alternatehistory.com

Ixbiliada
the history of Seville, 1070-1290

FOREWORD
excerpted from Izanagi Aoi, Moorish History: A Very Poor Introduction. Honolulu: Daiwakoku Press, 1988.

Far out in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way Galaxy lies an utterly representative G-series star.

Orbiting this, at a distance of 149 000 000 kilometers is a dense-cored world whose inhabitants are so mind-shatteringly uncouth that many of the local cretins still believe that sacred monarchy is a good idea.

This planet has (and always had) a problem: most of its multitudes were immiserated most of the time. Many solutions were proposed for this problem, most of which involved redrawing lines on maps and killing people, which was great fun but still left the multitudes immiserated, even the ones with sacred monarchs.

And then, one fine night (I believe it was a Thursday), the archangel Gabriel was compelled to descend from heaven, approach a trader out in the desertified armpit of the world, and share the very definitely final revelation of God Himself, setting forth a record clear and without error, because God Himself wanted to make sure the local cretins got it right this time.

So of course they promptly set about redrawing lines on maps and killing people, which was great fun and still left the multitudes immiserated, and soon the empire had stretched to a peninsula on the edge of the known world. When they had finished redrawing the lines on its maps and killing people, they introduced dhimmitude and toothpaste and the very definitely final revelation of God Himself to the region, making sure the local cretins got it right this time, and created a kingdom that was one of the more impressive things the world had ever seen.

This is not the story of that kingdom.

But it is the story of a small city's depraved dictator, and a wandering warlord, and their rocky relationship in the ashes of that kingdom.

It is also the story of how the one paid the other to redraw lines on maps and kill people, having great fun and immiserating the multitudes.

And it is the story of how, by doing this, they accidentally created one of the most impressive nations the world will ever see. (Even if most of the local cretins still believe sacred monarchy is a good idea.)

This is going to be a long story. Let's take it from the top.

۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞​

With this done, I commit myself to keeping al-Andalus alive and Moorish from winter 1080 (when El Cid finds an employer) through the Berber Fitna [1], the Almohads, the collapse of the Abbasid Caliphate, at least one crusade, and the lives of the last recognizable people in the ATL's Iberian history.

And now, for the obligatory stuff:
  • This began as a writeup for a GURPS worldline; you can probably find the original post buried somewhere in the SJG forum archives. (If you do, the POD and the writeup of the world ca. 1930 are pretty much unchanged; everything else has been demoted to "extremely rough draft," which is partly why I started writing.)
  • Where it's possible, this TL is written as in-ATL texts. (I'm trying to make them less dry and academic than my source material; I apologize in advance if any of that bleeds through.) "Year: Event" formatting will be avoided unless a particular period of time gets really dense.
  • The present day of the ATL is 1348/1930; at the moment I'm limiting my scope (and my workload) to 1070-1270ish.
  • At some point in the world-building (probably when I realized none of my prospective players were history buffs) things took a turn for the poppy and pulpy; for one thing, there'll be many more recognizable names than there really should be. (Most of this won't be an issue for quite awhile, but it's something that should be said now.)
This is going to be a long story. Let's take it from the top.

[1] Medieval Sevillan historiography universally agreed that the collapse of Umayyad Cordoba was entirely the fault of unassimilated Berber immigrants. Historiography is fun like that.
Top