Excerpt: 14: The Century That Changed Everything - Christian Saldmare, Dragon's Hill Press, AD 2002
The pace of change in Anawak hit its crescendo in 1376, when the Tepanec tlatoani Xiuhtlatonac finally died - a quarter of a century after Muslim explorers first discovered the Central Valley cultural complex.
The disintegration of the Tepanec dominions in a remarkably short time following 1376 is a testament to multiple challenges, any one of which could obliterate a civilization. Epidemic diseases routinely devastated the population en route to killing the vast majority of indigenous peoples in the Valley complex. Technological change and new allies gave the Tepanecs' rivals new means to oppose them. The introduction of Islam into Anawak gave minority groups in the Valley something to rally around, while the arrival of wealth from new foreign trade routes created opportunities to shift power dynamics within the Valley. Yet the Tepanecs maintained many of their allies for the remainder of Xiuhtlatonac's life, and his reign is held up by some as an example of the validity of the "Great Man" theory of history: That history is defined by the actions of a few great men more than by overarching events.
Yet the decline of the Tepanec hegemony over the Valley was under way even before Xiuhtlatonac's death, and it was much in evidence in the 1360s, when the Tepanecs were obligated to brutally crush the Caxcanes. That conflict left many Tepanec tributaries grumbling under Xiuhtlatonac's ruthlessness, and by the time of his death, cities were looking for allies.
Following Xiuhtlatonac's death, his inheritance was unclear, owing to the death of his two eldest sons to epidemic diseases. The eventual victor was his younger brother, Tlacatzin, but he proved even more unpopular than Xiuhtlatonac, with little sign of his tactical or political brilliance. Fractures rapidly formed in the Tepanec tributary network, leading to revolts against Azcapotzalco across the valley. Tlacatzin was quickly deposed, set aside in 1378 by his cousin Ahuiliztli, supported by the priesthood. By then, however, preserving the Tepanec dominion was a fading dream: Court politics, shifting lines of succession and the rapid onset of disease after disease ensured that no ruler in Azcapotzalco would enjoy full support even within their own altepetl, and tributaries steadily fractured away.
All the while, the spread of Islam within the Central Valley proved rapid and organic. The dreadful toll taken by disease - and the tendency of Muslim travellers to not only appear immune to many of the plagues, but to sell their services as mercenaries, advisors and religious instructors - ensured that visitors from the Islamic east were among the few rocks of stability and reliability in a region beset by political instability. As populations declined even in regions where Islam caught on, indigenous people in Anawak looked at the situation through a religious lens. For many, the crises in the Valley were evidence that the current world was ending, and the arrival of Islam was seen as an entryway into the world which succeeded it.
The power vacuum following the steady crumbling of the Tepanecs was filled by powers united by this religion, spearheaded by the Muslim leader of Xaltocan-Dähnini - Abdullah Hñunxuni.
The exact details of Abdullah's machinations are unclear, but seem to have begun as an effort to form an alliance against the Tepanecs in the mid-1370s. By 1380, however, his approaches had borne fruit. Three powers in the Valley complex and one on its periphery joined together in what historians anachronistically call the Otomi Alliance. The partners included the Otomi cities of Xaltocan-Dähnini and Metztitlan-Nzi'batha, the Acolhua-ruled altepetl of Texcoco, and the Totonacs. All four powers were centres of Islam, with Xaltocan, the Totonacs and Metztitlan all boasting Muslim rulers and the Acolhua being heavily influenced by Muslim traders, with the faith blossoming among the lower classes there. The Acolhua tie to the alliance was strengthened all the more owing to the Otomi roots of the ruling dynasty: While the majority of people there were formerly of the Chichimeca, they had integrated with the Otomi in a fashion similar to the Tepanecs themselves.
Promoted by the rulers of the Otomi and Totonac cities and spread by an informal network of Sufis and imams, Islam rapidly percolated through the Valley, though not always along the most orthodox lines. Generally speaking, the upper classes in Xaltocan, Metztitlan and Cempoala tended to hew to a relatively orthodox form of Islam, guided by Maliki imams and advisors - some crossing with the sanction of the Caliph in Córdoba.
Converts among the commons, however, had a wider range of experiences with Islam, and many viewed the new religion through the lens of their own faith. Particularly in Xaltocan and the northern areas of the Valley Lake,[1] Islam spread syncretically through the cult of N'ahahontho, the One and Only, which interpreted the Islamic God as a superior entity above the Otomi moon and sun deities.[2] Among Nahuatl-speakers, meanwhile, Islam was seen as a sign that the fifth iteration of existence was dying, and the arrival of strangers from the east, speaking of the true god, was the revelation of the sixth world. Through this lens, God was associated with the sun.
Surviving contemporary codices produced by early convert communities often depict the Prophet Muhammad in the Nahua style, accompanied by Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent. While indigenous beliefs tend to be fragmentary, owing to the tribal divides and city-based differences in belief within the Valley, the Feathered Serpent was fairly universal, tracing back to the Old City of Teotihuacan. Many of the Valley societies considered the Feathered Serpent to be the creator of the fifth sun, associated with the dawn star, mercy, wind and justice. The symbolism of this pairing not only attempts to transfer the attributes of Quetzalcoatl to the new religion and depict the arrival of Islam as a handoff from the fifth sun to the next. The term "Chicuacentonatiuh" is sometimes recorded - "Six Sun" - and makes clear how Islam was interpreted: Common people in particular, with little of the formal Quranic instruction being received by the upper classes, saw the arrival of epidemic disease as the end of the Fifth Sun, and Islam as the beginning of the Sixth Sun, which would be the final and eternal world.
The disorganized state of Islam in the Valley did not go unnoticed. Indeed, correspondence from 1381 survives between Caliph Al-Hadi (who took power in 1375, following the death of Al-Mustamsik) and an imam in Nzi'batha, one Gazi ibn Harun al-Maliki. Ibn Harun appeals in his letter for the Caliph to send more teachers, complaining that the locals "create barbarous idols and call them God, as there are not enough learned men to guide them in the
sunna, even as they wish to hear it." Al-Hadi, in his response, vows to "guide the
al-Garbiyyin to the proper way."
The correspondence is likely the driving force behind the Mission of 1382, in which a fleet of ten ships left Andalusia and sailed to Anawak, loaded with scholars of Islam. While one of the ships was wrecked in the Sea of Pearls, most of the wise men made it to Anawak and dispersed throughout the region, serving as teachers, healers and advisors in an effort to guide the locals in Islam. However, even these wise men couldn't outpace the spread of Islam, pushed informally through the efforts of Sufis and Sudani marabouts who were more than happy to blend Islamic teachings with local traditions to invite natives in.
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The period following the mid-1360s brought a similar upheaval in Kawania, where the loose authority enjoyed by the city-state of Mani had steadily waned. By 1367, the leader known as Glorious Resplendent Jaguar was approaching his seventies and wracked with illness and dementia, and he'd never enjoyed any sort of imperium over the other city-stated to begin with. The onset of disease disrupted trade routes and increasingly isolated the Mayan cities, though the tough terrain and thin provender of the Yukatan peninsula made conquering the Maya a challenge.
Islam was much slower to spread in Kawania, finding mainly a few converts among the lower classes. But it established its first firm foothold in 1374, when a shipload of
kishafa led by the Kaledati adventurer known as Hasan al-Jalal[3] landed in Zama[4] and captured the city.
The story of Hasan al-Jalal is a treacherous political topic, owing to its centrality in the history of the modern Cawania. The national mythology built up around him initially lionized him, describing him as a
kashaf from the Kaledats who had heard stories of the Maya and sought to bring Islam to the Yukatan. As the legend goes, Hasan arrived in Zama with a group of escorts to share the teachings of the Quran, but the local lords eventually betrayed him and tried to sacrifice his wife and sons. In a righteous fury, Hasan and his men overthrew the rulers of Zama and tore down the local deities.
This initial mythology has been heavily questioned since, not the least of that questioning coming from indigenous Maya activists citing what little evidence exists of who Hasan was. What documents and letters exist suggest Hasan was in fact a marginally successful merchant from the Kaledats who had traded for some years prior with contacts in Zama, but who had eventually gotten involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the local leadership on behalf of another Mayan candidate. From a fragment of a letter written by one of Hasan's companions to family in the Kaledats, it appears that Hasan effectively co-opted this coup following the death of the initial lead conspirator left a power vacuum at the top. The merchant seems to have stepped into the void with the support of his better-armed men and a few local allies, adopting some of the trappings of a Mayan lord but introducing Islam and empowering his Kaledati and Andalusian companions as his "ruling class" of sorts.
While the Andalusian takeover of Zama would mark the entrance of direct Islamic rule into the Yukatan, it would also portend a model which would be repeated in some other regions. Less interested in wholesale conquest than in trade, Muslim settlers would wind up ruling areas directly mainly through individual initiative and avarice, though such efforts would eventually lead to cooperations with Isbili. Indeed, similar things were happening in the southern part of the Gharb al-Aqsa, where the spread of illness had led to the beginnings of a widespread abandonment of villages along the Wadi al-Baraa.[5] Among the victims were the natives of Marayu, whose island effectively fell under the purview of the Muslim trading post at Makzan al-Husayn.
Exploration up the Baraa, however, continued to prove challenging, mainly owing to the resilience of the indigenous people known as the Tapajos. While less sophisticated than their urbanized neighbours, the Tapajos routinely attacked Andalusian efforts to explore the river. Their typical approach - canoes full of archers firing poison-tipped arrows - proved an effective impediment to Muslim adventurism. It is a testament to the effectiveness of Tapajo warriors that they proved a more effective brake on the spread of Islam than the more organized, densely-packed Mayan and Anawakan states - and it's a testament to the Andalusians' failings.
Broadly speaking, Islam spread most rapidly in areas of the New World where societies were dense and urban. It ran into the most trouble in less-developed areas, and particularly in areas of heavy tree cover, or along the Baraa, accessible mainly by boat. The more difficult a place was to reach, the harder it was for Andalusians to take it over, and the more urban it was, the more devastating disease proved to local politics, while still enabling Andalusians to exploit, usurp or co-opt regional power structures.
It would take longer for Andalusians to reach other areas outside those facing the Atlas Ocean, though epidemic diseases would precede them. Indeed, in the Kingdom of Chimor across the Andes Mountains, burials dating to the 1370s have been found to show evidence of smallpox, suggesting that eastern-world diseases had migrated even to the isolated mountain kingdom well ahead of any recorded Andalusian mission. It's likely that first contacts took place for which no direct evidence exists, leaving much of this period shrouded in conjecture.[6]
SUMMARY:
1374: Hasan the Majestic becomes leader of Zama after backing a local conspiracy. The traditional founding act of Cawania.
1376: Tepanec tlatoani Xiuhtlatonac dies. The Tepanec dominion steadily disintegrates.
1380: The rulers of Xaltocan, Metztitlan, Cempoala and Texcoco form an accord known as the Otomi Alliance. All four members are friendly towards Islam.
1382: A fleet full of Andalusian and Maghrebi religious scholars arrives in Anawak to try and spread orthodox Maliki doctrines among the budding Muslims of the Central Valley, in an attempt to stamp out syncretism.
[1] Lake Texcoco.
[2] Discussed in a previous entry.
[3] Hasan the Majestic.
[4] Tulum.
[5] The Amazon River.
[6] Yes, I'm alive! I spent some time traveling over the summer and didn't do a lot of writing - but I've still got a story to tell.
