virtually no water or food, or any bases for a living except trade. The coast of Palestine has a...

You should probably read up on colonial history in the region. The British did use Arab Christians as middlemen to control the middle east. They used mostly Syrian Christians, but generally not Maronites, who had long and historic ties to France. Palestine used to have a large Christian...

Because Islam was an intellectually vital and much of that was due to the free interflow of ideas and knowledge within the Caliphate. Classical Greece and Renaissance Italy were not "very fragmented", they were urban states. Dark Ages Europe was little petty lords in castles with a village...

Well, how much resistance to their rule was there in the historical Caliphate? The answer is "not much". Most resistance to the Caliphate was from the Caliphate itself, not its subjects.

We're not talking about the Renaissance, we're talking about the Dark Ages. There's no light in Italy to snuff out - at least not in comparison to Islamic civilization at the time. It's impossible to tell what the effects would be, but being opened to the wider Islamic world and...

Yes, but those population patterns date to the pre-Ottoman days wherein chaos and warfare led the population to the hills, whereas during the Pax Ottomanica, Muslim settlers moved to the lowlands and Christians there or that moved there were more likely to convert. I'm not sure how it's an egg...

Needless to say, I disagree with Valdemar completely. The largest problem the Ottomans had always faced was labor shortage. The Balkans were way, way more thinly populated than Western Europe, and always had been, to antiquity. In OTL, the Balkan part of the empire was on the verge of...

The population didn't "collapse" in this period, nor for most of it was there a decline, and what there was was due to warfare and resulting privation and breakdown of government. There was nothing particularly onerous and corrupt about Ottoman administration - Hungary wasn't exactly a paragon...

It's too much bother; better to choose colors for aesthetics. Except Britain must always be pink and France blue.

Maybe we should all color our maps however we feel like it?

OK, to me a genocide is a deliberate and systematic attempt to exterminate a people. On that basis, the Armenian Genocide isn't. There was no deliberate policy of extermination, massacres that occurred were not systematic, they were opportunistic, and the vast majority of deaths occurred do...

Elements of Hagia Sophia went into Ottoman mosques, but the layout is much different. Suleymaniye references both Hagia Sophia and the Dome of the Rock - this evokes both Solomon's temple and Justinian's boast "Solomon, I have surpassed thee!" Suleyman is the Turkish form of "Solomon", and...