AHC: Surviving Hafsid Sultanate of Tunis

Your challenge should you choose to accept it, make the Hafsid Dynasty, which ruled Tunisia and Tripolitania for much of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, survive to see the 20th century. Bonus points if you can extend that into the modern day. PoD must be after 1277 (after the death of Muhammad I al-Mustansir, the claimed Caliph of Ifriqiya)
 
It's not going to be a walk in the park : Hafsids were really stuck between Ottoman expansionism and Castillan/Aragonese expansionism in the XVIth century.

Getting rid of one of these would probably end with at least a situation where the other is able to take on the Sultanate relatively easily.
Not only this but it knew several periods of division trough succession or regular decline of sultanate power, even if generally followed by cyclical re-unification.

Finally, the Sultanate prosperity comes from its trade, critically trans-saharian and Italy/Near East. With Portuguese and Castillan directly trading with Africa, then circumnavigating it to reach asian harbours, a Mameluk-like situation is going to provoke a serious crisis.

Now, this is not hopless, just hard.
I'd think the best chances would be to have Ottomans being effectively crippled in the XVth century by Timur, preventing them to take on Mamelukes of Cairo.
It would make Mameluke having more odds of survival, and maybe if they manage to compensate the economical crisis they went trough, to sattelize Hafsids under the very technical caliphal authority they could claim for themselves.

It wouldn't make Christian pressure (piracy or politic) going anywhere but could give some room for Hafsids to recover when this pressure would be alleviated, probably trough some alliance with a side during the XVIth European wars

A Franco-Mameluke/Franco-Hafsid alliance instead of Franco-Ottoman alliance? It would require Hafsids and Mamelukes to rebuild their naval forces, but then again without pressure on their immediate borders, that's doable).
That said, such alliance would likely make Castillan/Aragonese thalassocracy even more bound on taking North African coasts and harbours (including Tunis) than it was IOTL. But I doubt they would be able to take on the hinterland.

Would that work, at least for a first time? (It's going to be relatively hard preventing the regular "Coastal dynasty weakens too much, hinterland tribes takeover" tough)
 
Could the Hafsids not become vassals to the Ottomans much like Crimea did?Ottoman control in the region wasn't strong to begin with.
 
Could the Hafsids not become vassals to the Ottomans much like Crimea did?

Well, it's technically doable, but I don't really see this happening easily : while Crimeans beneficied from good relations with Constantinople (on the matter of trade, for exemple), Tunis clearly didn't have this kind of interests.

It would require a deep strategic shift from support of Italian traders and more western-leaning relations, which could cause a lot of political troubles.
If it's pulled (again, it's not unthinkable, just it would have bad consequences), then Hafsids would certainly go trough a really important decline (more than the one they went trough IOTL) with probable territorial losses and economic irrelevance (safe maybe agricultural production and piracy).

Ottoman control in the region wasn't strong to begin with.
While the bey had important autonomy, it was an important autonomy compared to the vilayets of the Empire. Ottoman influence was objectively quite strong in Tunisia.

Beylerbey, in the early days, were basically men sent directly from Constantinople, which mean strong political power subservient to the Sultan and not local forces (hence why Maghrib was really reunified by Ottomans, from a shitload of de facto independent harbours).

One could argue that the bey managed to get free from direct provincial administration, its very legitimacy went from Constantinople (hence why they "annexed" the pasha function) and Turkish military forces were a political force as well (contrary to what existed in other regions, Jannisaries were Turkish, meaning a lesser relation to local political factions).

Admittedly the whole region becomes a clusterfuck of various interests, but I wouldn't mix large autonomy and factional fights, with "not strong to begin with".
 
It's not going to be a walk in the park : Hafsids were really stuck between Ottoman expansionism and Castillan/Aragonese expansionism in the XVIth century.

Getting rid of one of these would probably end with at least a situation where the other is able to take on the Sultanate relatively easily.
Not only this but it knew several periods of division trough succession or regular decline of sultanate power, even if generally followed by cyclical re-unification.

Finally, the Sultanate prosperity comes from its trade, critically trans-saharian and Italy/Near East. With Portuguese and Castillan directly trading with Africa, then circumnavigating it to reach asian harbours, a Mameluk-like situation is going to provoke a serious crisis.

Now, this is not hopless, just hard.
I'd think the best chances would be to have Ottomans being effectively crippled in the XVth century by Timur, preventing them to take on Mamelukes of Cairo.
It would make Mameluke having more odds of survival, and maybe if they manage to compensate the economical crisis they went trough, to sattelize Hafsids under the very technical caliphal authority they could claim for themselves.

It wouldn't make Christian pressure (piracy or politic) going anywhere but could give some room for Hafsids to recover when this pressure would be alleviated, probably trough some alliance with a side during the XVIth European wars

A Franco-Mameluke/Franco-Hafsid alliance instead of Franco-Ottoman alliance? It would require Hafsids and Mamelukes to rebuild their naval forces, but then again without pressure on their immediate borders, that's doable).
That said, such alliance would likely make Castillan/Aragonese thalassocracy even more bound on taking North African coasts and harbours (including Tunis) than it was IOTL. But I doubt they would be able to take on the hinterland.

Would that work, at least for a first time? (It's going to be relatively hard preventing the regular "Coastal dynasty weakens too much, hinterland tribes takeover" tough)

So no "Sons of Carthage" for the Hafsids then. (Though let's face it, Paradox Achievements are ASB's to achieve.)

I can imagine a Hafsids ultimately losing Tunis no matter which way you swing, although I doubt they'd go too far beyond the Western Med, even if the Habsburg union still happens as per OTL. So I don't think Spain could ever secure all of North Africa even if it tried, not unless it was a multinational crusade, and even then, it'd probably run into a similar problem as the crusades that preceded them. Still, the fact that the Hafsids have a chance of survival as you put it, despite it being really hard, seems good enough for me.
 
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