And All Nations Shall Gather To It - Volume I: The Abode of Peace
- Thread starter Ricard (i.e. Rdffigueira)
- Start date
Now, I really get the point @Rheinbund is trying to get to, but this is kinda one of the reasons why I said, earlier, that I avoid delving too much in linguistics. I know little to nothing about grammar and spelling of foreign languages, besides English, which is a language I've been studying about since I was a child.
I have to stand by my own point, though, without ignoring or discarding what Rheinbund said, and what I'm trying to reach is something more similar to what @Gloss pointed above: a Latin State that is dominated by a Langue d'Oc culture merged with Lombard Italian, no less due to the pervasive Vulgar Latin influence that will prevail through most of its initial centuries. I'm not saying that French would be negligible as a linguistic presence, much on the contrary, but the developments I'm seeing are certainly not similar to an OTL Jerusalem that might have eventually survived for some more centuries with a purely Francophone aristocracy.
@ElMarquis and @cmakk1012, those are interesting observations. I knew about al-Azhar, but never heard about al-Quaraouinyine (which is a shame, this is something that stands out in the history of Medieval education). Yet, I was originally thinking about European universities, which is, I suppose, the model that the Crusaders would adopt. Even after conquering Egypt, I believe they would either terminate al-Azhar, or, perhaps, in a more tolerante regime, leave it be without sponsoring it (which, in the long-run, might spell its decline).
@IamtheEmps, the Archbishop for the time being really is a down-to-earth representative of the Pope in Jerusalem, so none of them will (at least until the political scenario change greatly, on the level of an Avignon Papacy, for example) even consider becoming too disobedient. On the contrary, I imagine that lay rulers are more likely to be interest to follow their own designs, and the AoJ remains a conservative pro-Papal agency in the realm, especially if the contrary signifies becoming subservient to the Prince/King of Jerusalem. Any Archbishop, be him more interested or not in actually ruling, will see himself as the legitimate head-of-state, and the possibility of changing this status quo will bring a conflict by itself. But you are correct that an ambitious Prince might demonstrate his true colors (as in becoming a proto-absolutist ruler, that is) by firstly curbing the power and the role of the Archbishop. If this would play out positively, I can't say for sure.
Regarding the point you addressed in the second paragraph, I'm not sure this would be too feasible in the long-run. I mean, one or another Prince of Jerusalem might entertain the idea of strengthening the relation with Constantinople, but completely overturning the political circumstance, exchanging the Pope for the Emperor, would likely completely upset the Levantine geopolitics in its difficult relationship with "Frankish" Europe. What we can never forget is that all the façade of having the Crusader States as a nominal "vassal" of "Byzantium" only makes sense, in the western Medieval worldview, because they regard the Pope as the superior authority, and the Emperor in Constantinople as a powerful ally, but never a master of their interests. Forsaking the Pope to achieve a regnal (Imperial I find too much, not even the Basileus would admit it), I believe, would drain the *KOJ of its very legitimacy, vested in the idea of the Crusade, which, in turn, is ever a Papal-sanctioned enterprise.
And the second question - I intend, in the long-run, for the Churches to reach some level of conciliation, perhaps with the point of the Orthodox nations incorporating their own Crusader ideology (one not necessarily at odds with the Latin/Catholic conception). But I think that even in the course of centuries a full and complete reintegration of the Churches, in the way that it was during the (Late Antiquity) Roman Empire, is impossible. By the 12th Century, the distinctions between the two Churches, as I see it, owed not only to theological, but a lot to cultural, ideological and social distinctions between western and eastern Christendom, and also to political disputes.
I have to stand by my own point, though, without ignoring or discarding what Rheinbund said, and what I'm trying to reach is something more similar to what @Gloss pointed above: a Latin State that is dominated by a Langue d'Oc culture merged with Lombard Italian, no less due to the pervasive Vulgar Latin influence that will prevail through most of its initial centuries. I'm not saying that French would be negligible as a linguistic presence, much on the contrary, but the developments I'm seeing are certainly not similar to an OTL Jerusalem that might have eventually survived for some more centuries with a purely Francophone aristocracy.
@ElMarquis and @cmakk1012, those are interesting observations. I knew about al-Azhar, but never heard about al-Quaraouinyine (which is a shame, this is something that stands out in the history of Medieval education). Yet, I was originally thinking about European universities, which is, I suppose, the model that the Crusaders would adopt. Even after conquering Egypt, I believe they would either terminate al-Azhar, or, perhaps, in a more tolerante regime, leave it be without sponsoring it (which, in the long-run, might spell its decline).
@IamtheEmps, the Archbishop for the time being really is a down-to-earth representative of the Pope in Jerusalem, so none of them will (at least until the political scenario change greatly, on the level of an Avignon Papacy, for example) even consider becoming too disobedient. On the contrary, I imagine that lay rulers are more likely to be interest to follow their own designs, and the AoJ remains a conservative pro-Papal agency in the realm, especially if the contrary signifies becoming subservient to the Prince/King of Jerusalem. Any Archbishop, be him more interested or not in actually ruling, will see himself as the legitimate head-of-state, and the possibility of changing this status quo will bring a conflict by itself. But you are correct that an ambitious Prince might demonstrate his true colors (as in becoming a proto-absolutist ruler, that is) by firstly curbing the power and the role of the Archbishop. If this would play out positively, I can't say for sure.
Regarding the point you addressed in the second paragraph, I'm not sure this would be too feasible in the long-run. I mean, one or another Prince of Jerusalem might entertain the idea of strengthening the relation with Constantinople, but completely overturning the political circumstance, exchanging the Pope for the Emperor, would likely completely upset the Levantine geopolitics in its difficult relationship with "Frankish" Europe. What we can never forget is that all the façade of having the Crusader States as a nominal "vassal" of "Byzantium" only makes sense, in the western Medieval worldview, because they regard the Pope as the superior authority, and the Emperor in Constantinople as a powerful ally, but never a master of their interests. Forsaking the Pope to achieve a regnal (Imperial I find too much, not even the Basileus would admit it), I believe, would drain the *KOJ of its very legitimacy, vested in the idea of the Crusade, which, in turn, is ever a Papal-sanctioned enterprise.
And the second question - I intend, in the long-run, for the Churches to reach some level of conciliation, perhaps with the point of the Orthodox nations incorporating their own Crusader ideology (one not necessarily at odds with the Latin/Catholic conception). But I think that even in the course of centuries a full and complete reintegration of the Churches, in the way that it was during the (Late Antiquity) Roman Empire, is impossible. By the 12th Century, the distinctions between the two Churches, as I see it, owed not only to theological, but a lot to cultural, ideological and social distinctions between western and eastern Christendom, and also to political disputes.
Perhaps you could ask a reader or two with linguistic knowledge, at the right time, to write a chapter or two developing how the language in the KoJ develops. In my own timeline, featuring a Gothic Western Empire, I've come to rely on the advice of a few readers who are much more knowledgeable on the subject than I am and encourage their input. Although I haven't gotten to the point of asking for a chapter to be written yet, I suspect I might do so in the future. This way the information gets covered, it adds more depth to the world you're creating, and you can, of course, ask them to submit their submission for review before posting so that you get veto power (it is your own timeline, after all!) Several of those posters, I noticed, such as @professor and, I believe, @cmakk1012 and here too. Not saying you have to do this, of course, just that its been one of the ways I work around my own lack of linguistic acumen.
Perhaps you could ask a reader or two with linguistic knowledge, at the right time, to write a chapter or two developing how the language in the KoJ develops. In my own timeline, featuring a Gothic Western Empire, I've come to rely on the advice of a few readers who are much more knowledgeable on the subject than I am and encourage their input. Although I haven't gotten to the point of asking for a chapter to be written yet, I suspect I might do so in the future. This way the information gets covered, it adds more depth to the world you're creating, and you can, of course, ask them to submit their submission for review before posting so that you get veto power (it is your own timeline, after all!) Several of those posters, I noticed, such as @professor and, I believe, @cmakk1012 and here too. Not saying you have to do this, of course, just that its been one of the ways I work around my own lack of linguistic acumen.
That's an excellent idea!! I love when TL's grow so-much "naturally" that other readers can join it. It becomes a "collaborative work" par excellence (and that's the only French you'll see on my side here, lol), it serves as testament of how the TL's "lore" got so big, detailed and expansive that anyone can develop creative ramifications. For example, Augenis' "The Silver Knight" and Kitfisto's "Revolution" are two fascinating examples of TL's that became so big that other writers were able to help it grow even more.
Indeed, it will be certainly helpful for the creative effort as a whole. Some readers also have already offered to draw maps to help me, for example, and I'm truly happy that the story got so likeable for everyone here.
I guess they would, to some degree. Nonetheless, there is a significant distinction between a feudal/manorial organized society, like the Crusaders - who simply "imported" the trends of military fortifications that came to occur in Europe through the course of some three or so centuries into a region that, so far, had been merely a periphery of the West-Asian hegemons (the Fatimids, the Seljuks before them, and all the way back to the Abbasids and the Ummayads), so it lacks a substantial network of fortifications (barring Jerusalem itself, Caesarea and the coastal cities, there wouldn't exist a lot of forts in the Levant before the Crusaders) - and an Empire such as "Byzantium"/Rhomania, whose Imperial structure was much akin to a modern nation-state (grain of salt, please), with some degrees of administrative decentralization which serves a more military and fiscal purpose, without emptying the power and authority of Constantinople. And, before anyone argues, I know for sure that the Komnenian era saw a pattern of increasingly simplified distribution of power, both due to the collapse of the "Theme" system and to the strengthening of the landowning aristocracy, which fostered a devolving of political power to atomic-level and interpersonal levels of relationship. This does not changes the fact that the structure of power in the Empire remained intensively centralized in the Imperial bureaucracy and court of Constantinople. Also, differently from Jerusalem, whose military consists in the common feudal model of a professional equestrian elite atop a quasi-professional minority of men-at-arms, and supported by large numbers of untrained levies, Byzantium has a standing army and depends more on its system of logistics, communications, transports and regionalized administrative structures to account for military threats.
TL;DR - Byzantium has a very different administrative, fiscal and military structure in relation to the Crusader State. It obviously has the need of providing for strategic depth in fortifications, but I don't believe it has the exact same conditions that allowed for a trend similar to the "Encastellation" that happened in Palestine, and, before that, in Italy, France and England, for example.
Yes, that's the short to medium-term reach that the Komnenoi will get to, even if they are already making an effort to secure their control over northwestern Syria.
Interlude 1. We Left Our Hearts In Armenia
A map of the region of Greater Armenia (c. 1090), after the collapse of the Seljuk empire, and before the Golden Age of Georgia. The figure depicts the still extant County of Edessa, as well as the Rûm Seljuks and the Danishmends
1. Armenia, the Vanished Kingdom
The Turkish invasions of the middle to late 11th Century in Western Asia were not the first, nor would they be the last, of the movements of barbarian nations from the heart of the undiscovered East, being the latest clash of a seemingly eternal, eons-old, conflict between the sedentary civilizations and the nomadic empires. The hardships of life in the wilderness of grasslands, mountains and deserts in the heartlands of Asia cemented countless generations of cultures that orbited around horses and bows, tradition and honor and rapine and violence. Such had been the case of the Scythians and Sarmatians, contemporaries of Alexander and of the Caesars; of the Huns, the Avars, the Khazars, and even of the Hungarians, who had invaded Europe through the worldwide avenue that the “Pontic Steppe” opened to these belligerent races coming from the distant ocean of ice. Now, the Turkic confederations had been the first ones to accept the Qur’an and the word of Muhammad, and their conversion would reverberate in the history of Asia for centuries to come.
The descendants of the warlord Seljuk beg were to accomplish the impossible. First, they destroyed the various competing Iranian dynasties in Persia, and united the realm that had been fractured for centuries, since the collapse of the Abbasid Caliphate. Then, the Caliph in Baghdad recognized the Turkish supremacy, and bestowed the title of Sultan to Tughril beg, Seljuk’s son. Less than ten years after his death, his nephew Alp Arslan would make the Kingdom of Armenia vanish from map, and inflict such a decisive defeat upon the Rhōmaîoi that would allow for his vassals to later conquer Anatolia until the Aegean Sea. This would completely change the geopolitical, cultural and social landscape of the Near East, and, indeed, has been correctly pointed out as an important factor that indirectly led to the Crusades, as it resulted also from Basileus Alexios I Komnenos’ plea to Pope Urban II for assistance against the infidel invaders.
However, after the death of Sultan Malik-Shah of Great Seljuk, the various succession wars that followed him created a power vacuum that allowed the ascension of various minor Turkic dynasties in the region, disputing the suzerainty over various cities held by petty Armenian rulers, as well as the Kurds and Azeri farther to the east.
In Rhōmaîon Cilicia, a successor state to the Kingdom of Armenia was created by the agency of the Rubenids [Roupenids] – an aristocratic family that rose to power after the demise of Philaretos Brachamios, another Armenian warlord who had established an independent principality, orbiting around the province of Germanicea [Kahramanmaraş], in late 11th Century – and was about to usher a new era of artistic expression and architectural innovation.
As of the early 12th Century, the resurgence of the Rhōmaîon Empire, in no small part successful owing to the assistance of the Crusaders – whose combined armies sped the downfall of the Rûm Seljuk dynasty, after they lost their hold over Iconium [Konya] and Ancara [Ankara] – served as a mere prelude of this new era of Christian hegemony in the Near East, one that had not been seen since the golden days of the Macedonian dynasty. Then, the ambitious Danishmends of Sebasteia [Sivas] jumped into the fray, attempting to feast on the carcass of the Rûm, but were in turn contained and defeated by the armies of Constantinople, whose Basileus convinced the enemies of the Danishmends, the tribes of the Mengujekids and of the Saltukids, to attack them by the rear, effectively overrunning their small dominion. By 1110, the Seljuk Rûm dynasty had effectively been wiped out by Danishmend Ghazi’s brutal and appalling execution of Kilij Arslan and his kinsmen, with the few remnants of the defeated Rûm vassals in Paphlagonia being incorporated into the Empire, while the Danishmends themselves lost their recently conquered holdings in the former region of Charsianon to the Rhōmaîoi, and Sebasteia itself was stormed and sacked by the Mengujekids. The Danishmends still survive, as of the 1120s, in a rump “beylik” further south in the region of Tephrike [Divriği] and Melitene [Malatya], now ruled by the paranoid Melik Mehmed Gazi, as a tributary of Constantinople.
The geopolitical balance of power in the region, then, is influenced by the following polities:
- The Mengujekids of Coloneia [Şebinkarahisar], the main beneficiaries of the weakening of the Danishmends; its Bey, Mengujek Ghazi, went personally to the court in Constantinople in the years of 1113 and 1119 to pay homage and tribute to the Basileus, once to Alexios I, and another to his successor, John II. His beylik, a satellite state of sorts, received as reward for their loyalty, Imperial protection against the other enemy dynasties and sanction to settle and colonize in the lands of the newly-restored Armeniac Theme, which had been widely depopulated in the previous decades;
- Their neighbors in the east, the Saltukids of Karin [Erzurum], were also recognized as nominal allies of Constantinople, but their sights were turned to their eastern frontier – Kars, Ani and Ganja – a route of expansion that will put them in collision with the rising Kingdom of Georgia;
- The Çubukids of Harpout [Kharput], locked in a seemingly eternal conflict with their neighbors to the south, the Inalids, a small beylik led by Bey Ibrahim, which had been one of the few tribes to admit the suzerainty of the Rûm Seljuks as the legitimate successors of Sultan Malik-Shah, instead of pledging allegiance to the Great Seljuks in Persia. Now that the Rûm were gone, the Çubukids took the opportunity to submit the Inalids into vassalage. In their darkest hour, the Inalids offered no resistance when the more formidable Artuqids took advantage of the opportunity to wrestle the city of Amid [Diyarbakir] from their dominion;
- The Artuqids of Mardin and Nisibis [Nusaybin], by then still headed by Ilghazi, the warlord who led them in various expansionist wars against the Radwanites of Aleppo and against the Çubukids. The Artuqids’ long running ambition was the one of controlling the whole of Mesopotamia, including the prized provinces of Mosul and Erbil. Yet, the establishment of the disgraced Toghtekinids in Mosul, as vassals of the Great Seljuks, forever ended their dreams, as they lacked the power and the will to defeat the mighty Sultanate of Baghdad. Emir Taj al-Mulk Buri of Mosul, would instead become their ultimate enemy, one bent on the destruction of their splinter beylik.
- The Shah-Armens or Sökmenlis, whose court was in Ahlat, a citadel erected in the shores of the antediluvian Lake Van, the very cradle of the Armenian race. Being since the reign of Malik-Shah loyal to the Seljuk crown in Isfahan, the Shah-Armens greatly benefited from their allegiances, successfully expanding to subjugate the minor beyliks of central Armenia, somewhat legitimatizing their claim as Muslim successors of the defunct Armenian kingdom. Through the 1110s and 1120s, they conquered territories as far north as Kars and Ani, and their borders were the Zagros Mountains with Persia and the Urmya Lake with Azerbaijan. Their constant wars against the Kurdish Shaddadid dynasty of Ani caused the fracturing of their territory, allowing for the Kingdom of Georgia to opportunistically grab their more northern provinces, going as far as the Lake Sevan. By 1125, the Shah-Armens would have already been reduced to tributaries of Georgia;
- The Toghtekinids in Mosul, whose head was Taj al-Mulk Buri Saif al-Islam. He had been created Emir by Sultan Muhammad I Tapar, and founded for himself a polity in eastern Mesopotamia, centered in Mosul, the famed “city of gardens”, built near the ancient and ruined capital of the Assyrians, Nineveh [Ninawa]. His loyalty to the House of Seljuk, however, was fated to be fleeting, and Sultan Muhammad’s untimely death would inspire Taj al-Mulk Buri to further his own ambitions on the pretext of serving the Sultan. For almost four decades, he would spearhead various wars of conquest in an attempt to unify the whole of Mesopotamia and Armenia, becoming an implacable enemy of both Christians and Saracens alike;
- The ancient and legendary Mamikonian dynasty of Armenia survived well into the 12th Century after the disappearance of their own kingdom by ruling a rump fief vassal to the Great Seljuks, centered around in Sason, having formed a confederation of sorts with the Armenian chieftains of Moxoene to protect against the Turcomans after the death of Malik-Shah. The ascension of the Shah-Armens and of the Toghtekinids threatened their existence, but they continued to wage minor wars, mostly of defensive nature, by the help of Turcoman and Kurdish mercenaries, and, later, the Franks;
Finally, in Mesopotamia proper, the former homeland of Assyria, there were already inhabited by the Kurdish populations, which, however, had failed to establish independent polities after the collapse of the Seljuk monarchy. The most relevant of the Kurdish aristocratic lineages of the region was the one of the Hadhabani, the lords of Erbil, another vassal state to the Great Seljuk Sultanate whose suzerainty, however, was all but nominal.
2. The ephemeral Frankish fiefs in Armenia
In the period between the First and the *Second Crusades, the region also experienced a non-negligible influx of Crusaders, attracted by promises of easy plunder and conquest. Indeed, while the Holy Land at least had an aura of sacrosancticy that served as a magnet to pilgrims from the whole of Christendom – not only Catholic adepts, but also the Orthodox, Miaphysite and Nestorian creeds –, the lawless frontier of the Orient, with its very diverse landscapes of desert, mountain, grove and so forth, was regarded with a mixture of fascination and material covetousness by these landless warriors from Europe, with many places associated with Biblical and Classical legends, a vast land of opportunity of hidden treasures and creatures to slay. One German knight would return to his home in Franconia claiming that he had slew a dragon in Syria, happily presenting some huge bones (actually from an unusually large ox) to uphold his allegation, and, in the next year; the peasants from a remote hamlet in Francia would welcome their compatriots back from the Orient, with them some golden coins with Arabic inscriptions, or a jeweled ring taken from a “Persian” horseman, or perhaps silken fabric stolen from the Greek market in Acre; meanwhile, some Italian burghers that went on pilgrimage would return to their cities in Tuscany or Lombardy with fierce eyes Turkish slaves to work on their households.
There are three particular cases of Crusading expeditions that operated beyond the region of the Holy Land, and which held to no significance to Jerusalemite geopolitical standing, besides the County of Edessa, which had been founded earlier by Baldwin of Boulogne.
- The first one relates to the capture of Kaysun [Çakırhüyük] by Godfrey of St. Omer [Godefroi de Saint Omer], a Flemish knight who had come to the Holy Land during the First Crusade with his father, William [Guillaume] of St. Omer, in the retinue of Duke Robert of Flanders. When his father and their liege returned to Europe, Godfrey decided to remain in the Orient, employed in the service of a preaching priest from Flanders named Gerard of Cambrai [Kamerijk] who wanted to teach the Gospels to the infidels. After some time in Palestine, they went to Lebanon, and from there to Edessa, where they were welcomed by Count Baldwin. Godfrey’s few Flemish soldiers then acted as a bodyguard of sorts to the priest, as they voyaged deep into Armenia, until prelate Gerard was imprisoned and executed by Dhû al-Nûn [Lat. Dunalnorus], a Turkish petty lord of Kaysun. The Flemings escaped back to Edessa and returned with a combined Lorrainer and Armenian army, whereupon they stormed Kaysun and avenged the fallen priest (1104). Godfrey would later be recognized by the Archbishop of Jerusalem as the “Count of Cazòne” by right of conquest. It would survive barely a few years before a siege attempt by the Çubukids coming from Harpout forced the Flemings to beg for Cilician-Armenian suzerainty, and thus Duke Thoros I, upon delivering them from ruin, would accept their oaths of fealty. Thenceforward, they became incorporated to the Cilician duchy, and St. Omer’s knights disappeared from History;
- Another short-lived polity was the County of Melitene, resulted from the capture of that city in 1112 by a combined army of Norwegians, led by King Sigurd, who had come from Antioch and decided to help Thoros I of Cilicia-Armenia in the endeavor of defeating the very last stronghold of the Danishmends, now that Tephrike had been captured by the Çubukids. Differently from the other episodes, while some Norwegians remained in Melitene as mercenaries, under the suzerainty of Jarl Thorfinn Haakonson, and even married into Armenian aristocracy, they never came to found an independent polity. The most peculiar aspect of this bizarre historical curiosity is the fact that the Norwegians in Cilicia-Armenia resisted some measure of cultural assimilation throughout a few generations, and in turn their foreign ways and culture left a minor imprint in the Cilician-Armenian society, the most remarkable example being the introduction of Norwegian proper names among a few Cilician persons of the period, such as “Magnus” and “Olaf”.
- The most successful case (or least disastrous, depending on the perspective) involved the Principality of Carrhae, founded in 1107 by a minor army of French knights and men-at-arms from Picardy, Champagne and Artois, led by Rotrou III of Perche, together with the Montdidier brothers from Roucy, and assisted by Baldwin of Edessa. The city of Harran – known to the ancients as Carrhae, where Crassus lost against the Persians – capitulated after the local Turkish bey, Qarâjar – a former slave who had ascended to power with the help of Radwan of Aleppo, and then betrayed him, proclaiming allegiance to the Artuqids – was defeated in a pitched battle. For the next years, the small fief would be constantly assaulted by both Aleppo and Mardin, and its survival can only be explained, again, by the lack of unity between the surrounding Mahometan princes. After Radwan’s defeat, with the Rhōmaîoi capture of Aleppo, the Principality of Harran obtained a brief respite, and even managed to expand along the valley of the Khabur River, inflicting some defeats on the Artuqids. The Principality’s fortunes waned when Buri became Emir in Mosul, and immediately moved to destroy them. Harran was captured by storm; Rotrou of Perche perished in the fighting, but his son of same name would escape to Constantinople, from whence he returned to Europe. Some survivors remained in the Orient, and joined the forces of Jerusalem after the conquest of Edessa, in the next couple years.
3. Song of the Kartvelians
Map of the expansion of Georgia during the reign of David IV Bagrationi (r. 1089 - 1125 A.D.) [click it to open to full-size]
During the Crusader Age, one popular set of European folklore comprised the so-called "Romances of Alexander", created by the feverish imagination of Greek authors ever since Late Antiquity and spread across the Catholic cultural world particularly during the 12th Century. These mythical retellings of the legendary King of Macedon, Alexander the Great, who had become the sovereign of Asia, were less concerned about his historical foes (the Persians) and more about his purported encounters with various sorts of beasts and supernatural fiends; a vision only loosely based on the Greek sources, which likely is more inspired by the hagiography of martial saints such as St. George and St. Maurice.
One particular tale, that warrants mention in this chronicle, tells about the Caspian Gates, a vast wall constructed in the Caucasus to deter the advances of monstrous barbarians from the tribe of Gog and Magog. The guardians of these Gates were called the Iberians or Colchideans by the Greeks, a race of hardy and sullen mountain-men, who had been vassals to the Persians, and then to the Romans, and once in every eon seemed to achieve independence. Now, however, the various petty kingdoms of the Iberians had been united under a single monarchy, and they called themselves "Kartvelians", the people from the country of Kartli in the foothold of the Caucasus, and were proud and devout followers of the True Cross even as dark days descended upon the neighboring realms, whose cities and churches were plundered and devastated by the rapacious Turkic barbarians, who had come not from the Caspian Gates, but rather from Persia.
Now, the Turks, having satiated their greed, but not their appetite for blood, lacking any new peoples to slaughter, turned upon each other like dogs, instigated by the ambitions of their chieftains, now that their Kings - or Sultans, as they called - were weak and degenerate. Now it was the hour of redemption for the faithful of Christ. Yes, the Georgians were awed and bewildered by the news that their King, the wise and valiant David (IV) of the House of Bagrationi, had received visions of the God Himself in his dreams, placing in his hands a sword made of fire to expel the infidels, and a banner with a red cross. Yes, it was a clear sign of God, and this earnest belief was only confirmed when the Georgians heard, in the very end of the 11th Century, that a host of Franks had come to liberate Jerusalem from the infidels, and they also wore the emblem of the red cross. Of course! God had sent the message to the most courageous princes of Christendom, announcing the twilight of Islam.
It happened in the fields of Didgori, some kilometers west of Tbilisi, which, even today, is the capital of the Kingdom, but, then, had been the court of an Emirate for about four centuries. The Georgians were led by the King himself, with one wing commanded by his heir and eventual successor, Demetrius, and the other by his ally Otrok Khan – an exiled Cuman [“Qivchaqni”, lit. Kipchak] warlord who had been allowed to settle in Georgia after being expelled from his homelands by Grand Prince Vladimir II of Kiev; by 1121, he had been baptized and his daughter was married to King David IV. The combined army had more than fifty thousand men of Georgians, Cumans, Alans and even a some hundreds of Rhōmaîoi soldiers sent by Constantinople.
The opposite side, which had been sent under the auspices of the teenaged Sultan of the Great Seljuks, Mahmud II, was an immense host of Turks, Azeri, Kurds, Persians, Iraqis and Arabs, led by Toghrul ibn Muhammad, the Sultan’s brother. Ilghazi of the Artuqids, Emir of Mardin, the same one that had participated in the Syrian Jihad against Jerusalem, was present, but the fact that he had been maimed kept him off the actual engagement. The numbers are impossible to define precisely, but it substantially outnumbered the Christian coalition.
Expecting a demoralized and desperate enemy, the Saracens were surprised by the resolve of the Christians, and their arrogance and overconfidence did not allow them to realize David’s clever maneuvering until it was too late; the Turks had concentrated their advance against the main line of battle, failing to perforate the heavy infantry, and were flanked by a division of the elite Monaspa guards, a force of heavy cavalry outfitted in inspiration of the Rhōmaîoi kataphraktoi, whose movement was not nimble like those of the Seljuk horse archers, but was nevertheless a formidable force due to the sheer destructive impact of their charge against the disorganized and tired Kurdish infantry. In a single day of battle, the Islamic coalition was disintegrated and nullified as a reliable military asset, but through the course of several days, their scattered bands of escapees were chased and slaughtered mercilessly by the joyful Cumans. King David IV forbid his men of taking prisoners and slaves, promising that the hapless citizens of Tbilisi, once the city fell to his banners, would be their slaves; those who had met them in battle would be left to fatten the crows.
The storming and sack of Tbilisi was the crowning achievement of King David’s military career. He had, in the previous years, since he defect from paying the tributes to the Great Seljuks, in 1097 – the very year the Crusaders put themselves before the gates of Antioch – waging a veritable war of conquest. In the span of less than a single generation, he expanded his realm from its cradle in the western Caucasus, incorporating Kakheti, and forcing the Alans into vassalage. With the humiliation of the Seljuks, and the submission of Tbilisi, the gates to the heartlands of Armenia, as well as those to Azerbaijan, were opened to his armies.
The triumph in Didgori would be applauded in the whole of Christian Asia, among the Syriacs and Chaldeans; the Coptic communities in Egypt would for much of the 1120s dedicate prayers and masses to the god-given victory of this reincarnated "King David", comfortable in the fact that their Arabic master knew little to nothing about the arcane language they spoke in the religious ceremonies; and even from the Nestorian congregations - whose faithful, deemed heretics by Rome and Constantinople, populated various settlements throughout the veins of Asia, from Persia to China - would King David IV receive letters and gifts praising him for his great victory.
By the year of his death, in 1125, the Kingdom of Georgia would have more than tripled in size, and its wealth increased tenfold by plunder and tributes. The strongholds of Ani – the former capital of Armenia, now a shadow of its former self –, Ganja [Gəncə] and Dvin [Doύbios/Dabīl], the course of the Araxes River was to be secured as the fluctuating border of his realm for generations to come.
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Notes and comments: I apologize in advance for the spam/abuse of Wiki links. I realize that this not looks good at all. But, nevertheless, I think that some of you might find them useful to better place the "piece by piece" puzzle that is this absolute mess of comprehending Medieval Armenia. Without maps, its impossible to accurately picture the places, the regional polities and who is who around there. Soon, the region of Greater Armenia will tend to be unified under the most powerful polities: Byzantium, Georgia and the Emirate of Mosul. Their complicated relationships to one another and to the neighboring tributary rump states will define the geopolitics of the region for quite a long time.
Historical characters mentioned: all of the named Turkish beys are historical, but obscure; Godfrey of St. Omer existed, and was one of the founding members of the Templar Order. Rotrou III of Perche has been mentioned already in Chapter #24, you might want to give it a look to better understand his transcontinental path to glory. On the other hand, "Jarl Thorfinn Haakonson" is fictional (I just needed a Nordic sounding name there), as are the minor Muslim princes whose names remain "unlinked".
The Battle of Didgori is similar in scope and consequence to OTL. I just avoided going into detail about the order of battle and tactics, because the sources are contradictory, and, really, I saw no use in going there. The only significant change is the "post-battle" with the supposed extermination of the defeated Muslims (considering that I wrote the chapter "in character", as if being the author of a History Text-Book, you should take it with a grain of salt, like an anecdotal exaggeration). And the Wiki points out that there were some 200 Frankish soldiers in the battle, sent by King Baldwin II.
Also, I should point out now: the Georgian territorial expansion, line of monarchs (including Tamar), international influence, and so forth, will be exactly the same of OTL unless I mention otherwise.
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I just wanted to give my opinion and bring a critical review of the possible linguistic evolution of this crusader state (ITTL)
But it's your TL and seen nothing is predetermined, as long as it's consistent and plausible you can do what you want.
With all these Muslim polities fighting themselves for dominance, its no wonder the Crusaders lasted as long as they did in OTL.
Yeah I guessed that this would be the case, it did seem more likely for such an action to be taken in extreme circumstances. Maybe, if the French try to impose themselves on KoJ, by way of getting the Pope to order the KoJ to give the King of France the crown of Jerusalem, then it might happen that against this the AoJ might try to break free.
Yeah TBH I didnt think of it in that perspective, but rereading it I realise that this is probably correct, and would be more one sided. Namely, that the Byzantines might try to argue this stuff to gain control of Jerusalem.
I would agree that it is quite impossible for full reintegration, but I do think the relationship will be far less strained as the Byzantines wont tolerate anti-Latin riots, what with southern Latin Vassals, and there is unlikely to be a 4th crusade, so long as the Byzantines remain strong.
I would say that at this time modern Azerbaijan was called Shirvan, with Azerbaijan being exclusively the Azeri part of Persia. Similarly, you could argue that Armenia at this time was more the Kurd Dominated parts of historical Armenia, than the modern Armenia, and in the words of Andranik "[it] was only a dusty province without Turkish Armenia whose salvation Armenians had been seeking for 40 years"
I have to say that, while I am very interested in the period, I have never been able to do any reading around it so my knowledge is rather deficient. Thank you for a fascinating, detailed and very informative TL. Keep up the good work old man!
That's the main goal of this TL, but without neglecting the role of the non-Catholic Christian and Muslim polities.
Ugh, making a map for this is... well, hard.
But I will try when I have time(probably today or tomorrow)
I thank in advance for your support. If it's not much of a hassle, I'd love, indeed, to see a well-drawn map of yours. The previous ones have been simply brilliant.
Of course, my friend! I hope you don't feel like I've ignored or disregarded your suggestions, especially because you provided very logical arguments and a very detailed explanation to sustain it. You can be sure that, in the event that I get to discuss some more about linguistics, I'll be sure to base my considerations in some of what you explained.
My thoughts exactly. There is an anecdote (from OTL) that says that the Muslims were shocked to see that the Kingdom of Jerusalem did NOT experience a succession war once a king died, a circumstance that was all but endemic in the Islamic monarchies. The Seljuks, in particular, were really self-destructive, and IOTL they never really recovered once the empire broke apart in various sultanates. Then you put there various other non-dynastic Turkish families, the Syrians, Kurds, Arabs and Egyptians, you have a situation that can be described in one word: chaos.
Yes, your bit about the King of France is very interesting. This will certainly give me ideas
Indeed, overall the relationship between "Byzantium" and Catholic Christendom will be much more healthy than OTL, especially if the Papacy is used as a "middleman" to foster better diplomatic and political relationships with the western monarchies. Also, no 4th Crusade. At least not in the way we saw OTL.
You are correct about Azerbaijan, I just got to use some anachronistic names when they depict some place better than the pre-modern name. An example is "Lebanon" - until the 19th Century, the name served to indicate solely the mountainous region of Mount Lebanon, but not the country as a whole -, but, on the other hand, "Phoenicia" is a name that by the Medieval age had fallen out of use, and it originally only referred to the coast. The region of Lebanon was ever considered a part of Greater Syria, but using this terminology would create more confusion, so I opted to use the modern name for the region between Palestine and Syria proper. Anyways, I'll be preferring to use "Shirvan", as you suggested.
And I made an effort to stress how the Medieval region of Armenia - which now comprises Turkish Armenia - was much larger than modern Armenia. I opted sometimes to use "Greater Armenia" as a denomination, but this serves more the purpose of contrasting it with "Little Armenia" (Cilicia) than actually depicting Armenia proper, so I've found more convenient to use, simply "Kingdom of Armenia", because its borders at least were well defined.
I'm glad to hear it, friend. I'm very grateful for the compliment. I'm always concerned that I sometimes exaggerate in the amount of details and trivial information, but this is simply a style that I became more comfortable with, so I really can't avoid it. Thus, I'm happy to see that you saw it as a strength instead of a weakness of this TL. Thanks!
The level of detail you put in this TL isn't a weakness but rather a strength. It really helps with the believability and gives another layer of depth to the TL. It also encourages me to research more about Crusades and the medieval era. Keep up the great work!
I have an idea.... on an art software, you map out a geographical simulation of the a city (let's take Tyre for example), and draw a city in this world with the streets and city walls.
I couldn't agree more! It makes for a more 'lived-in' world and adds to how believable it is. I'm the type of guy who likes to see chapters devoted to changes in script or farming practices. But, then again, I might be a bit of an outlier there
Well, did the Forum got offline these previous days? I tried to access it from my phone various times, to no avail.
Thanks, friends! It's actually an unconscious effort most of the times, really. As the characters get more fleshed out, and the divergences more pronounced, some ideas simply root into the head and I put some details here and there, and then I read something new about the period and get some new ideas. The wonder of the creative cycle.
That would be fascinating, and really helpful indeed. But what you are thinking about is to have a 2D map of any city, and then we try to do with others?
I couldn't agree more! It makes for a more 'lived-in' world and adds to how believable it is. I'm the type of guy who likes to see chapters devoted to changes in script or farming practices. But, then again, I might be a bit of an outlier there
Thanks, friends! It's actually an unconscious effort most of the times, really. As the characters get more fleshed out, and the divergences more pronounced, some ideas simply root into the head and I put some details here and there, and then I read something new about the period and get some new ideas. The wonder of the creative cycle.
That would be fascinating, and really helpful indeed. But what you are thinking about is to have a 2D map of any city, and then we try to do with others?