Beta Israel butterfly check: 9th century POD, Jewish Ethipoia. pre 1866 butterflies?

Had an Idea bumping around my head (which I won't develop until I get serious about finishing Mound of spring).

Without getting into too much academic controversy the general consensus is that Judaism spread throughout the Middle East and Europe by a process of exile, migration and gradual conversion and intermarriage as opposed to the post 330 Christian/Islamic mode of active missionaries, top-down conversion by state leaders and conquest.

The exceptions are
Ethiopia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Semien
, the Khazars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars#Judaism
Yemen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himyarite_Kingdom#From_300_until_the_advent_of_Islam_in_Yemen

and possibly some north African Berbers. Evidence for them is even more sketchy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihya#Disputed_origins_and_religion

who left behind small Jewish communities (Karaites, Tats, Beta Israel, etc) who were largely isolated from the main Ashkenazi/Sepharadi centers of Jewish scholarship and therefore maintained many preculiar customs- none of which had much impact on contemporary judaism (Sorry Granny, that's just the way it is).

There are all sorts of threads floating around considering the possibilities of some of those Jewish and "Jewish" polities surviving to the modern day. Generally, those threads die off for four reasons:
a. The history surrounding each of those polities is obscure. How can you make alternate history with little real history?
b. Too many butterflies. If Khazaria survives and remains Jewish then the whole history of central Asian migrations (Mongols, etc) changes. If Yemen Judaizes does Muhamad appear? Does a Jewish Jihad sweep into the power vaccum left by the Byzantine-Persian wars?
c. Basically, what makes Judaism and Jewish ATLs interesting is that Jews are UNLIKE members of the other universal religons. One reason they are unlike christianity and Islam is precisely because Jews spent 2000 years as opressed minorities and under these conditions were selected for an urbanized, second-third wave economy, developed an morality under conditions of powerlessness and had to settle internal theological disputes by words instead of swords.

OTL Israel is interesting, in the Chinese sense, precisely because of the tension between economic habits, morality and habits of thought developed as a minority and the reality of being a majority.

If Judaism became the state religion of Yemen/Arabia then how would it substantially differ from Islam? Well, the legal tradition would be different... but I'm not really sure that over time a clear distinction would remain.

Another point of interest is that Jews, as a minority in Europe (albeit mostly Eastern Europe from the 16th century onwards), either assimilated or participated in the development of Western technology and social structures- and then exported the Western package wholesale into a non-Western region. Would a Jewish Yemen/Arabia substantially differ in (little) technological development from a Muslim Yemen/Arabia? Not if you believe Jared diamond or Paul Kennedy. ANd would Jews be likely to persist as a European minority throughout the middle ages if they had an accesible alternate homeland? not likely.

d. All Jewish states failed for a reason. The reason is that as islands in a Christian/Muslim sea they got eventually dogpiled by an interreligous alliance system (Arabs-Turks and Viking Rus- Byzantines for Khazars, Axumites-Byzantines for Yemen, Chrsitian-Portugese for Beta Israel).

So, for a "Surviving Jewish state" TL to be interesting and doable you would need:
a. The Jewish state to develop in isolation of the mainstream Jewish community with little possibility of immigration until the late 19th century.
b. For that Jewish state to have little impact on global history until the late 19th century.

Ethiopia fits the bill perfectly. It had little contact with the West, save for a very brief contact with a Portugese expidition during the 16th century and It survived as a Christian Island in a Muslim sea.

While the history of Jews and "Jews" in Ethiopia is obscure the most likely (to me) timeline indicates that:
1. Judaism was prevalent in a large subpopulation in Axum, probably due to secondhand Jewish migration from Arabia and Yemen during the 1st-3rd century until Ezna's conversion to Christianity in the early 300s.
2. A large number of "jews" left Axum after the conversion and migrated inland to Lake Tana where they established their own kingdom (or more likely a number of chiefdoms).
3. around the 8th century the Christian kingdom of Axum, expanding southwards made an attempt to subjugate the Jewish kingdom(s), which met with very partial sucess.
4. During the 10th century, Taking advantage of Auxumite defeat in one of their southward expeditions, Muslim raids on Coastal Axum (Contemporary Eritrea), and alliances with semi-barbaric pagan Agaw tribes from the interior, the Beta-Israel sack Axum and establish temporary hegemony, only to be overwhelmed in term by a barbarian migration from the south, plunging the remmanents of axum into a dark age.
5. An Agaw based dynasty partially reestablishes an imperial system and gradually converts and promotes chrsitianity but without significant conflict with their Falasha kin.
5. During the 13th century the Amahara are first drawn into the imperial system and then take it over, promoting a more millitant christian identity, leading to conflict with the Jewish polity in the simien mountains.
6. Between the 13th-16th centuries the two polities raided and counterraided each other with the Beta Israel generally having the worst of it (though they enjoyed isolated sucesses as well).
7. during the 16th-17th century, Ethiopian civilization collapsed under the twin strains of Ottoman backed SOmali/Arab invasion and the Oromo migration northwards. The Beta Israel wasn devastated both more and was eventually eliminated in 1672.

What if the 10th century Beta-Israel period of domination persists and eventually does unto the ethiopian christians what they did onto the Jews? The Christian Axumites are cut off from outside support by the Islamic caliphate and there is no reason why a Jewish island in a Muslim sea in the highlands of ethiopia is less plausible than a christian one. The lack of portugese aid during the period of Ottoman backed Jihad may be difficult to overcome but a few Jewish exiles from Spain and Portugal (and Yemen) may provide the same knowledge of firearms the portugese provided OTL.

Then we get to the 19th century, with few major changes to OTL, Ethiopia restablishes contact with the world and as some form of Zionism begins to develop among european jews after 1878 things get... interesting.

Plausible? Intersting?
 
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Very interesting, but without at least some continued contacts with outside Judaism, wouldn't *Ethiopian Judaism develop into a Christian-Jewish syncretic hybrid under the conditions you describe?
 
a. The history surrounding each of those polities is obscure. How can you make alternate history with little real history?
Learning as much as you can about it and the context. That say, the exemples you quoted aren't exactly obscure, the Jewish Berber for instance whom we have a lot of sources about it.
When you want to fill the gaps, knowing the historical context is sometimes what could makes you say that it could work or it doesn't add up.

If Khazaria survives and remains Jewish then the whole history of central Asian migrations (Mongols, etc) changes.
If the judaisation of Khazars remains more or less the same than the Xth situation, nothing really changes : as all steppe empire, Khazars were pretty relaxed about religions and didn't seem to have imposed it or even particularly tried to support it (it's guesstimated that maybe 25% of Khazars elites were judaised, the rest remaining Muslim or Tengric(?).

If Yemen Judaizes does Muhamad appear?
Considering that Yemen did knew a Jewish influence (not unlike Khazars did after them), I think that's pretty much what happen IOTL.

Does a Jewish Jihad sweep into the power vaccum left by the Byzantine-Persian wars?
No. It's missing the point of Islam as an unifying religion, due to prophetic institutions creating a confederation (You have other historical exemples of that during Ridda Wars)


c. Basically, what makes Judaism and Jewish ATLs interesting is that Jews are UNLIKE members of the other universal religons. One reason they are unlike christianity and Islam is precisely because Jews spent 2000 years as opressed minorities and under these conditions were selected for an urbanized, second-third wave economy, developed an morality under conditions of powerlessness and had to settle internal theological disputes by words instead of swords.

I disagree you had several exemples of rural Jewish communauties, or urban population with a clear level of autonomy (Grenada or Lunel), and access of power, as well in Arabo-Islamic world than Christiendom.
The systematical oppression of Jewish communauties in Europe, for instance, didn't appeared before the XIIIth century, while you had of course non-systematical oppressions before.

Make no mistake that they were always second-class population, in a era where religion was one of the main identity markers, but their situation critically deteriorated after 1200's, that is when inner dynamics of Judaism (philosophically, theologically, economically, socially, etc.) slowed down (and of course, it's related to that).

If Judaism became the state religion of Yemen/Arabia then how would it substantially differ from Islam? Well, the legal tradition would be different... but I'm not really sure that over time a clear distinction would remain.
Giving how Yemenite elite adopted Judaism as a "political" religion rather than a state belief...Yes and No.
It would probably be an heavily Arabized Judaism, with a probable Christian or Judeo-Christian influence on it, and quite different from Rabbinic or Kairit tendencies (while still compatible with them) at least in a first time as Jewish missionaries could indeed try to rectify beliefs.

Would a Jewish Yemen/Arabia substantially differ in (little) technological development from a Muslim Yemen/Arabia?
Not really. The direct contact of Arabo-Islamic world with Hellenistic corpus was really a boost for the region, as well the preservation or restauration of Late Antiquity infrastructures.
Jewish Yemen on its own would have less opportunities to do that, while admittedly the contact with other Jewish communauties would have been a really interesting way to transmit that said corpus.

So at best, it would be different, but similar. At worst, it's clearly delayed.

And would Jews be likely to persist as a European minority throughout the middle ages if they had an accesible alternate homeland? not likely.
Yes likely. Jewish communauties in Europe proven extremly persistent, even in the later periods and only massive expulsion enforced with all the royal power managed to destroy them hugely (but still not entierly).

We're talking of people that lived in Europe since centuries, sometimes since a millenia. Unless the PoD involves an early industrialized genocide that kills millions of them as well entiere communauties, removing Jews from Europe while even now the majority of Jewish population still lives outside Israel...

I simply don't see that happening.

d. All Jewish states failed for a reason. The reason is that as islands in a Christian/Muslim sea they got eventually dogpiled by an interreligous alliance system (Arabs-Turks and Viking Rus- Byzantines for Khazars, Axumites-Byzantines for Yemen, Chrsitian-Portugese for Beta Israel).
You have more reasons:

- The states you quoted were either confederations of tribes, or not clearly unified states: it happens that Judaism, without a clear religious head but as a decentralized institution, fit these.

- These were geopolitical islands because the converted people choose Judaism to not be under Byzantine or Caliphal influence (accepting Christianity or Islam would have been a mark of alliegance on religious institutions that were under political thumb). We have here more of a reaction than a real inner dynamic.

- - - -​

So, for a "Surviving Jewish state" TL to be interesting and doable you would need:
a. The Jewish state to develop in isolation of the mainstream Jewish community with little possibility of immigration until the late 19th century.

a. Isolation of mainstream Jewish communauty would meant, and at short term, that such Judaism would have become increasingly heterodoxial.
Furthermore, it strikes me as particularly impossible : remember that up to the Xth century, Jewish communauties mastered most of trade roads between Francia and Indias, Ethiopia being right in the middle of these.

Considering the capacity of Jewish communauties to ties and maintain contacts to each other with even the most distant ones, total isolation seems really hard to reach.
That Christiendom forgot about it doesn't mean Jewish communauties did, especially the ones in Arabo-Islamic world.

Of course if we accept the, likely, possibility that Falashas are issued from Judeo-Messianic groups (it would explain a lot, from their distinct rites to how they were considered), not seen by either Christians or Jews as part of their own, it could help.

What if the 10th century Beta-Israel period of domination persists and eventually does unto the ethiopian christians what they did onto the Jews?
I'm not sure it would have been outright possible, but it's an interesting PoD : forced conversion would have been hard to enforce, giving the contemporary possibilities, but relativly slow assimilation but a really harsh policy (crushing institutions rather than beliefs) is possible.

You'll need an alliance with Muslims raiders, and the possibility to redistribue enough wealth to formerly Christian elites to make them join their side.

If we're to keep Juedo-Messianic theory as at least partially founded, having rites more close to Ethiopian Christians for Falashas would help a lot, as blurring some differences.
 
syncretism and cultural drift

Very interesting, but without at least some continued contacts with outside Judaism, wouldn't *Ethiopian Judaism develop into a Christian-Jewish syncretic hybrid under the conditions you describe?

Ethiopian christianity had little to no contact with Euro-Med christianity, and even Coptic christianity between the 7th century AD- 19th century (with a brief interlude during the 16th century which ended with the Jesuits being expelled). Did it develop into a Judaeo-Christian or Muslim-Christian hybrid?

No. It did develop a strong emphasis on the old testament and various unique features of it's own but it was, I think, more a case of incorporating local pagan traditions+ cultural drift drift.

Likewise, OTL Ethiopian Jews show no explicit christian syncretism. Some of their unique customs and practices may be traditional Pagan in origin, others may be local drift and others may represent a more authentic reproduction of the Temple based Judaism which existed until the 1st Century AD.

In a Jewish Ethiopia TL, Ethiopia will probably also get a number of waves of Jewish emigration from abroad:
a. small trickle during 10th-11th flight from Egypt during the reign of Al-Hakim http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Hakim_bi-Amr_Allah#Interreligious_relationships
b. Very large wave of Yemenite Jews (possibly with none remaining in Yemen) during the 11th-13th century during the period of Ziadi fanaticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemenite_Jews#Jewish-Muslim_relations_in_Yemen. maimondes epistle to the Yemenites might urge them, ITTL, to emigrate to Habash rather than pretend to accept Islam.
c. Small trickle of North African and Andalusian jews during the period of Almohavid intolerance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_Granada_massacre. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Spain#The_Taifas. Getting Maimonde's family to continue to Ethiopia rather than staying in Egypt is probably a bit too much. But several hundred, even thousands of Jews would probably make the journey.
d. A slightly larger trickle from Christian Iberia between 1391-1520 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Spain#Turning_point_.281212.E2.80.931300.29. Once Portugal makes direct naval contact with Habash then some conversos might discreetly take ship to Adulis. Hell, if we were willing to flee to Bloody Brazil...


I'll grant you that to other Jews Yemenite practices until the 19th century also appear somewhat hetrodox (though less than those of Ethiopians) to mainstream Ashkenazi/Sepharadis. Still, the influx of them, and a few highly literate North African and Iberian Jews may serve to Keep TTLs Ethiopian Jewery closer to the fold than OTLs Falashas.

Of course, After the 1520s the coasts are likely to be firmly held by Ottoman and Omani clients and Ethiopian Jews will be almost completely isolated until the second imperialism of the 19th century opens the coasts and the Nile route.
 
issues

Considering that Yemen did knew a Jewish influence (not unlike Khazars did after them), I think that's pretty much what happen IOTL.

Yes, but it didn't persist. During the sixth century, a combination of sucession crisis, axumite and Byzantine intervention, Persian occupation, and conflicts with local Christian and pagan tribes ended Jewish political Hegmony and incidentially devastated Yemen and southern Arabia.

If it hadn't, then the Hejaz would have remained politically and economically dominated by Yemen and an obscure prophet taking over Yathrib would have been steamrolled by it.

Besides, Muhamad was such a fluke that any major divergence earlier would have either prevented his birth or turned him towards one of the major existing religions.

No. It's missing the point of Islam as an unifying religion, due to prophetic institutions creating a confederation (You have other historical exemples of that during Ridda Wars)

Disagree. Judaism supposadely played a similiar role to Islam in cementing political control of Yemen for a generation. It failed mostly because the geopolitics were less favorable. Besides, if you look back Judaism STARTED as an umbrella organization for a tribal confedaration gudided by prophets/judges. Muhamad was using the old testament as a template for his form of legitimate rule.

As for external expansion- well, the heretics ARE holding Jerusalem and there are large Jewish communities in Messopotamia, Syria and Egypt being oppressed. Since becoming Jewish does not eliminate the desert raider tradition...

The big speedbump on a Jewish caliphate would probably be not internal constraints but the active opposition of Heterodox Christians in the Middle East. OTL, they were prepared to accept Muslim rule as an alternative to Orthodox opression on the principle of "better the devil we don't know". Jews, however, are the devils they do know.
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So at best, it would be different, but similar. At worst, it's clearly delayed.

Pretty much my thoughts.

Yes likely. Jewish communauties in Europe proven extremly persistent, even in the later periods and only massive expulsion enforced with all the royal power managed to destroy them hugely (but still not entierly).

We're talking of people that lived in Europe since centuries, sometimes since a millenia. Unless the PoD involves an early industrialized genocide that kills millions of them as well entiere communauties,

I disagree.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Expulsion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_France#Expulsion_from_France.2C_1182
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_France#Expulsion_of_1394
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Spain#Edict_of_Expulsion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Portugal#Inquisition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...A_period_of_massacres_.281096.E2.80.931349.29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Italy#Expulsion_from_Papal_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Italy#Expulsion_from_Naples

These persecutions (and a smaller number of similiar persecutions in Muslim Spain and North Africa) were sufficient to "ethnically cleanse" Jewish communities for centuries from most of Western Europe until the Modern early Period without recourse to idustrial extermination. The whole reason Ashkenazi Jewry is essentially Polish-Lithuanian descended Jewry, with a minority of Hungarians and Rumanians, is that those relatively backwards states were the only ones prepared to accept the exiles from Western Europe (unless you accept the Khazar origin hypothesis. I don't).


Likewise, later, non industrial-genocidal persecutions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Russia#Mass_emigration

were sufficient to cause nearly a third of the Jewish population of Russia to leave within a thirty year period.

and of course, once Israel was well established and the soviet union collapsed over 85% of Soviet Jewery left within a decade in spite of the absence of Pogroms.

Furthermore, when France and Britian left North Africa and the Middle east, over 95% of the jews fled to either Israel (75%) or the West (25%). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_Arab_and_Muslim_countries

As a result, currently around 45% of the world's jews live in Israel and the proportion is steadily increasing (to be sure, this is partly due to greater natural growth and no assimilation). It will probably a majority within a decade- and this is after a mere 60 years of independence and the West offering a risk free environment, legal and civil equality and a much larger and somewhat more advanced economy with a larger niche for specialized activities at which Jews excel.

(To be sure, in Western Europe this offer pro-froma rather than de-facto- which is one reason French Jews are leaving http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/02/09/the-jewish-exodus-from-france‎/)

Bottom line: Jews were continually displaced and prepared to relocate during the medevial period, in spite of the absence of an industrial genocide complex. If an accesible "Jewish state" existed in say, the Ukraine-Don-Volga, or North Africa, or Greater Arabia-Syria-Egypt then I think they would prefer that state as a destination over Poland or the Ottoman empire.

Ethiopia, however, is a very difficult target for mass immigration, especially if interdicted by hostile Muslim states. We are not talking about a few male traders with established contacts and patronage networks with local rulers- we are talking about hundreds of thousands of refugees in an era which lacks the steam engine or the SUez Canal. given the number of Jews who perished in the flight from Iberia in 1492 I think that no more than ten thousand, if that, will make the journey to Ethiopia.

Yemen, of course, is another matter. I can see Yemenite Jewry relocating enmasse.



You have more reasons:

- The states you quoted were either confederations of tribes, or not clearly unified states: it happens that Judaism, without a clear religious head but as a decentralized institution, fit these.

Good point.

- These were geopolitical islands because the converted people choose Judaism to not be under Byzantine or Caliphal influence (accepting Christianity or Islam would have been a mark of alliegance on religious institutions that were under political thumb). We have here more of a reaction than a real inner dynamic.

True, but that just reinforces the point that getting those states to survive without conversion to the superpower faith is tough.
- - - -​


a. Isolation of mainstream Jewish communauty would meant, and at short term, that such Judaism would have become increasingly heterodoxial.
.

Yes. That is what happened to the Ethiopian and Indian and Chinese Jews and to a lesser extent to the Yemenites and Khazar remmanents in Crimea and the Casaucaus

It is also part of what would make such a TL interesting- interactions between Orthodox (and conservative and reform and Sepharadi) jewish immigrants and the Hetrodox native Ethiops... especially given that assuming similliar demographics to OTL and mirror image Christian/jewish ratio in ethiopia , the number of Ethiopian jews in the 1930s will be around 7 million. Or around two thirds of pre-holocaust European Jewry.

Furthermore, it strikes me as particularly impossible : remember that up to the Xth century, Jewish communauties mastered most of trade roads between Francia and Indias, Ethiopia being right in the middle of these.

Considering the capacity of Jewish communauties to ties and maintain contacts to each other with even the most distant ones, total isolation seems really hard to reach.

Total isolation, no. Even OTL's Ethiopian Jews are recordedhalf a dozen times between the 11th and 17th century in written records of the Egyptian Jewish community. TTLs Beta Israel will have control of the coast for a longer period and will have a larger footprint so I assume contact will be greater.

But there is a difference between intermittent contact, trade, sustainable exchange of Ideas, and population movements. OTLs yemenite jews recived very little of the latter and therefore developed in near isolation between the 13h and 19th centuries. what kept us "Jews" during that period was the inherent conservativm of a any group, and Jews in particular under siege and self identity.

Insofar as the Beta israel of TTL goes the question is not whether they meet some theological benchmark of Jewish orthodoxy (which they probably will to a greater degree than OTL) but whether Euro-Med Jews choose to identify them as such and whether they themselves see any point in claiming kinship with the Euro med "heretic" Jews.

Given the realities of 19th century colonialism and antisemitism I believe some on both sides will.

That Christiendom forgot about it doesn't mean Jewish communauties did, especially the ones in Arabo-Islamic world.

There are about half a dozen Jewish written references to them between 1200-1672. After that, nothing until the late 19th century.

Of course if we accept the, likely, possibility that Falashas are issued from Judeo-Messianic groups (it would explain a lot, from their distinct rites to how they were considered), not seen by either Christians or Jews as part of their own, it could help.

"Judeo-Messianic"?? You mean like Pre Pauline Jewish followers of Jesus? it's not part of the current (or pre contact with modern Israel and aliyha) theology of those who self identified as Beta Israel. It seems to me more likely that rather than having emerged from Judeo-Messianic theology, those Falashas who converted under pressure during the 18th and 19th century maintained a residue of "jewish" customs.

I'm not sure it would have been outright possible, but it's an interesting PoD : forced conversion would have been hard to enforce, giving the contemporary possibilities, but relativly slow assimilation but a really harsh policy (crushing institutions rather than beliefs) is possible.

which is what happened to Beta Israel OTL. heck, it took the Christian Ethiopes six centuries to convert/kill most of them. discrimination in taxation, land tenure, slave raids on rectlaciant communites, and making promotion in the army and state bueacracy dependent of cleaving to the correct faith worked for the Christian Romans/Byzantines, conquering Muslims and reconquestida Spanish. No reason it can't work for Beta Israel.

You'll need an alliance with Muslims raiders, and the possibility to redistribue enough wealth to formerly Christian elites to make them join their side.

Perhaps a defacto rather than de jure alliance, but yes. it probably won't hold, of course. But the Muslim polities in the horn of Africa WERE capable of maintaining centuries long "Hudnas" with the Christian polities of Sudan and Ethiopia OTL. Why not with a Jewish one TTL?

If we're to keep Juedo-Messianic theory as at least partially founded, having rites more close to Ethiopian Christians for Falashas would help a lot, as blurring some differences.

Again, what is the Juedo-Messianic theory?
 
Yes, but it didn't persist. During the sixth century, a combination of sucession crisis, axumite and Byzantine intervention, Persian occupation, and conflicts with local Christian and pagan tribes ended Jewish political Hegmony and incidentially devastated Yemen and southern Arabia.

I PoD with a weaker ERE before Persian-Byzantine wars could be enough. I don't think Persia would have an interest in western Arabia (at least not immediatly) as their interventions were often more of "proxy wars" than an actual imperialism in the region (compared to the policy they had with eastern Arabia).

If it hadn't, then the Hejaz would have remained politically and economically dominated by Yemen and an obscure prophet taking over Yathrib would have been steamrolled by it.
I was under the idea that Hejaz was more under Ghassanid influence than Yemenit, at least for the Vth century. Of course, weaker ERE could mean less influent Ghassanid as well.

Disagree. Judaism supposadely played a similiar role to Islam in cementing political control of Yemen for a generation. It failed mostly because the geopolitics were less favorable. Besides, if you look back Judaism STARTED as an umbrella organization for a tribal confedaration gudided by prophets/judges. Muhamad was using the old testament as a template for his form of legitimate rule.
I think there might be a misunderstanding there : my point is that Early Islam's era Arabic confederations were pretty much declining or not that "attractive" for possible clients.
Persia defeat and quite harsh treatment of Lakhmids weakened eastern Arabian tribes and confederations, Christianism was too much tied with Byzantium, and Beduin tribes and confederations were filling the power vacuum.

So I agree that geopolitics were less favourable for Yemen, but both Judaism and Yemen were established entities, less likely to be used as a "pan-arabic" unifying factor (pretty much as Ghassanids and other Christian tribes were pretty stuck).
Islam, by its novelty and the religious opposition it allowed against declining or weakened entities, had better chances (not that it was bound to happen of course, Ridda Wars are there to disproven this).

As for external expansion- well, the heretics ARE holding Jerusalem and there are large Jewish communities in Messopotamia, Syria and Egypt being oppressed. Since becoming Jewish does not eliminate the desert raider tradition...
I'm not sure that a Yemeni religion would look like Islam entierly : Hejaz cities and tribes knew a relativly new prosperity only since the VIth century and were still pretty much tied to their neighbours "traditions".

Of course, you didn't had a Great Wall between Yemeni Arabs and ther neighbours, but we're talking of a society less based on raid, and more on trade and local production.

I don't think it could likely evolve as a "Jewish Caliphate" per se. Maybe if it's a Judaism so heterodoxial that is not considered as such by anyone, but it kinda defeats the purpose of the OP, isn't?

I disagree.

These persecutions (and a smaller number of similiar persecutions in Muslim Spain and North Africa) were sufficient to "ethnically cleanse" Jewish communities for centuries from most of Western Europe until the Modern early Period without recourse to idustrial extermination.

I disagree as well.
First, it was a religious persecution : meaning that if you converted, you were technically safe (at least in the period between 1200's and 1400's). You didn't, and that the important point, a real "racial" policy.

Then, even with these explusions, communauties were maintained. At first, as crypto-Judaic communauties (as in Spain) and eventually tolerated, as the "Portuguese Jews" in France.

Finally my point wasn't that Jewish communauties couldn't disappear and be forced to convert or leave (as it happened OTL), but to answer your point about "if a Jewish state existed in Mediterranean world, Jews would emigrate to it).
Admitting that its existence doesn't simply butterfly away the systematic anti-judaic persecutions (It's not as it was written on letters of fire), you'll have most probably a limited (geographically) emigrations to places where they still enjoyed some sort of protection, if depriving them of actual rights.

So, I stand my case : safe a mass genocid, Jewish communauties in Europe (as in getting rid of Jews in all Europe) is highly implausible.

(unless you accept the Khazar origin hypothesis. I don't).
Let's be serious two seconds, please. :rolleyes:

and of course, once Israel was well established and the soviet union collapsed over 85% of Soviet Jewery left within a decade in spite of the absence of Pogroms.
You're missing my point by far I'm afraid : I didn't said each mass emigration was bound to happen by a particular genocidal attempts, but that such genocidal attempt alone would be traumatic enough ("physically", by the loss of entiere communauties and parts of each communauties) to provoke a migrating dynamic.

Furthermore, when France and Britian left North Africa and the Middle east, over 95% of the jews fled to either Israel (75%) or the West (25%). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_Arab_and_Muslim_countries
You twisting a bit statistics there.
Jews from places neighbouring Palestine were massivly emigrating to Israel. It makes sense, it's closer and Arab actions against them were most threatening.

But when it comes to places not only further than Israel, but as well more closely administrated by the colonial power (as North Africa) the tendency is reversed.
Quoting this article.

"however, most of the emigrants went to France, Belgium, Spain, and Canada, rather than Israel.[58]" speaking of Moroccean Jews.

"Algeria's 140,000 Jews, who had French citizenship since 1870 (briefly revoked by Vichy France in 1940) left mostly for France, although some went to Israel.[66]"

"Following Tunisia's independence from France in 1956, a number of anti-Jewish policies[citation needed] led to emigration, of which half went to Israel and the other half to France"

(To be sure, in Western Europe this offer pro-froma rather than de-facto- which is one reason French Jews are leaving http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/02/09/the-jewish-exodus-from-france‎/)
Michel Gurfinkiel? Seriously?
This guy have a so important sionist bias (in the political meaning of the world), that it's not even fun caricaturizing it.

Bottom line: Jews were continually displaced and prepared to relocate during the medevial period,
That, I disagree. Jewish communauties in Western medieval Europe were remarkably stable.
Jews of Grenada, Lunel, Narbonne, Champagne, Rhone, Rheinland had a continuity since Late Antiquity up to the XIIIth or XVth centuries.

The point is, I can't stress it enough, that safe a huge traumatic event that OTL was reached only trough a plannified industrial slaughter (while Jewish identity was, influenced by european nationalism, more based on ethny than religion, meaning you had more chances to have a strong and cohesive Jewish identity rivaling to say, French, British or German), emigrations are going to be regional and less directed towards a Jewish state for the sake of it than from neighbouring ones.

- - - -​

It is also part of what would make such a TL interesting- interactions between Orthodox (and conservative and reform and Sepharadi) jewish immigrants and the Hetrodox native Ethiops... especially given that assuming similliar demographics to OTL and mirror image Christian/jewish ratio in ethiopia , the number of Ethiopian jews in the 1930s will be around 7 million. Or around two thirds of pre-holocaust European Jewry.

Butterflies. I'm mean seriously, no : there's no chances that with an early medieval PoD, you'll always end with 1) Nationalist and ethnic identity AND 2) Genocidal Antisemitism as a state policy AND 3) An unifided Jewish identity.

But there is a difference between intermittent contact, trade, sustainable exchange of Ideas, and population movements. OTLs yemenite jews recived very little of the latter and therefore developed in near isolation between the 13h and 19th centuries. what kept us "Jews" during that period was the inherent conservativm of a any group, and Jews in particular under siege and self identity.
It would be distinct, I agree, but more something along Sefardi and Askhenazi lines than radically heterodoxial if a maintained (I stress maintained, it's not Jews popping at random, but ties supported by both religious, commercial and geopolitical lines. Not that it means continual contact, of course) link is maintained between Jewish centers (and a Jewish Ethiopia is going to be a Jewish center, comparable to Palestine, Spain, Rhineland or Mesopotamia).

Assuming (as I proposed) it doesn't go either Rabbinic or Kairit ways (assuming they're not butterflied), it would be talked about would it be only to say "these people are weird" and criticize their religious masters.

Insofar as the Beta israel of TTL goes the question is not whether they meet some theological benchmark of Jewish orthodoxy (which they probably will to a greater degree than OTL) but whether Euro-Med Jews choose to identify them as such and whether they themselves see any point in claiming kinship with the Euro med "heretic" Jews.
Well, giving the PoD, I don't think it would be a real matter. Religious distinctions weren't cristallized until quite later and often because they were analyzed this way by western european scholars (as Islamic schools and religious "heresies" were far more interpenetrated without a real division between "Proto-Sunni" and Shi'a up to quite late).

Basically, you probably won't have a jewish identity based on rites, but more likely on cultural lines. Before that, they probably consider them as "mistaken Jews" rather than heretics or something totally foreign.

Given the realities of 19th century colonialism and antisemitism I believe some on both sides will.
*Clear his throat* Butterflies.

"Judeo-Messianic"?? You mean like Pre Pauline Jewish followers of Jesus? it's not part of the current (or pre contact with modern Israel and aliyha) theology of those who self identified as Beta Israel.
No, I was referring to the theory that made Falasha issued from Juedo-Christian groups that while accepting some of mainstream (for the region) teaching kept Jewish rites.
It's not exactly Pre-Pauline followers (from which we know nothing really detailed), but more what you could find in Arabia at the same time.

And obviously, I'm not talking about the modern Falashas (Really, if you allow me to give you an advice, it's trying to understand medieval context wthout assuming 19th or 20th centuries events or situations are doomed to happen for the sake of it and use them as markers for medieval period), but from which groups they appeared.

It's a distinct possibility that such Judeo-Messianic groups eventually reinforced their "Judaicity" in order to distinguish themselves from neighbours (and explaining why Christian Ethiopians considered them as apostates rather than a foreign element), maybe with help for Jewish communauties.
So, I tought about the reverse : what if Falashas adopted more Christian-issued rites while keeping more of Jewish theology? It would certainly increase the odds of absorbating Christian Ethiopians, while a "Judaic" reaction could still happen to purify these rites.

No reason it can't work for Beta Israel.
Considering the historical context of Falashas, they'd have to deal with a more important Christian population, with centuries of Christian rules. They won't have the same advantages than their OTL rivals.
In fact, if they tried to do just a "Mirror OTL", they would probably end crushed.

No, we're gonna be smarter if we want this TL, and have a more smooth absorbtion of Christians.

But the Muslim polities in the horn of Africa WERE capable of maintaining centuries long "Hudnas" with the Christian polities of Sudan and Ethiopia OTL. Why not with a Jewish one TTL?
Kinda my point, yes.
 
Yemen, jewrabian caliphate and Jewish middle ages migration

Actually, what I posted this for was butterfly control. But since you raise many interesting points let me reply to them first:


I PoD with a weaker ERE before Persian-Byzantine wars could be enough. I don't think Persia would have an interest in western Arabia (at least not immediatly) as their interventions were often more of "proxy wars" than an actual imperialism in the region (compared to the policy they had with eastern Arabia).

Well, they did briefly occupy Yemen. But if Yemen is an ally Vs ERE... but then we get to massive butterfly storm. A weaker ERE before the byzantine-Persian wars may not survive said wars. Or it may not overstretch in the West-med and thereby avoid invasion. And that makes the whole world so out of wack (Christianity dominates Med, Byzantines eventually dominate Europe, no Islam, and maybe a fourth religion like Manichianism confined to the Hejaz) so that the whole issue which the POD sets out to explore is obscured.

Anyway, that's why I was thinking a later POD, after Islam severs Ethiopia from the Med.


I think there might be a misunderstanding there : my point is that Early Islam's era Arabic confederations were pretty much declining or not that "attractive" for possible clients.
Persia defeat and quite harsh treatment of Lakhmids weakened eastern Arabian tribes and confederations, Christianism was too much tied with Byzantium, and Beduin tribes and confederations were filling the power vacuum.

So I agree that geopolitics were less favourable for Yemen, but both Judaism and Yemen were established entities, less likely to be used as a "pan-arabic" unifying factor (pretty much as Ghassanids and other Christian tribes were pretty stuck).

Islam, by its novelty and the religious opposition it allowed against declining or weakened entities, had better chances (not that it was bound to happen of course, Ridda Wars are there to disproven this).

All good points. Very well I cede the case- a Jewish Yemen probably does not a unified Arabia and Jewish caliphate make. It does probably abort an alternative unified Arabia under a fourth religion- which means that the Byzantines probably recover from the persian-Byzantine wars (persians may go down to invaders from central Asia and undergo a replacement of dynasty. May lose Iraq to Byzantines or Lakhamids during their civil war).

Yemen may remain independent and compete with Axum for trade and maybe even colonies in the Indian ocean.

interesting TL- but not what I'm interested in.



View attachment Expulsion_judios-en.svg
I disagree as well.
First, it was a religious persecution : meaning that if you converted, you were technically safe (at least in the period between 1200's and 1400's). You didn't, and that the important point, a real "racial" policy.

Sure, as long as you didn't mind the Inquisition dragging you out of bed at night because someone snitched that you had washed your drawers on Friday.

Conversos remained social inferiors and subject to claims of Judaizing, instituionalized discrimination and mob violence for many, generations- for many the same reasons that assimilating Jews in Central Europe did in the 19th and 20th century. It turned out that once they were able to compete economically on equal terms with the middle class the "old Christians" were not wildly enthusiastic about welcoming them into the fold.

but for our purposes the issue of racial Vs religious persecution is immaterial- faced with a choice, the majority chose, for whatever reason, not to convert.

There are different estimates regarding the numbers but for the Spanish Jews this estimate is fairly non controversial:


Algeria 10,000
Americas 5,000
Egypt and Tripoli 2,000
France 3,000
Holland, England, Scandinavia and Hamburg 25,000
Italy 9,000
Morocco 20,000
Turkey 90,000
Elsewhere 1,000
________
Total emigrated 165,000
Baptized 50,000
Died en route 20,000
________
Total in Spain in 1492 235,000

A (mostly false) conversion rate of 22% when the death rate for those leaving was 12% is fairly significant.

Then, even with these explusions, communauties were maintained.

If Spain had 230,000+ Jews in 1492 and 4,000 in 1933 (mostly recent immigrants) that is NOT maintaining a community.

Finally my point wasn't that Jewish communauties couldn't disappear and be forced to convert or leave (as it happened OTL), but to answer your point about "if a Jewish state existed in Mediterranean world, Jews would emigrate to it).

That would depend on the size, accesability and economic potential of the state. If it were Ukraine size and place (Khazaria)- I can't see why not. It would certainly offer them more economic and personal security than even the Ottoman empire or Poland and is not much further away.

Admitting that its existence doesn't simply butterfly away the systematic anti-judaic persecutions (It's not as it was written on letters of fire),

I think that church doctrine and a variety of other factors (a rising middle class competing with traditional Jewish occupations, greater population density, the crusades, a more complete christinization than existed in the early middle ages...) gave late medevial antisemitism considirable inertia which random butterflies are unlikely to disperse. This is not a phenomenon caused by one individual or in one nation.

19th century antisemitism is another matter perhaps- but the issue would be moot if a Jewish state existed since if Jews were not treated as Jews they would, instead, be treated as Muslims (that is, as aliens of doubtful loyalty owing alliegence to a hostile power). They too were expelled from Spain, Portugal, Italy and, in the 19th century, from the reconquered Balkans and the casaucaus.

you'll have most probably a limited (geographically) emigrations to places where they still enjoyed some sort of protection, if depriving them of actual rights.

Given a choice between economic prosperity, social equality and the fuzzy warm feeling of proto-nationalism and a precacious position as a tolerated alien why would (m)anyone want to take the second choice? especially when you are aware that another expulsion is always possible?

and it was, many of the Jews who were expelled from Northern Christian Iberia had previously fled Southern Muslim Iberia. The Jews of France were expelled and allowed to return four or five times, each time with considerable loss of lives and property.

In short, you are not outlining a choice between a resource rich and safe USA equivalent and a tiny embattled Israel, you're outlining a choice between a unsafe ghetto existence and normalized existence in states similliar save for your statues in them.

So, I stand my case : safe a mass genocid, Jewish communauties in Europe (as in getting rid of Jews in all Europe) is highly implausible.

And I stand mine- given an accesible, safe and reasonable alternative (which "Jewish" *Ethiopia is not in the 15th century), most Jews expelled from Western Europe and North Africa in the Middle ages would drift towards "Khazaria" rather than Poland or the Ottoman empire (the destination of most refugees).


You're missing my point by far I'm afraid : I didn't said each mass emigration was bound to happen by a particular genocidal attempts, but that such genocidal attempt alone would be traumatic enough ("physically", by the loss of entiere communauties and parts of each communauties) to provoke a migrating dynamic.

That's an interesting claim. It is theoretically sound but as the mass emigration out of Tsrist Russia-Poland PRIOR to WWI (Or the immigration of Jews out of Germany prior to 1939 for that matter. 80% left, though mostly to countries later occupied) shows, it does not hold up to reality. The question is soly as to the DESTINATION of said migration rather than it's existence. I believe that, all other things being equal (which for OTL Israel are not and yet...) the preference would be for a destination ruled and inhabited by Jews rather than potential persecutors.

You twisting a bit statistics there.
Jews from places neighbouring Palestine were massivly emigrating to Israel. It makes sense, it's closer and Arab actions against them were most threatening.

But when it comes to places not only further than Israel, but as well more closely administrated by the colonial power (as North Africa) the tendency is reversed.
Quoting this article.

"however, most of the emigrants went to France, Belgium, Spain, and Canada, rather than Israel.[58]" speaking of Moroccean Jews.

Regarding Morrocan Jews- France was used as a waystation because it was, for obvious reasons, illegal and dissaproved by King Hassan (who quietly cooperated with the migration) to leave directly for Israel. In fact, 80% arrived in Israel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moroccan_Jews. The statistics for Algeria and Tunisia are correct.


Michel Gurfinkiel? Seriously?
This guy have a so important sionist bias (in the political meaning of the world), that it's not even fun caricaturizing it.

I am not familliar with the individual (frankly, I just googled French Jews emigration). The statistics however, are well known and are not in serious dispute. Google them.

That, I disagree. Jewish communauties in Western medieval Europe were remarkably stable.
Jews of Grenada, Lunel, Narbonne, Champagne, Rhone, Rheinland had a continuity since Late Antiquity up to the XIIIth or XVth centuries.

Not quite. The jews of Grenada were expelled by the Almohavid dynasty in the 11th century and suffered periodic expulsions thereafter. In the Rhineland. periodic Expulsios started during the first crusade in 1066. Mostly true for the rest.

But then? expelled wholesale (except for the rheinalnd. political fragmentation insured some communities always remained). return occurred, mostly only during the 18th century. When Napoleon issued his code and equalized Jews as citizens almost all of them lived in the recently acquired alsace.

The point is, I can't stress it enough, that safe a huge traumatic event that OTL was reached only trough a plannified industrial slaughter (while Jewish identity was, influenced by european nationalism, more based on ethny than religion, meaning you had more chances to have a strong and cohesive Jewish identity rivaling to say, French, British or German), emigrations are going to be regional and less directed towards a Jewish state for the sake of it than from neighbouring ones.

The expulsion for Spain and the rest of Western Europe were sufficiently traumatic, I judge, to provide motivation to leave to somewhere safe.

Zionism, and the mass flight from Eastern Europe occured prior to the Holocaust. Without it, I grant you, a smaller proportion of Jews would probably inhabit Israel today (for one thing, it could not hold them all). But the total numbers of the Jews who now live there would be higher.

- - - -​
 
Sure, as long as you didn't mind the Inquisition dragging you out of bed at night because someone snitched that you had washed your drawers on Friday.

In fact, being under trial under Inquisition may have been far less dangerous for religious minorities than other tribunals, mainly because they were less "trigger-happy" and were quite "by the book".

Does the book was full of bias against Heretics (and Jews, as they were assimilated religiously and juridically to heretics by the XIV th century)? Yes.
Does Jews were treated after 1200's as at best perpetual minors, more usually pariahs? Yes.
And does the situation of Jews in western Europe increasingly deteriorated from the beggining of XIIIth up to the XVth? Again, yes.

But in this period, the main policy was less to crush these communauties than "teach them their place" (page 2), structurating along Castillan and Portuguese lines to better control them.

Eventually, with only the Inquisition, you may not have ended with an expulsion.

It turned out that once they were able to compete economically on equal terms with the middle class the "old Christians" were not wildly enthusiastic about welcoming them into the fold.
Actually, it was conversos elite themselves that went the most militant against Jewish communauties.
For different reasons : compensating their origin, fear of being assimilated to Jews, social rivality with them...

Not that the "Old Christians" (a concept that didn't appeared before the Jews were expulsed, and with the apperence of Crypto-Judaism, so a bit anachronic there) were as you put it, widly enthusiastic, but far less than converted.

There are different estimates regarding the numbers but for the Spanish Jews this estimate is fairly non controversial
Well, these numbers aren't exactly controversial, but nobody really use them as precise and definitive stats. I was far more use of "forks", as 100 000 to 150 000 exiled; and therefore between 50 000 to 100 000 conversions, making the demographical distinction between two groups rather hard.

It's hard to have precise and definitive numbers, for a series of reasons : not everyone was counted, people that choose exile then conversion may not have been recounted or then twice.

For instance, it seems that 20% of Spanish population (well, maybe not all the spanish population, as I think they kept samples of "traditional" population only, safe immigration) had semitic origins. Now, of course, it could indicate Arabic origin as well, but considering the really few numbers of ethnical Arabs in Al-Andalus (no more than some thousands), Jewish influence may have played fully there.

If Spain had 230,000+ Jews in 1492 and 4,000 in 1933 (mostly recent immigrants) that is NOT maintaining a community.
I think you may have misunderstood my point.
Allow to me repeat it, more clearly for you, maybe.

You were pointing that a Jewish medieval state would attract an huge jewish immigration if too close of Mediterranean basin.

I then pointed out that Jewish communauties didn't easily migrated, and unless forced to, didn't or at least in large numbers; and when doing so preferred to move to immediate neighbouring regions.

I also pointed that Jewish medieval communauties, depsite the XIIIth-XVth turning point (as we're talking of a medieval PoD, I think it's best we focus as best we can on medieval situation than 19th, except when really relevant), remained maintained up to their expulsion that didn't let them the choice to do so.
By exemple, the jewish communauties of Languedoc could trace their history up to Roman Antiquity, and spanish ones from Late Antiquity.

That would depend on the size, accesability and economic potential of the state. If it were Ukraine size and place (Khazaria)- I can't see why not. It would certainly offer them more economic and personal security than even the Ottoman empire or Poland and is not much further away.
Well, assuming Khazaria turns into a jewish state for the sake of the argument (I think it couldn't but...), there's some reasons for that.

1) Such migration would involve formerly economically integrated populations. Assuming we're not talking about the rural jewish population that disappeared by the XIIIth century, it's going to be hard to settle urban workers, merchants, etc into a underdevelloped (compared to other regions) backward land. (That may not be able to feed all the Jews of Europe)
Exiled would eventually settle in a place where they can do what they did before. Which bring me to

2) Cultural differences. It's not because...let's say Khazaria, would be a Jewish state that it would have much affinities with exiled.
In fine, save regligion, a Sefardi would have closer ties with a Maghrebi than a Türk.

3) This one is a bit tricky, and I'm not sure about its influence. Khazaria wouldn't be Jerusalem.
The latter had an historical and institutional link with all Jewish communauties, and served as a more or less uncontroversial reference point, and even if the land was totally estangered, it would have still an "aura" that wouldn't have more "lay" state.
Migrating for religious (and not only being expulsed) reasons to Palestine makes sense, doing that for Khazaria or else, do less.

Now, yes, the existence of such state would have certainly consequences on the exiled migrations flux, and would settle many of them, but not as a mass and whole immigration.
What I could see, while it asks for a rather strong Jewish state, is the ruler of Khazaria being acknowledged de jure or de facto as the "protector" of jewish communauties at least in Khazari's neighbouring region, as some Christian kings obtained a protectorate over Christians during Ottoman rule.

I think that church doctrine and a variety of other factors (a rising middle class competing with traditional Jewish occupations, greater population density, the crusades, a more complete christinization than existed in the early middle ages...) gave late medevial antisemitism considirable inertia which random butterflies are unlikely to disperse. This is not a phenomenon caused by one individual or in one nation.
Antisemitism isn't a medieval phenomenon, as the reject wasn't based on racial prejudice, but on religious.

Allow me to copy paste one of my previous posts on the subject (a summarized translation).

It's a bit long to summarize, but basically : while anti-judaism existed in the Early MA, at the exception of Visigothic Spain [where it was diversly applied], you don't have a strong and continued movement and Jews kept the same status than during Roman Empire (basically, while they had to be maintained firmly in a Christian communauty, inside their own they are free to do).

If the persecution (forced conversion or plunder and/or death) of Imperial Jews during the crusades by disorganized bands (while it didn't existed with the "official" armies) were relativly isolated as well, it was truly percieved by Jews as a degradation of a stable situation that they knew so far depsite the more or less effective protection of Church and Empire.

While the XIIth century is still an "open" period, the situations began to change with the first mention of ritual murders, as en exemple. While fought by religious and secular authorities (that are still maintaining conversion of Jews as an objective), it was maintained in popular anti-judaism and later in the XIIIth more or less suported by the beggars orders, representative of a more harsh christian line.

1215 is percieved by the author as an important date, as the Jewish are clearly assimilated to heretics, and to the threat these were supposed to represent for society [let's recall that in MA, religion is the main social referent. Going against or turning away was seen as damaging the communauty as a whole], imposing them discriminatings features [not unlike what existed in Islamic Middle Ages or in earlier Byzantium. It would be interesting to see how the reuse of roman law happening at the same period didn't favoured that]. At this date began to disappear the previous housing that was more mixed (in town as in countryside) with co-existance of both communauties.
While in the XIIth, Christian scholars (that are divided on this : some support the expulsions and discriminations, other plaid for the former one) tried to read Jewish religious texts openly and "objectivly", these were now burnt. The situation didn't stop to degradate at this point.

In the same time, Jews status change and they are now considered as belonging to a secular authority rather than to their own. To quote the author, the feudal management of Jewish communauties was diverse : "They defend firmly their goods, but when they cease to be useful, you abandon them" at the same time that Jewish communaites began to loose the "political" and economical importance they had earlier.

The problem is less what you quoted, when it participated to it, than the rivality between secular states and church from one part, and the introduction of Justinian Law from other, eventually making Jews, from "protected" (as in protectorate) people to assimilated to heresy (that was always, even during earlier period, crushed swiftly)

Depending on the PoD, we may either butterfly partially or not this evolution; or if not butterfly how nationalism inherited medieval antijudaism as a source for antisemitism, with the important twist of basing it on ethny (aka, even if you convert, that doesn't matter).

Given a choice between economic prosperity, social equality and the fuzzy warm feeling of proto-nationalism and a precacious position as a tolerated alien why would (m)anyone want to take the second choice? especially when you are aware that another expulsion is always possible?
That's one of the anachronism you're commiting there : nationalism or "proto-nationalism" (I suppose we're talking of the XVII/XVIIIth centuries emerging national feelings there) didn't existed in medieval era.
What made identity was religion, tribe/family/dynasty and that's about it. Two groups of people living together not sharing that would not be considered the same.

Spanish and French jews migrating in Khazaria would form distinct communauties as they would have only religion (and I'm generous there, not taking in account ritual and schools differences) and won't form with the natives a common population.

Everything that makes the modern nation : community of language, territory, politics (and blood, depending on which place we're referring) didn't existed per se then. Period.

That's an interesting claim. It is theoretically sound but as the mass emigration out of Tsrist Russia-Poland PRIOR to WWI (Or the immigration of Jews out of Germany prior to 1939 for that matter. 80% left, though mostly to countries later occupied) shows, it does not hold up to reality. The question is soly as to the DESTINATION of said migration rather than it's existence. I believe that, all other things being equal (which for OTL Israel are not and yet...) the preference would be for a destination ruled and inhabited by Jews rather than potential persecutors.



Regarding Morrocan Jews- France was used as a waystation because it was, for obvious reasons, illegal and dissaproved by King Hassan (who quietly cooperated with the migration) to leave directly for Israel. In fact, 80% arrived in Israel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moroccan_Jews. The statistics for Algeria and Tunisia are correct.


I am not familliar with the individual (frankly, I just googled French Jews emigration). The statistics however, are well known and are not in serious dispute. Google them.
The main problem is that religious statistics doesn't exist in France. What we have is what Israel stats give us about emigrations (an emigration that they have interest to highlight, as it's supported by the state whom it is after all, the ideological justification).

Basically, it means we don't really know which proportion of the French jews are emigrating.

That said, yes the rate is accelerating while American's is slowing. But you should consider that migration from France to Israel was traditionally limited, and that Israel was more focused on American and Soviet Union migrants.
As the most of the population of these regions that was already ready to go left them already, Israel's immigration policy could then focus on the next region with a large jewish population.

Since more than a decade, call to migrations are made to the jewish community of France, repetitidibly and planned. This is as much responsible for the accelerated rate of migration than inner situation you described.

Interestingly, Israel became also a state of economical migration : non-jewish french immigration know a similar, if lower rate, not unlike people that live in UK now.

Googling stats isn't enough, it have to be explained as well (and possibly, not by a guy that is a known militant of said policy)


Not quite. The jews of Grenada were expelled by the Almohavid dynasty in the 11th century and suffered periodic expulsions thereafter. In the Rhineland. periodic Expulsios started during the first crusade in 1066. Mostly true for the rest.

The anti-judaic riots of 1096 weren't an expulsion, but a more or less spontaneous pogrom (more or less because it was led by lower nobles) and as well directed against Jews than their protectors (as the archbishop).
As it the riot was crushed (as much bloodily that it was itself), what remained of the Jewish communauty resettled the town and wasn't expulsed before 1473 after one century of periodic persecution.

The same goes for Metz, ravaged by the same popular crusaders (as in not sanctionned, and generally hostile to sanctionned crusades) groups.

For Granada : you had a pogrom in 1066 (maybe the reason of the slight date confusion), then the Jews were attacked again by Almohads around 90 (interesting that these happened in similar times in Spain and in Germany).

But for that the treaty of Granada passed with Nasrids, explicitly mentioned Jews from the city, you must had a Jewish community there after these events, up to the end of XVth century.

When Napoleon issued his code and equalized Jews as citizens almost all of them lived in the recently acquired alsace.
Not quite.
You had the Jews "so-called portuguese", previously mentioned and "Juifs du Pape" formed two other groups of communauties.

The expulsion for Spain and the rest of Western Europe were sufficiently traumatic, I judge, to provide motivation to leave to somewhere safe.
There's a difference between moving because you were forced to and emigrating of your own.

The OTL exemple you're giving show that when expelled (and not before), yes they migrated as much or more than converting themselves. Such events, depending on the PoD, aren't doomed to happen and you may have a maintainance of the post-1215 policy of "Humiliate and persecute them" instead of expulsion.

And Zionism, that is the application of anti-integrationism and nationalism, these three things in a row are doomed to happen is, pardon me, far-fetched.
 
butterflies and messianic jews

Butterflies. I'm mean seriously, no : there's no chances that with an early medieval PoD, you'll always end with 1) Nationalist and ethnic identity AND 2) Genocidal Antisemitism as a state policy AND 3) An unifided Jewish identity.

I would normally agree this is the case. But is this the case here? OTL, ethiopia had next to no state level contact or direct trade with Europe until 1866 when it managed to stumble into an absolutely avoidable and pointless war with England. by that point Nationalist and ethnic identity, unified Jewish relgious identity, and (by the 1870s) proto zionism were present. So was Tsarist Russia's policy of repression and expulsion towards the Jews (at least after 1881). So was modern, "racially" based antisemitism in Central Europe. And so was the powder keg leading to some variant of WWI.

I mean sure, taken strictly, personalities will be different because not exactly the same people are born all over the world from 980 onwards. But must we be purist about this? This is a thought exercise, not one in particle physics. can you think of any SPECIFIC way a sorta Jewish Ethiopia would shift world history prior to 1895?

TTL the Anglo-Abyssinian war is almost certainly butterflied away (it was an unlikely fluke caused by accident and internal ethiopian power struggles) and Habash would come into more intensive contact with Europe when Egypt is forced to withdraw from Eritrea and Sudan in 1885. That's when things might begin to diverge on a global scale if eritrea and somalia are distributed in a different manner than OTL (possibly with British and French Jewish philantropists bidding for Messab instead of financing settlements in Argentina and Palestine?).

If that occurs the Italian Abyssinian war, and Italian humiliation in 1895, might be avoided, and Italy might strike at Libya earlier (1908?). If not, then Jewish Ethiopia would have to face an Italian invasion without the support it recieved OTL from orthodox Russia.

either possibility might effect the dynamics and timing of political coups in Istanbul and the Balkan wars which might, in turn, mean a different timing and coalitions in an alternate WWI. And from there, I agree matters can proceed quite differently from OTL.

however...

*Clear his throat* Butterflies.

Can you spot a hole in my net prior to 1885? As I said, I'm not a butterfly purist. I mean one could theoretically re-roll the dice for every single historical development which depended on a given individual (like Eleanor of acquitane being a man, the white ship never sinking, Martin Luther forgetting his hammer and nails, etc ad infinitum) born after the POD... but for the sake of my sanity I would realy prefer to only relate to changes flowing from geopolitics and cultural trends.

No, I was referring to the theory that made Falasha issued from Juedo-Christian groups that while accepting some of mainstream (for the region) teaching kept Jewish rites.
It's not exactly Pre-Pauline followers (from which we know nothing really detailed), but more what you could find in Arabia at the same time.

Is it? Sources? Non of the Islamic sources I read indicated that the Jews Muhamad encountered in Medina and Khyber were actually Judaeizing christians. Nor do their own stories (some fled to Tiran after Muhamad destroyed them and were recorded by Egyptian Jews) indicate this. The Byzantines and Axumites certainly do not seem to have viewed the newly converted Jews in Yemen as Heretical Christians.


It's a distinct possibility that such Judeo-Messianic groups eventually reinforced their "Judaicity" in order to distinguish themselves from neighbours (and explaining why Christian Ethiopians considered them as apostates rather than a foreign element), maybe with help for Jewish communauties.

That seems to me unlikely. For one thing, judaizerr christian groups elsewhere never completely renounced Jesus and the new testament. De-emphazied, sometimes. But completely ignored him? never. For another, it violates Ocrams razor. We know Judaism spread in Arabia and Egypt. We know christianity did the same. Is it not more likely both reached Axum and won different adherents until Ezna decided to make christianity the state religion? That may have been reflective of a clan struggle for dominance with some clans associated with judaism and some with christianity.

Furthermore, there is the linguistic evidence. The Christian bible translation which reached Axum was Greek, this is well established. The Lingua Franca of Jews, however was Aramaic. A variety of terms spoken by Falasha have Aramaic roots. the Christian Tigray, however, show Greek linguistic influence.

So, I tought about the reverse : what if Falashas adopted more Christian-issued rites while keeping more of Jewish theology? It would certainly increase the odds of absorbating Christian Ethiopians, while a "Judaic" reaction could still happen to purify these rites.


Hmmm.... Keep the rites, change the theological justification over time ("this is the blood of Solomon, from whom we all come")? Or maybe take a leaf from Muhamad and claim Jesus as a prophet and reformer but not as Messiah or son of god? Maybe insist on royal monopoly on appointing local bishops and priests instead of retaining communion with Egypt?

Considering the historical context of Falashas, they'd have to deal with a more important Christian population, with centuries of Christian rules. They won't have the same advantages than their OTL rivals.

I'm not sure what those advantages were to be honest. The Tigray had access to the sea and technological innovation and revenues thereof- but after the rise of Islam that also meant constant harrasement. They may have had a larger population base but this is by no means certain. They had no significant theological reinforcement or millitary from christendom.

One thing which may have prevented the Beta Israel from establishing Judaism as the state religion during their period of power may have been that they were junior partners to the Agawa. Maybe if their King survives the Axumite invasion the Falasha will be senior partners- and maybe be in a position to bring about a more planned conversion process and/or encourage Jewish immigration from Yemen.

No, we're gonna be smarter if we want this TL, and have a more smooth absorbtion of Christians.

Well, I like your suggestions so far. Can't say that I agree with your analysis for the drivers of Medivial Jewish migration and European "Anti-Judaism". But more on that later.

It would be distinct, I agree, but more something along Sefardi and Askhenazi lines than radically heterodoxial if a maintained (I stress maintained, it's not Jews popping at random, but ties supported by both religious, commercial and geopolitical lines. Not that it means continual contact, of course) link is maintained between Jewish centers (and a Jewish Ethiopia is going to be a Jewish center, comparable to Palestine, Spain, Rhineland or Mesopotamia).

So long as hostile Muslim polities owning aleigence to the Ottomans or Egypt hold the coasts and the Nile Valley maintaining contact after the 1520s will be difficult. Sepharadi and Ashkenazi, by contrast maintained contact (Shulchan Aruch, for example, was a Sepharadi composition). As to Ethiopia being a Jewish center... well, the problem is that it's very, very backward even compared to North Africa, let alone Eastern Europe.

One reason Ashkenazi Rabbis had been dominant among religious Israelis in spite of having much less of a following is that their quality of scholarship has been embarresingly higher (by which I do not mean their interpetations are more correct- just that they employ superior rhetoric and more complex interpetation). I imagine that this will be an even greater source of embarresment for TTLs ethiopians- if they even recognise the importance of Talmudic disputation and legal interpetation. they might not.

Assuming (as I proposed) it doesn't go either Rabbinic or Kairit ways (assuming they're not butterflied), it would be talked about would it be only to say "these people are weird" and criticize their religious masters.

Both Rabbinical and Karaite schools are well established by the POD. Ethiopia Definately does not go Karaaite -they were based in Iraq, Turkey and the Casucas/pontus. They do get some Sepharadic rabbinical and much Yemenite influence. So yeah, it might be a slightly weirder equivalent of Yemnites... but there will be a LOT of them. enough to be recognised as a major stream of thought and customary practice.

Well, giving the PoD, I don't think it would be a real matter. Religious distinctions weren't cristallized until quite later and often because they were analyzed this way by western european scholars (as Islamic schools and religious "heresies" were far more interpenetrated without a real division between "Proto-Sunni" and Shi'a up to quite late).


Trouble is, the Haskala and the cleavage between Hassid/Mitnaged and Orthodox/conservative/reform are all in existance by the 1860s in Europe. And the people doing the categorising will be European Jews given how they have the numbers, money and obsessive need to categorise. How important this will be to secular and socialist Jews... probably not much. But racial predjudices and atavistic repungance from "primitive" customs (as well as romantic attraction to "authentic" ones) will certainly exist in the 19th century.

Basically, you probably won't have a jewish identity based on rites, but more likely on cultural lines. Before that, they probably consider them as "mistaken Jews" rather than heretics or something totally foreign.


makes sense. But the culture shock between iron age feudalism and 19th century industrial age Europeans will be... interesting.
 
I would normally agree this is the case. But is this the case here?
Yes, while the importance of these butterflies could be admittedly more limited with a later PoD.
A Late Antiquity or Early Medieval PoD would have important consequences, while a classical medieval PoD would be more similar to OTL while the reunion of these three conditions woudln't be at all the expected result.

Development of OTL nationalism, for instance, depended on precise features such as French Revolution happened. Even a slight PoD in the XIVth century would butterfly it eventually, not that it wouldn't happen but probably not the same year, not because of the same things and without the OTL thinkers.

Can you think of any SPECIFIC way a sorta Jewish Ethiopia would shift world history prior to 1895?
As I don't really know what you're intend to do between MA and 1866, it's hard to say.
Now, any change in the Jewish world, critically if Ethiopia (without becoming a powerhouse) gain sort of influence on neighbouring communauties, it could have interesting consequences.

Let's say that Egyptian judaism enters in Ethiopian's "sphere", it could impact exiles of the late MA, with ancestors of important Jewish or Jewish issued contributors disappearing, as Spinoza.

It's less about what Jewish Ethiopia would directly change (that said, a religious and economical center there could have interesting effects on the eastern mediterranean and east african trade), than its indirect consequences.

Is it? Sources? Non of the Islamic sources I read indicated that the Jews Muhamad encountered in Medina and Khyber were actually Judaeizing christians.
It's not either Jews, Judaised Christian, Heretics or Judero-Nazareans. Basically all of these were present in pre and early Islamic Arabia that was a religious bazaar.

In France, Edouard-Marie Gallez and Alfred-Louis de Prémare are kind of the main searchers on this.
They theozierd that "Judeo-Nazareism" could had been an huge influence on Early Islam, but honestly, I'm not sure evidence is that clear.
My point is more that such communauties existed among several others.

Patricia Crone's more recent works as well (rather than earlier work, that is clearly hypercritic, and while dismissed by the author herself, still used on "certain" circles), but I don't know about American academic circles to be that sure about others.

The Byzantines and Axumites certainly do not seem to have viewed the newly converted Jews in Yemen as Heretical Christians.
Well, as I said just above, you didn't had only Jews in the strictest meaning, but also in-between communauties (that weren't seen by Byzantine or Axumites as Christian nonetheless).

That seems to me unlikely. For one thing, judaizerr christian groups elsewhere never completely renounced Jesus and the new testament. De-emphazied, sometimes. But completely ignored him? never.
That's a bit of a circular reasoning. We don't know Judeo-Christian

For another, it violates Ocrams razor.
Please, Occam's razor in its strictest meaning had been violated more times than it's humanly possible to say.
Having one apparently easy solution doesn't mean other aren't valid themselves, or even more valid.

Besides, we know Judeo-Christian communauties existed in the Middle-East, at least up to the Vth century, probably later. The less likely would be that they wouldn't have followed similar roads than more classical Judaism or Christianity, or even Christian heresies.

Furthermore, there is the linguistic evidence. The Christian bible translation which reached Axum was Greek, this is well established. The Lingua Franca of Jews, however was Aramaic. A variety of terms spoken by Falasha have Aramaic roots. the Christian Tigray, however, show Greek linguistic influence.
Excuse me, but we agree both earlier that Beta Israel knew a severe religious persecution historically. Giving as religious scriptures and/or comments were often the first victims of such, if they used different scriptures, we would have trouble saying it now.
For linguistic, it's not as clear as an evidence : if Falashas were "judaizers" (it's not exactly the right concept, but close enough) they would have used different texts and rites than Christians, if the separation was quick enough or trough a re-judaisation via foreign jewish communauties.

And of course, that this theory exist doesn't implies the other aren't valid : the existance of judaizers doesn't prevent the existence of jewish communauties at all in the same time and a possible re-judeisation trough a conversion process (more or less similar to the "orthodoxisation" of Arians or other christian heretics).
Sharing same rites, it's not unthinkable that they merged eventually.

But again, that's a theory (you'll notice that I first said "assuming it's true"). I mentioned it because it would make a Jewish Ethiopia quite easier : so if you don't think it's fitting your OP, let's scrap it and let's see other possibilities.

One thing which may have prevented the Beta Israel from establishing Judaism as the state religion during their period of power may have been that they were junior partners to the Agawa. Maybe if their King survives the Axumite invasion the Falasha will be senior partners- and maybe be in a position to bring about a more planned conversion process and/or encourage Jewish immigration from Yemen.
That's an interesting possibility, I must admit.

Well, I like your suggestions so far. Can't say that I agree with your analysis for the drivers of Medivial Jewish migration and European "Anti-Judaism". But more on that later.
I would point that it's not my analysis, but the main academic consensus on the question, at last there.

So long as hostile Muslim polities owning aleigence to the Ottomans or Egypt hold the coasts and the Nile Valley maintaining contact after the 1520s will be difficult. Sepharadi and Ashkenazi, by contrast maintained contact (Shulchan Aruch, for example, was a Sepharadi composition). As to Ethiopia being a Jewish center... well, the problem is that it's very, very backward even compared to North Africa, let alone Eastern Europe.
Well, that's a problem indeed. But being a Jewish state of its own, and the possibility (trying to integrate your PoD there) and with a collaboration with Yemen...
Couldn't we have the possibility of a better trade center in Red Sea to India, possibly shadowing Horn's cities?

Both Rabbinical and Karaite schools are well established by the POD. Ethiopia Definately does not go Karaaite -they were based in Iraq, Turkey and the Casucas/pontus. They do get some Sepharadic rabbinical and much Yemenite influence. So yeah, it might be a slightly weirder equivalent of Yemnites... but there will be a LOT of them. enough to be recognised as a major stream of thought and customary practice.
Mmm...It's gonna blow a bit.
That said, if it's managing to get some influence on southern Red Sea and some sort of missionary drive supported by their rulers on the different Jewish Communauties, couldn't we see a "Saba Judaism" gaining over Nilothic and possibly other groups, eventually making it a jewish school recognized de facto?

But racial predjudices and atavistic repungance from "primitive" customs (as well as romantic attraction to "authentic" ones) will certainly exist in the 19th century.
Well, it could if things are roughly similar to OTL, and I'm no fan of "butterflies" for the sake of it, but a jewish state living on didn't really existed historically to begin with, and it's hard to see what could be the ideological changes at least among Jewish intelligentia.

makes sense. But the culture shock between iron age feudalism and 19th century industrial age Europeans will be... interesting.
Probably. That said, wouldn't a Jewish Ethiopia would need an inner dynamism for surviving Islamic neighbours? Such as being powerful and develloped enough as Christian help is ruled out.
 
But in this period, the main policy was less to crush these communauties than "teach them their place" (page 2), structurating along Castillan and Portuguese lines to better control them.

That place was unsustainable and increasingly narrow. It could lead only to emigration as economic opportunities became more limited or else conversion... which as you claim was the trigger for harsher persecution since it blurred the separation between unbeliever and heretic.



Actually, it was conversos elite themselves that went the most militant against Jewish communauties.
For different reasons : compensating their origin, fear of being assimilated to Jews, social rivality with them...

Or fear that if they didn't they would be dragged out of bed for washing their linen on Friday. But that is a moot point. By your own words "putting unbelivers in their place">conversion>converts militantly attacking their birth communities>worsening conditions for unbelivers> conversion or emigration. I disagree that that was the main dynamic but either way it's a positive feedback loop with no release valve save emigration.

It's hard to have precise and definitive numbers, for a series of reasons : not everyone was counted, people that choose exile then conversion may not have been recounted or then twice.

For instance, it seems that 20% of Spanish population (well, maybe not all the spanish population, as I think they kept samples of "traditional" population only, safe immigration) had semitic origins. Now, of course, it could indicate Arabic origin as well, but considering the really few numbers of ethnical Arabs in Al-Andalus (no more than some thousands), Jewish influence may have played fully there.

The 20% repeatable was unrepeatable by other, similliar studies. Furthermore, disgnating all "levantine" genes as Jewish seems to ignore phonecian colonization and a whole slew of non-Jewish immigration from Syria under the Roman empire.

For the rest- Sources? In any event, The Morisco population was far larger than the Marrano one and apparantly Spanish muslims were more willing to formally convert than Jews (possibly because they were more tied to the land.).

I think you may have misunderstood my point.
Allow to me repeat it, more clearly for you, maybe.

You were pointing that a Jewish medieval state would attract an huge jewish immigration if too close of Mediterranean basin.

Yes.

I then pointed out that Jewish communauties didn't easily migrated,

disagree, but I lack statistics.

and unless forced to,

which makes the former a moot point- they were, frequently, forced to.

didn't or at least in large numbers; and when doing so preferred to move to immediate neighbouring regions.

The #1 target of Spanish and Portugese expelees was the Ottoman empire. That's about as far as one could go by sea. distance was an issue. A sense of security on the other side was a larger one. Likewise, 19th century Russian Jews preferred emigrating over the Atlantic rather than moving to Central Europe (in spite of Kin group in Austrian Galicia and Prussian Poland).

I also pointed that Jewish medieval communauties, depsite the XIIIth-XVth turning point (as we're talking of a medieval PoD, I think it's best we focus as best we can on medieval situation than 19th, except when really relevant),

Actually the 19th century example is more relevant to TTL since I do NOT believe Ethiopia is a viable destination for most expellees given 13th-15th century transportation. Insofar as discussion of Medivial expulsion and migrations go it is relevant, from my POV only to demonstrate that:
a. Contrary to my interpetation of your initial claim, mass movements of Jewish populations took place prior to the application of industrial genocide (and it is in this sense that the 19th century migration of Russian Jews is relevant).
b. An accesible Jewish state in Arabia-Syria or the Med would be normalized with these immigrants in the medivial age rather than being bootstrapped by them in the industrial age. hence, less interesting.

remained maintained up to their expulsion that didn't let them the choice to do so.

I am not 100% sure that is correct (sources?). Even if it is true for Iberia I am quite sure it was not true for England or France in the XIIIrd century. the difference, it would seem to me, is that when the Iberian expulsion took place, North Africa, Much of Italy and West Germany, france and England had all expelled or forcibly converted their Jews. Iberian Jews, therefore, were trapped and required a great deal of capital and an active invitation from the Ottomans (or a push by Spain) to immigrate. Absent the Ottoman invitation, Alohistory books may well have disabused those who believe that an industrial revolution is a prequisite of genocide.



Well, assuming Khazaria turns into a jewish state for the sake of the argument (I think it couldn't but...)

neither do I:p

, there's some reasons for that.

1) Such migration would involve formerly economically integrated populations. Assuming we're not talking about the rural jewish population that disappeared by the XIIIth century, it's going to be hard to settle urban workers, merchants, etc into a underdevelloped (compared to other regions) backward land. (That may not be able to feed all the Jews of Europe)
Exiled would eventually settle in a place where they can do what they did before.

Which was precisely why Poland, an undeveloped land, wanted Jewish (and German) traders and craftsmen. Jews stimulated trade and craftmanship and developed the local market. And yes, they also formed farming communities, particularly in the Eastern frontier. Insofar as I am aware feeding them was not an issue- rather the more urbanized Jewish population stimulated rural food production.

2) Cultural differences. It's not because...let's say Khazaria, would be a Jewish state that it would have much affinities with exiled.
In fine, save regligion, a Sefardi would have closer ties with a Maghrebi than a Türk.

And yet, More Sefaradis immigrated to Turkey rather than the Mhagreb.
3) This one is a bit tricky, and I'm not sure about its influence. Khazaria wouldn't be Jerusalem.
The latter had an historical and institutional link with all Jewish communauties, and served as a more or less uncontroversial reference point, and even if the land was totally estangered, it would have still an "aura" that wouldn't have more "lay" state.
Migrating for religious (and not only being expulsed) reasons to Palestine makes sense, doing that for Khazaria or else, do less.

Now, yes, the existence of such state would have certainly consequences on the exiled migrations flux, and would settle many of them, but not as a mass and whole immigration.

Perhaps. But over three centuries? With periodic expulsions and growing opression? I believe it would. certainly if that homeland included Jerusalem the attraction would be greater but given the extent and length of prosecution I believe the Jewish population would tend to gravitate to the Jewish state.


Antisemitism isn't a medieval phenomenon, as the reject wasn't based on racial prejudice, but on religious.

Irrelevent, since most Jews preferred to keep their religion, thank you very much.
In any event, the church itself promoted certain "genetic" prohibitions on the children of conversos as did secular authorities and "theories" regarding the trasmission of sin by heritage were widely circulated. http://www.jewishjesuits.com/briefhistoricalsetting.html. The phrase "pure blood" to indicate converso free ancestry did not originate in the 20th century.

Depending on the PoD, we may either butterfly partially or not this evolution; o

I cannot see how this evolution can be butterflied away, certainly not by events that occur in Ethiopia after it is isolated from contact with Europe.
as I understand it you are claiming that the drivers for the (d)evolving attitude to Jews were:
1. Association of Judaism with Heretic threats (such as the Cathars)
2. Loss Of Jewish economic and political importance
3. The existence of a Converso class which was suspected (probably correctly) of having converted for economic gain while maintaining Jewish practices= heretics.

Heresy is not going to dissapear from Europe. It's outbreaks were driven by social causes, contradictions and ambiguities in the new/old testament which give christianity much of it's character and dissatisfaction with the increasingly corrupt catholic hiearchy.

While Jews are placed in conditions of economic competitive inferiority some will go apostate and be suspected of heresy. And the political-economic power of Jews ineveitably declined as the christian population grew and became more economically adept.

How any of these factors will be effected by Changes in isolated Ethiopia I cannot see. Can you?

r if not butterfly how nationalism inherited medieval antijudaism as a source for antisemitism, with the important twist of basing it on ethny (aka, even if you convert, that doesn't matter).

For the purposes of TTL such a butterfly would be irrelevent. As most Jews had no wish to convert, conditions which would make it impossible to live in a given region without converting would lead most to move elsewhere with only a minority choosing to convert- If an elsewhere exists which is accesible (which ethiopia would be in the late 19th century).

In any event, the "twist" was no accident of history- it occured whenever a sufficiently large converso population occured, whether in 15th century Iberia or 19th century Germany. As they presented an intolerable economic and cultural challenge (especially given the insincere nature of most conversions) the reaction to them was accordingly.

There are, I suppose, PODs which might butterfly such attitudes away in the 18th or 19th century without a Holocaust. but I believe they would change European society and Geopolitics beyond recognition- and I can think of no way in which changes to Ethiopia would lead to them. Can you?

The OTL exemple you're giving show that when expelled (and not before), yes they migrated as much or more than converting themselves. Such events, depending on the PoD, aren't doomed to happen and you may have a maintainance of the post-1215 policy of "Humiliate and persecute them" instead of expulsion.

I believe the drivers leading to expulsion or rather giving them a choice between expulsion and conversion were sufficiently repeated on both sides of the Muslim-Christian divide and repeated themselves sufficiently over the centuries that they are quite robust. Likewise, the drivers you (and I) proposed for this evolution do not seem to be effected by changes to ethiopian history post 9 century CE. If you can see a way that hey are...

And Zionism, that is the application of anti-integrationism and nationalism, these three things in a row are doomed to happen is, pardon me, far-fetched.[/QUOTE]

Zionism (or territorialism) were the logical conclusion of the failure of the concept of full legal and social equality regardless of religion. Even if conversion were to achieve this equality it would not be an acceptable solution for most Jews.

Furthermore, most Jews (and most zionists) lived under the rule of Tsarist Russia, which failed to extend even legal equality to Jews and carried out a deliberate policy of persecution and ethnic cleansing against religious minorities (Muslim and Western Christian as well as Jews though not to the same extent) at the time of OTLs Ethiopia re-contact with Europe. It seems that some, at least will be drawn to a jewish state where they can be equal in both theory and fact.
 
That place was unsustainable and increasingly narrow. It could lead only to emigration as economic opportunities became more limited or else conversion... which as you claim was the trigger for harsher persecution since it blurred the separation between unbeliever and heretic.
The historical reality after the XIIIth century was more of a succession of active persecutions followed by more calm and restructurations, not an increaslignly unsufferable situation.

The exemple given in the source quoted (that is in french, so if you can't read it, i'm afraid you'll have to trust me), is the period between 1432 and 1479, where after Valladolid conference, a new administrative net was set up and decimated communauties could rest a bit.
1479 being the union of crowns between Castille and Aragon, the author underlinying that religious unity was used while they lack actual centralisation.

Situation of Jewish communauties was less continuous (while precarious) between the XIIIth and XVth than you depict, mainly dependent on the geopolitical context.
For instance, no Catholics kings may have delayed the OTL expulsion in Spain, maybe up to moriscos expulsion.

It seems (I would comeback later on the "seem" part) that in the more calm periods, there wasn't a great emigration from Spain. Unlike french protestants that were forbidden to leave the kingdom, Arabo-Andalusian at the same time were able to leave Spain and I'm not sure you had an actual restriction for Jews (I may be wrong, but given the hour it is, I'm not seeking up the late Castillan treaties)

The 20% repeatable was unrepeatable by other, similliar studies.
I honestly didn't get that one.
Did you mean that it was repeated by some and not by others? Given some searched for the same Y-DNA that is not dominant after all, it doesn't surprise me that much.
An acceptable fork would be 20% (admittedly a max) and 5%.

Furthermore, disgnating all "levantine" genes as Jewish seems to ignore phonecian colonization and a whole slew of non-Jewish immigration from Syria under the Roman empire.
Phoenician settlement were much limited to south-western coasts, and in few numbers. Carthaginian's may have been more important but then again, considering the early mix between Punic and Libyan populations, you should have similar Libyan or Berber traces : unfortunatly, it's hard to distinguish from later migrations.

I'll easily give you, that said, that an actual study should look on names of persons whom DNA is prevleved and with a genealogic survey. Unfortunatly, I'm not sure we would have the means to do that too soon.

Generally, J1 and J2 are associated with an overall ME origin, but it's not these one that were used by the study. IRRC, it was G.

For the rest- Sources? In any event, The Morisco population was far larger than the Marrano one and apparantly Spanish muslims were more willing to formally convert than Jews (possibly because they were more tied to the land.).

For the sources, it's from a compilation of Islamic sources, and knowledge of logistical and geopolitical context.
Around 750, you may had 15 000, 20 000 Berbers and 5 000 Arabs, not counting families.
Considering the first settlements were made in the wake of conquests, and that they couldn't have maintained armies of more than 10 000 in a row, ,it's a good enough approximation.

Furthermore, after the Berber Revolt and the Umayyad takeover of Al-Andalus, both Berber and Arab migration was cut off for a while (and while the first re-"opened", critically after a policy of conquest/clientelisation of Zenets tribes, the latter...not so much).
And eventually, Berber Dynasties takeover eneded to clearly minorize tribal Arabs.

I would think Marrano/Moriscos demographical importance is more likely directly tied to both demographical importance of their respective origin groups, and of course a more lasting presence for the formers.

disagree, but I lack statistics.
You won't find clear statistics, with people numbered up to the latest, but rather forks based on medieval censy (that more likely concern groups of people rather than individuals) and of course sources as "today some people settled in my town today".
So, in this case, that we have no accounts as "Jews moved in the neighbour there", serve as stat.

which makes the former a moot point- they were, frequently, forced to.
Not really. Save the really fluctuating behavior of Capetians, you didn't had regular expulsed/going back/explused, etc. and that was more of a racket.
Jews were expulsed, settled at the very border of royal demesne (remember that up to the last, expulsion didn't concerned the kingdom as a whole but the former), and came back eventually.
The first explusion of 1189, by exemple, ended by Jews being considered as royal serves after their return, and it was repeted in later reign.
It does seems, though, by contemporary accounts, that the same groups resetteled the cities they inhabited before the expulsion rather than staying away (even within the kingdom, in Aquitaine by exemple where the overall situation for Jews was still beter up to the end of XIIIth century) up to the expulsions of 1315 and 1360 where it was noted that only a part of the exiled may have came back (after 150 years of in/out, that'd understable but JE explanation about that, aka because there's no longer Jewish intellectual life, seems a bit unconvincing. But I don't see proof of the contrary either.) in the royal demesne, the other apparently settling in Provence or Alsace.

The #1 target of Spanish and Portugese expelees was the Ottoman empire. That's about as far as one could go by sea. distance was an issue. A sense of security on the other side was a larger one.
Mmm...Looking after it, you're right there. My mistake. (I think I mixed up my moriscos and my Jews somehow).
Still, looking at guesstimates I've, it's about 50 000 to 70 000 Jews migrating to Turkey, on a population around 100 000, 150 000.; aka between 2/3 and 1/2.
You still have an appreciable part not going to, and I wonder that if without the active help given by Ottomans, the proportion would have been that important.

That's after all the great difference with other medieval migrations, with an active help to cross large distance.
But you're still right on this.

Likewise, 19th century Russian Jews preferred emigrating over the Atlantic rather than moving to Central Europe (in spite of Kin group in Austrian Galicia and Prussian Poland).
You'll certainly agree that 19th transportation that was more regular, more quick and carrying more persons played a lot in the choice of distance there.


a. Contrary to my interpetation of your initial claim, mass movements of Jewish populations took place prior to the application of industrial genocide (and it is in this sense that the 19th century migration of Russian Jews is relevant).
Well, as we both clarified our points, I agree on this.

b. An accesible Jewish state in Arabia-Syria or the Med would be normalized with these immigrants in the medivial age rather than being bootstrapped by them in the industrial age. hence, less interesting.
On that, I'm disagreeing though.

An active Jewish state in Arabia-Syria would have certainly carried enough butterflies to change situation, even slightly, of European Jews.
If it doesn't, because of its weakness (but then, I wonder how it exist in first place), and can't carry out expelled (as, I insist, mass and far emigrations happened either in the wake of great expulsions, or when transportations allowed better choices than immediate neighbours), I'm not sure a single state could host all the mass emigrations that touched Europe on this regard (Ottoman Turkey did, but it was huge even at this moment).

I don't see the opportunity to continue on this particular point (not because the discussion about it wasn't interesting, at the contrary, but because we made both our statements)

I am not 100% sure that is correct (sources?).
For France, Ordonnances, chronicles (not that they say "Jews didn't moved" but by the accounts of "Jews were expelled in...." and "Jews came back at these conditions", underline persistance of said communauties.

Histoire des Juifs de France, by the same author than the online source I gave you in the other post, is really interesting (but I don't know if it was translated, unfortunatly).
JE, that underlines the moment where Jews seemed to come back in clearly fewer numbers can be a good indicator.

Remember that for France specifically, expulsion almost always meant of the royal demesne, implying a known migration over peripherical demesne (either vassals or neighbouring as Alsace or Pontifical State)

Alohistory books may well have disabused those who believe that an industrial revolution is a prequisite of genocide.
Not exactly. Still, it's a prequisite of an efficient genocide, as it require enough ressource to go trough planification of mass murder, bureaucratisation, etc.

Which was precisely why Poland, an undeveloped land, wanted Jewish (and German) traders and craftsmen.
We're not seriously comparing late medieval Poland with medieval Caucasus, aren't we?
The former was in the middle of important trade ways, and while not as powerful than HRE (in its hours of glory, that is) was still quite wealthy of its own, critically after the urban development of the XIIIth on Baltic.
Northern Caucasus on the other hand...was steppe surrounded by forest, itself bordered by mountains.

Perhaps. But over three centuries? With periodic expulsions and growing opression? I believe it would. certainly if that homeland included Jerusalem the attraction would be greater but given the extent and length of prosecution I believe the Jewish population would tend to gravitate to the Jewish state.
Be careful about "I know that I would have done" in history. You know the saying about History being another country, and it play full in regard of mentality.

That many of them maintained Crypto-Judaic rites is an historical reality. It's also void of real stats or even guesstimates.

Irrelevent, since most Jews preferred to keep their religion, thank you very much.
That doesn't strike me as obvious. As we see before, it's really hard to have a clear majority in the 1492 expulsion that doesn't convert, and that's not counting the marranos that converted earlier.

In any event, the church itself promoted certain "genetic" prohibitions on the children of conversos as did secular authorities and "theories" regarding the trasmission of sin by heritage were widely circulated. http://www.jewishjesuits.com/briefhistoricalsetting.html. The phrase "pure blood" to indicate converso free ancestry did not originate in the 20th century.
The blood thing is actually coming from Spanish nobility rather than Church. At the XVth, Roman church increasingly lost his hand on national churches (not only in Spain, but more or less everywhere).
It was less promoting it than submitting to it (admittedly, they weren't too much vocal about it).

Basically, we can't argue of Castille/Aragon policy, reflected on a church they had a free hand on, to retrospectivly applying it to medieval churches conception on Jews.

(As I tried to answer later questions above and here, and that's quite late here already, could you excuse me to end my post there?)
Basically, yes an Isolated Ethiopia becoming Jewish only quite late and behavoring as "Mirror Ethiopia" would have only limited direct consequences (see post above) and Medieval Christianity wasn't doomed to end with expulsion of Jews.
 
Butterflies and TL draft to 1884

Probably. That said, wouldn't a Jewish Ethiopia would need an inner dynamism for surviving Islamic neighbours? Such as being powerful and develloped enough as Christian help is ruled out.

Yes, that's a major issue. I'm thinking that a more cohesive state which avoids the fraticidal warfare between the Geez-Agraw-Falasha and the Tigray-Amaharic blocs+ Influx of Yemenite Jews+ introduction of Gunpowder and some Western techniques by a small number of Iberian and Egyptian refugees might even things out.

The Portugese... well, they were engaged in warfare with the Ottomans and Mamelukes from 1508 onwards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman–Portuguese_conflicts
but their intervention in the Adal-Ethiopian war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian-Adal_War (which will be somewhat different TTL of course. But escalating conflict of some sort seems ineveitable given the expansionist tendencies of Adal and Ethiopia) followed an Ethiopian request. The Portugese were not above allying with heathen Hindus in Goa against the Muslims but I'm not sure they would be as willing to ally with Jews, even Jews who seem to use some christian rites. The presence of Iberian Jewish refugees in court would also complicate matters.

On the other hand, the heavy Ottoman support the sultanate of Adal recieved in this war may have been provoked by the Portugese influence with Ethiopia. He may not back Adal as much if they are fighting isolationist Jews instead of potential Portugese puppets. Certainly, the later reinforcements sent by the Ottomans seem to have been in response to Portugese intervention "with the arrival of the Portuguese, the Ottomans sent reinforcements: 2000 Arabian musketeer, 900 Turkish pikemen, 1000 Turkish foot musketeers, some Shqiptar foot soldiers (with muskets) and Turkish horsemen".

So all in all, I think I would be justified in making the outcome of the war similliar. Mutual exhustion, inability to permanently occupy each others heatlands, followed by the Great Oromo migration northwards and an end to intensive Somali-Ethiopian conflict for many years. A de-facto Portugese-Ethiopian alliance is not impossible though it is less likely to be formal or involve Portugese land forces. christians and Crypto christians might use the crisis to strengthen their position.

Following this period, Ethiopia recieved no significant aid from Chrsitian Europe (because they lost control of the coasts) and portugese-Ottoman conflicts were waged seprately from Ethiopian-Ottoman conflicts. jesuits did continue to maintain influence in court (until they were expelled in the 1640s)

Yes, while the importance of these butterflies could be admittedly more limited with a later PoD.
A Late Antiquity or Early Medieval PoD would have important consequences, while a classical medieval PoD would be more similar to OTL .

More or less my thoughts. Basically, the way I see the watershed moment is the Muslim conquest of North Africa. Once that takes place changes in Ethiopia have no direct bearing on Europe until the 1860s (with a brief period of contact in the early 1500s)

Development of OTL nationalism, for instance, depended on precise features such as French Revolution happened. Even a slight PoD in the XIVth century would butterfly it eventually, not that it wouldn't happen but probably not the same year, not because of the same things and without the OTL thinkers. .

Well, that raises an interesting point. From my studies of the history of the hard sciences the consensus is that no major scientific advance was dependent on the individual credited with the advance. Rather, each given individual was competing to publish his findings first. Therefore, if Darwin had been stillborn, lazy wallace would have published similliar findings. In ethect, they were competing for the same memetic niche. Is this not true for social sciences and political thought as well? If the objective environment in which political thought is developed is essentially identical would not the same schools of thought come to dominate?

Let's say that Egyptian judaism enters in Ethiopian's "sphere", it could impact exiles of the late MA, with ancestors of important Jewish or Jewish issued contributors disappearing, as Spinoza.
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That's a good point. All I can say is that while certainly, strictly speaking, no individual will bear the same genetic heritage as OTL, the genetic bellcurve will produce, on the average, the same number of geniuses and those geniuses, on the average, will contain the same number of alienated individuals who will undergo similliar life experiences and come to similliar conclusions as spinoza. If there is no Spinoza (and hence no deterrence generated by the cherem against him) then some other alienated Jew (or non-Jew) will publish similliar tracts- because the memetic niche filled by Spinoza will be empty.

For other ideas to predominate intellectual discourse, objective conditions would have to be different- how do the marxists put it? "social-material conditions determine conciousness"? That may not be true for individuals but I tend to believe that it is essentially correct for statisticaly significant populations.

As I don't really know what you're intend to do between MA and 1866, it's hard to say.
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Well, roughly:
around 950: Axumite invasion of Beta Israel heartland defeated, Axumite emperor killed* while king Gideon of the proto-Falasha survives*

around 951: Using the prestige of his great victory King Gideon rallies other Judaic chiefdoms around him and concludes a dynastic alliance with dominant Agaw polity (either by marrying his daughter Gudit to an appropriate chief or by himself marrying the agaw queen Gudit depending on who you believe she was). The price of the dynastic marriage is mass conversion of the Agaw to Judaism. While the conversion is superficial, with many

951-960: Conquest of Axum and Tigrai heartland. Program of gradual Judaization of church initiated, with King Gideon declaring himself head of the church and appointing priests and bishops prepared to emphasize monotheism over trinitarism. Churches who refuse to recognioze monarchial authority are secularized and their lands distributed to Agaw and Falasha nobles as are the lands of the strongest supporters of the old church and dynasty.

Tigrai lands depopulated by the war are repopulated with a mixture of Falasha and Agaw immigrants while an new source of Jewish immigrants, from Yemen, is invited to settle in Adulis and Axum itself.

970-1020: With the death of Gideon the throne passes to the scion of the Agaw-Falasha marriage. The trickle of Yemenite Jewish immigrants grows as Ziadi repression increases. They are joined by a smaller trickle of Egyptian jews fleeing the repression of Al-Hakim. Rabbinical judaism begins to make a small impact on the state religion. Jesus is continuously de-emphazied and the veneration of Solomon and Menelik as the blessed of god gradually comes to dominate those rites previously dedicated to him.

Maimondes writes a critical tract concerning the Jewish kingdom of Ethiopia which becomes the literary equivalent of "the Khazar" by Yehuda halevi. Ethiopia become to the Jews what Prester john is to the christians. a Romantic and Semi mythological utopia.

1020-1200: Ethiopian Judaism, rather than christianity, spreads south into Amahara lands and the Amahara become both more sophisticated and more drawn into the Gideonite orbit.

1200: The growing strength of the Amahara and their alliance with barbarian people outside the imperial orbit leads to a change of dynasty. It's legitimacy is assured by marriage of the Amahara into the Gideonite dynasty. The new boss is much like the old boss.


1200-1300: An attempt by the Tigray to break away from the empire following the Amaharic takover and reassert open christian practice is met with invasion by joint Amaharic-. In spite of some reverses, the domination of the Gondar based dynasty is reconfirmed and Tigray lands are again depopulated and settled by southern people and a trickle of Jews arriving from Almohavid spain and north africa as the rebellion is crushed. Increased judaization of church and prosecution of cypto christians.

**OTL, in contrast, the Amahara takeover resulted in a prolonged period of fraticidal war with the Falasha and Agaw people. TTL, the conflict is less even since the Amahara gain the support of their coreligionists in putting down the Tigrai.


1300-1500: gradual expansion southwards accompanied with growing conflict with the Somali and Sudanese sultanates. Oromo people recieve both Jewish and Muslim missionaries and are equally tepid to both. News of the expulsion of Iberian Jews reaches Ethiopia belatedly but some effort is made to encourage those who had reached the Ottoman empire and mameluk Egypt to continue to Ethiopia. only 3000 or so make the difficult journey but...

1500-1530: Direct Naval contact with Portugal leads considerable numbers of Marranos to make their way to Ethiopia and offer their services as soldiers, administrators and craftsmen. Among other things they bring with them knowledge of gunnery and ship building, promoting a brief foray of Ethiopian trade untill...

** This is analogous to the settlement of Jesuit missionaries and potugese millitary advisers in the Ethiopian highlands during the 1540s. The maranos have less in the way of warlike skills and are not quite of specialized for administration but they arrive earlier provoke less suspicion by the old guard (since they are not representatives of a foreign power)

Unlike OTL, the ethiopians do not send an ambassador to Portugal in 1509 (for one thing, absent an exemption this would be a violation of the edict of expulsion) but there is enough private trade for Marranos to trickle in.

A series of Portugese conflicts with the Ottomans establishes Portugal of the dominant power in the Indian ocen but fails to gain them complete control over the persian gulf and the Red Sea.

**OTL

1530-1550: The sultanate of Adal and the Ethiopian kingdom have both been expanding into the south and the interior over the past two centuries and clashes between them have grown. But now, with the near unification of the Islamic world by an agressive new power the Somalis have a powerful patron. With Millitary support from the Ottomans Adal invades ethiopia, with some support by discontented Tigri christians.

The Jewish kingdom lacks portugese support but has indigenous, if rudimentary, gunworks. More to the point, it has had time to integrate the new technology and millitary techniques into it's armies. Furthermore, it's center of power is located further inland than that of OTLs Ethiopia making it difficult for Adal to penetrate the hertland.

The ottomans face additional challenges in the Indian ocean following the outbreak of another round of conflicts with the portugese. they also face new challenges in Europe, the meditiranian and Persia. Eventually, they withdraw most of their support from Adal.
This does not end the war which seesaws back and forth between the two East African states. Eventually, it is the Oromo who end it, raiding into the neglected southern fronties of both sides much as the Arabs did to the Byzantines and persians 900 years in the past. Unlike the Arabs, the Oromo lack a single leader and so fail to found an empire. they do, however colonize large portions of central ethiopia and force jew and Muslim to put aside their squabbles.

The big losers of this conflict are the Tigray. Their lands have been the focus of the war and their leaders had tried to switch sides several times. despised as infidles by both Jew and Muslim many of their people have been forcibly converted or carried into slavery in Egypt and Arabia.

1550-1570:
The Ottomans, having put their affairs in order in more important fronts for a time send an expeditionary force to occupy Massawa and forment revolt and conversion to Islam among the Tigray. They make little attempt to advance into the interior but do establish control over the coastlands and make some progress in islamizing their inhabitans.


1570-1870:
Peace is eventually established with the ottomans agreeing to cease slave raids and to allow slave trade only with officialy sanctioned caravans. However, concerned with previous Ethiopian attempts to lure Iberian Jews which he has resettled in Istanbul and Antolia to Ehiopia the Ottomans effectively prohibit the entry of Ottoman Jews into Massawa

In spite of skirmishes and occasional proxy wars the peace will hold for the next 300 years, as will the isolation of Ethiopia which, crushed by it's long wars, oromo raids, worsening climate and declining trade revenues, will collapse into warring principalities with little seprate control.

Jewish travelers from Egypt and Yemen will occasionaly penetrate the hermit kingdom and carry back heavily romatacized tales of Jewish knights and warlords but little true diffusion of ideas will take place during this period.

** OTL relations with the Ottomans were more tense until 1640 due to jesuit influence at court

1820-1870: The revolt of Muhamad Ali in Egypt brings a more dynamic, westernizing rule to the ancient land. It also results in greater invetment and direct control in the semi-colonial teritories of Sudan and Eritrea, greater penetration of westerners into both Egypt proper and her dependencies and the effective removal of many formal and informal restrcitions on Egyptian and foreign jews.

As more oriental and European Jews visit the court at Gondar a series of modernizing and centralizing Kings turn to recruiting them in order to modernize their administration, finances and millitary. The French jewish based Alliance Israelite universal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_Israélite_Universelle sends a French government sanctioned mission to Ethiopia through the French influenced port of Djibouti to advance their "civilizing mission".

Britian belatedly seeks to use their own Jewish citizens and organizations to improve their influence within Ethiopia, leading it to place greater value on the Eritrean ports and particularly Massewa.

** France, with universal conscription and an officially secular government enabled some Jewish officers to advance within it's ranks. OTL, France had little success in penetrating Ethiopia and the British were not concerned with their activities prior to 1900. Since they viewed Eritrea as unprofitable they were content to let Italy have it. TTL, their is earlier concern.

1875: Five years after the disastorous French defeat in Sedan The Egyptians face an equally disastoous defeat at the hands of Ethiopian soldiers advised by French jewish vetrans of the Franco-Prussian war. The statues of France in Ethiopia rises.

1884: With defeat in Ethiopia and revolt in Sudan the Khedivate is bankrupt. Following the British occupation of Egypt it is pressured to withdraw it's troops from the unprofitable colonies. In order to alleviate the finances of Egypt Baron Hirsh

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_de_Hirsch

is induced by the British government to purchase title of the port of massawa from the Khedive and to operate it, and it's hinterland, under a charter which will encourage the settlement of Eastern European jews within it. France, caught in domestic disturbances is able to secure no more than the port of Djibouti, urging Edmond De rotshild to invest in a colonization company similliar in concept to that of Baron Hirsh.

A disgruntled Italian government focuses it's efforts on securing the port of Asseb in southeastern Eritrea in order to safeguard it's supply route to it's more profitable protectorates in Somalia.

** Basicaly, the British let Italy have all of Somalia in return for getting the northern portion of Eritrea.

At this point things become more iffy. Britian and France are both sponsering competing Jewish colonies in the horn of Africa (which are not exactly zionist. This fits the philantropist model better) and jockeying for influence in Ethiopia. It's unlikely Britian will go to war with Ethiopia the way Italy did. If Italy is not humiliated in 1895 it may be more adventurous elsewhere- or it might seek to secure the Ogaden and come into conflict with Ethiopia from a different direction. It may also seek to settle jews on it's own stretch of coastline though Italy lacks the financially strong Jewish community

Now, any change in the Jewish world, critically if Ethiopia (without becoming a powerhouse) gain sort of influence on neighbouring communauties, it could have interesting consequences.
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I think that TTL isolates Ethiopia from the Jewish world fairly well until the 19th century. from 1884 onwards though....

Well, that's a problem indeed. But being a Jewish state of its own, and the possibility (trying to integrate your PoD there) and with a collaboration with Yemen...
Couldn't we have the possibility of a better trade center in Red Sea to India, possibly shadowing Horn's cities?
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That would be interesting but once the Ottomans and Portugese get to the scene that's over. They simply command too many resources and manpower to allow such an independent trade entrepot to exist. Even before the ottomans the Fatimid Caliphate would prevent it. That's what happened to Ethiopian see trade OTL- choked off by the caliphate.

Well, it could if things are roughly similar to OTL, and I'm no fan of "butterflies" for the sake of it, but a jewish state living on didn't really existed historically to begin with, and it's hard to see what could be the ideological changes at least among Jewish intelligentia.
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That is true. Still, i think I've made Ethiopia sufficiently distant for it to have little effect on the ruminations of dutch or central European Jews. After all, imagine mendelson in Berlin. For him Ethiopia is an unreachable land, a land of legend even before the Ottomans cut it off. it might fire the imagination- but he must need deal with the german reality as it is. Only once the ports are opened will imagination touch fire.

Egyptian jewry would be impacted but they had little impact on jewish thought after the 15th century so I am not sure on how much that would matter. My only concern is a certain fellow named Shabtai Tzvi. If he decides to march on Ethiopia after the jerusalem community rejects him...
 
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