Deus Vult, or the Crusaders Roll Straight Sixes
- The Third Crusade (1189-1191) was the high-water mark of Islamic expansionism. The upstart Ayyubid Dynasty under the general Saladin rolled back the gains made by Christendom in its earlier wars by capturing Jerusalem in October 1187. The shock of the Holy City’s fall rocked Europe and was rumored to be the blow that killed the ailing Pope Urban III. The combined armies of Europe sallied forth in response. Nearly 50,000 of the faithful descended upon the Holy Land. In a series of bloody campaigns, the Crusaders and their local allies retook Jerusalem and exploited divisions caused by the death of Saladin at the Battle of the Jabbok River to conquer parts of Palestine previously thought unattainable.
- The Third Crusade was not by any means the last Holy war in the Middle East. Various Turkic and Arab powers attempted to retake Jerusalem with forces of varying sizes, however, Christian forces also went on the offensive by conquering Egypt and Northern Africa as well as raids on various Islamic polities. Other wars of conquest were fought by Christian powers to take Mesopotamia and Arabia
- Though the Crusader statelets could easily have been defeated had Muslim forces had better luck, the possibility of Muslim reconquest of Palestine was more or less gone by the end of the 14th century. Two hundred years of Christianization had created a situation that would have made a non-Christian power holding down the region untenable, while further conquests of Muslim states and the pushing of the Christian-Muslim border further away from Jerusalem increased the difficulty in even getting a Muslim army into Palestine.
- While the Eastern Christian states were initially supportive of Papal-backed Western adventures in the Holy Land, rifts gradually developed as the Muslims became less threatening to the Crusaders and tensions between the different Christian branches became more common. The Seventh Crusade (1278) ended in the sack of Constantinople and the establishment of a new, Catholic empire. The Angelos Dynasty fled to holdings along the Black Sea where they claimed the title of Eastern Roman Emperor, but gradually faded into obscurity as Western control of Constantinople was cemented.
- The Pope took the opportunity of a friendly, Western ruler in Constantinople as a chance to reestablish a unified Church. While Orthodox Christians initially were not especially happy to submit to Rome, slowly, many came around to it as Catholic powers grew stronger and Orthodox ones weaker. The Patriarchate of Constantinople ceased to exist, as the new French-descended Latin Emperor, Simon, persecuted Orthodox authorities within his realm. Patriarchates rose and fell elsewhere, but gradually have lost power to the spread of Catholicism.
- The Mongols burst onto the scene much in the same way as OTL. Their empire conquered much of Eurasia in the 13th century. Alliances with various crusader states helped hasten the collapse of the states of the Islamic Middle East. A Khan sat in Isfahan for nearly a century, while the Great Khanate focused primarily on the Middle East, where it appeared there were more opportunities for expansion. The high tide of the Mongol Empire came by the end of the 14th century, when the Khanate experienced an era of internal strife that forced it to pull inwards. However, by this time, the Khan in Karakorum had already converted to Islam.
- The defeat of Islamic states by Mongols and Crusaders alike caused a serious crisis within the religion. Spearheaded by the Assassin Order, a strain of thought later called Apocalyptic Islam took hold that believed the Earth to be merely a proving grounds, and that Jihad was, in fact, the primary duty of adherents to the Islamic faith, this, in turn, gave new life to the Order, which has allowed it to remain intact to the present. Another form of Islam, broadly referred to as Originalist Islam, rejects many teachings of imams after the death of Muhammed (and even some of the hadiths with questionable origins) While not as violent as Apocalyptic Islam, Originalism is practiced as a way of life and practitioners are generally strict in enforcing their rules. Inhabitants of other Muslim regions that have not experienced these great religious changes still are generally hostile towards Christians, harboring a resentment at their overlordship of the Holy Cities.
- Though the Mongols were friendly towards Christian traders, control over their empire gradually faltered. In the early 15th century, overland merchants began to seriously back trade by sea. The Indian Sea trade, which had declined since the Christian conquest of Arabia, began to see a revival. Still, there was discontentment at the fact that products had to be unloaded and carried across Arabia before being loaded again on the shores of the Mediterranean. Several attempts at building a canal proved unsuccessful. Meanwhile, others hoped to find an all-water route to East Asia. The loss of several expeditions to the west persuaded most European seamen that a gigantic maelstrom lay between Europe and the East. Slowly, Iberian, German, Italian, and English captains piloted their ships down the coast of Africa, establishing waystations to allow others to follow.
- Scyllia and Charybdia (the Americas) were discovered somewhat accidentally. Basque fishermen from Navarre stumbled upon OTL Newfoundland and slowly set up towns of their own there. With Europe focused on the Indian Ocean and Africa, colonization of the Western Hemisphere took a long time to begin, but did take off when it was discovered that there was some gold and other precious metals. Partly inspired by the cultural memory of the seas of the west as dangerous, the continents are named for the two mythical monsters of Homer’s Odyssey, as the two major landmasses of the were something of hazards compared to the prosperous Caribbean Sea. Colonization in the New World has, however, occurred rather rapidly as English and Aragonese leave their rather crowded home countries for opportunities in the unexplored Scyllia and Charbdia.
- China benefitted from a more westward focused Mongol Empire, however it entered a state of stagnation in the late 1500s as the south attempted to industrialize. Crackdowns on industry by conservative emperors led to decades of all-out war that ended around 1650 with a new dynasty (Chuzhou, named for their ancestral home) on the throne in Biangjing, while peripheral areas became kingdoms in their own right. This coincided with the arrival of European merchants in great numbers, who quickly pressured their way into ownership of various ports, while their products became popular overnight. The Imperial Court is not especially happy with the situation but find themselves unable to do much. The sons of the current, aging emperor, however, have plans to reorganize their state to better compete with Europe.
- Japan had a worse time than OTL. A more factitious middle ages irreparably divided the islands into several states, some under military rule and some under more feudal control. The arrival of the Europeans only served to cement these divisions as Japanese statelets pitted Europeans against each other and vice versa. The diplomatic instability of the Japanese islands is, in effect, a microcosm of Europe and its various conflicts.
- Over half a millennium has passed since the Crusades, but the Church is still going strong. While not as powerful as it was at its height (in the centuries following the Crusades), most of Europe remains Catholic and to go against it is unthinkable (well, mostly…) With the absence of Protestantism and a much-truncated Islam, the Church is somewhat complacent as it (rather rightly) believes itself to be on top of the world. This, of course, does not stop conflict between the European states. Europe however has not experienced the religious troubles of the mid-millennium, so is somewhat more peaceful and populous than OTL.
- Europe, however, has a much expanded definition from OTL. While there are differences between, say, Palestine and England, they are thought of as part of a single Catholic cultural sphere. The states of the Middle East are considered to be part of a Greater Europe. A form of Arabic much influenced by French, German, and Italian is spoken throughout the Christian kingdoms of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Jerusalem, however, in this world, Arabic is not viewed as synonymous with Muslim.
- While this worlds European world is slightly more traditionalist and feudal than OTL, it has begun to catch up. With colonies around the world, the power and standing of the merchant class has grown steadily. Mercantilism has begun to prevail, however in this world, there is a sort of merchant nobility that has begun to displace the agrarian nobility. Unlike OTL, this has not led to an Enlightenment, but to something more akin to a dark enlightenment that justifies the power of open markets and absolute monarchy (imagine if Hobbes had been the major basis for Western political thought) However, racism is not especially an issue here. European and Catholic are largely synonymous (well, except for Jews and Roma), and the color of a persons skin is not especially important – a North African from Mauritania and Swede will be largely seen as equal throughout Europe.
- The Islamic World today is defined very much by the scars in the collective psyche caused by the Crusades and their aftermath. The loss of Jerusalem, Mecca, Medina, Baghdad, and Damascus, the premier cities of the Muslim world has created a less centralized, more fractious diaspora with a strong hatred of Christianity (well, the Persians hate them less)
- Mali remained prosperous ITTL, and has become a strong, somewhat modern, regional power. It has taken up the mantle of being a caliphate and it vies for influence in West Africa alongside the European colonialists. Within most of Africa (excepting the east), Mali is the premier Islamic power and is an intellectual and religious haven. Mali opposes the slave trade (to Europeans) on religious grounds, which has forced Europe to take slaves primarily from further south near the Congo Basin. The Great Lakes region of the African interior has come under the control of the descendants of Arab traders, who have founded the Waq-Waq Emirate. Several great cities have been erected along the shores of the Ukerewe (Lake Victoria) and Hayadala (Lake Tanganyika)
- Technologically, this world is roughly on par with OTL. A scientific revolution did occur, and its effects were spread beyond OTL Europe and into Christian states of Asia and even the Muslim states bordering them.
