Moonlight in a Jar: An Al-Andalus Timeline

glares at Ibn Khaldun Islamic studies are a shamefully bad field when it comes to translation. Morocco alone has many massive native histories, some fully digitized but not a word of them has been translated into english.

BTW, are the Saqalibah showing any preference to particular Berber tribal groups or Arab clans or are they staying entirely separate of that aspect of Maghrebi politics?

And its interesting that we both have Hispano-Normans in our respective timelines, albeit yours seem to be having a more significant impact than my Normanos.
One of the many ways in which we deal in semi-overlapping magisteria but do different things with them. In my case, the northern kingdoms were weak and divided enough that it was easier for the Normans to make an England out of one of them. OTL, there was a period where French reforms started to filter into the North; ITTL, that's coming by way of the Hispano-Normans in Leon and Gallaecia and the brief Aquitaine-and-Navarre period in the Basque areas.

The Saqaliba tend to prefer the Banu Ifran as their main clients and will also hire certain other Zenata tribes, though will hire small groups of Sanhajas and Barghawatas as well to avoid tribal monopolies.
 
@Planet of Hats

This is interesting. I was looking at the map again and noticed that Ghana's powerful rival the kingdom of Audoghast is not present. I'm guessing that this tribal confederation of Sanhaja collapsed and Ghana is in full control of the valuable salt in that area rather than the Sanhajas contesting it?

I was curious because at the peak of their strength, the kings of Audoghast successfully loosened control from Ghana multiple times, and raided them as well, when they had enough power.
 
It would be interesting if, at some time in this TL, Andalus gains land the "european way", a marriage to a european princess/queen. I think in OTL this concept never existed in the muslim world.
To an extent it did with the fall of Ayyubid dynasty the mamluks claimed legitimacy as they married the former sultans wife. Also with andalusia going to become more european (there nothing stopping it) you will also see it more likely happen, with a more liberal islam muslims will marry non muslims more (muhammad married a coptic christian i think). Also with a weaker church you might see a ambitious ruler seeing andalusia to be a strong ally. Another problem is jihad would you as a ruler want to claim land through inheritance rights or jihad which brings you more legitimacy. I think the mughals are your best example they turned marrying a non muslim princess to muslim ruler from a sign of submission to something more acceptable, even to the extent rajputs actively wanted to marry into mughals.

What about a muslim princess being married to a european, as there are more likely more of them, and they wont inherit under normal circumstances so threat to the succession war.
 
To an extent it did with the fall of Ayyubid dynasty the mamluks claimed legitimacy as they married the former sultans wife. Also with andalusia going to become more european (there nothing stopping it) you will also see it more likely happen, with a more liberal islam muslims will marry non muslims more (muhammad married a coptic christian i think). Also with a weaker church you might see a ambitious ruler seeing andalusia to be a strong ally. Another problem is jihad would you as a ruler want to claim land through inheritance rights or jihad which brings you more legitimacy. I think the mughals are your best example they turned marrying a non muslim princess to muslim ruler from a sign of submission to something more acceptable, even to the extent rajputs actively wanted to marry into mughals.

What about a muslim princess being married to a european, as there are more likely more of them, and they wont inherit under normal circumstances so threat to the succession war.
Sultans married all the time christian women, but never a princess who would inherit a throne.
Muslim princesses marrying a european would probably only happen if he converted. Maybe it could happen in this TL with a banished norman prince.

PS: I'm still hoping to see muslim dragon boats in this TL.
 
Sultans married all the time christian women, but never a princess who would inherit a throne.
Muslim princesses marrying a european would probably only happen if he converted. Maybe it could happen in this TL with a banished norman prince.

PS: I'm still hoping to see muslim dragon boats in this TL.
Muslims did sometimes marry christian princesses, umayyads did. Seljucks did it with Byzantine and the Ottomans with both Byzantine and Serbian, again its just the circumstances/ chances the female of inheritance just never happened.
 
Muslims did sometimes marry christian princesses, umayyads did. Seljucks did it with Byzantine and the Ottomans with both Byzantine and Serbian, again its just the circumstances/ chances the female of inheritance just never happened.
Right, but RL isn't like Crusader Kings II, where the computer will just cause a princess to inherit even if she's married to a Muslim. With real human beings, they'll just go around her and install whomever is acceptable, or there'll be a baronial coup, or they'll find a cousin. The political outcry over a queen regnant with a crowned and landed Muslim consort would be pretty significant.
 
Right, but RL isn't like Crusader Kings II, where the computer will just cause a princess to inherit even if she's married to a Muslim. With real human beings, they'll just go around her and install whomever is acceptable, or there'll be a baronial coup, or they'll find a cousin. The political outcry over a queen regnant with a crowned and landed Muslim consort would be pretty significant.

Especially since said princess' heirs would probably be Muslims too.

Basically, marrying a Muslim puts her firmly out of the succession line unless she actively presses her claim, and even then, the backlash against it would be massive.
 
Right, but RL isn't like Crusader Kings II, where the computer will just cause a princess to inherit even if she's married to a Muslim. With real human beings, they'll just go around her and install whomever is acceptable, or there'll be a baronial coup, or they'll find a cousin. The political outcry over a queen regnant with a crowned and landed Muslim consort would be pretty significant.

Firstly its hard to marry outside of your religious grouping in ck2.

Yes you are right, their is no way in hell a ottoman french personal union will ever form. Yes they could just ignore her claim to lunch a coup, but your ignoring the power of that islamic state to enforce it, the mughals can easily enforce a female hindu princess if they wanted to, these are the examples of real life inter religious marriage.

Also the society matters as well im not sure which are the correct words to use so if someone else can correct it for me i appreciate it. Places such as india and places where the turks have been did have marriages of muslim to non-muslim, These
societies were more open/secular/pragmatic/diverse in nature/less religious authority show they do happen and people were not always rebellioning if they got a ruler who was not their religion.
The mughals married heavily into rajputs and equally punished ruling families heavily if they did something wrong such as land being stript/ all the males of the family dying.

I am definitely wrong when if i was suggesting a marriage for example between the HRE and andalusia can happen or even in france. But in Iberia it could happen a count wanting to gain favour with the moors so he now has a very strong ally, but with more mingling of christians and muslims, you going to have these ideas pop up especially in someone ambitious. The chance some county could also reject the princess who has the backing of maybe the most powerful state in iberia is low unless their norman.

Muslims princesses did marry non-muslims, Mastani was the daughter of a Hindu Maharaja Chhatrasal and a muslim wife, some sources say she the daughter of the nizam of Hyderabad. Some sources (dr vir vinod) say Akbar offered several marriage proposals of mughal princesses to Rajput kings but they refused because rajputs care about bloodline. Bivi Nachiyar a muslim princess. King Shivaji married a muslim.

The fact the mughals intergrated the rajputs so well is linked to the dynastic links often power is more important than religion, often the hindu princess family would often gain alot of power, in this can be a similar case in iberia.

Just as muslim ruler were often discouraged from having wives as that meant their family would gain some power but also make her his equal. Is andalusia still relying on concubines or wives now? (This is the edited part it was terribly written)

Does anyone have an interpretation on the thing about richard the lionheart and saladin, about lionheart marrying his sister to saladins brother. Was that a serious offer or more diplomatic games.

Also are the habsburg exist in this timeline?
 
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I am definitely wrong when if i was suggesting a marriage for example between the HRE and andalusia can happen or even in france. But in Iberia it could happen a count wanting to gain favour with the moors so he now has a very strong ally, but with more mingling of christians and muslims, you going to have these ideas pop up especially in someone ambitious. The chance some county could also reject the princess who has the backing of maybe the most powerful state in iberia is low unless their norman.

I agree, if the balance of power is more skewed, I could see it happen.
 
ACT IV Part IV: William of the Bull and Saif al-Din
"On Saint James Way in castle proud
A glorious king of men did dwell
And brought his steel upon the Moor
Until the savage Moor-king fell."

- Verse from "The Ballad of William of the Bull," circa 1196


~


Excerpt: Fractured Cross: The Kingdoms of Northern Iberia - Leona Mondeforo, Falconbird Press, AD 2011


One would be hard-pressed to write a history of the Hispano-Normans without dwelling extensively on Guillermo I - the monarch remembered in history as Guillermo del Toro.

Guillermo was born in 1091, a grandson of Geofredo I, the first King of Santiago - the eldest son of Geofredo's second son, Balduino, and thus never expected to be in the line of succession. Indeed, when Geofredo passed in 1105 and the crown went to his first son (the short-lived Tancredo I), it seemed Guillermo would be out of the line of succession entirely. Of course, fate would intervene on his behalf - or perhaps more than fate.

In 1110, Tancredo died suddenly. Histories record that he fell off his horse while practicing the joust, but an analysis of his corpse has identified nicks on various bones suggesting that he was stabbed through the back by a professional who knew where to find the heart. Rule in the Kingdom of Santiago thus passed to Tancredo's infant son, Geofredo II, then just two years old. A regency council was established to govern for the young man; that council included Guillermo, whose father had died some years before.

Already by this time, at least according to tradition, Guillermo had shown himself to be a young man of some promise. Raised by both Norman and Iberian tutors, Guillermo was said to have been visited in his teenage years by the Moorish mathematician Avezali (known to Andalusi intellectual history as Ibn Salih), who was in Santiago to debate the greatest minds in Christendom. Embellished tales suggest that the teenage Guillermo converted Avezali to Christianity by using the Bible to disprove his theorems. However, the existence of Ibn Salih's "Explorations of Problems of Numbers" - written in the 1020s and referencing discussions with "the elders of the ferengi"[1] and full of references to Islam - suggests that Ibn Salih may never have even met Guillermo.

The story from here is a famous one. In 1111, the infant Geofredo II is said to have been "touched by the Devil's plague-hand" and killed in his cradle, then buried in state. The kingdom is said to have been awash with despair and confusion, for the infant king had died without heir or sibling. The myth goes that Satan then sent a great bull to plague the citizens of Santiago, which was only stopped when Guillermo, then a brave young knight bearing the Scallop-Shell of St. James on his shield and surcoat, stepped forward and wrestled the bull into submission with his bare hands. The citizens of Santiago are said to have then proclaimed him their king and carried him to the palace on their shoulders, there to enthrone him. It is from this incident that Guillermo gained the nickname "Guillermo of the Bull."

Historians treat this story as the ludicrously embellished myth that it is, but robust histories have now been built based on a number of factors. In 1897, the tomb of Geofredo II was opened for the first time and discovered to be empty. A text was discovered in 1966 speaking of a Great Bullfight in Santiago, in which "William the Cousin of Our Kinge" took part - in the year 1110, before Geofredo II's apparent demise. And genetic tracing has also given credibility to the family history of the Banu Jifrid of Balansiyya, who claim to be the direct descendants of Geofredo II - despite said king apparently dying as an infant.

Current theory leans towards a more clandestine explanation. Historians believe that Guillermo, while part of Geofredo's regency council, was popular at court, impressing both the Norman ruling class with his embrace of their values and the Iberian commons with his fluency in their language and customs. With Moorish raids constantly an issue, it is likely that the nobility - who saw fit to remove Tancredo I by assassination - saw little use in continuing to keep Tancredo's child on the throne. The nobility is believed to have selected Guillermo as a replacement candidate, both due to his royal lineage (as Geofredo II's cousin) and his prominence after what may have been a memorable performance in or at the prior year's bullfight. The palace coup then sent Geofredo and his mother into exile in Andalusia, publicly announced that the boy had died of an illness and held a funeral for him to give it legitimacy, and finally enthroned Guillermo, touting the bullfighting story to legitimize him in the eyes of the public. Geofredo, meanwhile, grew up in obscurity and converted to Islam, establishing the roots of the Banu Jifrid line.

Whatever the case, Guillermo del Toro is widely considered the first true Normando king of Santiago. He spoke both Old Gallaecian and Norman French, incorporated both Norman and Gallaecian traditions into his rule, and introduced the scallop-shell banner to Santiago. He marks the beginning of the process by which the Normans were absorbed into Gallaecian culture and language, both reforming and modernizing political and social life and separating it from its Old Iberian roots as new "Normando" ways became facts of life for the common people.

Guillermo spent his first few years stepping up raids along the border with Andalusia, recruiting new knights from the ranks of the commons and training loyal Gallaecians in Norman ways. It would seem that Guillermo's early raids were successful enough to provoke a response from the Andalusians - enough so that, in 1116, the new hajib Shams al-Din personally joined a major northward raid into the Kingdom of Santiago.

The raid proved to be a disaster; the Andalusian raiding party was turned back by a smaller force of Normans and Gallaecians, suffering significant casualties. In the fighting, Shams al-Din took an arrow to the chest and fled, eventually dying in his tent and leaving Andalusia with a succession crisis: Shams al-Din's children were babies and his brothers were mostly teenagers, and the Caliphate needed a strong hand to ensure the Saqaliba did not lose their grip on power.

An internal power struggle ensued, with the Rus' faction of the Saqaliba - suffering a loss of leadership after the debacle in Gallaecia - eventually losing out to those Saqaliba originating from the Haemus. By 1117, the title of hajib was solidly in the hands of Mujahid ibn Dalibur, a descendant of Sirmian slaves, who took on the moniker of Saif al-Din. But the Daliburids were not without their opponents, and the changeover left Saif al-Din and his core weakened for several years as the new administration wrangled with loyalists of the Rus' faction.

It was under these conditions that, in 1117, Guillermo successfully orchestrated the recapture of several border towns, the largest being Aveiro. The Hispano-Normans took home substantial loot from these conquests and came home with a new sense of momentum. However, Saif al-Din was able to blunt the 1118 campaign through the expeditious use of hired swords, stemming that momentum and working to re-establish security in the north.

Nevertheless, a new adversary had arrived for the Andalusians: Guillermo del Toro would be the most potent threat from the north the Caliphate had ever faced.[2]


[1] The Franks. Also "firanj" or "ifranji."
[2] Yes, I am alive. Work and winter depression ate my soul.


SUMMARY:
1111: Guillermo I - known as Guillermo del Toro - takes power in Santiago following an apparent coup against his infant cousin, ending the Great Upheaval.
1116: Hajib Shams al-Din is killed on the battlefield in a clash against the Hispano-Normans. In the subsequent succession crisis, the Rus' faction of the Saqaliba is replaced by the Sirmian Daliburids under Saif al-Din.
1117: King Guillermo I of Santiago recaptures Aveiro from the Moors.
 
Sometimes names mean different things in AH!

He's gonna give the enemies of Christendom hell, boy. Possibly with his golden army. And his blade, too.

That might be a joke, but that sounds like a good idea. He'd be leading the "golden army of Christendom" since he'd be one of the few Christian leaders able to give the Muslims a bloody nose. And it'd fit his legend perfectly to turn his sword into a Excalibur-like magical weapon.
 
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