Hermanubis said:I’m not sure if he is still around here thou…![]()
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htgriffin ? His profile says
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Seems as if he is
Grey Wolf
Hermanubis said:I’m not sure if he is still around here thou…![]()
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Boo!Hermanubis said:I’m not sure if he is still around here thou…![]()
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I rather thought it was the first, Hülegü.Matt Quinn said:I'd also heard that one of the last rulers of the Ilkhanate (the Mongol's empire in Persia and the Middle East) was a Nestorian Christian. He proposed joint action between the Western Christians and the Ilkhanate on the matter of Jerusalem, but died before anything could get started..
I think it is very hard to avoid having the Ilkhans adopt the religion of their Muslim subjects. Or they don't last very long.Matt Quinn said:The Ilkhans might be a good candidate for mass conversion to the Nestorian or Monophysite (Armenians or Egyptian Copts) branch of Christianity. The "Different Fate for the Templars" has one branch of the Mongols adopting the Armenian Apostolic Church. I think it was the White Horde that converted, though, not the Ilkhanate.
If you really want to get interesting, have the White Horde adopt Orthodoxy and the Ilkhanate adopt Nestorianism.
(just an old POD of mine I dug up)
Between 1235 and 1242 A.D., the Mongols under Batu established what became the Khanate of the Qipchaq (known in the west as 'Golden') Horde on the steppe north of the Black Sea. Despite establishing overlordship over the christian slavs to the north, the Mongols and Turks (who comprised the majority of the local nomads) remained largely and officially pagan until the conversion of Ozbeg Khan (ruled 1313-41) to Islam (several previous Khans had converted, but it was regarded as a personal affair only). What might have happened if, at some point during that interval, the Tatars of the Qipchaq Horde had adopted Christianity instead?
Let us say that around 1275, Rhomanoi or Russian clerics manage to convince the Khan at Sarai to adopt the Orthodox faith and, more importantly, encourage his nomadic subjects to do likewise. While unlikely to alter the nomadic Tatar lifestyle in and of itself, such a conversion would result in increased cultural/political contact with both Constantinople and the Horde's Russian vassals to the northwest. These increased ties between vassal and overlord would not only help reduce the mutual disdain twixt nomad and city-dweller, but increase the Khan's motivation and ability to monitor and control the Russian princelings.
By the time this timeline's Ozbeg comes to power in 1311, he had already visited Constantinople and had gained considerable political insight, including the governance of settled populations. As such he was considerably more cautious about allowing a single one of his russian vassals to gain a great degree of power without binding it as closely as possible to the crown (i.e. himself). As such, he engineered the first of several state marriages that absorbed the russian princely houses into the Ghengizid line while at the same time codifing and reforming the laws of government, delegation, and inheritance in order to prevent the provincial rebellion that plauged his predecessors. Eventually the distinctions between Russian and Tatar, while remaining strong, are likely to become more a matter of class and lifestyle than race; with Tatars settling down in and around Sarai, the russian provinces, and the Black Sea ports while Russian serfs and the like run off to join nomadic Tatar bands or forge their own not unlike OTL's Cossacks. The linguistic status of the Tatar realms is also likely to be hetrogenious; with Qipchaq Turkish (with various degrees of Mongolian, Greek, and Russian influence) becoming the language of the court and the steppe, Russian predominant in the towns of the old slavic principalities, and the two competing with Slavonic for position within the church (the establishment of a separate Tatar Patriarchate would be... unwise).
Increased cultural and political links between Christian Sarai and Constantinople would have important effects as well. If the Tatars see wisdom in establishing direct trade links with the Rhomanoi rather than dealing with Latin Genovese middlemen, they could aid the former in re-establishing their fleet and driving the latter out of the Black Sea. Of infintely greater importance, the Tatars would be in a far better position to intervene in the civil war that plagued what was left of the Roman Empire in the 1340s, quite probably replacing the Muslim Turkish forces John IV Cantacuzenus summoned to aid him and establishing a permanent presence in Constantinople's dominions afterwards. With Tatar aid and a fleet worth the name, Constantinople would be likely to regain not only the realms Stephan Dusan appropriated, but much of the Aegean and quite possibly the Asian side of the Marmara as well. This intervention on the part of the Tatars would also be of singular importance due to the fact that the Ottomans would be far less likely to establish themselves in Europe. Moreover, the Qipchaq Tatars might be inclined to establish it's own fleet in the Caspian; which, along with a more stable government and quite possibly artillery, could prove enough to keep Timur from leveling Sarai at the end of the fourteenth century.
By 1400, the Qipchaq Khanate, if all goes well, would remain direct rulers of the bulk of Russia outside of Novgorod's dominions as well as the steppe from the Dniester to the Ural and perhaps beyond. More importantly, the steppe nomads which ruled this empire would remain so despite their christian faith and less rigid ethnic composition. Novgorod, while likely to remain independent due to it's distance from the steppe, would develop into a far more western state than OTL's Russia or the Russo-Tatar empire to the south and turn towards the Baltic far sooner and more effectively than the former ever could. As for the Roman Empire, while Constantinople would rule Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly, much of Epirus, a foothold in Asia, and perhaps Bulgaria and Trebizond as well; they would be a de facto Tatar protectorate and unless they regain Anatolia once Timur's empire disintergrates upon his death they would be well advised to remember it lest a Ghengizid Baselius be set up before they could blink.
Comments, corrections, or impolite assessments of my intellect?
HTG
ZOMG thread necromancy!I was convinced this was a completely new thread (not that it's not an interesting one though).
My first though was that Timur would do his best to destroy it. The Golden Horde converting to Christianity does not block the Il-Khans or Chagatai from converting to Islam after all.
On the one hand, a mere personal feud with Tokhtamysh made him wage war for a decade till his opponent was exiled and the Golden Horde puppetized. So a religiously motivated conflict could be far longer, more devastating and far reaching than the OTL one. Timur could well try to march all the way to Novgorod while unleashing destruction on the level of his New Delhi campaign. Now, since Timur sucked at logistics the Christian Horde might still survive in the end despite all destruction inflicted so who knows.
And on the other a Timur that fully invests his best years in Russia could cancel his campaigns in Syria, Anatolia and the second destruction of Baghdad entirely. Can't say what would be the effects of that but I imagine they would be many. Plus, Timur would end being viewed by Muslim historians as an actual champion of the faith rather than an overkilling psycopath. Christian historians on the other hand...