Well, in this TL, that could begin sooner than we could suspect with Norman North Africa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Africa) which was established as a dependency of the Kingdom of Sicily. That didn't last IOTL, but that can changes there.
And All Nations Shall Gather To It - Volume I: The Abode of Peace
- Thread starter Ricard (i.e. Rdffigueira)
- Start date
Cryostorm
Monthly Donor
I say Damascus because without that it becomes rather difficult for anyone in Mesopotamia or Persia to threaten the Levant, especially with a strong Rhomaion to the north. That would cut North Africa off from the wider Islamic world and make them easier targets for future crusades.
But Damascus pays tribute every year. If the Crusaders attack and take it Seljuk court in Persia might just get off it ass and crush the crusaders. Egypt is in the hands of a Shia. So as long as the Crusaders are victorious no Sunni Lord would attack.
It's well known that the Crusaders made historical demonstrations of wisdom by attacking and conquering allies to make more enemies...
That is to say, the OTL siege of Damascus was just like that, attacking a city whose ruler was otherwise friendly to Jerusalem and adamant about not falling into Zengi and Nur ad Din dominions, only to get in a matter of weeks the city joining Aleppo for the first time in a century, which we can agree was the worst possible outcome that could have happened to the Second Crusade.
So, if they did it IOTL, they would probably do the same choice ITTL given very similar circumstances (Edessa's fall, Egypt's neutrality and Syrian princes preferring being allied to Christians than subservent to a powerful lord come from Mossul).
The big difference here is that with Aleppo in Rhomaion hands and Lebanon more solidly anchored into Jerusalemite sphere, there is a real chance at succeeding before any relief can come from beyond the Euphrates. Otherwise, there is a very real risk of Damascus falling back under Toghtekinid rule and unite along Homs with Mossul into a very dangerous state.
As for the Great Seljuqs, they are often between two civil wars and a conflict with the Abbasid Caliphs, and never bothered to intervene in Levant directly. That was always Mossul.
Very good points raised, both in regards to Damascus and in regards to Egypt. Again I thank you all for the inputs and considerations. Its good to
In this case, Damascus will indeed be the prime target, even if for the time being it remains a tributary. @galileo-034 presents an accurate prediction of how things might unfold. There are, however, many paths that might lead to this conclusion, of course, and we'll see how the events unfold, as the new European armies will arrive and interact with the established Crusader aristocracy in the Outremer.
Egypt will always be alluring as a prize of conquest, but there is a need of consolidating the strategic position in the Levant proper - and this includes Syria, of course - so, for the time being, there won't be any dedicated designs to invade it. As someone said before, at least not without support of the Italian republics and of the "Byzantine" Empire.
In this case, Damascus will indeed be the prime target, even if for the time being it remains a tributary. @galileo-034 presents an accurate prediction of how things might unfold. There are, however, many paths that might lead to this conclusion, of course, and we'll see how the events unfold, as the new European armies will arrive and interact with the established Crusader aristocracy in the Outremer.
Egypt will always be alluring as a prize of conquest, but there is a need of consolidating the strategic position in the Levant proper - and this includes Syria, of course - so, for the time being, there won't be any dedicated designs to invade it. As someone said before, at least not without support of the Italian republics and of the "Byzantine" Empire.
A Kingdom of Tunis centered around the city might be able to hold on ITTL, even if the Normans can’t keep control over the entire Tunisian coastline at first.
Clearly you haven’t played enough CK2, the Crusade will be for Tibet.
Although, just asking out of curiosity - say the Crusaders decided to go after Egypt first, and were successful in conquering at least Lower Egypt (even if we say it's in the loose sense of the term).
What would be the reaction of the Syrian statelets to the Crusaders conquering Egypt? Would that be enough for them to begin making deals to unite against the Crusaders, as they'd be the next obvious target?
Just asking as my initial choice would be for Damascus, primarily as, once Egypt is gone, the Syrian statelets are more likely to harden and become hostile, as despite their internalized antipathy towards one another, they still do not desire Crusader rule imposed upon them. I'm just not sure how the geopolitics would play out - if any of the Syrian statelets could be counted on to support the crusaders, that makes Egypt at least a little bit more logical... but without a very high certainty of support, it's a weak spot aimed directly at the Crusader State that cannot simply be ignored.
What would be the reaction of the Syrian statelets to the Crusaders conquering Egypt? Would that be enough for them to begin making deals to unite against the Crusaders, as they'd be the next obvious target?
Just asking as my initial choice would be for Damascus, primarily as, once Egypt is gone, the Syrian statelets are more likely to harden and become hostile, as despite their internalized antipathy towards one another, they still do not desire Crusader rule imposed upon them. I'm just not sure how the geopolitics would play out - if any of the Syrian statelets could be counted on to support the crusaders, that makes Egypt at least a little bit more logical... but without a very high certainty of support, it's a weak spot aimed directly at the Crusader State that cannot simply be ignored.
Hmm, if the main target is Damascus and interior Syria, and Damascus remains a tributary... maybe the Frankish lords will be based in Edessa and the Armenian marches? With Cilicia kept under the ERE, it'd give the world some level of Armeno-Frankish fusion, and Catholic exposure to the Church of the East via the Assyrians and other groups. Of course, the Toghtekinids are also foreshadowed as a threat so maybe Frankish Armenia wouldn't be the longest-lived thing, but I don't see where else in the Levant that Frankish lords could be rewarded with land...
I think the goal of the Crusade is going to be capturing the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates River Valley. From there they can sail down the rivers on barges, capturing cities and towns as they go, and end up at the Persian Gulf. The effect of this would be to cut the Muslim World in two, and to secure a passage to India and to China. There'll be no need to pay any tolls to the Byzantines, they've got a straight shot to riches uncountable.
Main problem with that is that whichever polity controls Persia can easily sweep in and crush the Crusader statelets, I’d think.
41. A Panorama of the Islamic World in the Eve of the Second Crusade
1. The Fatimid Caliphate
Fatimid Dinar of Caliph Almustansir. At the time, gold coins were rare and valued in Europe, and the intricate artful pattern of Arabic writing Andalusian and Egyptian dinars aroused a certain fascination among the intellectual and nobiliar elite. Even in the monasteries one could find pieces of Islamic gold, cherished as parts of the church's treasure, a circumstance that likely brought a great deal of embarassment to the Holy See.
Abū Tamīm Ma‘ad al-Mustanṣir bi-llāh [Latin: Almostansir], Caliph of the Shi’ites and scion of the al-Fāṭimīyūn – that is, the descendants of Fāṭimah, the daughter of the Prophet –, reigned in Egypt for almost six decades, being the longest reigning monarch among all the Islamic princes ever since the year of the Hijra. What might have amounted to a golden age of this sectarian Caliphate, antagonist of the Ahl as-sunnah [Sunni branch], instead revealed the gravest symptoms of the deterioration of the Fāṭimid regime, fated to fall in the late 12th Christian Century. Indeed, al-Mustanṣir’s long tenure witnessed a period of economic recession, demographic decay and recurrent intestine violence, aggravated by religious factionalism; a menagerie of calamities that would greatly weaken his proud dynasty and result in the de facto political emasculation of the later Caliphs.
As it usually happens in great empires, the roots of the decline owed to the growing interposition between politics and military affairs. In its apogee, the Caliphate, situated in the crossroads between two continents, became transmogrified by diverse cultural and social influxes, incorporating a multitude of ethnic groups into its complex social structure: initially the Berbers and Bedouins, then the Egyptians, Arabs, Syrians, Jews and Greeks, and later the Armenians, the Nubians and the Turcomans, these last ones notably among the slaves, the famous “Mamālīk” [Mamluks]. Inside the armed forces, however, this ethnic diversity resulted into the segregatation of distinct units, so that we would have the Berber divisions in light cavalry and camelry wings, the Arabs in heavy infantry regiments, the Syrian light infantry divisions, Turcoman horse archers, and so forth. As the centuries passed, this enforced soldierly discrimination fomented serious rivalries and strengthened factionalism; a scenario aggravated by the gradual decentralization of the Caliphate as it expanded its territory, which resulted in accumulation of power by regional aristocrats, notably in peripheral regions such as the mountain ranges of the Red Sea littoral, in the desert oases and in the Libyan frontier.
And then there was the circumstance that the Fāṭimids, from their genesis as a tribal confederation that saw itself positioned by force of arms over a complex, stratified and essentially urbanized society, had to surrender shares of the political dominion to the native Egyptian and Arabic elites, whose expertise in administration, finances and cultivation was indispensable to keep the gears of the government functioning. Thus, the Egyptian urban bureaucracy and landed gentry, until very recently handicapped by the ever-suspicious Abbasids, came to reinvigorate their extensive political influence; however, in a scenario of increasing factionalism and courtly intrigues, this would soon enough impact in the stability of the central government.
By the later period of al-Mustanṣir’s reign, in the 1060s and 1070s, as the Caliphate struggled with drought and famine, order collapsed as the various factions fractured the realm in their disputes for power. The most remarkable example: barely twenty years before the First Crusade, a Turkish company led by a general named Nasir al-Dawla ibn Hamdan took Cairo by force and made the Caliph a hostage, seeking to control the state. Al-Mustanṣir then implored the support of Badr al-Jamali, the Armenian-born Governor of Palestine – father of al-Afdal Shahanshah – who, after marching into Cairo and destroying ibn Hamdan, positioned himself as the Caliph’s Vizier and became the de facto power-behind-the-throne, ruling Egypt with iron fist while the weakened Fāṭimid Caliphs were put aside.
*****
After the death of al-Mustanṣir, in 1094 A.D., the successive Caliphs were powerless to change the status quo, ushering the so-called “Rule of the Viziers” period. It might have been a period of greater stability, because the Viziers ruled with a strong hand and endeavored to preserve a precarious balance between the disgruntled rival parties, notably the Berbers and the Turcomans. However, al-Afdal sowed the seeds of his ultimate ruin by appointing al-Mustanṣir’s second son, al-Musta‘lī bil-Lāh [L. Almostalinus], instead of the firstborn son, Nizar [Abū Manṣūr Nizār al-Muṣṭafá li-Dīn’il-Lāh – L. Nizarius Almoustafa], an act that provoked a bloody dynastic war with a peculiar devotional element: Nizar’s followers believed him to be the rightful Imam, that is, a rightful successor of the Prophet. This succession war, even if resolved briefly by al-Afdal’s gruesome retaliation, failed to prevent the formation of a splinter sect inside the Shi’ite branch, named Ismāʿīlism. Nizar was executed in 1097, shortly before the First Crusade, but his sons successfully escaped to Alamut and founded the “Nizari” sect, which would in turn form the core of the order of the Hashshāshīn.
Afterwards, the invasion of the Franj in the Levant resulted in the loss of al-Quds [Lat. Jerusalem] and in a succession of humiliating defeats, events that tarnished al-Afdal's reputation. His failure in expelling the Crusaders from the Levant, coupled with the catastrophic destruction of the Egyptian navy by a combined Greek and Italian armada, were the straws that broke the camel’s back. In his last years, al-Afdal, fallen from grace and consumed by paranoia, spiralled into a cycle of tyranny and brutality, but did little to prevent the powerful provincial governors from gaining quasi-independence. Even worse, the former tributaries of the Caliphate, like Makuria and Hedjaz, stopped paying tribute and homage, while in the Red Sea the Yemeni pirates, usually invited by Egyptian emirs to prey on one another, infested the coastal cities.
The last Caliph that exercised effective power was al-Āmir bi'Aḥkāmi’l-Lāh [Lat. Alamir], and this only between 1121, the year al-Afdal died, and 1130, when he himself was brutally assassinated by agents of his own cousin, al-Ḥāfiz li-Dīn-Allāh [Lat. Alafaïs Dinala], who usurped power from the deceased Caliph’s infant son, Al-Ṭayyib Abū'l-Qāṣim [Lat. Altaïbar]. This, in turn, created another separatist devotional sect – the Ṭayyibi –, as some Ismāʿīlii partisans regarded Al-Ṭayyib as the rightful Imam, and sought to depose al-Ḥāfiz. Their failure to oust al-Ḥāfiz forced them into exile; once they find safe haven in Yemen, they will spread as far as India, where even nowadays there are Muslims that hold the idea that Al-Ṭayyib is the rightful Imam.
Even with this many catastrophic dynastic troubles, provincial sedition, religious strife and ethnic conflicts, the Fāṭimid dynasty – its Caliphs reduced to ignominy, but remaining symbols so significant that their sole existence in Cairo seemingly prevented the complete collapse of the realm into anarchy –, would linger for some decades more. Alas, a poignant fate, as they will be witnesses of another wave of Franji invasions, fanatically inspirited by the blasphemous images of the prophet ʿĪsā ibn Maryam al-Masih. At last, the Fāṭimids would be the last Islamic dynasty to rule in Egypt for centuries to come, succeeded by the Christian Franj monarchs.
2. The Great Seljuks
Detail of a Persian miniature (c. 1300 A.D.) depicting Sultan Mahmud II, who would be one of the last effective Sultans, even if disputing the control over the Sultanate with his uncle Ahmad Sanjar. Mahmud would be the sole Seljuq monarch to wage direct war against the Crusaders, in the sunset generation of his dynasty.
As explored in a previous passages of this chronicle, soon after the death of Malikshāh, the Great Sultan of the Saljūq [Seljuk] dynasty, his vast empire fractured as his successors quarreled. Asia Minor was secured by Kilij Arslan, who proclaimed himself Sultan, inaugurating a short-lived dynasty centered in Cappadocia, now almost forgotten in the dense mists of time, while Tutush made himself the master of Syria, a country that would later be divided between his own hateful sons, Radwan and Duqaq. The humongous realm of Persia itself would be partitioned by the disputes between his four sons: Barkiyaruq, Muhammad I Tapar, Mahmud I and Ahmad Sanjar.
During the first decades of the 12th Century, these brothers, who hated one another with a passion animated by their respective ambitions, moved vast Muslim armies and razed the pristine Persian metropolises in their indefatigable quest for absolute power. By the time of the Crusaders, the empire had been fractured in two distinct pieces: the western half, ruled from the heartlands of Persia, domineering al-'Irāq [Lat. Iraq], Āzarbāydjān [Lat. Azerbaijan], Shirvān, Daylam and Ṭabaristān, headed by Mahmud II, the son of Muhammad Tapar; and the eastern one, ruled by Sanjar from Khwarāsān [Lat. Khorasan] and Tūrān [Greek. Transoxiana].
It might be that each of them desired to unite the whole commonwealth under one banner, but, instead of allying to face common enemies, their mutual hatred and their power-mongering ambitions reinforced the division, which would become permanent, until the final deposition of the Saljūq dynasty. Besides, both of them lived in unending campaigns against other enemies: Mahmud II had to use force to deal with the constant insubordination of his vassals, like Garshasp II of Yazd, the Shirvanshahs, and the Caliphs in Baghdad, the last ones who loathed their submissive position under the regime of foreign barbarians; Sanjar, on the other hand, was constantly occupied with wars against invaders from Central Asia, the likes of the Qarakhanids, or the tireless Ghurids, a formidable dynasty of warlords from Afġānistān [Lat. Afghanistan].
It is worth to note that he Saljūqli of western Persia, in spite of their lack of effective control over Mesopotamia during the Crusader Era, were unquestionably in a better position to undertake a dedicated expedition to destroy the Latin Principality, provided they obtained the support of Syria. Until the 1130s, however, none of the Mesopotamian or Armenian beyliks would actually support it; they feared that a resurgence of Saljūq power would result in their vassalization, neither would Baktash in Syria, whose political isolation came from his own doing, as he usurped the throne of Damascus from a cadet lineage of the Saljūqli. Thus, the Sultans, even if genuinely appalled by the revolutions in Palestine as any other Muslim prince, did not really have means – nor perhaps the interest, as some of their more devoted ones discreetly applauded the humiliation of the Shi’ites – to project their military power beyond the Euphrates.
Then, by the 1130s, shortly before the Second Crusade, two circumstances overturned this consolidated status quo, thus explaining why the Turco-Persian emirs will finally advance against the Crusader State:
1. The consolidation of a formidable Islamic polity in Mesopotamia, centered in al-Mawṣil [Lat. Mosul], headed by Emir Taj al-Mulk Buri ibn Toghtekin, by then already fond of the rather grandiose appellation of “Saif al-Islam” [Sword of Islam], believing himself to be the paramount champion of the jihad against the Franj. Buri, only some years ago, had arrived in Baghdad as a refugee, having escaped from the reach of the assassins that slew his father in Homs, with a handful of Turcoman and Syrian retainers. In the span of a few years, he made a name for himself by quarreling against the Kurdish chieftains in al-Jazira, and was welcomed into Sultan Mahmud II’s court in Hamedān [Lat. Hamadan]. With a small company of horsemen, he ventured into al-Mawṣil and defeated the traitorous emir that had assassinated Mawdûd ibn Altuntash – one of the most loyal vassals of the Saljūqli – and proclaimed allegiance to Mas’ud, the Sultan’s brother and rival in a dynastic war. After Buri became the master of al-Mawṣil, in the early 1120s, Mas’ud’s rebellion was contained to Iraq and he was finally defeated by Mahmud II. The grateful Sultan, whose court was scarce of competent and trustworthy lieutenants, granted the conquered province to Buri, to serve as the capital of his own Emirate.
Year after year, Emir Buri ventured into al-Jazira and Armenia to force the various Turcoman beys and Kurdish warlords into submission, so as to thwart any designs that Constantinople would have to secure the region. Indeed, the Basileus had yet to undertake military action beyond the Taurus range, but by diplomacy and coercion he obtained he turned some Turkish dynasties into tributaries and clients, with the intention of forming a “curtain” to safeguard Asia Minor from another Seljuk invasion.
Year after year, Emir Buri ventured into al-Jazira and Armenia to force the various Turcoman beys and Kurdish warlords into submission, so as to thwart any designs that Constantinople would have to secure the region. Indeed, the Basileus had yet to undertake military action beyond the Taurus range, but by diplomacy and coercion he obtained he turned some Turkish dynasties into tributaries and clients, with the intention of forming a “curtain” to safeguard Asia Minor from another Seljuk invasion.
2. By the 1130s, the unrecognized Sultan of Syria, Baqtash Sahib al-Dawla, alarmed about the rapprochement between the Latin Principality of Jerusalem and the Empire of Rhōmania, and fearing their advances beyond the Jordan and in northwestern Syria, decided to finally abrogate his own sovereignty in exchange for the apparent security of becoming a vassal of the Saljūqli. It seems that, until that moment, Baqtash, an autocratic and egotistic tyrant, genuinely believed that his realm could hold off against the inevitable Crusader advances; they had been expelled once, and would be again. Despite the small size of his territory, indeed he had a sizeable army at his disposal, a substantial treasure (owing to his proverbial greed) and plenty of resources to withstand a war. In the meantime, he had procured alliances with the Bedouins, with the beys in Diyar Bakr and went as far as Yemen with the intent of cementing a coalition against the Latins. Now, however, he finally realized his isolation, and saw that the geopolitics of the Crescent had been reshaped by the recent events, not only the consolidation of the Crusader State, but also the rejuvenation of the Rhōmaîoi monarchy.
Thus it happened that Baqtash of Damascus voyaged in person to Baghdad, beggaring his dignity in exchange for deliverance against the “kafirun” [infidels]. There, he obtained an interview with the Caliph, al-Mustaršid Bi-'llāh [Almostarxide], a proud man who had been made a prisoner in his own palace, after a failed revolt against Sultan Mahmud II. From there onwards, he met the Sultan himself in Hamedān, seeking the promise of an army to invade Palestine and destroy the infidels. Mahmud II cautiously recognized Baqtash’s lordship over Damascus, granting him the title of “atabeg”, but, for the time being, did not acknowledged any rights over the whole of Syria itself.
In that very year, however, the 26-year-old Sultan unexpectedly passed away, struck by a sudden fever, and, to Baqtash’s dismay, the regents of his young successor, Dawud, were unwilling to commit many soldiers to the assistance of Syria. Even worse, in barely a couple years, another dynastic war was deflagrated by the late Sultan’s nephew, Mas’ud, who obtained the support of the Saljūqli cadet branch ruling in Kerman and of Toghrul, the Atabeg of Daylam. Amidst the chaos, the Sunni Caliph himself would be freed from his prison and declare another war against the Saljūqli, in an effort to restore the Abbasid regime. Thus, Baqtash’s hopes for a preemptive war to cut the fangs of the Latin Principality and destroy the Crusaders were quenched.
Or so it seemed.
Long before Mahmud’s succession war was fated to end, and it would only by the timely intervention of Sultan Ahmad Sanjar, envoys from Mosul rendezvoused with Baqtash as he returned to Syria. To his surprise, the committee was led by none other than Shams-al-Mulk Isma'il [Turk. Şamsarmyüliç Ismail], Buri’s son. Acknowledging that the Saljūq dynasty was in its twilight years, they forged a secret pact, by which they were to coalesce against the cursed infidels and retake al-Quds, and then partition the fairest lands of the Crescent. To seal the alliance, Baqtash married his son Irtrach Sahib al-Malik to one of Buri’s many daughters.
3. The Armenian Beyliks
In the 1120s, two minor Turkish emirs, Ishak of the Mengujekids [Mengüçoğulları], ruler of Acilisene [Erzincan], and Ibrahim of the Inalids [İnaloğulları], established in Kharpout [Harpout], ceased their perpetual infighting and forged a defensive alliance against the Danishmends, which, among the Turcoman beyliks, had been the greatest agents and benefactors of Kilij Arslan’s destruction. Now, Gümüshtigin Ghazi, champion of the faith – and client of the Empire – established in the fortified metropolis of Sebasteia [Sivas], was poised to become the dominant Turkish warlord over Armenia. Fearing his might, they used deceit to attract him to one of their citadels, making it appear that the Mengujekids wanted his allegiance to fight against the Inalids. Emir Ghazi, feasting on a sumptuous banquet and admiring the performance of Armenian slave-dancers, was surprised when his host’s soldiers restrained him and had him shredded by a dozen sabers. His severed head was sent to Baghdad in a golden casket – he had been a traitor to Islam, after all, and the Caliph would certainly sanction the bloody deed –, with a letter of the beys, written in Arab, pleading for the support of the Caliphate against a probable retaliation from Constantinople.
However, aware that the decapitation of the Danishmend dynasty might not be enough to secure their strategic position, and seeking to prevent a vendetta, the Mengujekids and the Inalids mustered their bannermen and invaded the enemy territory before the news reached about the assassination. Lacking the means to take Sebasteia, they attracted the infuriated Danishmend retainers to a more convenient battleground in the shores of the Meander River, and its course became reddened with blood after a day of engagement.
Thus, as it ought to happen in this chaotic frontier carved from the corpse of the Armenian kingdom, the Danishmends, in a few seasons, were coerced into submission, and their former rivals, joined in coalition, rose to prominence. The Mengujekids and the Inalids waged their counteroffensive with remarkable agility, so that in a couple years the Danishmends, who had expected to prosper in the wake of the downfall of the Rûm, were reduced to a rump state concentrated in Sebasteia.
Aware that these movements would attract Imperial reprisal, the Beys offered tribute to Constantinople, arguing that the war had been entirely defensive; even if preventive.
The Basileus was hardly convinced and, desirous of an effective control over the frontier of the Empire, reallocated the battered Danishmends to Cappadocia and occupied Sebasteia with a Rhōmaîoi army led by Grand Domestic John Axouch [Greek. Mégas Doméstikos Ioannes Axouchos], who then proceeded to refortify the city and the outlying countryside, erecting a line of outposts in the roads leading to Armenia.
Now, the forces of the Mengujekids and the Inalids had actually grown before and after the defeat of the Danishmends, because many of Kilij Arslan’s former vassals and bondsmen had joined their ranks to avenge the ignominious fate of their perished liege.
For the next two years, the Rhōmaîoi, reinforced by the Armenian regiments from Cilicia, led by Duke Constantine II [Armen. Kostandin] would undertake a series of operations and punitive raids served to contain the Turkish Beys in western Armenia. They advanced cautiously, and took no strategically significant settlements in the region; likely, the memory of the disaster of Manzikert was still too vivid, and the supply chain was still unreliable to sustain a prolonged military expedition deep into hostile territory, especially as it would mean pursuing energetic and agile cavalry parties into a terrain fractured by a myriad of valleys and crags.
This cautiousness might have, on one hand, given the Turkish warlords the impression that the Empire was unwilling to commit their forces, and thus they complied to an easy truce, which they had no intention of honoring, expecting to soon initiate another season of raids.
In the end, the downfall of the Turkish beys would not come by the armies of the Empire, but rather by their own infighting, and between them and other neighboring clans. The alliance between the Mengujekids and the Inalids did not last more than a few years. The convenience of supporting one another against common enemies and even the blood bonds forged by marriage did little to overcome ill-sentiments that would sooner or later ignite ancient vendettas. After breaking the alliance, the Inalids approached the Saltuqids [Saltuklu], a Turcoman clique situated further to the north, to cooperate against the Mengujekids, who, in turn, associated themselves with the Artuqids [Artukoğulları]. Further to the east, the Shah-Armens [Ahlatşahlar], pressured by the Saljūqli, in razzias spearheaded by the Emir of al-Mawṣil and by the expanding Georgians, would see their fortuned wane, creating another power vacuum in the region.
4. Arabia
Non-contemporary Persian miniature representing Arwa al-Sulayhi, one of the few reigning Islamic queens, whose dynasty ushered a golden age in Yemen, transformed from a backwater and provincial country wrecked by clan rivalries into a sophisticated Shi'ite haven
In the span of a single generation, a formidable warlord named Muhammad bin Ali al-Sulayhi united the whole of Yemen in the middle of the 11th Century, creating a formidable regional power in the Red Sea, going as far as securing Makkah [Lat. Mecca] under his extensive dominion. His untimely death in the hands of his enemies, the Najahid family, would led to a vendetta prosecuted by his son, Ahmad al-Mukarram. After avenging his father’s assassination, Ahmad would rule undisputed as Sultan of Yemen, ushering a period of peace and prosperity. Owing to severe health issues, Ahmad would silently abdicate from government and pass the responsibilities of managing the realm to his wife, Arwa al-Sulayhi, a shrewd and indomitable noblewoman, whose long reign witnessed the undertaking of marvelous architectural projects and the construction of various schools. The great mosque of Sana’a remains to this day the most significant legacy of her fortunate regime.
The age of the Sulayhid dynasty would also pave the way for the eventual ascension of Yemen as the premier [Ismāʿīlī] Shi’ite Islamic monarchy in the Middle East, after the fall of the Fāṭimid Caliphate, as their Sultans would receive many refugees and pilgrims from the fallen realm of Egypt, and their patronage would foster the creation of Ismāʿīlī communities even in India.
*****
In the other extremity of the Arabian Peninsula, the Omani peoples, proud of their Ibāḍī affiliation – a religious sect founded soon after the Prophet’s death, thus predating the Sunni denomination – had already languished under the tyranny or the indifference of the Saljūq monarchs for far too long. Ever since the days of the Rashidun Caliphate, Oman had been ruled by the prudent arbiter of the Imams; after centuries, as the weakness of the successive Caliphates wrought periods of turmoil, inspiring the ascension of ambitious warmongers, the power of the Imams eroded while the clans and patriarchates of the interior played their game of thrones.
The submission of Oman to the Turkish invaders, however, occurred without any significant resistance, as none of these clans made the gambit to power as it meant opposing a sprawling empire of vicious barbarians. Now, still ashamed of their cowardice, and delighted in the imminent downfall of the Turco-Persian dynasty, these very tribal confederations conspired to obtain independence, now using the incumbent Imam as a figurehead. Among them, the most resourceful were the Banu Nabhan, a family greatly enriched by the commerce of incense, those that would, soon enough, overthrow the Saljūq administration and restore the Omani independence.
_______________________________________
Notes and comments: This chapter is very long and has a lot of information, but most of it is straight from OTL, with only a few details correlating to TTL divergences. It is, nevertheless, a necessary condensation of the history of the Islamic powers in the Middle East until the middle of the 12th Century. Now, with this bigger picture, you can see why the Fatimids aren't really in a good shape to oust the Crusaders from Palestine, and, for the matter, neither are the Seljuks.
One detail you might notice is that I inverted the linguistic pattern in this chapter: the names of persons and places are preferably written in native Arabic or Turkish languages, and the most well-known English ones in brackets, while the Crusaders are referred as "Franj" (i.e. "Franks"). This is just to give some sort of immersion, so you, the reader, can imagine that this part of the (faux) historical chronicle is written from the POV of a Muslim author.
Last edited:
