Khans and Crosses: A Collaborative TL

There is a typo in the last update, so I will do some corrections now.



News of the Mongol pillage of Adrianople ran quickly throughout the Byzantine remnants as Nicaea, Trebizond and Epirus’s leaders began to send their delegates into Sartaq’s temporary headquarters in Ras, offering their services in liberating the ancient center of Orthodox Christianity. Sartaq also revealed to the Byzantine delegates that he had arranged for his eldest daughter Tughdua to marry Stefan Uroš I’s eldest son, Knjaz Stefan Dragutin. Sartaq also hinted at allowing either his son or grandson to marry any Byzantine noblewoman in the future to preserve the Byzantine state. Negotiations went further on the role of the newly restored but rump Byzantine Empire and the extension of the Golden Horde’s influence in the Balkans. For one, the Byzantines were promised southern Bulgaria and mainland Greece in exchange for ceding Epirus to the House of Nemanjic, though the trade off may seem to be more costly on the Byzantine side, they were willing to place themselves under the Khan’s protection. On August 23rd, 1265, the armies of the Epirus, Trebizond and Nicaea Despotates marched towards the occupied city of Constantinople, accompanied by 50,000 Mongol soldiers (5 tumens) and an additional 15,000 Serbian infantry and cavalry combined. The siege began with the Mongol bombardment of Constantinople’s outer walls as the Byzantine remnants gave useful info on their own city’s defensive weaknesses to their Mongol allies, allowing Boroldai’s archers to launch their deadly arrows over the city’s walls. Unlike the time when Genghis Khan’s army had besieged the old Qin city of Beijing, the Siege of Constantinople was extremely difficult in a way that both sides would become exhausted from the sheer ferocity of the battle. Latin Crusaders pleaded with Catholic powers in Europe for aid, while adding in their letters that the schismatic Byzantine remnants have joined forces with the dreaded Mongol hordes. The 1265 Siege of Constantinople would become one of the longest and bloodiest sieges of the Middle Ages, with Constantinople as the main prize.
 
Chapter Three: The House of Discord





The Il-Khanate distinguished itself as the conqueror of the Muslim lands at a time when the spirit of the Crusades lingered even after the events of the Fourth Crusade. Indeed, the collapse of the Latin Empire at the hands of the combined armies of Sartaq Khan and Stefan Uros I had opened up the possibility of the Golden Horde’s incorporation of the Byzantine lands ravaged by the Crusaders, which finally completed its task of integrating the Byzantine nobility with the Houses of Borjigin and Neman’ic through a series of dynastic marriages. Even as Sartaq-Pavle Khan, as the Serbian missionaries now called the Tatar khan, consolidated his legitimacy of the new Orthodox Christian faith amongst the nomadic hordes of Mongols, Tatars, Merkits, Bashkirs and Kipchaks, he has gained popularity with the Slavic population. The only difference now is that the Mongol nobility needed to learn the language of their subjects. A form of Slavonic dialect designed for conversational use by the Golden Horde was needed, but such development will take a long time to complete. So in March of 1267, Sartaq commissioned two monks that can help him spearhead his goal of educating his people: the monks named Danilo and Ioaniki’e, for whom they will play a role in the Serbian Orthodox Church’s role in the Golden Horde. Sartaq’s court gradually became multi-lingual as they adopted the Old Serbian language as the official language of the Mongol court in Sarai Batu, along with Mongolian, Kipchak Turkic and Greek. Indeed, the mixture of words from Mongolian and Kipchak Turkic along with Russian and Bulgarian into Old Serbian resulted in a different dialect of Old Serbian: Steppe Serbian. Steppe Serbian was the first dialect of the Old Serbian language which constantly changed its vocabulary and phonology over centuries of usage by successive Tatar khans, and the Steppe Serbian Cyrillic was also written using the Old Serbian Cyrillic, but adopted letters from the Russian and Bulgarian Cyrillic and created new letters to adapt for the non-Slavic languages, especially the Mongol and Turkic languages. While the Golden Horde acquired a desire for learning, its neighbors in the Il-Khanate and the Yuan Empire had other issues to deal with.


Il-Khanate – Constant Struggles:


In 1258, the Il-Khanate conquered the great Abbasid stronghold of Baghdad, modern day Mesopotamia. This occurred while the Golden Horde launched its own campaign against the Duchy of Kiev and the Kingdom of Halych-Volhynia due to Lev I’s defiance against Sartaq. When Hulagu heard of Sartaq’s execution of his uncle Berke and the verdict that the Khan passed on the condemned man and his faction, he was relieved that he didn’t have to face the wrath of another Mongol Khanate as Sartaq and Berke were of different faiths. Indeed, Sartaq wrote a letter to Hulagu, requesting for half of the loot that the Il-Khanate were to acquire from their conquests in the Middle East, but that half he mentioned must not be in gold or jewelry, but in manuscripts. Hulagu was flabbergasted as to why Sartaq needed manuscripts. After all, the Mongols were hardly literate and manuscripts are useless to any Mongol warrior. Though the conquest of Baghdad went smoothly in terms of how the general population there was slaughtered and treasures were looted, Hulagu managed to secure manuscripts of great importance and entrusted three hundred keshiks to deliver it to Sarai Batu. As soon as Sartaq received the parcels, he decided to keep it until he can find a scholar who was literate in Arabic. Hulagu’s Il-Khanate also played a vital role in the Golden Horde’s liberation of the Byzantine Empire from the Latin crusaders in 1266 by allowing Trebizond’s forces to rejoin their fellow Byzantine comrades through Il-Khanate territory. At the same time, Hulagu’s armies campaigned against the Muslim Turkic tribes that delayed his advance through Anatolia. Within six months, most of the Turkic tribes in Anatolia were annihilated, except for a Turkic tribe called the Sogut tribe. Hulagu decided to spare the Sogut for now, giving the Seljuq remnants a respite. However, a power struggle broke out within the Il-Khanate after the Golden Horde liberated Constantinople when Abaqa Khan’s forces were attacked by that of Tekuder Khan’s forces. The origin of the Il-Khanate Civil War from 1265 to 1268 was Tekuder’s conversion into Islam and Abaqa’s pro-Christian policies that irritated the new convert. Furthermore, Abaqa had to flee into Anatolia after the Turkic Sogut tribe fled towards Tekuder’s new base in Baghdad. Once in Anatolia, Abaqa and 15,000 soldiers who were loyal to him settled down and placed his new domain under Sartaq’s control. Sartaq hoped to use Abaqa’s troops as additional support if he was to prevent any possible proselytization of the Muslim faith from the Arabs, as well as to beef up the Golden Horde’s presence in Anatolia.


Tekuder soon made Isfahan the new capital of the ll-Khanate when a rebellion spurred by his nephew Arghun broke out. Not wanting to sit back and do nothing, Abaqa moved to Arghun’s camp in the outskirts of the Tigris River, waiting for Tekuder’s army to arrive. On March of 1267, Tekuder’s forces soon attacked the combined forces of Abaqa and Arghun. The battle did not last long, as the Mamluks did not come to the aid of their erstwhile Muslim Mongol convert and Abaqa’s troops were diverted to battle them instead. While fighting off another Mamluk assault, Abaqa’s forces became encircled by the Mamluk cavalry as he was struck by a Mamluk arrow in the chest. Though he managed to survive from the extraction of his wound, Abaqa would not live long enough to see Arghun defeat Tekuder and even launch an expedition into the heart of the Il-Khanate. Abaqa himself will die in October of 1267, just five and a half months before Tekuder was finally brought down and executed. Unfortunately, Tekuder’s flirtation with Islam will survive in the Il-Khanate, for it was Tekuder’s successor and Arghun’s own son Ghazan who would eventually make Islam the official faith of the Il-Khanate. Arghun’s relationship with Ghazan was on par with Temujin’s relationship with Jochi, only in this case their differences were based on religious debates. Eager to move closer towards the Il-Khanate’s relationship with the Mamluks while fearing a potential encirclement from the increasingly Christianized Golden Horde and hostile Yuan Empire, Ghazan agreed to marry a daughter of a minor Mamluk officer. Consequently, the Mongol princess named Kokechin who was supposed to marry Arghun had arrived in Sarai Batu instead. Luckily, Qughchi took an interest in the new princess who could have ended up marrying the Il-Khanate’s khan and courted her. On September of 1270, Qughchi and Kokechin married in Sarai Batu with both Vasily of Kostroma and Stefan Milutin being the guests of honor. (Stefan Milutin was invited to attend the wedding of his new ally shortly before he took command of a Serbian garrison stationed in the Zeta River region in the event that the Despotate of Epirus got cold feet)


Golden Horde/Serbia – The Remnants of a Hated Adversary:


Stefan Dragutin himself was now pressured by both Sartaq and his father Stefan Uros I to find a suitable wife. Upon Sartaq’s recommendation, Stefan Dragutin settled on one of the Khan’s own daughters, Tughdua, as his new wife. They married three months after his anda and Kokechin married, this time on the Crimean city of Qirim (later renamed Savabaliq, or Sava’s Residence). Within two years, Tughdua would give birth to three children between 1272 and Stefan Dragutin’s sudden demise in 1284: Stefan Guyuk-Mihailo (1270-1326), Buyan-Pavle (1276-1339) and Zlatan of Astrakhan (1279-1348). Out of the three children, Stefan Guyuk-Mihailo was known in the Golden Horde as the epitome of a new era where the Khan’s descendants will have to face a series of trials throughout time to see if the blood of Genghis Khan was worthy to fuse with a more prestigious bloodline of a clan that gave to Serbia two well-loved figures: Stefan Nemanja and Saint Sava himself. As was the traditional Mongol custom, Stefan Guyuk and Qughchi’s eldest son Buqadai {means the bull} (1270-1332) became blood brothers while the other two brothers became close friends with two leading sons of minor Torghut and Manghud tribes. Those sons were: Gantulga of the Northern Torghut Tribe and Qaraboladkai {black steel} of the Eastern Manghud tribe. One other custom that Stefan Dragutin decided to follow was to take his new children into the Great Khan’s residence in Dadu, but Stefan Uros I discouraged his son from traveling that far. Even more so, the old king voluntarily abdicated in favor of Stefan Dragutin and decided to open up a new monastery on the outskirts of Sarai Batu after Stefan Dragutin’s coronation. There, the old king will die of old age and Serbia’s alliance with the Golden Horde was now ready to manifest itself in surprising ways.


The Latin Empire had lost a lot of territory when the Golden Horde launched its campaign against them. However, only two rump states remained under Latin Crusader control: the Duchy of Athens and the Principality of Achaea. Both states were firmly allied with the Papacy and both of them were a menace to any attempts to restore the Byzantine Empire to its former glory. However, Sartaq had no intention of giving up control of Constantinople, which not only served as the center of commerce between Europe and Asia, but it also acted as the gateway into the underbelly of the Golden Horde itself. He reorganized the rump Byzantine territory as the Despotate of Bosphorus and he temporarily allowed Alexios Strategopoulos to reign in Constantinople as the puppet ruler who took orders from the Mongol military until a more, enduring solution was found. Yet the old general who failed to liberate Constantinople the first time around told the Mongols that he could not restore the Byzantine Empire since most of its territories are gone. Therefore, the old general suggested, the Golden Horde will need a fleet to capture Achaea and the Duchy of Athens. Only through skilled Byzantine and Serb shipbuilders can Sartaq acquire the warships he desired for the naval campaigns, but it will be through the efforts of the Serbs and Byzantines alone that will complete the conquest. Sartaq had to concede to Strategopoulos’s suggestion as the Mongols were not a sea power. It was a wise lesson that even another Great Khan had failed to heed. While preparations were underway, Sartaq and Stefan Dragutin made plans to re-settle a few Mongols, Bashkirs, Cumans and Volga Tatars into his domain. As early as 1274, the Volga Tatars who lived in the Volga River region for a long time found themselves settled on the Presevo Valley, thus giving birth to the Presevo Tatars, while the Drina Bashkirs settled on both sides of the Drina River and Mongol tribes settled on both banks of the Morava River. The Drina Bashkirs were one of Sartaq’s advance guards as they later played a role in the joint Serbo-Mongol campaigns in the rest of the Balkans, against the Hungarians and the Bosnian kingdom. The war against the Kingdom of Bosnia had to wait until certain conditions were met, primarily with the retraining of Mongol warriors to fight on hilly terrain, and often without their horses. At the same time, developments occurred in Bosnia as various princes fought for the title of Ban, and the Kingdom of Hungary served as Bosnia’s overlord. Stefan Dragutin in particular, wanted to expand his domains westward into Bosnia for only one reason: to prevent Hungarian and Papal influence from trickling into the Latin Empire’s last two remnant states. In order to set the stage for the conquest of Bosnia, Stefan Dragutin often made promises to various Bosnian nobles of military support for their ambitions if they supported his claim on the Bosnian throne. Moreover, the persecution against the Gnostic Bosnian Church by Ban Prijezda I’s pro-Catholic policies and Hungary’s earlier wars with the Golden Horde prompted a few Bosnian nobles to seek sanctuary in the Serbian kingdom. Finally, Sartaq was advised by the Orthodox clergy based in Pec that an attack on Hungary and Poland will force the Catholic states to pay close attention to their own borders instead of the Orthodox states’ borders.


It was not only Sartaq however, who will lead the Golden Horde’s army into war against Poland and Hungary. Qughchi was chosen to lead alongside him because he needed military experience if he was to succeed his father one day, and upon hearing that Stefan Dragutin will participate in the Horde’s war against Hungary by attacking Bosnia and Croatia, Qughchi agreed to send 5,000 Keshiks to aid his anda. On March of 1275 after two and a half years of preparations for the campaign into Bosnia, Qughchi moved his infantry forces into the Bosnian stronghold of Visoko, where Prijezda I’s forces were entrenched while waiting for the Mongol forces to show up. Before the attack on Visoko, Qughchi had a conversation with Stefan Dragutin on how to proceed with internal Bosnian affairs and through his established contacts with anti-Papal Bosnian leaders; they managed to come into contact with Prijezda’s son Stjepan. Stjepan however, proved to be an unreliable ally because he had gone cold feet and abandoned the alliance. Prijezda II, Prijedza I’s other son, was eager to marry into the House of Borjigin but his main problem is that Tughdua is already married to Stefan Dragutin so he had an eye on Theodora, Sartaq’s other daughter as a bride. Initially, Qughchi and Sartaq were hesitant in allowing Prijezda II to marry Feodora and as it turns out, Feodora was not interested in Prijezda at all. Unfortunately, the campaign into Bosnia had distracted the Golden Horde from their plans for Feodora as Qughchi’s army laid waste to every Bosnian fortress that came in their way, while Stefan Dragutin’s army besieged and captured Visegrad by March 29th. A contingent of Russian mercenaries under Stefan Dragutin’s control but nominally commanded by Dmitry of Pereslavl was tasked with taking the cities of Milesevo, Prijepolje and Onogost while they would be joined by Stefan Milutin’s 21,000 soldiers once he would take control of Schkoder and Budva. The advance into Bosnia was dangerous, and the mountains became natural fortresses for the defending Bosnian forces as Qughchi’s army lost around 12,900 soldiers within just three months. To replenish the Serbo-Mongol invasion force, Sartaq was compelled to send Mongol reinforcements from Sarai Batu, as well as to request for Bulgarian reinforcements from the Bulgarian vassal ruler Shishman and from the Despotate of the Bosporus where Strategopoulos promised to send naval reinforcements, as well as to help train the Golden Horde in shipbuilding. Shishman was certainly not happy with the idea of being forced to take part in a campaign that would have certainly strengthened his Serb rival but right now, Bulgaria was too weak to rebel against the Mongol war machine. Thus, in addition to Bulgarian and Bosporan Byzantine reinforcements, 2,000 Vlach warriors made the journey into Bosnia.


Visoko was cut off from the rest of the world by May of 1275 as Mongol siege engines were put to work, battering down the Bosnian stronghold. Unlike the previous Mongol campaigns, Visoko’s fortress was perched on a hill, making the siege extremely difficult and thus allowed Prijezda I’s army to hold off. Yet without supplies coming into the city, it is only a matter of time before the Bosnian defenders had to give up. Just as Prijezda I’s fortunes were about to decline, Prijezda II arrived to attack Visoko but at the same time a large contingent of Croat and Hungarian forces also arrived, this time to relieve the defenders of Visoko. To make sure that the Hungarians were distracted from attacking Visoko, Sartaq himself would lead another 30,000 Mongol soldiers into battle, this time ambushing the Hungarians and the Poles in what became known as the Battle of Sandomierz, occurring in May 17th, 1275. Sartaq’s primary objective was to divert the Western European forces from the conflict in Bosnia, and this time he gained more reinforcements from the Mongol heartland, including 3,000 Oirat warriors and even 1,000 Jurchens. These extra troops proved to be extremely effective when the Hungarians and Poles in Sandomierz employed Cuman mercenaries to deal with the Mongol threat, but Sartaq would send three Mongol generals to the Cuman camp just outside Sandomierz to pay the Cumans to switch sides. Their bribe was three times more than what the Hungarians paid them, thus the Cumans who formerly worked for the Hungarians now declared their loyalty to Sartaq Khan. The turncoat Cumans then attacked the Hungarian and Polish camp in Sandomierz as the Mongol forces surrounded them and proceeded to massacre all the survivors. After all the soldiers were killed, Sandomierz was razed into the ground with no survivors. Now that the Hungarians and Poles were defeated in Sandomierz, Sartaq’s forces moved southwards, forcing the Hungarian army defending Visoko to pull back and to make their last stand, leaving the Croat forces under Ban Butko’s control. The conflict drew on for a lot longer until Stefan Milutin’s army began to march from the Zeta River and arrived by July of 1275 to besiege the Klis fortress in modern day Split. Stefan Milutin’s Serbian infantry greatly aided the Mongol contingent that soon arrived to participate in the siege of Klis fortress. Qughchi himself arrived by July 27th with another 5,000 extra troops and the fortress finally fell by September of 1275. With the capture of Klis fortress, the Serbs were now in prime position to conquer Dalmatia from the Croats. As the Croats continued to analyze the Mongol fighting skills, they began to see a pattern. The Serbs will attack first as a screening maneuver, followed by a thrust from the Mongol forces in the rear. Faced with a risky decision that might very well put an end to Dalmatia for good, Ban Butko withdrew his army from Visoko and reinforced Dubrovnik. In Dubrovnik is where the Croatian army will make their final stand against the combined Serb-Mongol army under Qughchi and Stefan Milutin’s control. Unfortunately for the Serbs and Mongols, Dubrovnik was also contested by the Republic of Venice and its attack by the former had triggered a war between those two nations. To prevent any more conflict from spreading in the Adriatic region, Qughchi demanded to the Venetians that they cede Dubrovnik to the Kingdom of Serbia or the Mongols will launch an expeditionary raid into the Italian peninsula. They also demanded that they pay compensation to the Despotate of the Bosporus for the sacking and occupation of Constantinople from back when the Byzantine Empire lingered around. If those demands were not met, then he would unleash the Bosporan Byzantine forces to attack the Italian peninsula. As he predicted, the Venetians rejected the ultimatum and Strategopoulos was now given permission to attack the Italian states as payback for the Sack of Constantinople. What lies in the Italian peninsula for the Bosporan Byzantines was riches they need to regain.


klis-fortress.jpg

Klis Fortress was the main target of the combined Serb-Mongol forces. Because the Serbs could fight as infantry, the Mongols were able to survive the ambushes launched by the Croat defenders.
 
Though the conquest of Baghdad went smoothly in terms of how the general population there was slaughtered and treasures were looted, Hulagu managed to secure manuscripts of great importance and entrusted three hundred keshiks to deliver it to Sarai Batu.

I don't know what made Sartaq intervene in behalf of the manuscripts but it's a good thing at least some of the Baghdad Library content was preserved.

this time on the Crimean city of Qirim (later renamed Savabaliq, or Sava’s Residence)

Nice touch. Do you have any other name changes planned? As the Serbs and Mongols are apparently capturing Bosnia, it would be funny if the city of Vrhbosna, which OTL the Ottomans renamed into Sarajevo, would also become a Sarai-evo in this timeline, but this time not as a Turkish fortress but as a Mongol settlement.
 
I don't know what made Sartaq intervene in behalf of the manuscripts but it's a good thing at least some of the Baghdad Library content was preserved.



Nice touch. Do you have any other name changes planned? As the Serbs and Mongols are apparently capturing Bosnia, it would be funny if the city of Vrhbosna, which OTL the Ottomans renamed into Sarajevo, would also become a Sarai-evo in this timeline, but this time not as a Turkish fortress but as a Mongol settlement.

Some of those manuscripts might focus on science and mathematics though, and I was thinking if Sarajevo of OTL could be named Bosnabaliq, or the palace of Bosnia. Since the Balkans are rough terrain, it may look like the Mongols and other nomadic peoples might have a similar lifestyle to the OTL Albanians minus Islam.
 
The map is great, though if all of Lake Baikal was under Northern Yuan control, then that might even be better for the Northern Yuan Mongols if they are looking for a lake where they can get their water supplies. I can assume that the official languages there would be Mongol and Chinese, with Jurchen as the additional language.
 
The map is great, though if all of Lake Baikal was under Northern Yuan control, then that might even be better for the Northern Yuan Mongols if they are looking for a lake where they can get their water supplies. I can assume that the official languages there would be Mongol and Chinese, with Jurchen as the additional language.

Yes, I think language will be mix of Mongols and Jurchen with little Chinese influence. Mongolian and Chinese phonetics is very different.
 
Yes, I think language will be mix of Mongols and Jurchen with little Chinese influence. Mongolian and Chinese phonetics is very different.

Not to mention that the Mongolian language uses the Uyghur script. Though I wonder if Mongol could develop a writing script that might help improve the entire Mongol population with literacy.
 
Not to mention that the Mongolian language uses the Uyghur script. Though I wonder if Mongol could develop a writing script that might help improve the entire Mongol population with literacy.

Personally, Uyghur script is very good one. It has very small amount of alphabets, and easy grammar.
So only thing is implement some education system.
One easy and less costly method is teach soldiers.
Mongols social system is based like
tumt- 10.0 thousand households consist of 10 minggat.
minggat - 1.0 thousand households nocisit of 10 zuut.
zuut - 1000 households 10 arabt.
Arabt - 10 households

So you can teach all Tumt noyon. Then all Tumt noyan would teach it to minggat noyon. Then minggat noyon would teach to zuut noyon. Zuut noyon would teach to arabt noyon. If you implement this for some time you will have enough literacy.
 
Personally, Uyghur script is very good one. It has very small amount of alphabets, and easy grammar.
So only thing is implement some education system.
One easy and less costly method is teach soldiers.
Mongols social system is based like
tumt- 10.0 thousand households consist of 10 minggat.
minggat - 1.0 thousand households nocisit of 10 zuut.
zuut - 1000 households 10 arabt.
Arabt - 10 households

So you can teach all Tumt noyon. Then all Tumt noyan would teach it to minggat noyon. Then minggat noyon would teach to zuut noyon. Zuut noyon would teach to arabt noyon. If you implement this for some time you will have enough literacy.

That is a good idea.
 
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