Malê Rising

I was tagged into this so presumably you're aware that I am Gary Oswald. I am glad that you got something out of my thoughts, Jonathan.
I initially tagged you and then thought better of it and removed the tag, both because I wasn't sure if you wanted to keep Youngmarshall and Gary Oswald separate and because it's bad form for an author to tag a reviewer. But I guess that tagging, once done, can't be entirely undone.

Anyway, knowing that this story added to your life and expanded your horizons may just be one of the highest compliments I've ever been paid. And I do appreciate your criticism a great deal - it goes to issues I've thought about myself. This timeline was part of my maturation as a writer (it seems strange to say that about something I began writing at age 40, but there we are), and the short stories I wrote professionally after 2015 were influenced by some of the very things you pointed out in your review. Praise is like wine, but criticism is discipline, and discipline is what makes one improve.
And it saddens me to think you have no stories to tell at the moment, when you're such a great storyteller. I hope that too shall pass.
It has always passed before, and it was actually this timeline that brought me out of my last dry spell. And thank you.
This TL has definitely inspired me during the pandemic to reach out and find local mutual aid groups in my area to contribute to. There's a lot of exposure to a Whitman's Sampler of concepts and ideas here that make you think, "why not also in real life?"
Thank you for doing that. I actually did much the same. I've volunteered at a local food bank since about a month after the pandemic started - at the time, I figured that a lot of people were out of work and needed food, and that many people might be scared to volunteer. Since then, it's become a regular part of my life. And yes, I think part of the impulse came from the mutual aid ideas I explored here.
 
Last edited:
OK, a couple of announcements.

First, I've posted a new Mutanda-verse story to the Writers' Forum. I expect that it will be published sometime in mid-2022, depending on editorial timetables, but those who are interested can read it here first. It will go through some edits between now and then, so as always, criticism is accepted with gratitude.

Second, January 8, 2022 will be the tenth anniversary of Malê Rising, and I'm planning to mark the occasion with a story. It won't be a 2100 story or a continuation of the main timeline, but it will involve a formative event in this universe that has never been told before. And for now, that's all I'll say. Check back in 23 days and it will be here.
 
Oh my goodness, it's been that long? I remember first encountering this work and thinking that "Oh my god... is this some overthrow of a matriarchal empire or something?"
And the rest is history.

Yeah my first post here back in September, 2013. I've been lurking for a few months back then I remember.

I can't wait to see more of your other works and of your 10th year anniversary post.

Jonathan, are you planning to threadmark your posts here or something? But anyway I think we have an updated list in the wiki so that's all good.
 
Last edited:
For me it's been nine years since I discovered this story, before I had an account. Many things have changed, but not how I feel about this wonderful story. Can't wait to read the new instalment!
 
I'm excited to see!

Totally unrelated, something I was thinking about the other day is that something like Bundism is probably nearly inevitable, but will be reshaped by the way ethnosectarian pluralism, fragmented sovereignty, and the specific histories of Russia and Poland shake out ITTL. Moreover, the Bundist vision of Jewish cultural and communal particularism within the context of a pluralist revolutionary socialism is much closer to being achieved here, and I think that's beautiful.
 
Totally unrelated, something I was thinking about the other day is that something like Bundism is probably nearly inevitable, but will be reshaped by the way ethnosectarian pluralism, fragmented sovereignty, and the specific histories of Russia and Poland shake out ITTL. Moreover, the Bundist vision of Jewish cultural and communal particularism within the context of a pluralist revolutionary socialism is much closer to being achieved here, and I think that's beautiful.
Absolutely. I've mentioned that the largest Jewish political movement in Israel/Palestine itself ITTL is basically Bundist, emphasizing communal autonomy and control of institutions rather than territorial statehood. Part of that is realpolitik, of course - statehood is a non-starter with an intact Ottoman Union whereas the Ottoman constitution is very friendly to autonomism - but it's also because the de-emphasis of statehood and post-Westphalian communal ties favor that approach. Also, TTL's only Jewish-majority polity is in Salonika, which doesn't have the same tradition as a religious-cultural homeland and thus doesn't pull toward blood-and-soil nationalism. And there hasn't been a Holocaust to upend the early 20th-century status quo. There's some degree of sublimated Zionism in TTL's Jewish politics - there are a fair number of self-governing kibbutzim in the Galilee, for instance - but Bundist-type movements are definitely the major key.
 
Absolutely. I've mentioned that the largest Jewish political movement in Israel/Palestine itself ITTL is basically Bundist, emphasizing communal autonomy and control of institutions rather than territorial statehood. Part of that is realpolitik, of course - statehood is a non-starter with an intact Ottoman Union whereas the Ottoman constitution is very friendly to autonomism - but it's also because the de-emphasis of statehood and post-Westphalian communal ties favor that approach. Also, TTL's only Jewish-majority polity is in Salonika, which doesn't have the same tradition as a religious-cultural homeland and thus doesn't pull toward blood-and-soil nationalism. And there hasn't been a Holocaust to upend the early 20th-century status quo. There's some degree of sublimated Zionism in TTL's Jewish politics - there are a fair number of self-governing kibbutzim in the Galilee, for instance - but Bundist-type movements are definitely the major key.
I remain short of sceptical, to put it mildly to Ottoman federalism or for that matter Ottoman constitutionalism surviving and flourishing, in OTL the moment flew away when Murad V was overthrown supposedly on grounds of insanity, but I think I've mentioned this a time or two hundred in SHWI and TINC so you are hardly surprised. But if it HAS made it though it opens up all shorts of interesting possibilities I'd like to see explored sometime including the proposals for a dual Greek-Ottoman monarchy.
 
The Moorish Tower: A Tenth Anniversary Story
Portugal
July 1808

1641658140963.png


Art: Dora Hathazi Mendes

The fort on the hilltop was the oldest thing Paulo had ever seen. It loomed in the gathering twilight amid a stand of pines, its walls in partial ruin, weathered enough to seem one with the boulders on the hillside. Paulo knew how people aged, how ships aged, how crops aged; the fort had stood long enough for stone to age.

The lessanos in Bahia – the imams of Paulo’s youth – had said there were things older still, that the Indians had built cities and temples long before the coming of the Prophet. But if there were such things, the jungles had claimed them. Paulo had never seen one.

“There should be a trail,” said Silva, the sergeant of the twelve caçadores who’d marched all day from Guarda and come to a halt beneath this hill. The fort was their destination. Centuries of soldiers had guarded the mountain passes from that tower, and they would be the latest. Portugal had risen against France, and though the great battles would be fought further south, someone still had to give warning if the French tried to enter the country this way.

There was a trail – Moreira, the forester’s son, found it. It ran straight for a while up the gentle lower slopes, and then became a switchback among the pines and boulders. From there they climbed single-file, Silva and Moreira in front of Paulo and Costa, the sailor, just behind.

“Damn this pack,” Costa said as the trail became steep; he was a small man, and he also liked to complain. Paulo said nothing, but he also felt the weight of his pack and musket. He had never fired the musket in anger. He had been a soldier four weeks.

Silva looked back and hissed for silence, and they climbed, hungry and tired, to where the trail ended just below the hillcrest. The gate of the tower stood before them, its arch partly crumbled, darkness beyond.

“Moorish work,” Silva muttered, and made the sign of the cross. So did several of the others. Even this long after the wars, the Moors were still regarded with superstitious dread, enough so that Paulo had learned to hide carefully the fact that he was a Moor himself. Half his fellow soldiers were praying men and he prayed when they did, but he prayed in silence, never mentioning Olorum-Ulua the Creator, never taking the black meteorite that was his Kaaba from his pocket.

Dread or not, though, the Moors were no longer in the fort, and the caçadores filed inside. Beyond the doorway was a single, circular room with the remains of a ladder leading upward to the roof, another rotting ladder leading down a dark hole to a cellar, and a single large stone that was embedded in the ground and had been cut to form a rough table.

“Moreira! Abacar! Go cut some wood,” said Silva. “We need to make another ladder so we can keep a good watch. No, two of them.”

Paulo took the spare axe and followed Moreira outside. In the moonlight, the traces of Fulani ancestry on Moreira’s face – his grandmother’s family had been sailors, and Portuguese mariners had been visiting Africa for a long, long time – stood in relief. Paulo wondered how many of the other caçadores realized they likely had Moorish ancestors themselves, and not only from the long-ago occupation. He could see which of them might have had Kongo forebears, who had a trace of Igbo blood, and who might have some of the same Fula ancestors he did. But that, too, wasn’t something he could mention out loud.

Instead, he and Moreira found some pine saplings for the ladder poles and another from which rungs could be made, and they worked quickly together as they’d become used to doing in the past month. They brought the wood inside to where others were waiting with hammer and nails, and threw their own packs down to reach the food inside.

“Do you see the table?” asked Costa. Someone had lit a candle while Paulo was outside, and the guttering flame illuminated wilted flowers and small polished rocks that had been placed in a hollow on the tabletop.

“The girls come here to pray for husbands and babies,” Costa said, and laughed. He wasn’t one of the praying men – he liked to say that church was for women and that men should stick to the taverns. “Maybe they should pray to São Hilario. He’s the one who warms up all the girls who die virgins, isn’t he? Makes the nuns proper brides for Christ.”

A couple of the others laughed along with Costa. Most didn’t. One shouted that it was blasphemy; he looked ready to fight, and he wasn’t the only one. In the north, people fought over things like that. Paulo tensed; he had no side in a fight between the priests’ Catholicism and the peasants’, but any dispute over religion might end up involving him, and then it would be all against one.

Praise God, though, Silva didn’t want a fight over religion either. “Shut up, Costa,” he said. “In fact, why don’t you put up that ladder” – the poles and rungs had been nailed together now – “and take the first watch. Come down when I say so. Maybe I’ll leave you up there all night.”

Costa looked ready to argue, but Silva was six foot two and had shown that he wasn’t afraid to use his fists. He took the ladder, leaned it carefully into the hole, and disappeared onto the roof.

“And you, Abacar,” said Silva – maybe he too realized that in this moment, Paulo was a possible source of tension. “Take the other ladder and a candle and take a look in the cellar. See if anything’s down there that we can use.”

Paulo obeyed. It was clear, though, that no one had used the cellar in decades, maybe even centuries. As Paulo moved the candle around the room, he saw rusty tools, rotting chests, scraps of what might once have been clothing, chicken bones, a broken sword. There was nothing here that would be of use to anyone.

But there was writing. Someone long ago had carved “MARIA” into the walls – the name of a wife or daughter, or maybe of the Virgin. There were other names and a few short phrases; Paulo had learned some of his letters in his years of merchant sailing, and he could make out a few of the words although not enough to make sense of them. And there were also words written in another way entirely.

Moorish writing. The lessanos had told Paulo that the Holy Koran was written in that alphabet; one of them, who’d visited the sugar plantation where Paulo had grown up a slave, had had a necklace inscribed with a passage from that very book. But the lessano couldn’t read it – he hadn’t been able to read at all – and Paulo, too, couldn’t tell whether the Moorish words carved in the cellar wall were holy scripture or the names of soldiers or their lovers.

He tried anyway. He brought the candle close and spent a few moments looking at the carvings, hoping that if he looked long enough, he could make sense of them. But neither Olorum-Ulua nor any of his aligenum – the jinn – had any revelations to impart, and at length Paulo made his way carefully back up.

To his surprise, Costa was there too, and was whispering urgently to Silva. “There’s someone out there,” he said, “someone with a spyglass down on the road.”

“A Frenchman?”

“How would I know? All I saw was the glass. He was hundreds of yards off.”

Silva swore under his breath. “All right. Moreira, Abacar, Soares – come up with me.” He began climbing the ladder; one at a time, the others followed.

Above, the four men lay prone on the roof, out of sight of the road, and looked down through the holes in the crumbling parapet. Paulo saw no movement, heard no sound but the nightjars and insects – but suddenly, there it was. A glint in the moonlight, the unmistakable shape of a spyglass; Paulo saw it only for a moment, but there could be no doubt.

“He’s in the woods on the other side of the road,” he whispered. Silva nodded; he had also seen.

“Should I shoot him?” Soares asked. That wasn’t the absurdity it would have been from any of the other caçadores; Soares was a hunter born and raised, and he carried the rifle he’d inherited from his father. A soldier with a musket might have an even chance of hitting an enemy seventy yards away; Soares had already proven one day on the march that he could hit a target at four hundred.

But Paulo still shook his head. “It’s night,” he said. “Too far even for you, I think. And if you miss, he’ll know exactly what he came to find out.”

Soares bristled for a moment but then nodded. At the same time, Silva looked at Paulo sharply; Paulo had never spoken up this way before.

“Do you have any better ideas?” he whispered.

Paulo was silent for a long moment; he did have an idea, but he wasn’t sure how the sergeant would take it, and he weighed whether to speak. Finally he did. “You know I was a slave in Brazil, right?”

“Yes. So?”

“I know how they chase after runaways.”

Now it was Silva’s turn to be silent and weigh up what to do. He said nothing, but it was clear what he was thinking: that if Paulo was here rather than on a plantation in Bahia, he must have known the trackers’ ways well enough to make good his escape.

“All right. Come down with me. You’ll take four men – Moreira and Soares, and Carvalho and Sousa know the forests too. You’ll tell them what to do. I’ll tell them that whatever you say comes from me. But you’d better catch him.” This will be your first and only chance to gain my trust remained unspoken.

If so, then so. Paulo put a hand to his Kaaba stone and uttered a prayer: Olorum-Ulua, let me not forget what I have learned. And downstairs, he became the teacher. He made the other four men black their faces and hands with charcoal – “now you can look like me,” he said – and made sure no place was left unpainted. He blacked up the musket barrels too, theirs and his own. He tied down or discarded anything that might rattle. And last of all, he took off his boots and looked pointedly at the others’ feet.

A short time later they began making their way down the trail, keeping low, moving slowly. Paulo stopped sometimes to go to the ground, watch and listen. The man with the spyglass was good, but not quite good enough; Paulo could see that he was still there, and as they got closer, he saw more movement from further back, the shape and size of a horse.

An officer – who else would the French have sent to spy out these roads?

He raised his fist above his head, calling for a halt. “He hasn’t seen us yet,” he whispered. “When we get to the road, you go around and in back – if he runs, make sure he doesn’t get to the horse. I’ll go straight at him.”

The next moments were as tense as any in Paulo’s life, almost as if he were a runaway slave in the jungles of Bahia again. But this time he was the hunter, not the quarry; this time he was in command. He watched Soares and Carvalho slip across the road; he waited for any sign of awareness from their prey; finally, when he was ten seconds past sure he’d waited too long, he signaled Moreira and Sousa, leaped to his feet and charged.

After that it was almost too easy. The man with the spyglass – he was a French officer, in the full uniform of a major – had no time to react. He really had been unaware, and he was just starting to reach for a weapon when Paulo, and then the other two, knocked him over. Paulo punched him to keep him off balance and seized his hands, holding them so Moreira could tie them with a length of rope. Behind, Carvalho and Soares had untied the horse and were leading it back to the road; Paulo jerked the officer to his feet and motioned for him to follow.

He’d expected that he would have to half-drag and half-carry the Frenchman back to the fort, but once he’d recovered from shock, the officer walked willingly enough under his own power. In fact, he was almost cheerful about the situation. “I hope the army learns its lesson,” he said in fluent Portuguese. “Make a professor into a spy, and this is what you get.”

“You’re a professor?” Paulo asked. In the moonlight, the officer’s face was weathered and his hands callused from the reins; they were not a professor’s hands.

“I studied in Paris before the revolution, and I taught for a while too, until all the wars. I studied literature – the Arabic poets, can you believe it?”

Paulo came to a sudden halt. “You speak Arabic? Do you read it?”

“Of course! When I was with the Emperor in Egypt and the Holy Land – then I had something useful to do. And a more comfortable place to do it in – a palace in Cairo, a serai in Jaffa, even a command tent was more congenial than these mountains. And the dancing girls were certainly more congenial than you gentlemen, meaning no offense.”

In spite of himself, Paulo laughed.

“But I am remiss in not introducing myself. I am Berrien. Your officer will take my parole, I am sure?”

“There is only a sergeant. He’ll decide what to do.”

Berrien kept up the stream of conversation all the way up the trail. He was more talkative than any three of the caçadores, telling stories – most of which Paulo judged to be outrageous lies – about his campaign with Napoleon in Egypt. He fell silent only when they came to the top at last and Paulo led him through the gate.

It felt different to Paulo, walking through the doorway this time. It was different to be returning as a leader of men, a captor with a prisoner. It was different to return to cheers, to Silva’s slap on the back and call of “well done,” and to know he was a trusted man. Even when Costa called out that São Hilario would save a girl for Paulo because of this, that was different from the way Costa had bantered with him before, and besides, the lessanos in Bahia had promised him houris if he followed the ways of the Prophet. He felt triumphant; he felt as he imagined drunkenness might be.

But there was still something else, something shameful. After a moment, Paulo realized what it was; he’d used the tactics he’d learned from the slave-chasers in Bahia, and when he’d caught Berrien, he’d felt a chaser’s triumph. He felt shamed that something he’d learned from such men had brought a sense of victory. But if he had these skills, shouldn’t he use them for the men who were now his comrades?

His thoughts were interrupted by the soldiers arguing over what to do with Berrien. A couple wanted simply to kill him – wasn’t that what soldiers should do to the enemy? But the others shouted them down. The others understood instinctively that there were rules, and that there would be penalties both earthly and divine if the rules were broken. “Kill a prisoner and his ghost will haunt us all our lives,” Costa said, and his dread was real.

“No, we won’t kill him,” Silva said. “That would be murder. Two of us will take him to Guarda tomorrow and he can give his parole to the officers there.”

“Should we question him at least?” asked Moreira.

Silva thought for a while but then shook his head. “I’ve known officers. He won’t talk. We’ll keep him in the cellar tonight and take him to Guarda in the morning.” He turned to Paulo. “You caught him, Abacar – take him down.”

Paulo motioned to Berrien and helped him carefully down the ladder. “Take some bread,” he said, “and this canteen is half-full of water. It should last you until morning.” But then he held his candle close to the wall and asked Berrien the question that had been in his mind since the French officer had said he could speak Arabic. “Can you read this?”

Berrien leaned in closely; he hadn’t expected the question, but now he too saw the letters carved in the wall, and considered them with a historian’s fascination. But he shook his head. “That just says ‘Ahmed,’” he said. “A soldier’s name, no doubt.”

Paulo moved the candle. “This – a soldier’s name too?”

“No, not this.” Berrien was laughing. “It’s a complaint about stale bread – it condemns the baker to hell. Soldiers’ complaints were no different in the days of the Moors, I see.”

The candle flame flickered on another part of the wall, where a longer phrase was inscribed. “And this?”

“This – yes, this is something different. ‘Knowledge without action is arrogance,’ it says. A maxim of the Imam Shafi’i, I believe. One of your Moors was a devout man.”

Costa wouldn’t have liked him, Paulo thought, but that was nothing the French officer would understand. There were other things he wanted to know about that Moorish soldier, but Berrien wouldn’t know that either, and he wasn’t even certain what questions he should ask.

“Good night,” he said instead, and after Berrien repeated the unexpected benediction, he climbed back up the ladder and pulled it up behind him.

The flames were guttering out in the main room of the tower, and half the soldiers had gone to sleep, their snoring drowning out the low voices of Silva and Carvalho as they played at dice. Paulo found an unoccupied section of wall and lay on his back, using his pack as a pillow. He closed his eyes, letting the sounds of the room go out of focus, waiting for sleep. But sleep would not come.

Knowledge without action is arrogance. Maybe that was the answer to the shame he’d felt earlier in the night. If he had knowledge, if he had a skill, it was arrogant not to use it.

But how should he use it, if he wanted to use it justly? Maybe that was knowledge too. What did Paulo know about the justice of the world? He knew the grace of Olorum-Ulua and the teachings of the Prophet. And, he realized, he knew evil – he knew slavery.

He knew that. It would be arrogance not to act on it. And the other things he would need to know before he could act?

He put his hand on his musket, which still had never been fired in anger.

He would learn.
 
Epigraph
We know Paulo Abacar the Liberator. We know Paulo Abacar the poet, the soldier, the statesman, the visionary. We have his writings, his battlefields, his histories. But Paulo the man is an enigma. We know nothing of his childhood, not even the name his parents gave him. We know so little of his youth, his maturation; it is almost as if he sprang forth fully formed that January day in 1835 when the Malê of Bahia rose against their masters.

Many people have tried to puzzle out this enigma – Paulo was a seeker and he inspired other seekers, and some of them sought him. But they can do no better than guess. We know the things Paulo made, but we do not know, and we will never know, the things that made him.

But at the end of the day, do we need to know that? A man is what he has made, and we see what Paulo Abacar made in everything around us. And I know, I see, nothing that he hasn’t made.

For me – I am Paulo Abacar’s descendant, and for me, he made the world.

Laila Abacar (1959-2074)
Coordinating Representative of the Union of Nigeria
Speech on the 200th anniversary of the taking of Sokoto
April 2040
 

Just want to mention that AlternateHistoryHub (with over 2 million subscribers) mentioned the timeline for a bit and it's a good explanation @Jonathan Edelstein

One of the many favorite and watched timelines of mine that was mentioned. It's a very good day for this community.

If this video was released a few years back, I am sure this timeline is a little bit higher in the iceberg.
 
Portugal
July 1808

View attachment 709121

Art: Dora Hathazi Mendes

The fort on the hilltop was the oldest thing Paulo had ever seen...
I've been largely absent from AH lately for a variety of reasons, but this thread remains for me one of the highest peaks of art as well as the "science," such as it is, of this site. I didn't see this post until today but it remains in the high standards of all of your canon posts, Jonathan.

The fascinating, hilarious, inspiring ironies continue. Turns out the great Abacar gets one of his most important lessons in his synthesis of progressive Islam and European revolutionary Enlightenment from, who else, a French savant turned conscript Napoleonic officer! Presumably he has little further contact with his captive, but this short encounter is clearly critical.

And of course part of this lesson is his self-awareness he is integrating lessons from the people he despises the most...and that he not only can do that, he must, or at any rate, ought to.

Apparently, if one cannot use the master's tools to unbuild the master's house, one bloody well can use them, modified probably, to build a better house that can stand against the worst the master can do to tear it down.

I don't know if "Never run from knowledge" is a generic Islamic adage, but I did hear it from an Iranian friend. Muslim, Persian or personal to my friend it is advice I'd have done better all my life to heed more diligently. Paulo is learning it and we know he won't fail to heed it pretty often. Even though he has already accepted the burden that with knowledge comes responsibility to do something with it.
 
Just want to mention that AlternateHistoryHub (with over 2 million subscribers) mentioned the timeline for a bit and it's a good explanation.

Cool! The summary in the video is pretty good - I hadn't thought it was even possible to summarize this timeline, but he got the essence of it. His description of Europe was a bit off, but there's a lot to assimilate.

It's amazing that the video has 600,000 views already - hope it brings some people here. I'll be interested to see what's in the second half of the iceberg. Thanks for pointing this out.

Speaking of media, BTW, the kind people at Sea Lion Press recently asked me some questions about writing, AH, and history in general - the interview is here for those who may be interested.

The fascinating, hilarious, inspiring ironies continue. Turns out the great Abacar gets one of his most important lessons in his synthesis of progressive Islam and European revolutionary Enlightenment from, who else, a French savant turned conscript Napoleonic officer! Presumably he has little further contact with his captive, but this short encounter is clearly critical.

And of course part of this lesson is his self-awareness he is integrating lessons from the people he despises the most...and that he not only can do that, he must, or at any rate, ought to.

I did promise something formative. As you correctly guess, Paulo and Berrien never met again, but this encounter crystallized many of the things he'd been thinking and wondering about during his years as a sailor and now a soldier. He would carry Imam Shafi'i's maxim through the Peninsular War and back to Brazil, and it would lead him to join the Malê revolt, to found the First Sokoto Republic, and ultimately to a soldier's death at Abomey - though, as Laila says in the epigraph, this world's historians will never know how he learned of it.
 
Top