Moonlight in a Jar: An Al-Andalus Timeline

[Planet of Hats]

"The law is clear, and all I desire is consistency with the law," a long-suffering Tariq ibn Mujahid repeated for what must have been the thousandth time that day. "Riba is haram and we cannot call ourselves Muslims if we allow Muslims to carry it out."

"No one is disputing that, Hajib," came the equally long-suffering reply from the gallery. "But you realize that there are dhimmi who live by different laws."

"Yes, of course-"

The discussions with the Majlis always took this tone - a headbutting between the world through his eyes and the world through theirs. Privately, Tariq wished he could hurl the lot of them out a window, and their barely-Islamic innovations along with them.

Doing that will not help anything, he reminded himself - again, not for the first time. Certainly the Majlis stood on nothing more than a foundation of tradition, legitimate only because his grandfather had assembled them and his uncle had relied on them for advice. In theory, Tariq should have been able to send them all home. But it was not lost on him that he himself stood on a flimsy foundation. These people, for all their degeneracy and impiety, were leaders of their communities - communities Tariq himself claimed to govern with little save a de facto claim based on the fact that a few people who liked him had paid a man to strangle and drown his cousin.

The people of Isbili had already begun to grumble about the circumstances of his installation. Sending the Majlis home would only spread the grumbling. Holding on to the seat of the Hajib would require him to dance this little aggravating dance with them, at least for awhile longer.

"This is not only a matter of laws," pointed out the Wali of Gharnatah, hands folded on the table before him. "It is a matter of travel. Many of our people now are merchants who must sail long distances. They depend on the services of those dhimmi who hold and lend money. It is unappetizing, to be sure, but surely there are ways for these transactions to be conducted amongst Muslims without riba - and in any event, shall we truly expect the People of the Book to behave as Muslims? Their conduct is permissible."

"I would add that the moment we try to prohibit those activities, our people sail south to Labu and Tekrur and we lose a lot of good merchants." That was the Wali of the Kaledats, a thorn in Tariq's side as much as ever.

Tariq scowled daggers into the cluster of old men, practically feeling his heavy beard bristle with frustration. "Then help me, damn your eyes," he all but hissed. "You are wise men, are you not? Help to solve this problem. Find a way for us to be Muslims without all your degenerate friends--"

An uproar immediately burst through the room. "--all your degenerate friends," Tariq shouted over the protests, "from pulling up their robes and stomping off in a huff at being asked to obey the law as written!"

"That is a total slander!" shouted someone near the back

"Excuse me a moment, everyone," a louder voice broke over the crowd - that of Abu Qays Abd ar-Rahman ibn Hassan al-Barshiluni, the respected Wali of the northeast. As the rabble died down, the heavy-set man waved a hand towards Tariq. "We have been over this territory. Many times, in fact. Shouting at each other will not achieve anything. May I suggest we leave these issues to the scholars for now and focus on what we can accomplish, Hajib. And gentlemen as well."

Tariq's scowl eased, and he looked down into his lap for a moment. Sometime in the last couple of minutes, one of the cats had climbed up there - the black one with the white paws that looked like stockings. He'd been so engrossed in yelling at the Majlis that he had barely noticed.

"We can come back to this issue," the Hajib finally decided, albeit grudgingly. "Fine. Very well." With a huff, he shooed the cat away with a sharp flick of two fingers. He had no time for feline follies right now.

"Then we move on," he determined. "I'm considering what we need to improve our network of roads...."

~​

Excerpt: The People's Faith: A History of Modern Islam - Abu Najib ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Mufaji, AD 2007

2
TARIQ, UTHMAN AND SANJULA​

The brewing conflict between Hajib Tariq and the Majlis would have made for a fairly anemic conventional civil war. An exchange of gunfire was hardly likely in the early going. Rather, the battle between the Usulid Hajib and the majority Ghimarid Majlis would be decided through policy, politics and often-brutal court maneuvering.

At the heart of the Hajib-Majlis conflict was a simple fact: Neither institution was truly legitimate. On the one hand, the Majlis was a simple advisory body with authority derived almost entirely from Al-Nasr's political stunting on behalf of his son Abd ar-Rahim, who maintained the council's relevance primarily for image purposes. In theory, Tariq could have dismissed the council at any time - but his own position was precarious, coming to power as he did on the back of a suspicious death and at the suffrance of minority reactionaries at court, in the face of a population that did not share his rigorist views on faith and behaviour.

Beyond the circumstances of his ascent, however, Tariq had to contend with the nature of the Hajib's office as a mere representative of the Caliph. As much as the Umayyads had long been sidelined - indeed, then-Caliph Al-Musta'sim was in his late seventies and stricken with dementia, stubbornly refusing to die yet barely able to weigh in - the Hajib role nevertheless relied on an age-old legal fiction of Caliphal consent and delegation. In Abd ar-Rahim's time, a younger Al-Musta'sim had praised the Majlis as the voice of the ummah. To dismiss them could have been seen as a drastic overreach by a Hajib at odds with both the Caliph and society.

Despite his desire to return society to its traditional Islamic roots, Tariq was obliged to maintain the fictions on which his office stood, both to bolster his legitimacy and prevent court factions from removing him the same way he had removed his cousin. The Majlis remained in session as he pushed into his term.

A key early achievement for the precariously-perched Hajib was his campaign against the Sheresh wine industry, an underground sector of the economy that had long supplied high-quality wine to Andalusians and Berbers of means. On paper, vineyard owners in the area were well-known for their bounty in "grapeseed oil" and "raisins," while actually producing alcohol under the table - and raking in immense profits. Those who operated openly were largely Christians supposedly limited to selling to other Christians, but it was common for Muslims to buy it. Tariq, a well-known teetotaller, viewed the open secret of the wine production as a flagrant violation of the sunnah, and he ordered several well-known vineyard owners arrested and tried.

The move provoked rapid backlash in the form of the Sheresh Wine Riots, in which large numbers of protesters rioted in the city and surrounded city guardsmen sent to arrest prominent vineyard owners. Fighting quickly broke out between protesters and traditionalists. Some accounts suggest citizens broke into a vineyard and smashed dozens of barrels of wine, draining the contents into the river. Regardless of the exact details, the Wine Riots prompted a coarsening of attitudes towards Tariq among many in the public, and as word spread of the actions, merchants in other cities raised protests into what they claimed was a draconian edict by the Hajib. Family of some of the arrested vineyard owners similarly protested, alleging that many of those accused weren't actually winemakers, but actual producers of grapeseed oil.

Stung by the public backlash, Tariq seems to have tried to strike a less confrontational tone in his efforts to try and assert a more rigorist form of Islamic law. Among his edicts, he re-affirmed the ban on utilizing printing presses to reproduce the Quran, insisting that they only be produced by the hands of classically-trained scribes. He similarly moved to hire additional tax collectors to police the dhimmi, increasing the overall tax revenue of the Asmarid Empire to an extent but evoking intense frustration among non-Muslim communities, particularly in the Christian north.

By far the area where Tariq had the most influence was abroad, where he sought to restore the Asmarids' perceived Islamicity by renewing the jihad. His areas of focus were primarily overseas in the Gharb al-Aqsa, especially in Quwaniyyah. While the north of the peninsula had been effectively brought under Asmarid control, much of the inland south remained effectively independent despite Asmarid claims to control the entire isthmus. In particular the K'iche Maya of the Kingdom of Q'umarkaj, or Jakawitz, remained outside Asmarid domination despite ghastly losses to endemic diseases and ongoing kishafa raids.

Tariq sought to rebuild his legitimacy and strengthen the faith by directing the jihad into the jungles of the Isthmus, at the expense of the K'iche. From 1536, he arranged for a series of seasonal campaigns out of northern Quwaniyyah aimed at extending Asmarid control to the southern coast. These campaigns were largely conducted by volunteers armed with blackpowder weapons and shipped to the Gharb al-Aqsa annually.

By and large, the southern Mayan campaign was expectedly successful in bringing the key population centres in the area under Asmarid domination. As with many campaigns in this period, the Asmarids utilized relatively small forces - rarely more than 2,000 men to an army. While some elements among the Maya had begun to adopt captured horses and even the occasional crossbow or blackpowder weapon, a massive technological disparity still existed. Mayan traps and ambush tactics inflicted their share of casualties, but in direct battle the defenders inevitably suffered ghastly attrition to numerically inferior Asmarid armies equipped with modern weapons and armour.

Accordingly, the war was short, brief and brutal. In 1538 a force of about 1,200 men arrived in the K'iche capital of Jakawitz and handily defeated a much larger army of warriors to seize the city. The last Mayan king of the city was put in chains and taken aboard a ship at Ekab to be shipped back to Isbili, but died along the way. The conquerors otherwise beheaded a large number of priests and military leaders before installing an Islamic government and parcelling out choice land to veterans of the conflict.

In theory, the conflict should have strengthened Tariq's legitimacy in the eyes of the traditionalists. In reality he mostly succeeded in exporting hundreds of supporters among the commons to plots of land overseas. Most of those who volunteered for campaigns in the jungles were those invested in the idea of the external jihad, and with new lands well in hand following the war, their economic desires were more or less sated, at the cost of removing them from the body of locals on hand to support the Usulids in the ongoing social unrest at home.

That unrest would flare up again in 1539 in the form of events around the person of Sanjula bint Hamdin al-Anjylyni.

Sanjula, a daughter of a powerful merchant of the Banu Angelino, was the most well-known representative in her time of a wave of Berber and Andalusi women known for flouting many older traditions of dress and behaviour. She is described as refusing to wear the veil in public, is noted to have been unmarried at age 21, and she has left behind a few letters to friends and relatives that show exceptional fluency in both Andalusi and classical Arabic as well as some minor skill in poetry. A number of commentators from the period have written on her, largely because of the scandal that emerged around her during Tariq's reign.

In the spring of 1539, the merchant Abu Yasin ibn Gharsiya al-Zammuri accused Sanjula of attempting to seduce another man while being involved with him at the same time. The matter was brought to the qadi, who deemed that Sanjula had committed zina. As an unmarried woman, she was deemed to not be muhsan and sentenced to a public lashing - a sentence objected to fervently by both Sanjula and her father, Hamdin, who insisted Sanjula was never involved with Al-Zammuri at all. The two further noted that the crime had no witnesses beyond the testimony of Al-Zammuri, whose family's business interests competed with the Banu Angelino's. They asserted that the accusation constituted qadhf, a false accusation of zina, and stood on flimsy grounds.

Hamdin, a member of the Majlis, immediately appealed to the Hajib to intervene. Tariq refused and ordered that Sanjula be flogged in public for fornication.

The punishment was carried out before a crowd split between horrified Ghimarids and jeering Usulids. Contemporary chroniclers report a defiant Sanjula refusing to cry out while the lashes were administered despite being in obvious pain. They also report several members of the extended Asmarid family in the crowd, among them Tariq's cousin Uthman ibn Abd ar-Rahim, one of the late ex-Hajib's youngest sons, who was in the company of the Banu Angelino delegation.

The flogging remained fixed in the public consciousness when it later emerged that Al-Zammuri had fabricated the allegations as part of a plot to intimidate and discredit Hamdin - not only had Sanjula never been with Al-Zammuri, but the other man in his accusation never actually existed. Further, the qadi who tried the case was the brother of a leading Quranic scribe active in the Usulid movement. The Banu Angelino accused Tariq of flagrantly skewing the law against them, and prominent Ghimarids in Isbili began to speak out more vocally against what they perceived as a streak of vindictive rigorism, with some going so far as to denounce Tariq as a Kharijite.

Outcry remained confined to the realm of political speech and backrooms, sparing Tariq the potential for violence - save towards Al-Zammuri, who he was obligated to order tried. The merchant was eventually found guilty and lashed, which seemed to quell the most immediate frustration.

Sanjula, however, would not be out of Tariq's life for long. By 1540, she eventually found someone she did want to be with: Tariq's cousin, Uthman, who was beginning to emerge as a prominent Ghimarid within the Asmarid family.

SUMMARY:
1536: The Sheresh Wine Riots break out when Hajib Tariq attempts to crack down on the southern Andalusian wine industry.
1538: Asmarid forces conquer the Kingdom of Q'umarkaj.
1539: Public outcry flares up when a trailblazing Andalusi woman, Sanjula bint Hamdin, is publicly flogged for accusations of fornication. It later emerges that the accusations were falsified to try and undermine the Banu Angelino, but the trial was put through as a public show of vindictiveness against a known Ghimarid woman.

 

[Planet of Hats]

On summer's breath, to me you came
Like butterflies in...​

"Oh, bother," Sanjula groused as she scowled at the paper. Well, continued to scowl. She'd been trying all afternoon to get a poem going, but even the first couple of sentences seemed lodged up somewhere in her mind. Writing should've come easier than this.

It was harder these days. There was a lot on her mind.

"Trouble?" Moving up at the desk behind her, Uthman laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.

She sighed, brushing back a few locks of raven-black hair with one hand before bringing her fingers to rest on the back of his. "Always," she murmured. "I keep thinking about it. What happened."

"With Tariq?"

Nodding, she looked off towards the window. Uthman's house was well outside the city, overlooking picturesque farmland splayed out in a field of emerald beneath the sun, the frosted glass window panes swung open to let the air in. The warmth of the day was little comfort. The bruises from her ordeal under the lash had passed with time, but something else had not.

The anger - the frustration. The sheer fury at having been thrown beneath the horse's hooves by a man she'd spurned, at being used as an example by a backwards fool of a Hajib.

"Sometimes I wonder how you don't think about him all the time, love," Sanjula mused as she turned in her seat to rest her head on Uthman's shoulder; he drew his arms loosely around her as if on automatic, cradling her against him. "After what he did. Knowing that he killed your father and brother."

"I do think about him all the time, actually." Uthman closed his eyes and lowered his cheek to hers. His dark beard brushed against her forehead and temple. "But if I let myself be driven mad by what a munafiq he truly is, I would let him defeat me too."

With a sigh, she squeezed her eyes closed and set her jaw, then released them. For all that Tariq had made her life miserable, he'd done more to Uthman and his family. She hadn't known until she met him how sudden Abd ar-Rahim's death had been - died while preparing for his breakfast after taking a drink of his morning tea, found blackened in the face and stiffened from poison. That Shurayh died so suddenly afterwards was no coincidence, and it left two possibilities: That Tariq arranged the murders of his uncle and cousin, or that he benefited from the support of murderers.

There was little distinction to her. Both of them made the man even more of a monster. A sterling example of the rank hypocrisy of the Usulids. Performatively pious old men willing to kill and hurt to uphold words put in the Prophet's mouth long after His passing - men more concerned with protecting the hurt feelings of crusty old scribes than in caring for God's people.

She'd never been a person of politics. But Sanjula wasn't accustomed to being treated like a pawn in a game of idiots. And she wasn't accustomed to letting those who wronged her walk away unscorned.

"My love," she murmured, lifting deep hazel eyes to meet Uthman's. "I want to get him. Knock him off his high seat."

Uthman pressed his lips together before nodding gravely. "So do I."

~​

Excerpt: The People's Faith: A History of Modern Islam - Abu Najib ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Mufaji, AD 2007

3
SANJULA'S RESPONSE​

In Sanjula bint Hamdan, hajib Tariq had earned himself a surprisingly powerful enemy.

In the wake of her public flogging in 1539, Sanjula, now aligned with Tariq's cousin Uthman ibn Abd ar-Rahim, transitioned from an active socialite to a political force far more tangible in her impact than virtually any other Andalusian woman of her time. By late 1540, she had married Uthman, but their relationship appears to have been significantly more coequal than was typical for the period. Her surviving poetry, while not considered among the most literarily fluent or skillful examples of period poetry, is remarkable in its focus on romance from the point of view of a willful woman - but it was her political activities that stirred controversy at court.

Her marriage to Uthman gave Sanjula somewhat greater freedom of movement among the Asmarid ruling class, and contemporary writings suggest she socialized frequently with the wives and daughters of key amirs and walis as well as leaders on the Majlis. Uthman, for his part, stood aloof from the political maneuvering, seemingly content to remain out of the fray of Sanjula's efforts to sway public opinion against Tariq.

The balance of power between Tariq, the Majlis and his new rivals stood on foundations of assumed legitimacy that made open challenges to either difficult. Dismissing the Majlis may have been feasible, but Tariq's lack of popularity - and the representative nature of his office, established as an assumption generations prior and accepted mainly by convention, not law - made an open move to dismiss the voices of the ummah risky. With neither side willing to raise the stakes, political debates between the Majlis members and the beleaguered Hajib grew increasingly rancorous as members of the council swung steadily into the anti-Tariq camp.

The most powerful backers of Tariq, however, stood apart from the Majlis. The aging Caliph Al-Musta'sim held views largely consistent with the Usulid viewpoint, and while his deteriorating mental health and frequent bouts of dementia rendered him a relatively ineffective force in terms of day-to-day politics, the appearance of Caliphal sanction was nevertheless vital. While Al-Musta'sim apparently valued the concept of the Majlis as a means to hear from the populace, his personal views were eminently traditional. The more effective backers were military men: Izemrasen ibn Ghanim al-Masmudi controlled a significant bloc of Masmuda Berbers in the Maghreb and contributed much to Asmarid military efforts, while Hunayn ibn Karabo al-Sudani, the head of the elite Black Guard, had few strong political opinions but tended to go along loyally with the will of the Caliph.

Of the two military backers, Hunayn held the most immediate threat, but Izemrasen's interests were the most divergent in real terms. The Masmuda largely occupied territories in the High Atlas centred on the old city of Aghmat, and while they controlled some ocean ports, they largely detested the "coastal merchants" upon whose activities Asmarid prosperity rested in those days. Discussions in the Majlis increasingly turned towards matters of trade and taxation, whether due to Sanjula and Uthman's prodding or due to simple tensions between Izemrasen's economic interests and those of the bulk of the Majlis members. While the Masmuda did have supporters on the council who succeeded in winning investments of dinars from Tariq, fuelling investments in new mosques and roads around Aghmat, the diversion of public funds inland annoyed much of the rest of the council.

The efforts of the conspirators in the years following Sanjula's public flogging mainly focused on trying to drive a wedge between Izemrasen and Tariq. However, in late 1540 those efforts were diverted when Caliph Al-Musta'sim suffered a seizure and withdrew into incapacity. With the Caliph's death seeming inevitable, Sanjula and Uthman swung their focus to his potential successor.

The likeliest candidate to replace Al-Musta'sim was his second son, the future Caliph Al-Adid. While he sympathized in some respects with the Usulids, Al-Adid was somewhat more moderate in his personal beliefs: He favoured more conservative styles of personal behaviour and dress while still valuing scientific pursuits. While not particularly loved by either the Ghimarid or Usulid camps, he stood as a likely compromise candidate for an office that had traditionally ceased to matter beyond the ceremonial.

That ceremonial role would change dramatically in the spring of 1541. The actual course of events is unclear, but sources from the time suggest that Al-Adid had been in conversations with Uthman and Sanjula, meeting with the two frequently enough to alarm Tariq and his backers. Some sources suggest Tariq sought to push Al-Adid aside and replace him, while others state that he was engaged in his own discussions with Al-Adid in the hopes of winning his political support. Nevertheless, the events of April 27, 1541 would surprise the Asmarid political world.

That evening, two eunuchs were intercepted by members of the Black Guard while trying to break into Al-Adid's home with poisoned knives. The assassins were killed in a short and one-sided fight, but Hunayn, the leader of the Black Guard, came forward to reveal he had been tipped off by a slave girl in Tariq's house that Al-Adid was to be murdered. Al-Adid himself strenuously denied knowledge of the attempt and ordered an investigation, but the incident drew loud protests from the Majlis: The perception was that Tariq had ordered the Caliph's son and heir apparent killed. Assassinations were hardly unheard of, but to target the son of the religious leader of western Islam was seen as a grotesque affront to the faith.

Debate over the appropriate course of action continued through the inconclusive investigation, but by early June, Al-Musta'sim had died, leaving Al-Adid to assume the Caliphate. By month's end, the new Caliph took an unprecedented action: He ordered Tariq to be dismissed as Hajib.

Al-Adid's dismissal was utterly shocking to an Islamic world accustomed to the Umayyads acting for generations as passive kingmakers at best and puppets of the Hajibs at the more conventional. Yet the move was fully justified by the flimsy assumptions upon which the Hajib's power rested. The Hajib was always positioned not as the sole ruler, but as the Umayyads' man in charge of the Asmarid realm, serving with the presumed sanction of the Commander of the Faithful. In theory, the Caliph had every right to dismiss the Hajib at any time - and his decision carried all the more weight by the movement of the Black Guard solidly out of Tariq's corner and into Al-Adid's. The Black Guard's loyalty was institutional, and while Tariq had benefited from it before, the attempt against Al-Adid had ensured that Hunayn would rest entirely on the side of the Caliphal power.

Tariq at first attempted to declare his dismissal a fraudulent decree written up by his enemies, sending word to Izemrasen to support him. He found few others willing to back him, particularly as printing presses began to churn out copies of Al-Adid's announcement. Scribes took time to write up decrees en masse; the holders of the presses could circulate documents easily and quickly, ensuring that public sentiment turned towards awareness that Tariq's power had been firmly checked. The beleaguered Hajib held out for a few weeks before finally agreeing in mid-July to withdraw from power.

To the surprise of most, Al-Adid did not rush to appoint a new Hajib. He simply reconvened the Majlis and moved into session with them to produce a landmark document: The Governing Fatwa.

The Governing Fatwa codified for the first time a formal power structure in the Asmarid realm. While affirming the centrality of the Umayyad Caliph as supreme authority and holder of the final say in religious affairs, the Fatwa formalized the existence of two institutions: The Hajib as the Caliph's chosen head of government and civil administrator, exercising temporal power to execute the law, and the Majlis ash-Shura, the Shura Council. The Hajib in particular was specified to be chosen by the Caliph and dismissed by the same in the event of gross breaches of authority or of Sharia, and charged with authority over matters of taxation, warfare, economics and other temporal management of the realm. Supreme spiritual authority continued to reside with the Caliph.

It was the formalization of the Majlis ash-Shura that would prove most consequential. The Governing Fatwa specified that the Majlis was to be assembled for a certain number of days each year, to sit in session to advise the Hajib. It called for a set number of representatives from each wilayah of the Asmarid empire and from each dhimmi community to make up the council. Perhaps most importantly, it empowered the Majlis to make recommendations to the Caliph directly on whom from the extended Asmarid line to appoint as the next Hajib. Effectively Al-Adid had made a play to take the office out of the hands of the usual method of choosing a Hajib - heredity punctuated by periodic bursts of assassination - in the hopes of ensuring a smoother succession.

It was far less surprising when the Majlis advised Al-Adid to appoint Uthman as his Hajib. The appointment was quickly formalized, all but finalizing Sanjula's revenge and vindicating her efforts in winning political support from both the Majlis and from Al-Adid himself. Historians largely view the Governing Fatwa as not merely a turning point in governance, but as the culmination of extensive backroom dealmaking between Sanjula, Uthman, Al-Adid and key members of the proto-Majlis to get rid of a hated Hajib.

The Fatwa, however, was far from the end of things. A furious Tariq withdrew to Aghmat, where he was received warmly by a protesting Izemrasen. While a military showdown against the powerful Black Guard and the merchant houses would have been unthinkable, Izemrasen effectively withdrew behind the bounds of Masmuda territory, withholding taxes to the Caliphal coffers and continuing to acknowledge Tariq as the rightful Hajib.

The presence of his deposed relative as a noisy parallel power in the High Atlas would be one of many thorns in the side of Uthman as he and Sanjula settled in. The dealmaking to depose his father's alleged killer left him in a predicament: The office of Hajib was more constrained than it had been in many years, with an empowered Majlis entitled to weigh in and an empowered Caliph still disagreeing with the Ghimarids on fundamental social issues. Further, angry Usulids continued to seethe in the broader public, and while the Ghimarids had powerful tools at their disposal to sway public opinion, riots broke out in a few cities upon Uthman's ascendance. While these would be put down, Uthman nevertheless came to power weakened and faced with considerable internal political and social turmoil.

SUMMARY:
1540: Uthman ibn Abd ar-Rahim marries Sanjula bint Hamdan amidst significant efforts on their part to undermine the Usulid Hajib Tariq.
1541: Following an attempt to assassinate Al-Adid, Hajib Tariq's position is weakened. Caliph Al-Musta'sim's death brings Al-Adid to power, and he promptly dismisses Tariq and issues the Governing Fatwa, the first document formalizing the Asmarid power structure and codifying the existence of the Hajib and the Majlis ash-Shura. At the advice of the Majlis, Uthman is appointed Al-Adid's Hajib, completing Sanjula's revenge on Tariq, who flees to Aghmat.

 

[Planet of Hats]

Aight, let's do this. Time for dat mapdate.

The Mediterranean and West Eurasian World

* The Santiagonian diaspora: They get a mention here for the role of former Santiagonians and their descendants, who have scattered throughout Europe over the last sixty years. Many of these thinkers are either of Anicetian belief or influenced by their thought - that is, they're bringing with them the idea that the real power of the Church should come from the bottom up, not the top down. A large number of religious reformers in Europe at this time are being driven by the influence of Iberian thinkers, particularly in Angland and along the Atlantic coast - and in Germany, where they're finding a receptive ear among those who have long clashed with the Pope over whether Rome or the Emperor has primacy. As much as council ecumenism has taken root to a degree, the spread of Anicetian-adjacent Iberians is creating a steady movement towards the concept of what is called the Church Vulgar, or the Church of the Commons: The idea that the Church should serve the people in a given kingdom, and that the Church within a given realm should be answerable to that realm as opposed to governed like a fief of the Papacy. That tends to take the form of ideas like keeping tithes within a kingdom rather than sending them on to Rome, an idea fuelled by Anicetian notions that the Papal Curia would just spend the money on riches and fripperies and not on matters of faith. The idea of the locally-focused Church forms the core of the Vulgarity movement. There are currents within that movement: Radical Vulgarity, for example, advocates for Mass to be delivered in the language of the commons. In general, Vulgarity is strongest in the north and northwest and weakest in the Mediterranean and eastern Europe.

* Angland: In the midst of religious turmoil at the moment, or at least coming out of it. Angland was already de facto operating under its own ecclesiastical authority, but Vulgarity is kicking that into high gear, largely driven by the preachings of the firebrand Vulgarian churchman Adam of Kent. In 1517 the Anglish King Arvid VII set a Vulgar precedent by appointing a Major Archbishop of Albion and the Isles - essentially a single churchman responsible for running the affairs of the Church in Angland's domains, nominally bending the knee to Rome, but appointed by the monarch. In this case, the Major Archbishop is the Archbishop of Kent, one Willeard Midforder, a close supporter and appointee of Arvid. This is causing no end of frustration in the tributary kingdom of Scotland and the various conquered Irish lands - most of the nobles there opposed this declaration on principle, resulting in a series of brushfire rebellions in Ireland followed by the Eight Years' War between Angland and Scotland, from 1520. That war ended with the Anglish delivering the Scots a few solid thumpings but not hard enough to break them, only managing to secure a marriage between Arvid's son and the daughter of the Scots king. The most seriously damaging of Arvid's Vulgar reforms has been a law specifying that Peter's Pence should flow into the coffers of the Major Archbishop, not the Pope - that is, that dues paid to the Church should stay in Angland. Predictably, Arvid was excommunicated, but an "ecumenical" council of Anglish churchmen de-excommunicated him. Arvid eventually died in 1536, but his son Edgar is more or less staying the course despite throwing the Pope a few bones like backing off of threats to start confiscating church land.

* Romania: Romania's political ties to the Pope have made the arrival of Vulgarity a problem here. In general, the more Mediterranean realms have been friendlier to the Papacy than to the idea of a national church, but that's less the case in old west Aquitaine/Gascony, where a community of reform Christians in Albret raised controversy by withdrawing into their villages and embracing Radical Vulgarity. The Romanian monarchy stomped in, slaughtered hundreds of the villagers, arrested hundreds more and dispossessed the local duke, mainly to demonstrate their respect for the Pope. Beyond that, the Romanian crown has been hard at work trying to solidify their control of Meridiana and Sicily - another reason they're playing to the Pope, as the Italian peninsula is a hotbed of pro-Papal and anti-Vulgarity sentiment. Driven by their desire to maintain their royal legitimacy and to solidify their hold on the boot, the Romanians are basically draping themselves in the Catholic Church and positioning themselves as champions of the Papacy in the face of perceived insults from the north.

* France: The big blue blob grows bigger. The French forced a truce the First Lowland War with a minor concession to German control around Limburg; the Second Lowland War followed in the early 1520s as German trading cities tried and failed to snag some northern port towns. The Third Lowland War, however, rolled a lot of that back: The French attacked in 1531, during a period of turmoil in the Holy Roman Empire. They not only successfully recaptured Limburg, but scored two major propaganda victories, recapturing Champagne and - more importantly - pushing far enough east to successfully seize Luxembourg. Pushing farther than that would be a bite too far, no matter how much the De Rouen kings want Charlemagne's old winter seat at Aachen, but they're making it work by virtue of the expansion of French power and wealth. The royal family controls a powerful demesne, centres in Paris but spanning the English Channel from northern Brittany through Normandy (the Breton holdings taken from the House of Rohan following a tax revolt), and the addition of the Low Countries is bringing in enormous wealth. It's also bringing in Vulgarity, largely because Antwerp and the Duchy of Brabant are the wealthiest areas of northern Europe and a crossroads of trade. France has not, to this point, gone Vulgar - they could go either way, with foes in the pro-Papal Romanç kingdom to the south and the pro-Vulgarity Germans to their east, but at the moment the Rouens are walking a tightrope.

* The Papacy: The Council of Imola back in 1470 already badly weakened the Papacy, forcing the Pope to humiliating concessions like conciliar reforms and a 20-cardinal limit. Since then, the Papacy has been working to push those limits back. The number of Cardinals has increased to more than 30, and the various Popes have taken to ignoring ecumenical council decisions on the grounds that they "aren't ecumenical." (Most of them aren't, to be fair.) The emergence of Vulgarity represents a different sort of threat in that it's not just a German ploy to gain authority over the Papacy, but a groundswell of what we might call populism in modern OTL. Pope Celestine VII, an Italian, is currently pushing back as hard as it can against some of these threads, including playing hardball with the Germans by withholding the crown of Italy and issuing privileges to nobility in the Holy Roman umbrella who support the Pope. Generally speaking, the Pope can rely on Romania, France, Hungary and Poland-Ruthenia as friends, along with most of the northern Italian nobility and the merchant houses in Genoa and Venice.

* The Holy Roman Empire: The breakdown of Papal authority has handed the German empire a bad case of of "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes" in that it's led to the Geroldsecks exiting power and to a contest for who's next. In the years after the First Lowland War, the last Geroldseck Emperor died without direct male issue in the late 1520s, with their extensive holdings in Swabia and Bohemia splitting amongst distant nephews, the most powerful of them underage. A succession dispute rapidly arose among the competing dukes of the Empire. In the north, the nobility rallied behind Friedrich von Saldern, Duke of Lower Saxony. These nobles have the support of the German establishment and a significant number of clergymen, holding more anti-Roman views - and indeed, Friedrich is heavily influenced by Vulgarity. He's considered an advocate for establishing the office of Major Archbishop and Patriarch of Germany. This is heavily favoured by northern nobility and clergy but viewed as overly provocative and schismatic by the Empire's Italian subjects and some of the southern and Alpine Germans. The Italians are withholding support and the Pope is refusing to crown Friedrich King of Italy despite several Germans recognizing him as such; the southern Germans are rallying behind the Duke of Bavaria, currently a Wittelsbach. What's worse is that relations with Hungary soured during the late Geroldseck period due to a dispute over various claims by German counts in Moravia and the area around Zagreb. The Geroldsecks won that war and grabbed land at Hungary's expense - but with the Bataids beginning to muscle into Illyria again, the desire to side with the Hungarians is minimal in the Empire, and Hungary's weakened.

* Italy: With the Pope refusing to crown Friedrich of Lower Saxony King of Italy, the Italian communes and city-states have largely gone into business for themselves. There are a few notables here:

---> 1. The Duchy of Savoy and dependencies. As odd as it sounds, the ruler here, Duke Marco of the House of Zepetici di Savoia, is actually of Polish stock: They're a branch of the House of Szeptycki, who run a county in lower Poland, and married into the Savoyard family about a hundred years ago. They're fully Italianized and largely support the Pope.
---> 2. The Duchy of Milan: Ruled by the Torriani family. Milan is widely considered the most powerful Italian constituent and one of the wealthiest outside of the pure merchant communes: Milan controls powerful trade cities in Pisa and Lucca and key cities like Modena and Milan itself. Pisa and Lucca operate with partial autonomy as trading communes subordinate to the Ducal authority. The Torrianis have been diligent in stamping out Vulgarity and are considered the strongest champions of the Pope in northern Italy.
---> 3. The Duchy of Tuscany: Ruled by a branch of the Orsini family based in Sovana, having consolidated control of the realm over several rivals, including the old Tusculani family that used to basically rule the peninsula during Italy's stint as a kingdom. The most politically connected of the Italian states.
---> 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8: Respectively, the County of Brescia, the Viscounty of Trent, the County of Tirol, the County of Verona and the County of Pistoia. Minor powers with little to recommend them, with Tirol and Trent being somewhat more kindly disposed to the Wittelsbachs but not generally in favour of Vulgarity.
---> 9: The Lordship of Elba. Surprisingly in the hands of the French Duke of Berry, much to its frustration. Genoa wants it and will probably get it, unless Tuscany or Milan decide to kick them.

* The Italian merchant communes: Venice in particular has grown its authority through the period of tension with the Pope. It already owned a lot of cities at the head of the Adriatic, but they're now leading a massive trade hegemony and own several cities in the Ionian islands in a devil's bargain with the Bataids - really, they moved in during the Little Fitna and bought up port rights, and the Bataids haven't gotten around to kicking them out yet. Venice's loyalties in the current state of affairs tend to be self-centred but tilted towards the Italians and the Pope and against the Empire, largely because they don't like the German focus on the Baltic and North Sea trade and the privileges the Holy Roman Emperors have handed to the northern cities. Genoa, meanwhile, gained control of the city of Piombino - once on its own - and has set up a south-Mediterranean trade port on the edge of the Bayadhid periphery at Brega on the Gulf of Sidra; they're paying the locals for port space but basically run the town through a strong garrison, and while they're a mild annoyance to the Bayadhids, they're a quiet source of trade.

* Denmark: Vulgarity here is making appearances largely through connections between Denmark and Angland - there aren't many Iberians prowling Danish cities, but trade and religious contacts have left many a rich Dane with Ideas, as have contacts with the Holy Roman Empire. That said, the Danish monarchy hasn't gone whole-hog on Vulgarity, in large part because they're not on great terms with the Germans at the moment. The big sticking point is the expansion of German trading cities in the North and Baltic Seas, which Denmark views as cutting into ducal and royal tax revenues. Denmark has managed to kick a couple of German trade houses out of cities in Scania, largely because the Holy Roman Empire has other things on its mind right now, but they continue to scowl southward. Their biggest battles have been with the Swedish, whom they see as muscling into Norway. The other key thing for the Danish is that their current royal dynasty is actually of Breton stock: In the 1520s the death of a monarch without male heir saw the throne go to a nephew married to a descendant of the House of Rohan. There's little chance of a cross-inheritance, though, largely because the main branch of the Rohans has been unlanded as the Norman French monarchs have consolidated their power. The Danish cadet branch is known as the Rohans of Roskilde.

* Sweden: Increasingly showing its muscle. A couple of wars with the Danish in the last 60 years resulted in Sweden gaining control of several highland fiefs in montane Scandinavia, though the Danish have largely kept them from gaining ground in Scania and have managed to smack down Swedish efforts to gain control of trading posts closer to the lower Baltic. While there are some early moves towards Vulgarity happening here, Sweden's considered far from the European core, which makes it a bit of a wild card in religious terms.

* Prussia: The early 16th century was a disaster for Prussia. Weakened already by prior conflicts with Russia, Prussia attempted to retrench, but a series of weak leaders and internal conflict resulted in the kingdom losing ground to its neighbours. The Baltic War of 1525-31 saw Prussia clobbered by an unholy alliance of Russia and Poland-Ruthenia, with the Slavic powers coming in on the side of a pretender centred in Livonia. Ultimately both the Polish and Russian sides took what they wanted from the Prussian borderlands and split the kingdom, propping up Livonian and Prussian contenders in two distinct principalities, one a Polish tributary and the other bending the knee to Russia. At this point Prussia exists in a state of division at the suffrance of the two larger eastern European powers, though the locals aren't happy about it.

* Kingdoms of Poland and Ruthenia: The so-called Dwa Krolestwa (Two Kingdoms) came about through the close intermarriages between the Polish and Ruthenian royal houses. A series of inheritances culminating in 1519 led both crowns into the hands of Wladyslaw Khotynsky, who was initially Grand Prince of Ruthenia before being granted the Polish crown after the Polish branch of the marital line died without male heir. Wladyslaw died a few years ago, but his son Leszek is in the process of balancing out a realm that's growing in strength - all the moreso with the passage of eastern Pomerania into Poland via marriages among the Polish vassals, finally giving the kingdom a port on the Baltic. Poland-Ruthenia is not so much a unified realm as it is two separate kingdoms in a personal union, with Poland the more economically prosperous and Ruthenia the more militarized.

* Russia: Backing on up to the east. The Bear finished subjugating the Perm Kyrgyz of the Kaban Khaganate through the early 1500s. Russian hegemony stretches now to the Urals, and explorers are beginning to push eastward over the mountains to seek out reliable mountain passes and routes that circumvent the dangerous southern flatlands. Many of these explorers are actually hired men of Turkic origin, many of them Tabans, Argyns and Kyrgyz, some of them Russians who have begun to pick up horsemanship culture, because some things are just inevitable when you live on the edge of the steppe. Increasingly Russia is flexing its muscles in Europe as well, dealing a defeat to Prussia in the Baltic War and gaining control of upper White Ruthenia and Pskov in the subsequent concessions from Prussia.

* The Nasrids of Ifriqiya: Still part of the Umayyad sphere, they've been involved in a series of brief but ugly wars with Genoa over control of the island of Melita and over Genoa's desire to try and capture a coastal city or two as trading ports. A Genoese attack on Bizerte was driven off a couple of decades ago. In 1531 Genoa actually occupied Melita for a song, only for the Nasrids to drop in with a fleet and kick them out four years later. Culturally the Nasrids are doing quite well, with cities closer to the coast prospering and New World crops beginning to take hold. They've brought in the printing press and Iftenic script and are undergoing a similar internal dispute between traditionalists and reformers that's taking place in the Asmarid Empire, though at lower intensity.

* The Bayadhids of Egypt: Doing fairly well for themselves, they've recently smacked down a drought-related rebellion among some of their more restive Bedouins and chased them down the Nile, where they're causing havoc in old Nubia. More importantly, they jumped on the Bataids during the Little Fitna, sniping off a rebellious emir in the Levant and capturing Jerusalem - an event the Bataids weren't in a position to respond to with more than a token force. The Bayadhid hold on the southern Levant is tenuous - they definitely don't have Ascalon, for ex, and their word might as well be mud past the Jordan - but after the chaos of the Little Fitna, there are more than a few Muslims who are happy to acknowledge the Bayadhids and the perception of a more Arab-run Islamic power. The Bayadhids have openly placed the name of the Umayyad Caliph in the khutbah and begun to sponsor more Maliki learning.



Eurasia East of the Urals and Asia Minor

* The Bataids: The Little Fitna sparked off a couple of decades of instability among the Bataids, and they're only now recovering from a wave of rebellions and instability. They went through a period of about four emperors in a three-year span amidst a bloody civil war, and the late Irbisids took over several areas along the Tigris and Euphrates, at one point threatening to attack Baghdad before Khubilai Khan's death. The Hashemites of the Hejaz didn't take up arms, but at this point they're ignoring the Bataids and not bothering to remit taxes to Constantinople or enforce edicts against followers of the Umayyads or of the Shia, and the Bataids are too busy to wrestle them over it. The big distraction was a huge uprising among Christians in peninsular Greece and in lower Syrmia; it took several years to put down and only wrapped up in the early 1530s, largely thanks to the general Aidamir as-Sarkasi - Aidamir the Circassian, a ghilman from where his name implies. The current Bataid Emperor is largely in power because Aidamir supports him and has the loyalty of the armies. Aidamir's more Turco-Persian than Greek in his ways and has support from a lot of more traditional elements in society, and he's currently shoring up his credibility by leading a series of summer raids in the Haemus, intent on grabbing back Illyria. Notably, Aidamir's martial influence involves a move away from the cavalry-dominated model favoured by the Bataids before: He's more inclined to put jazails in the hands of infantry and mow down knights with walls of blackpowder pellets. Quicker and easier to raise a big army that way. Regardless, the real power in Bataid world is actually Aidamir, and it's entirely possible he might get it in his head to make a play to formalize that at some point.

* The Former Irbisids: Khubilai the Snow Leopard Khan was dominant in his day, but as with so many great-man empires, his empire did not long survive his death. Upon the death of Khubilai, his sons and generals began fighting amongst themselves, but proved unable to resist a series of local uprisings. The most serious was one in Persia led by the general Nur ad-Din ibn Hossein al-Miladi, centred in Luristan and the southern mountains; the Miladids have largely gained control over mainland Persia south of the Alborz Mountains, including winning over most of the loose vassals of the old Mezinids. They're a Persian Sunni dynasty with substantial military might at their disposal. The other key rebellion was led by the Yagburids, a Turkmen dynasty centred in Rasht, in the Yuregir Turkmen-dominated strip north of the Alborz. At the moment, Khubilai's nephew Burigli rules a reduced Irbisid realm out of Samarkand, but he's currently awash in the remnants of the migrating White Horde of Tabans and likely to be overthrown.

* The Karachar Khaganate: The Volga Tabans, centred around the mouths of the Volga and Ural Rivers and down the Caspian coast towards Daghestan. They're a more concentrated take on the Black Horde. The name is derived from words for "black" and "soldier." While reduced in strength these days, they're still a powerful local cluster dealing in slaves and silks via overland trade and clashing on the regular with Russian frontiersmen. Try as they might, the Russians have had little luck chasing the Karachars out of the arid riverlands.

* Hindustan in General: The Nimanni Sultanate, after a bit of heel-cooling, scored a big win in 1505 when they struck into the weakening Radha Kingdom and conquered most of it. The region is absolutely NOT embracing Islam, but the tax revenue it's bringing in is more than offsetting the manpower cost of holding it. A few Buddhist lords on the periphery remain independent and trying to win the support of the Lavo Kingdom. In fact the Nimanni won't go further east than this; it's hard to campaign that far from their power base and they damn well know it. They've also got their hands full with the Seunas, who are continuing to halt Nimanni efforts to grow southward. Many of the lords in eastern India have nominally thrown in with the Seunas to try and keep the Muslims out. As for Lanka and the Hoysalas, merchants, probably~ and they've got SPICES~

* The Great Wu: China will grow larger. A war with Korea in the 1490s brought the peninsula's rulers to bend the knee to the Dragon Throne, and Chinese troops have pushed into poorly-controlled hinterlands to extend the geographical extent of the land China claims. That said, the Wu aren't hugely expansionist: They're in the midst of a steady period of cultural and economic growth and modernization. Industry has still been slow to spread due to the glut of manpower in China, but the Grand Canal now has locks where barges are pulled along by steam-powered chain mechanisms, and the Chinese army is increasingly becoming a blackpowder army in much greater degree. Only the fact that China has everything it needs within China is stopping them from gaining the curiosity to go out exploring. Europeans are beginning to discover them now - they've had a couple of low-key skirmishes with Anglish pirates, for example.

* The Lavo Kingdom: They ate the Ava Kingdom not so long ago and are presently working towards an apex of power, most notably forcing Champa into tributary status. The Lavo Kingdom is one of the wealthiest and most sophisticated kingdoms on Earth right now, and their position is making them an incredible trade crossroads - and an idea crossroads. There hasn't been another experiment with steam here, but Chinese ideas are filtering into the kingdom along with Hindustani and Islamic ideas and goods. The Lavo rulers are increasingly becoming outward-looking and considering moving their capital west to the Irrawaddy region for the sake of trade.

* The Ma-i Archipelago: Both Islam and Buddhism are spreading through the islands. Mindanao, Madyas and Sulu are largely shifting towards Islam, the northern islands towards Buddhism and tributary relationships with the Great Wu. The Asmarid colony on Mubaraka continues to chug along, though there are few Andalusians living there and quite a large number of black slaves and Ma-i workers and merchants.

* Japan: The bloody civil war was settled in favour of the Imagawas when the Nanbu lost a critical battle in the late 1480s, causing fringe supporters to swing out of their camp. Blackpowder weapons were pivotal in turning the tide, some from China and some sold in by Andalusian traders. Since then, Andalusian merchants gained trading privileges for awhile in some of the key Japanese ports, but the Daimyos are somewhat wary of Islam spreading. Christians are also now beginning to drift into the area to nose around.

* Ryukyu: The islands are now firmly under the control of the monarch at Chuzan - or rather, the Emir. The current ruler has outright embraced Islam and adopted the name Umar, though they've basically syncretized with a lot of traditional Ryukyuan beliefs in practice. Islam is in the process of becoming a majority, sitting close to 45% now.

* The Janggala Kingdom: Still Hindu-Buddhist, still absolutely swimming in money. Every now and then China attempts to muscle in on them, but the Janggalas have one of the most effective navies around and can hold their own in any battle on the high seas. They're increasingly being visited not only by Muslim merchants, but by Christians curious to see what they've got to offer. Asmarid and Bataid-originating traders in the area are doing everything they can to leverage their relationships with local lords to tilt the scales away from Christendom, with the result being that some Christian ships have been turned away from harbours.



Sub-Saharan Sudan

* The Zeila Sultanate: On the way up, gaining control of much of the Ethiopian coast and clashing regularly with the isolated inland Christians. They're increasingly a noteworthy power in the area. They've had a few conflicts with Warsheikh over cities in Berbera, but for the most part they've been fairly stable and focused on expanding their footprint in the region. A rising problem for them is the arrival of Christian merchants in the Indian Ocean; they've had a few issues with Anglish pirates in particular trying to snipe off their trade ships.

* The Warsheikh Sultanate: Not as big as they used to be, largely because of the need to focus on threats from the sea and from the north. They lost a war with Zeila that cost them a few toeholds in Berbera. That in itself wouldn't be so bad, but they're increasingly being troubled by Christian traders who want to muscle in on the monsoonal trade routes. A Warsheikh flotilla defeated a Danish raiding force off Bandarbeyla in 1538, and several coastal towns have been obliged to repulse attacks by Danish, Anglish and even a couple of Romanian raiders. The Dutch are also beginning to nose around the East Sudan coastline.

* The Kilwa Confederacy: Continuing to steam along, but they're bearing the brunt of Christian efforts to gain toeholds along the Sudan to supply ships heading towards India. They've withstood a few attacks, including a couple of Anglish pirates who tried to capture the port of Kilwa itself. Andalusian trade fleets have been pretty helpful in staving the Christian interlopers off so far. The Danish have been the most serious regional rivals, mainly because they gained a toehold in Dragenland and are building up a trade factory on the coast, sheltered by the islands.

* Atbarah: The Mukhalladid dynasty ruling in upper Nubia steadily decayed through the 1400s and has been overrun by Bedouins wandering south from Egypt. The current dynasty here is actually Sunni, of the Maliki persuasion, and busily stomping down independent Shia nomads in the region. Like the Bayadhids, the rulers of Atbarah recognize the Umayyad Caliph., largely because the ruling dynasty claims their legitimacy from descent from the Umayyads.

* The Neo-Fatimids: Surprised to see them? The drought conditions that took down the Mukhalladids also affected the Ghanimids of lower Nubia, but rather than migrating Sunni Bedouins, the power vacuum was moved into by distant descendants of the long-gone Fatimid dynasty - or at least, a claimant who alleges he's a descendant of the Fatimids. The so-called Shams al-Din claims to descend from the last Fatimid ruler and has claimed himself the title of Imam, setting himself up in Sobah with the support of nomadic Arabo-Nubians. The little empire is in the process of re-consolidating territory back down the Nile, and while they're unlikely to menace Egypt proper, they're presenting a pretty good case to be recognized as the legitimate inheritors to the Ismaili imamate.

* The NiKongo Emirate: The NiKongo empirate is going full swing at this point. They are a land power, of course, but NsiKongo and a couple of other cities along the Zadazir are becoming quite prosperous and increasingly centred by architecturally splendid districts. The NiKongo emirs have turned slave-trade cash to building public works, roads and mosques, and NsiKongo in particular is increasingly a small but wealthy city of red earth brick and stone buildings. They've followed the current trend in Asmarid and Nasrid architecture to use yeseria plasterwork as a decorative: The Emir's palace and the main mosque in the city both have colourful yeseria patterns decorating areas, along with alfiz arch moulding and even a couple of domes. That said, most regular homes are more utilitarian and take the form of red earth cubes in the cities and more traditional wood buildings in villages.

* The Yaka Kingdom: The Yaka are the most powerful of the Bantu-derived tribes north of the NiKongo realm. They've had contacts with Eurasian traders too, and they've taken to raiding down the Zadazir to make off with the wealth and crops being imported into the riverland. The Yaka aren't Muslim yet, but they're likely to head that way. They've got a couple of small cities that look suspiciously NiKongo-esque in their architecture, and there's some effort to begin planting cassava.



Alasca and Berengaria

* Fyrland (Denmark): Much of this territory is not really properly held or anything, but represents Treaty of Granham lands currently claimed by Denmark. While they were initially not in much of a hurry to establish settler colonies, Danish priorities changed in the early 1500s as their population continued to grow and the climate continued to cool marginally. Norway isn't great land for overflow population, and Denmark proper is not large. The first permanent Danish settlement was set up in the 1520s at Tatshågen, the site of OTL Tadoussac, Québec. Disease has begun to proliferate among the local Innu, Mi'kmaq and Iroquoian peoples as the Danish extend fur-trading contacts with the locals; it's hit hardest in Elderbeve (Alderbeven to the Danish) because Old World people got there first. The island of Brasil's still barely inhabited - Newfoundland is not exactly hospitable - but Danish settlers have their eyes on a few habitable areas, mainly the Great Assumption River and the southwestern Vindalen region (that is, the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia), where they feel there's good farmland. The prospect exists of the Danish seriously making ago at setting up colonies here, easily in reach of home and suitable for overflow of bodies from Scandinavia. With Sweden menacing on the continent, Denmark's not eager to wage in wars of conquest with the natives; they're signing treaties wherever they can and recognizing various local leaders as tributaries. It is not uncommon for settlers to marry native women here.

* Helenia (Angland): On paper not as expansive as Fyrland, and still with much of it not properly inhabited or garrisoned, but more densely populated. The war with the Wampanoag and the Granham Treaty with Denmark have inspired Anglish explorers and fur traders to begin to move inland more, and a few new small towns have been set up in areas in what we know as New England. Wars with indigenous peoples are not infrequent, and settling these lands is considered dangerous - in the big picture Helenia's still small compared to anywhere the Asmarids have settled - but the Anglish see potential for profit here, mainly because there are beavers here and they can bring back pelts that sell for a mint in European markets.

* The Otomi Emirate: Now in control of the lands of the Chichimeca and extracting tribute not only from the Zapotecs and Mixtecs, but from the people living somewhat further to the south. They've also soaked up a few kishafa princelets whose cities weren't all that productive. The Otomi aren't a global power or anything, but they're coming into their own as an actual indigenous-led kingdom - albeit one where the ruling class have become Andalusianized to a significant degree.

* Chihéode (Al-Jahedi): With the Chichimeca largely subjugated, trade has begun to flow north from the Otomi realm, and the exploration of the Southwest by Islamic traders has begun. The forbidding desert was originally overlooked by the Andalusis as not particularly worth settling, but a Berber exploration party with a convoy of camels went through in the 1490s, leaving a big impression on indigenous tribes already swept by diseases that had flowed north through trade contacts. Athabaskan-speaking Diné migrating into the region, while suffering ghoulish attrition from virgin-field diseases, nevertheless brought with them the Three Sisters agricultural package and a willingness to trade with migrating Nahua peddling benefits from the isthmus: Namely camels. The southern Diné tribes, particularly the tribe known as the Chihéode - the Red Ceremonial Paint People, OTL a group that would metastasize into the Chiricahua. The Chihéode arrived along the OTL San Juan River around 1500 and stopped there as a wave of smallpox ripped through the vanguard of the Diné migration. In the ensuing 40 years they've lost a lot of people, but the survivors have managed to obtain camels via trade with kishafa coming up from the south. More importantly, they've begun listening to a couple of Sufis. While the Chihéode have not converted to Islam or Arabized en masse, the tribe is beginning to adopt a nomadic pastoral lifestyle around camel herding, and there are a few soft Muslims among them, mostly healers who are Muslim in name and retain a lot of shamanistic ideas.

* The Zuni, Hopi and Tewa: The Hisatsinom were in decline from the mid-1300s as climatic conditions on the Mesa Verde grew more austere, but the spread of epidemic diseases and the arrival of the Diné scattered the survivors of the group known to us as the Ancestral Pueblo to the four winds. The old Hisatsinom core is the domain of nomads now, and the scant cores of the post-Hisatsinom successor societies have migrated to marginally more favourable climes. The three largest groups are the Zuni and Tewa, who've settled along the Little Colorado River, and the Hopi, who've wandered further east than OTL. The Hopi in particular are largely dominated by the Chihéode, while the Zuni are well on their way there. While the Chihéode are nomadic and increasingly camel-pastoral, the three Puebloan groups are largely sedentary and getting to work building pueblos.

* The Al-Busuji: This isn't their real name because we're not sure what the deal was with this group - the Spanish called them Coahuiltecans but they're really a group of dubiously related tribes speaking little-known languages and living along the Wadi al-Busuji, known OTL as the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo. The river takes its name from a Maghrebi explorer's contact with a Tewa villager, who gave the river's name as posoge, and the Otomi, Andalusis and Berbers just refer to the people in this region as "the people of the Busuji." They've obtained horses via trade with various kishafa but have not embraced Islam, and they're harassing their neighbours with regular raids.

* The Karankawas: Also probably not their real name. They're living along the Texas coast south to the mouth of the Busuji, and they're much unlike any of their neighbours in terms of cultural mores, largely because they're probably Caribs. Unlike the raiders along the Busuji, the Karankawas - who've suffered brutal casualties at the hands of epidemic diseases and Busujid raids - adhere to a lifestyle of canoe nomadism, traveling by small watercraft every few weeks. They are proving somewhat receptive to the diffident but present efforts of a handful of poorly-attested Sufis to spread Islam among them. It's likely that the Karankawas will ultimately convert to Islam in some form, but they're weak and isolated in a difficult region and their long-term survival is by no means assured.

* The Caddoans and Wichitas: The Mississippian cultures peaked in population around the mid-1450s and have been in a steady decline and fragmentation since. Epidemic diseases are sweeping through the population here and hollowing out mound cities along the Mississippi, resulting in a breakdown of overarching social orders. Individual cities are now calling their own shots and becoming increasingly ruralized. Andalusian explorers have traipsed through the area and mostly come back wondering why there's no gold, though there's a realization that there's some lovely land in here. Some of the southern tribes have started to get ahold of horses.

* The Niitsitapi: The slow course of global cooling is pushing the OTL Blackfoot south onto the warmer parts of the Great Plains and the edge of the Midwest. They're clashing with the Menominee/Mamaceqtaw and the Siouan tribes, who've begun to form slightly closer tribal groupings.

* The K'esyehotine: On their way south to the more arid parts of the Americas, backfilling into areas vacated by the earlier wave of Diné. They do not have horses yet, but they likely will.

* The Inuit: The Thule people have been fully displaced at this point beyond a few dwindling enclaves on this or that unfavourable island, leaving the Inuit in control of the north. Now and then you'll get Danish foresters stopping in Markland and encountering a few of them, but contacts are quite rare.

* Muqmara: The Andalusian settlement in Rataam was largely abandoned in the 1520s - it never took off like the more prosperous cash crop farms in the Pearl Sea, and the Charrua people living in the area eventually got ahold of horses and started raiding the small group of Andalusian farmers living around the town. Eventually most of them either left for Azania or Tirunah or went inland, with a few outright joining the Charrua. Romanian sailors turned up in 1539 and found Rataam abandoned and being swallowed up by runaway crops. They've renamed it Sant-Paul-del-Pòrt-Morisc - Saint Paul of the Moorish Port - and while a few Catholic priests and curious explorers have turned up, they're finding raids by mounted Charruas a bit of a handful. There's increasingly talk about moving to the other side of the estuary in the hopes the natives there will be less aggressive. The Andalusians still claim the region but they're not showing much interest in pressing that claim right now.

* Iskantinsuyu: In contact on the regular with Islamic traders from Tirunah, but by this point the Quechua and Aymara have had a century or two to get their legs back under them. Epidemic disease has left the region with a severely depleted population, but they're beginning to bounce back enough that Iskantinsuyu has been able to expand into some new territory. Old World religions have not caught on here; the Sapa Incas are actively promoting old traditions and beliefs in the face of the occasional Sufi wandering in to talk about the Prophet. They're very much aware that there are Strange Overseas People living off to the north now, and they'd rather keep their traditional ways, thanks - but they're also beginning to get ahold of Old World technologies. Iskantinsuyu is beginning to experiment with iron weapons and tools, they have traded for a few goats and chickens, and a horse or two has even turned up. If they can avoid taking a sharp right hook to the societal jaw, there's potential for them to adapt more overseas tech and springboard into being a rare example of a New World power that survives within its pre-contact power framework.

 

[Planet of Hats]

What's the story with Vaçeu? It appears the Romanian colony there has grown? Also, what's with the Haudenosaunee? Saving that for an update concerning them and their interaction with Helenia?

Last time we saw them, the Romanians had established a small pernambuco-wood station there at Sant-Laurenç, overlooking Sant-Isabeu Bay - roughly the site of OTL Salvador. That was in 1498.

The ensuing few years saw the Romanians start off by shipping pernambuco wood home, while a few explorers scouted the area in the hopes of finding what they hoped would be there: Advanced and wealthy civilizations. They mostly found wild lands and a few wary natives. Unbeknownst to the Romanians, the local Tupi have suffered significant attrition due to the rampant spread of epidemic disease through the South American jungles, driven by Andalusian trade contacts, exploration, settlement in Marayu and at times just firsthand killing of indigenous people. The Romanians have no way of knowing about germ theory, of course, so what they see is terra verge - virgin land. Aside from having to stave off a few poorly-equipped native raids, they haven't had many problems settling into Sant-Laurenç and setting up pernambuco wood farming operations and sugar plantations - but they also haven't found the advanced trading partners they'd hoped for.

The Romanians have dealt with this by designating the area a Free March and opening it up to settlement. Their plan is basically to create a market out there.

At the moment, the Romanians are encouraging merchants and second sons of nobles to go on "adventures to the west" - that is, to sail west and set up shop in the Vaçeu, and to bring families and labourers if they can afford to establish some sort of viable business. This has led to a surge in sugarcane plantations popping up in the Vaçeu. It's also led many of these plantation owners to cut deals with slavers along the Bight of Sudan and import a slave workforce, given that working in a sugarcane plantation is not exactly fun. Some Romanian families have settled and brought with them Old World crops, mainly to feed Sant-Laurenç. Another major settlement popped up in 1529 at Sant-Andreu-del-Riu-Balena (around OTL Caravelas), initially set up by Gascons as a whaling station but expanded with the addition of sugar plantations. Some smaller villages also exist, though most of Vaçeu is unclaimed.

More than that, Romania is beginning to bankroll explorers interested in scouting more of the Berengarian interior. Vaçeu is not that far removed from the OTL region of Minas Gerais, where there is significant gold to be found. If the Romanians can get ahold of the gold earlier than the Portuguese did, they have the potential to have a cash-cow colony on their hands - even moreso than the cash crop farming would already bring in. Pernambuco wood and sugar are worth quite a bit, after all.

As much as the Andalusians have strong interests in the southern half of the Gharb al-Aqsa, the continent of Berengaria holds a lot of potential for Romania because the Granham Treaty only divided the north of the new landmass, not the south. In theory, Romania could argue that Inter alia res gave them everything south of the bull line, including all of Berengaria not inhabited by the Moors. In practice, that's a bit weak, but the Anglish and Danish are closer to Alasca than Berengaria and more accustomed to operating in temperate climes than Mediterranean. The Romanians have better access to the South Atlantic, and they've got better relations with the Asmarids, so it's feasible for them to make a go of it in Vaçeu.

Basically if this colony takes off, Provencal - increasingly referred to as Romanç, incidentally - might catch on as a major New World language.

 

[Planet of Hats]

Excerpt: Economic and Social Outcomes of the Blossoming in the Asmarid Empire - Prof. Jacme Millau, Academy of Marselha, AD 1997


As much as the period following the Governing Fatwa was one of social change and turmoil, it was also one of consequential technological leaps that would lay the conditions to launch the world into an era of naturalism and industry. The Asmarid Empire of the 1540s onward, with its extensive contacts with China, large and well-developed colonial network and ability to rapidly disseminate printed materials via mechanical presses, was an ideal place for such changes to emerge.

Much of the drive behind Asmarid advancement can be traced to social and geopolitical changes in the colonial period. New technologies had already begun to increase the output of mines in Iberia and the Maghreb, most notably horse railroads in the earliest years of the 1500s. At the same time, the combination of more modern farming techniques, new crops from the Gharb al-Aqsa, centuries of population recovery from the Great Plague and a global cooling trend since the Crossing were coming together to form a dual pressure: A growing population, but not enough land in Iberia and the Maghreb to feed them all. These trends drove migration to Anawak, Tirunah, Al-Gattas, Quwaniyah and other major and minor colonial centres, creating periodic labour shortages. The Famine of 1504 had further sparked migration.

Asmarid overseas wilayahs were growing increasingly populous and profitable, but the emergence of Christian and Hindu-Buddhist rivals on the maritime trade lanes made shipping goods and cash back to the Asmarid homeland increasingly dangerous. The need to tangle with maritime interlopers - Anglish and Danish freebooters, Genoese and Venetian merchantmen, Janggala and Chinese ships, Bataid vessels out to muscle in on perceived apostasy - led to the construction of larger safina and rafaq-type ships to safeguard trade lanes. These ships increasingly eschewed crossbows for blackpowder tanins, requiring more and more iron to be wrought into weapons and more and more wood to be chopped down for vessels.

It is this demand for cannon steel that drove the Asmarids to redouble their efforts in Iberia's preeminent iron-mining region: The area around the Wadi al-Ahmar in the peninsula's southeast.[1]

The river flows down to the coast near the city of Walbah and forms part of an enormous mineral belt spanning through the southwest of the peninsula almost as far as Lishbuna.[2] The river's name comes from its tendency to run red. The water is highly acidic and laden with iron and other minerals, at least as far down as the town of Libulah.[3] Much effort had been put in by the Romans to mine silver, copper, gold and iron there before the mines lapsed into a much lower level of activity.

By the early 1500s, however, Asmarid miners were once again delving into the mines along the Ahmar, seeking not only gold and silver, but iron for modern weapons. Still more iron was purchased in ingot form from the Nasrids of Ifriqiya, whose domain held a number of iron mines in the area west of Bizerte and who had also begun producing more iron and steel for the purposes of ships, weapons and farm equipment.

Neither Iberia nor Morocco are known for their vast forests, and while islands like Liwaril were being harvested for shipbuilding wood, feedstock for iron and steel-making furnaces was hard to come by due to high demand for a limited resource. Scholars generally agree that it was this growing demand for high-quality metalworking, combined with increasing demand for increasingly scarce wood resources, that drove Asmarid metallurgists and blacksmiths to begin experimenting with coke.

The conquest of the Christian kingdoms in the north had brought a reasonably productive coal region in old Asturias into the Asmarid realm, and horse railroads were allowing it to be exploited more effectively. Still more coal would be extracted from a mining region south of Oujda. While coal wasn't widely used at first, by the 1540s Sinophiles were beginning to notice that Chinese ironworkers in the core of the Wu Empire were making extensive use of coke in their furnaces. It was only a matter of time until someone within the Asmarid realm put the pieces together.

The first coke-fired blast furnace in the Asmarid realm appeared in Oujda in 1543, constructed by the Sinophile blacksmith Izebboudjen ibn Munis al-Haddad. Ibn Munis had traveled extensively in northeastern China and spent a year apprenticing to a Chinese blacksmith in the Yellow River ironworking region, where he had seen advanced Chinese technologies in action. Already known for the high quality of his metalworking, he sought to produce even more metal to work by operating a bigger furnace driven by cokes. His gambit proved successful: The coke-fired furnace in Oujda steadily out-produced more conventional furnaces, producing larger and larger quantities of cast iron and becoming a primary supplier of cast iron goods primarily for farms and kitchens.

The introduction of means of producing large amounts of iron at a faster rate formed one of the prerequisites for the Machine Age, contrary to assumptions that the era was simply based on the steam engine. It was not, however, the only prerequisite. A few of these were beginning to emerge in the Asmarid realm, largely spread by Sinophiles and Ghimarids and propagated in many cases through manuals published via Iftenic script on a printing press.

Advancements in textile weaving would also prove important. By the 1520s, weavers in the Asmarid and Nasrid realms were making regular use of modified spinning wheels featuring foot-powered tradles that allowed the spinner to keep their hands free while rotating the spindle with the treadle, along with the implementation of flyers to twist the yarn as it wound onto the spindle. These wheels - known in Christendom as the Moorish wheel - sped up production of yarns by allowing the spinner to wind the yarn without actually stopping their spinning.

These improvements to textile-spinning tools would prove vital to one of the Asmarid world's more distinct industries: The cotton trade. While Christian kingdoms had some knowledge of cotton at the time, it was not widely produced on the continent and was considered very difficult to obtain, with knowledge of weaving and spinning it largely confined to Romania and Italy.[4] The north of the continent largely imported cotton; the Islamic and Hindu-Buddhist world actively produced it, and Asmarid access to the Sea of Pearls gave it the strongest claim on productive cotton-producing land. Cotton plantations would pop up in Tirunah and Marayu, in the north of the Otomi Emirate and in Mawfilah.[5] Still more cotton would be produced on plantations along the Wadi al-Dahab, much to the profit of the Simalas.

~​

Technological advancements manifested themselves not only in personal belongings, but in architecture - a trend most strongly observed in the form of clock towers.

The emergence of blackpowder technology had made new mechanical parts available to Muslim craftsmen, namely the mainspring. Further developments came from opposite ends of the Islamic world, with the stackfreed emerging in 15th-century Baghdad and the fusee from crossbow-preferring Andalusia. The first to truly bring them together was Muhammad ibn Turashi al-Tarabzuni, a thoroughly Persianized clockmaker of Pontic Greek stock living in Alexandria in the early 1500s. Commissioned by the Bayadhids to assist in the construction of a new mosque, he capped off the mosque's minaret with an innovation: A mechanical clock with a minute hand. It's the oldest surviving example of a functional clock minaret.

Al-Tarabzuni's design would prove deeply influential, witnessed by pilgrims and traders flowing through Alexandria from across the Arab world - and from parts of the Christian. By the 1530s, a large clock minaret had been constructed in Jerusalem to a design similar to Al-Tarabzuni's. By 1540, one stood over a new mosque in Athens, and another was erected in Córdoba as part of renovations to the Great Mosque.

The clock-minaret would steadily become a feature of Asmarid architecture from the 1540s onward - the architectural style recognized today as Western Blossoming architecture. Features of this style would include...

• A transition towards pointed hemispherical domes and away from the crossed-arch domes once typical of Andalusian architecture. Domes from the 1500s were typically in a slightly conical shape and decorated with bright geometric patterns, largely predominated by indigo, yellow and white.
• The implementation of clocks into minarets on more prominent new mosques.
• Preference for pointed arches, typically with a pronounced keystone and artistically notable voussoirs - usually in the form of reliefs, yeserias or alternating stones in light and dark colours.
• Ample use of bold ablaq styling - that is, alternating rows of light and dark masonry used in construction. These would rarely include simple black-and-white contrasts, with red brick against yellow-to-white sandstone or limestone being the most common. The most expensive buildings would feature elaborate ablaq in complementary but contrasting hues of priceless marble.
• Regular use of variations on the sebka relief pattern, most notably darj wa ktaf interlacing patterns of curved and straight lines. These are often utilized as panels on exterior walls, with the voids between the outer latticework frequently filled with contrasting material such as colourful tilework.
• A resurgence in the use of zellige tile. While ubiquitous during the Blue Period, zellige of the Western Blossoming period incorporated new colours, including whites, yellows, browns and even more pricey violets and greens. The most expensive of these colours was Marayu green, a shade of viridian created through the addition of chromium oxides harvested from a single river in Marayu; few examples of it exist simply because of its rarity.[6]
• Extensive use of mashrabiya balconies, usually brightly coloured.
• The use of tall mullion-divided windows - in buildings of importance, often glazed.
• An increasing use of enamelled glass in colours typically complementary of a building's other exterior features.
• In general, a tendency to build higher and larger. Older Andalusian buildings were typically somewhat lower in height than contemporaries in the Levant, but Western Blossoming architecture reflects an increase in massing and scale, with more tall buildings emerging throughout the 1500s and onward.

Regional variations emerged in the Gharb al-Aqsa, largely lumped under the blanket term of Al-Aqsan Blossoming architecture. Architecture among the Otomi steadily shifted more into alignment with mainstream Asmarid styles, with key differences. Geometric patterns in Anawak, Quwaniyyah and Al-Gattas in particular tended towards more right angles and squared geometric patterns than the often-rounded patterns frequent in Iberia and the Maghreb, a clear influence from patterns frequent in pre-Islamic Anawak. Rather than blues, architecture in the more indigenously-predominated areas of the Gharb al-Aqsa tended to favour vermilion, often in combination with black, white, yellow and brown, giving Otomi and Maya settlements in the post-Crossing era a distinctive look. Architecture in Tirunah, Marayu and Al-Gattas continued to favour blue motifs. The proliferation of vermilion relied in large part on Andean mines controlled by Iskantinsuyu, fostering an increasing uptake of trade.

These architectural styles had some influence in Christian Europe - for instance, the Middle Romanesque style prevalent in Romania from the mid-1500s would adopt tall mullion-divided windows, chiarascuro masonry work and floor tilework patterns showing clear descent from Moorish styles - but would largely distinguish the western Islamic world from its immediate neighbours. The Romanians were rather more interested in applying new mathematical insights to traditional Roman styles they were beginning to rediscover. While Asmarid architecture moved into newer and more colourful directions, Romanian and Italian architecture shifted to emphasize continuity with Rome, placing focus on heavy use of columns (usually Tuscan or composite order), triangular pediments, imposing ribbed domes (often atop drums and with peaking cupolas) and massive stone construction.

Knowledge of these architectural practices would become more widespread in both the Islamic and Christian worlds with the proliferation of printing presses. While much more common in the Asmarid and Bataid spheres, such devices had begun to appear in Christian kingdoms, where the early focus on printing Bibles had begun to give way to more specialized materials. The emergence of these new technologies and styles would coincide with steady increases in rates of literacy. Particularly in Iberia, the Maghreb and Anatolia, a higher-level education was increasingly possible, and the Iftenic script in particular resulted in a slow standardization of the Andalusian dialect of Arabic. Regional spelling variations steadily declined in favour of preferences typical of the Wadi al-Kabir region, the centre of the Asmarid economic and cultural machine.

Bit by bit, the Asmarid population was becoming more intelligent, more educated and more cosmopolitan, trends reflected in the persons of Hajib Uthman and his wife Sanjula, and more broadly in the cultural cachet enjoyed by Ghimarid thinkers. These positions would not be unchallenged, however, and while some expected resistance to come primarily from the deposed ex-hajib Tariq, the most fervently opposed to modernity were the usual suspects: Inland Berber tribes who had never truly submitted to the authority of either Sale nor Isbili, and who maintained beliefs closer to the Zahiri madhhab.


[1] The Rio Tinto.
[2] The Iberian pyrite belt.
[3] Niebla.
[4] No Norman conquest of Sicily + no Crusades + no Reconquista = less cotton for Europe.
[5] Mobile, Alabama.
[6] Eskolaite is a key source of chromium-III, which is a primary element in the viridian pigment. The Asmarids are unlikely to get it from Finland or Ireland, but they can fish it out of the Merume River. Thanks, Wikipedia!

 

[Planet of Hats]

Excerpt: The People's Faith: A History of Modern Islam - Abu Najib ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Mufaji, AD 2007


Fresh off his deposition and furious at the terms of the Governing Fatwa, it would be reasonable to assume that the former Hajib Tariq would emerge as a strong parallel power in the High Atlas. Rifts between Usulids and Ghimarids were wider than ever in the Asmarid Empire, and the person of a deposed Hajib, supported by a powerful warlord in Izemrasen ibn Ghanim and his bloc of Masmudas, would seem to be a logical focal point for Usulid anger.

Events unfolded less rosily than Tariq would have hoped, by any metric. To be certain, Izemrasen promptly recognized Tariq as the rightful Hajib, the Governing Fatwa as invalid and the Asmarid Empire as held hostage by a usurper, and he ceased to remit taxes from within the Aghmat region back to Isbili. This move initially went unopposed: Facing unrest at home in the form of both sporadic Usulid riots and unease from the noble class at the formalization of the Majlis ash-Shura, newly-appointed Hajib Uthman was obliged to spend the first two years of his term both mollifying irritated aristrocrats with fiscal concessions and suppressing scattered Usulid violence with the help of the Black Guard and the junds.

Trouble signs emerged for Tariq in that most of these outbursts of Usulid sentiment emerged without his involvement - and without loyalty to him. While Tariq shared sentiments with the Usulids, the core of the movement was more ideological than personality-based, and his close ties to the Masmudas soured the opinions of high-ranking Andalusi Usulids. The cultural memory of the Al-Mutahirin uprisings and the Blue Army ran strong in Andalusi ideological thought, and while a handful of dissidents seem to have continued to acknowledge Tariq, a mass movement never materialized, with most protesters simply taking an ideological stand of their own volition. More soberingly, no other major landholders took the side of Tariq.

Holed up in Aghmat and operating de facto independent, Izemrasen and Tariq sought out allies in the Maghreb's political class, but found few, particularly with so much of the aristocracy long since invested in maritime trade. By 1543, disappointed by their lack of success with the elite class, they turned inland, to the group known as the Mulatthamin, today's Imuhagh people.[1]

Asmarid expansion into the northern edge of the old Manden Kurufaba had brought with it control over vast swathes of trackless desert, most of which they could never hope to control beyond a few scattered outposts. Real control of these lands lay with the nomadic Mulatthamin tribal confederations. They had contributed some manpower to the original Blue Army, but their impact had been particularly felt in the south, where the so-called Southern Blue Army had dominated Awdaghost and the surrounding area as late as the early 1400s. This loose confederation had fallen apart largely thanks to the activities of proxies of the Simalas, then later through the invasion of the Jeliba[2] bend. At a time when the economy of the Asmarid realm had shifted towards a maritime empire based on trading ports around the world and the culture had shifted to a more cosmopolitan one, the Mulatthamin remained more inclined towards traditional culture and a mix of fundamentalist and revolutionary strains of Islam, reliant on trade in salt, slaves and gold for their existence.

Pushed north from the river by the Zarmas, many of these Mulatthamin had begun to migrate north, back towards the Maghreb. The most important of these groups was led by a man known as Fakhreddin al-Mahdi.

Emerging from obscure origins, Fakhreddin was evidently born Ibrahim ag Baloua among a tribe once located around Awdaghost. Accounts of his life are so fragmentary that most efforts to reconstruct him rest on various rumours reported by enemies or curious onlookers. What is broadly consistent across these accounts is that Ibrahim undertook the hajj in the early 1530s and came back convinced he was the Mahdi, a claim he backed up with an impressive personal charisma and an ability to persuade. By 1543, now going by the name Fakhreddin - "Pride of the Religion" - he had built up a large base of followers on his way north, where his men had occupied the long-declined ruins of Sijilmasa and made nuisances of themselves on the sparsely-trafficked overland trade routes the city once straddled. Followers of Fakhreddin had begun to filter into towns and villages in the Maghreb, preaching the emergence of the Mahdi.

It's at this time that Tariq and Izemrasen seem to have made first contact with Fakhreddin. Tariq must have assumed that he could somehow work around Fakhreddin or otherwise harness his followers to his own ends. The version of Islam Fakhreddin preached was on the extreme edge of the Usulid spectrum, calling for a complete rejection of "innovation," naturalism and outside culture. Fakhreddin viewed Asmarid society as irrevocably corrupted by decadent innovations like printing presses, Chinese silk, honeyed mara[3] and haram things from overseas, and he viewed himself as the man who would roll back that innovation. His theology was highly Zahiri-influenced, entailing not only a rejection of innovation and of empirical deduction as a means of determining truth, but going even further and envisioning the existence of large dhimmi communities as unfit for a Caliphate. The emergence of the Majlis ash-Shura was also seen as an unacceptable innovation that perverted Islam.

Tariq seems to have hoped to bring Fakhreddin into his fold of supporters in the hopes of bolstering his army and making actions against Uthman possible. When Fakhreddin and his supporters made their way to Aghmat in 1544, it seemed that an alliance was nigh. Instead, Fakhreddin set up shop outside the city before staking out a place in the middle of town and preaching to the entire city, allegedly screaming at the top of his lungs for three hours straight. The speech was reported to be so motivating that a substantial portion of Izemrasen's army immediately swore fealty to the Mahdi and left for his camp outside the city.

Whatever actually happened, Fakhreddin seems to have harnessed anti-modernity sentiments among radical Usulids in the southwestern Maghreb and harnessed them into what has come to be known as the Mahdi Army. By the summer of 1544, Fakhreddin had driven Izemrasen and Tariq out of Aghmat and seized the city for himself, then swung west to launch a series of attacks on towns around the ports of Asfi and Anfa, prosperous communities flush with colonial wealth.

Tariq and Izemrasen withdrew higher up into the mountains and holed up at a small ribat in the village of Zerkten, keeping their heads down as Fakhreddin descended on the towns and cities that embodied everything he hated about the Asmarids. These raids could have been seen as a local matter until the Sack of Suwayrah in 1545.[4]

While not the largest trading port on the Maghrebi oceanic coast, Suwayrah had steadily grown through the Crossing Age, rounding into a prosperous seaside community built around one of the better anchorages in the region. The town was unprepared for more than two thousand Mahdi Army followers, mostly on horseback, to descend on it in the largest raid Fakhreddin had yet spearheaded. Contemporary accounts depict the Mahdi Army slaughtering the town's defenders, burning ships at anchor and destroying buildings at harbourside. The town had boasted a modest Golahi Jewish community; Fakhreddin's troops rounded them up and massacred them, accusing them of usury and various other trumped-up crimes against Islam. The few Christians in the community were similarly killed after Fakhreddin demanded they either convert to Islam or die.[5] Andalusi and Berber merchants were variously flogged or executed, and women were forced to don full face covers on pain of punishment.

Fakhreddin did not remain in Suwayrah - after destroying much of the city and leaving a quarter of its population dead, he withdrew inland with an enormous quantity of gold and treasure. Word quickly spread back to Isbili, carried by merchants who had managed to escape by sea in the nick of time. The message found Hajib Uthman fresh off dealing with an assassination attempt spearheaded by two disgruntled scribes, itself a follow-up to a series of smaller-scale riots he'd been obliged to put down or buy off.

Uthman moved quickly to gather a well-equipped force and send it across the Jabal al-Tariq to try and take care of Fakhreddin. This proved more difficult than anticipated. Landing in the spring of 1546, the Asmarid army found itself struggling to bring Fakhreddin to battle at all. While the Asmarids had the advantage of modern weapons, up-to-date equipment and manpower, Fakhreddin's army was heavily cavalry-based and enjoyed extreme mobility in the arid inland regions of the southern Asmarid Maghreb, where the Asmarid troops were challenged to operate for any length of time. Fakhreddin had more than enough horses and camels and more than enough experience operating in the Sahara to make campaigning there second nature. Any time the Asmarids would attempt to close in on him, Fakhreddin could simply melt into the desert and attack their supply lines until they had no choice but to either starve or withdraw.

The army did achieve successes in 1547. That year, a scouting force reached Zerkten and uncovered the whereabouts of Tariq. An ensuing raid resulted in Izemrasen's capture, though Tariq escaped and fled, heading east. Izemrasen would be shipped back to Isbili and imprisoned. The Asmarids would retake Aghmat later that year and replace Izemrasen and the Mahdist occupation government with a regional supporter. Despite these victories, however, Fakhreddin remained at large and as much of a menace as ever, waging less a traditional war and more a grinding war of hit-and-fades designed to run the Asmarid army ragged.

SUMMARY:
1544: Deposed Hajib Tariq attempts to forge an alliance with Fakhreddin al-Mahdi, a prominent Mulatthamin zealot migrating north from Subsahara. Instead Fakhreddin all but hijacks the Usulid movement in the southern Maghreb and goes on to kick Tariq out of Aghmat.
1544: The Mahdist War begins.
1545: The Sack of Suwayrah. The Mahdi Army invades the port of Suwayrah, slaughters religious minorities and elites and imposes an arch-rigorist version of Sharia before withdrawing to the outskirts. The Asmarids begin to mobilize a full response.
1547: The Asmarids chase a beaten Tariq out of Zerkten and go on to retake Aghmat from the Mahdi Army, but struggle to bring Fakhreddin and his forces to real battle.

[1] The Tuaregs.
[2] The Niger River.
[3] Coffee.
[4] The Arabic form of Essaouira, Morocco.
[5] This is a highly atypical approach, but has a parallel in the atrocities committed by the Almohads, who also rejected the idea of dhimmi as acceptable. If you doubted Fakhreddin was a heel, doubt no more.

 

[Planet of Hats]

Excerpt: The People's Faith: A History of Modern Islam - Abu Najib ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Mufaji, AD 2007

Even as the Asmarids dealt with the stubborn and hard-to-pin-down Mahdi Army, colonial endeavours proceeded apace not only for their realm, but for new powers in the Eastern World seeking toeholds in areas where Andalusis once held formidable monopolies on overseas trade. For all that Andalus had a century of lead time on exploration, their empire was largely one of trading posts and local partners, with a core of settlement mainly centred on the Sea of Pearls, Tirunah and Quwaniyyah. Much of their overseas holdings were sparsely populated at best, particularly in northern Berengaria.

The weakness of these Asmarid claims is reflected in how little Isbili seems to have concerned itself with the Romanian presence in Muqmara and Vaçeu. These colonies had received comparatively little focus from the Asmarid leadership, with Muqmara itself simply failing to launch in the face of hostilities from indigenous groups. Barshil, too, was never followed up on and allowed to remain in Christian hands.

The inability or disinterest of the Asmarids to claim everything upon which their explorers' eyes fell opened the way for other powers to step in and lay down claims, and while the Romanian claims in Berengaria were the most immediate, the entry of France into overseas exploration would prove crucial. With control of powerful harbour cities in the Low Countries, particularly Antwerp - at that point one of the largest and most prosperous ports in Europe - the French gained both enormous economic prosperity and access to some of the best sailors on the continent.

It is no surprise that most French exploration in the Western World was spearheaded by Brabantine sailors out of Antwerp. The 1544 adventure of Jean de Leonhocque - Johann van Leeuwenhoek, more properly - followed that model, with four ships venturing west on a royal charter and sweeping down the Berengarian coast south of Vaçeu proper. Van Leeuwenhoek, an experienced sailor and cartographer, took extensive notes on the areas he mapped, producing the first reasonably complete chart of the environs of St. Denis Bay.[1] The area had been known and noted on Andalusi and other charts, but poorly explored until Van Leeuwenhoek's first and second expeditions. The second arrived in 1546 with a hundred colonists, mainly churchmen and military men and families from Normandy and the southern reaches of the Low Countries, to establish Fort Mont-Réal at the foot of the eponymous peak.[2]

The establishment of a French anchorage in the New World amounted to another cut into already-frought relations between France and Romania. Fort Mont-Réal had the advantages of an incredibly defensible position, sheltered by an enclosed harbour and backed by the mountain itself. A fleet of 17 Romanian ships arrived in 1549 to try and expel the French, but the newly-established fort, supported by a small fleet in turn, held off the assault. A second Romanian effort to remove the fort would follow in 1552, this time with nearly 30 ships, but by this time France had expanded Fort Mont-Réal's defenses and constructed an additional redoubt for field dragons, allowing the Romanian fleet to come under heavy attack from shore. These failed attempts to remove France wedged Romania's rival squarely between its two nascent Berengarian communities of Vaçeu in the north and Sant-Pol in the south.

French entry into the game of intercontinental trade would put them in competition with the largest Christian power on the seas: The Anglish.

While not active in Berengaria, Anglish possessions in the New World included their immense Granham claims to King Robart's Land and the sugar-producing island of St. Albans, and they'd poured considerable efforts into building up a trade network to China. With their trading posts in India and the Sudan as a jumping-off point, Anglish traders increasingly made inroads into Chinese, Japanese and Nusantaran markets. Piracy in the Indian Ocean became an increasing issue as Anglish and Danish freebooters took the opportunity to prey on wealthy Andalusian merchant ships, though these attacks grew more difficult as more modern Moorish escort ships became prevalent.

The French would prove more vulnerable in the early going. The emergence of Paris into the Asian maritime trade saw Anglish merchants and pirates increasingly competing to keep the French out of what they viewed as their markets. European history typically contrives to pit Angland and France against one another, and the same would prove true in the age of sail and blackpowder.

*​

For all that the Asmarid overseas empire was rooted in a trading-post economy, and for all that the Mahdist War created pressure to field a strong army, this is not to say that settlement overseas was neglected. Indeed, the populations of key settler colonies swelled in the early to mid-1500s, a trend attributable to some extent to natural disasters.

Andalusia is no stranger to earthquakes, and two major ones had struck the peninsula in the early to mid-15th century. In 1522, an earthquake struck the port of Al-Mariyya, leveling much of the city and damaging structures as far away as Gharnatah. A smaller one leveled towns in the Maghurin Islands. A more serious quake struck in 1531, leveling much of Beja and collapsing homes and buildings as far away as Lishbuna. The Beja-Lishbuna quake is estimated to have killed more than 20,000 people and left countless more homeless.

While the cities would be steadily rebuilt on the back of the Asmarid Empire's significant wealth, many left homeless by the quakes - particularly those living in the countryside - would flee the disaster zones overseas. From the mid-1520s, Tirunah, Quwaniyyah and Al-Gattas experienced a major wave of migration from southern and coastal Andalusia, bringing entire families to the Asmarids' flagship settler societies. Much of this was soaked up by the mainland, with Tirunah drawing in the largest share by virtue of new discoveries of gold. The legends of the Emerald City and the Golden King remained strong in popular culture despite the routine failure of kishafa to find anything more in the dense jungles than small villages.

Perhaps driven by the quakes, the mid-1530s saw Tirunah experience a significant gold rush. The population of Abourah swelled with new migrants out to seek their fortune inland. By 1542, a new town had been established at Wadabidah, in the gold-rich highlands east of the Wadi al-Tirunah.[3] While many of these new arrivals failed to find fortune in the Tirunah highlands, most stayed in the region, either drifting back to trading cities on the coast or heading further east to settlements in Ar-Rakayiz.[4] The region had been somewhat neglected since its discovery, but the search for the Golden King had led kishafa through on countless expeditions, leading to at least one breakthrough: The discovery of gold east of Rayakiz Bay, in the lands drained by the Wadi al-Yaraqi.[5]

Gold discoveries in the region led to the founding of several new settlements: Qubaybah[6] in 1542, Madinat al-Amal (later just Alamal)[7] in the same year, and the port of Al-Mawlid[8] in 1544. Alamal in particular would experience the largest early boom as a main centre of gold exploration in Rakayiz and Yaraqi, with smaller settlements eventually springing up inland. Again, as with Tirunah, few prospectors actually struck it rich, but most remained in the Gharb al-Aqsa to set up shop as plantation workers, livestock farmers and general traders and providers of services. While gold was the main lure, the backbone of Tirunah and Rakayiz - the latter treated as an eastern appendage of the former - became agriculture, focusing both on cash crops and the raising of sheep, chickens, goats and cows to service the growing local economy.

The gold boom out of the west proved a boon to the new government in Isbili. With Mahdists haunting the Maghrebi hinterlands and forcing the constant movement of troops, Hajib Uthman put Tiruni gold to good use financing upgrades to both the Asmarid army and navy. On land, the gold would fund an expansion of modern blackpowder arms and good horses, enabling crack Asmarid troops to more rapidly respond to the blandishments of Fakhreddin's Mahdi Army. At sea, the gold would pay for new ships capable of patrolling vital trade routes east and west, critical now more than ever in the face of rising Christian pressure.

~​

Excerpt: The Red Comet: The Rise of European Vulgarity - Heinrich Holst, Falconbird Press AD 2018

Even as the world expanded for the kingdoms of Christendom, new technologies ushered in an age of tumult for broader Europe. Nowhere was this more keenly felt than in the German-speaking world of the Holy Roman Empire, where the struggle for the Imperial crown became rapidly tied up in the rising tide of Vulgarity.

Printing presses had steadily crept north from the Islamic world, mainly into the hands of well-connected merchants. In the German sphere, presses soon found themselves churning out two broad groups of political literature: Bibles and Vulgar commentaries on Bibles. One of the most influential of these texts of the Late Interregnum, driving Vulgarity into greater prominence, was the Commentary on God and Man.

The Commentary, penned by Vulgar theologian Amadeus Fleischer of Dortmund, began circulating from 1543, amidst the dragging succession struggle that followed the end of the Geroldseck line. At the time, Pope Celestine VII had grudgingly passed the crown of Italy on to Alarich, Duke of Bavaria, who commanded the loyalty of some of the German nobility closer to Rome but was heavily contested by Friedrich von Saldern, the Vulgarity-influenced Duke of Lower Saxony. If not for the power struggle in Germany, Fleischer's work might have passed in the night - but the arguments he presented were entirely too convenient for Friedrich to pass up on. In 1545, he invited Fleischer to his seat of power in Hildesheim and met with him for several days to hear out his thoughts.

Fleischer's Commentary took a highly Vulgar approach to Christian law, marrying older theologies to newer ideas emerging from thought strains influenced by the Anicetians. To Fleischer, the idea of a single and all-powerful Papacy flew in the face of the idea that each man could have a relationship with God. He advocated for council ecumenism to take the form of a Common Church, one that could meet the spiritual needs of a specific realm in a way that a single generalized church could not. His vision of faith saw the source of Christianity's power as coming from the bottom up, not from the top down.

In practice, the Commentary was a justifying mechanism for Duke Friedrich, who patronized Fleischer and his followers and endeavoured to spread their works far and wide. This was not without controversy, alienating some Vulgarians who saw Friedrich's efforts as subverting the faith for political gain. The Lower Saxon effort to overcome Alarich was plodding and inconclusive for several years, hobbled by periodic defections and failed insurgencies both by Papal and Radical Vulgarian breakaway factions, matters offset only by the grudging refusal of some smaller-scale pro-Vulgarian lords in Alarich's corners of Europe to commit men and gold to his cause. By 1546, however, Friedrich suffered a serious defeat at the Battle of Darmundstadt, rolling back gains he'd made to his south and costing him a number of his allies.

The defeat of Friedrich marked a turning point in the conflict: With allies deserting him, Friedrich was unable to hold off Papist forces, and Alarich swept into Hildesheim by mid-1547. Friedrich was promptly thrown into prison and his lands parceled out to less radical cousins, and Fleischer and his followers were ordered tried for heresy. This would prove to be the worst decision Alarich could make.

The Hanging of Amadeus on August 7, 1547, served only to make a martyr of Amadeus Fleischer in the eyes of Vulgarians. His Commentaries long outlived him, circulating from growing numbers of renegade presses throughout Europe and making it into translation in other parts of the continent. To many common Germans, Fleischer was a heroic figure, speaking to them in their own language against the excesses and indifference of churchmen who cared more about the approval of Rome than the wellbeing of the peasantry. While the overthrow of Friedrich and the execution of Fleischer would buy Alarich a few years' uncontested rule, barring efforts to tamp down rebellion in Lombardy and attempt to reclaim the Low Countries, his efforts would carry the growing millstone of popular and noble unrest.

An increasing portion of Alarich's army consisted of soldiers sympathetic to Vulgarity, and resentment between men from various regions of the realm made unit cohesion impossible. This was never more apparent than in the Lowland War of 1549-51, which saw the Empire surprisingly rebuffed in their effort to reassert control of areas of the Lowlands claimed by France. The decisive Battle of Attert seemed primed to deliver a win to Alarich over the French, but the Holy Roman army's cohesion was disrupted by disastrously bad coordination and tension between troops from the south and those from north and central Germania. Alarich's numeric superiority evaporated when the French threw a body of Hispano-Norman mercenaries against the northerners, who promptly deserted and quit the field to leave the Alarich loyalists to be surrounded. Thousands of pro-Vulgarity soldiers fled home overland or vanished into the countryside, while thousands more of the best soldiers on the Papist side were either killed or captured, leaving Alarich badly weakened and unable to make up territory.

The defeat at Attert - together with the northern German trade cities going into a tax revolt - forced Alarich to regroup, weakening him just as Vulgar riots and rebellions began to pick up steam. At the same time, it emboldened nobles who viewed him as an illegitimate pawn of the Papacy. The refusal of pro-Vulgar nobles to remit taxes made it more difficult for Alarich to rebuild the army or buy off barons and counts sitting on the fence.

Worse for Alarich was the re-emergence of succession as an issue. Going into his coronation, Alarich fully expected to be able to pass his titles on to his son, Alarich the Younger. His death in the winter of 1553, brought on by what modern analysts agree to be liver failure, left succession a question: Alarich had no other male issue. He and his empress, Magdalene of Silesia, had followed up Alarich with two daughters, and by the time of Alarich's death she was far from her childbearing years.

Alarich's advisors urged him to seek a new marriage for the good of the realm, a decision he waffled on out of sheer love for Magdalene. Ultimately, he caved to the pressure and lobbied for a divorce, which Pope Pius III granted in 1554 on grounds of consanguinity - a decision seen as cynical and un-Christian by many. Alarich turned around within months and arranged a wedding to Princess Iseu, daughter and eldest child of King Berenguier the Pious of Romania. Iseu, nineteen at the time, is described by virtually all sources as uniquely beautiful, yet uniquely stubborn and independent-minded. Her marriage to Alarich was one of political convenience, forging an alliance between the Papist factions in Germany and the steadfastly Papist Romanian realm, yet personally unfulfilling for her: It became obvious that she detested the 74-year-old Alarich. With political pressure on her to deliver a male heir as fast as possible, she chafed at the constant attention and demands on her person.

The remainder of 1554 came and went, followed by the first half of 1555, and Iseu and Alarich seemed no closer to consummating their marriage. All the more alarming to the Holy Roman court was the obvious decline in the Emperor's health, rendering him increasingly limited to the palace. Pope Pius III himself intervened, penning an infamous letter to Iseu reminding her of her "Christian duty" to sleep with her husband and assuring her it was not, in fact, a sin. An increasingly frustrated Iseu spent much of the spring getting under the skin of German courtiers and secluding herself in her tower, but by autumn, the word that the court awaited finally came down: Iseu was with child.

The sequence of events that followed would strike down any hopes of good fortune. Within weeks of the dawn of 1556, Alarich died old and infirm, leaving an interregnum to wait with bated breath for the birth of his successor. The anticipated child would be crowned the instant he left the womb. Already Iseu's handlers had kept her on a steady regimen of old pre-naturalistic rituals and edibles thought to make it more likely she'd give birth to a boy.

The court in Nuremberg all but ground to a halt through the winter of 1556 as virtually all of Christendom held its breath in anticipation. The days ticked by until the expected time of Iseu's giving birth.

It was in that moment of Christian paralysis that a comet flew. Beginning in February and March of 1556, observers across Europe observed the passage of an immense comet. The account of Bishop Conrad III of Osnabruck describes it as "a torch among the stars," fully half as wide around as the Moon. Another account describes it as being as red as Mars.[9]

The day after the comet was seen in Nuremberg, Empress Iseu gave birth to her only child by Alarich: A girl named Cecilia.


[1] Guanabara Bay.
[2] Yes, Montréal is in OTL Brazil here. The future Montréal is actually OTL Rio, and Mount Royal itself is Corcovado Peak, site of the Cristo Redentor.
[3] Guatavita, Colombia, northeastish of Bogota.
[4] Venezuela around Lake Maracaibo. The lake is known to the Andalusis as the Lake of Stilts.
[5] The departments of Yaracuy and southern Falcón, Venezuela.
[6] Cabimas, on Lake Maracaibo.
[7] San Felipe, Yaracuy.
[8] Tucacas.
[9] The Comet of 1556.

SUMMARY:
1542: A massive gold rush drives increasing population to the Asmarid settler colonies at Tirunah and Rakayiz.
1544: France enters the game of overseas colonialism with the first voyage of Jean de Leonhocque.
1546: Jean de Leonhocque's second voyage establishes Fort Mont-Réal on St. Denis Bay, south of Vaçeu.
1547: The Hanging of Amadeus. Prominent Vulgarian theologian Amadeus Fleischer is hung as a heretic by new Emperor Alarich of the Holy Roman Empire. His Commentaries long survive him, turning him into a martyr of Vulgarianism among the European commons.
1551: The Battle of Attert. Holy Roman troops attempting to make up ground in the Low Countries are defeated when crack mercenary infantry on the French side rout northern German troops considered loyal to Vulgarian causes. The defeat is largely seen by Papists as a betrayal by the Vulgarians, and by Vulgarians as a sign of Emperor Alarich's weakness.
1553: Pressured by his court to produce a male heir following the death of his childless son, Holy Roman Emperor Alarich reluctantly divorces his beloved wife Magdalene and remarries to Iseu, Princess of Romania and daughter of King Berenguier the Pious. The marriage gives Alarich a chance at a male heir - his only hope under Salic law, his daughters being ineligible - but is widely viewed in pro-Papal Christendom as a cynical betrayal of his Christian values.
1555: Empress Iseu of the Holy Roman Empire announces her long-anticipated pregnancy. Early that year, the elderly Alarich dies, leaving Iseu's unborn child his expected heir.
1556: The Omen of 1556. A day after a red comet is seen in Nuremberg and across Europe, Empress Iseu of the Holy Roman Empire delivers a baby girl, throwing the Empire into a terminal succession crisis.

 

[Planet of Hats]

A look at the vassals of the Holy Roman Empire at the time of the Omen of 1556:

Counties highlighted in yellow-white are holdings of the Church, mainly Prince-Bishoprics and Archbishoprics.

A handful of key figures:


The Power Gap

* The Duchy of Bavaria is currently under the Wittelsbach Regency as its lands look to fracture. The daughters of Emperor Alarich have some legitimate issue - his second daughter has a son, Dietrich, Count of Orseig, who looks likely to inherit Bavaria proper from his southeastern power base, while the lad's younger brother Wilhelm inherited the Margraviate of Pressburg. The problem there is that Wilhelm wants the entire Duchy for, basically, reasons of greed, and his wife is a cousin of the Duke of Rothenburg-Palatinate. By and large, the other nobles don't consider either Dietrich or Wilhelm worthwhile contenders for the Imperial title, considering the former the weak grandson of a weak man and the latter a conniving snake-in-the-grass. Until they manage to resolve their dispute over their grandfather's title, it's unlikely either will be in the running to wear the Iron Crown.



Leading Papal Supporters

* The Archduchy of Swabia comes as a loose package deal with the divided Geroldseck realms: The Duchies of Ortenau and Allemannia and the County of Kempten, all ruled by Geroldseck cadet branches or relatives thereof. The main branch of the Geroldsecks has died out by now, leaving the Archduchy itself in control of Gerhard von Geroldseck-Zurich, who rules out of the eponymous city. Gerhard was a child when the Geroldsecks' main branch died out, and while he had a strong claim to the throne as a nephew, he was soundly rejected by German nobles sick of years of the Geroldsecks throwing their tax dollars and levies into this war or that. For the most part Gerhard is content to sit back and support stronger contenders.

* The Duchy of Rothenburg-Palatinate: The House of Rothenburg rose from the city of the same name but gained control of the Palatinate in the early 1400s, and they've entrenched themselves since as modest power players based mainly on the economic power of their holdings along the Rhine. Historically the family's been close to the Geroldsecks, but they drifted away in the ensuing succession struggles. They've been modestly influenced by Swabian German linguistics and culture. While Duke Heinrich V von Rothenburg nominally supports the Papacy, he's considered a wild card: He came to power at just 17 and is now just 19, and he continually bucks his advisors' recommendations and pursues his own policy in the name of personal gain.

* The Kingdom of Illyria: Don't look now, but they're only partly in the Empire - they acknowledge the Papacy because they need help with the Bataid frontier and bend the knee to the Empire in general for the same reason. The Kingdom is ruled by the House of Andeszki-Hohenberg - the west-Austrian Andechs family of Carniola married into the German house set up there by the Geroldsecks years ago, ultimately merging the Andechs holdings in the Empire with the external Kingdom. They've since become Slavicized and surrounded by a mix of Germans, Carinthian Slavs and Croats. King Radoslav II is an older man in his 50s and just wants things to be peaceful internally so he can keep the Turkmens out of his realm.

* The County of Nice: Another half-in-half-out option. Nice is actually owned by Count Pons III of Rodez, a vassal of the King of Romania, who runs it in personal union. The young Count is only modestly close to the King but can count on King Berenguier the Pious to have his back.



Leading Vulgarians and Sympathizers

* The Duchy of Rugen-Mecklenburg: While not the most populous duchy, Rugen-Mecklenburg is one of the wealthiest, prospering through the taxation of northern trade cities - including those it won back from the Imperial Trade League in various treaties and skirmishes. The duchies were separate at one point but have since been unified by the father of the current ruler, Karl II Eduard von Rugen. Karl is one of the more radically pro-Vulgarian rulers in the German world, and while he wasn't able or even eager to make a stand against Alarich by himself, he has a trump card: He's the nephew of the King of Angland.

* The Duchies of Saxe-Hemmingen, Saxe-Weimar and Halle: These lands were once part of the Duchy of Saxony until Duke Friedrich von Saldern's defeat and exile by Alarich's forces. Saxony was broken up into constituent duchies and parcelled out to local men who could maintain order in the region. Since Alarich's death, however, the duchies have been wracked by unrest. The strongest remnant duchy is Halle, which controls powerful cities full of ardent Vulgarians. The Alarich loyalist there was toppled in 1555 in a short coup and replaced by Ferdinand von Saldern, Friedrich's oldest son, who is eyeing the remnants of his father's realm. Ferdinand is not as skilled a military leader as his father but has legitimacy behind him.

* The Duchy of Brunswick-Luneburg: This realm quietly supported Friedrich with both troops and cash, but Duke Alfred the Wise cut a deal with Alarich following the fall of Hildesheim, turning tail and acknowledging the Bavarian claim in exchange for Alarich's troops pulling out of the duchy. It's widely acknowledge that Alfred, scion of the long-running Brunonid house, kept quietly patronizing Vulgarity despite attesting loyalty to Alarich, largely hoping to claim back tax revenue from the Church. No one's quite sure how he'll play his hand now. While Alfred is exceptionally clever, he's also in his early seventies, and there are doubts that his eldest son, Alfred II, is even close to his mental equal. The real wild card in Alfred's family is his second son, Count Otto of Luneburg - otherwise known as Otto, the Black Count. He's known as an especially shrewd diplomat with broad contacts among the region's Vulgarians, and he's open for a strategic marriage.

* The Duchy of Holstein owes a lot to its contacts with Denmark in terms of Vulgarity taking root here, though it's also sullenly desired by the Danes. The family ruling here is the House of Segeberg, who were installed during the Adventures a couple centuries back and have hung on for some time. Duke Gerhard VII is an old man with two legitimate daughters... and about a dozen bastards by as many different women. Churchmen in Holstein absolutely despise him, but he backs Vulgarity for basically cynical reasons of trying to legitimize one of his bastard sons to inherit, something Rome won't allow.

 

[Planet of Hats]

With the commission and will of the blessed Emperor Dizong, we, Nara Tailan and his companions, are tasked with charting the unknown parts of the world said to be known to the barbarians of Xihai,[1] from whence strange goods are brought. Until this day three voyages have taken place in the name of the great Emperor, which we have brought to the barbarians of the northeast, that they should pursue their course while in submission to the proper station of authority. With the great aid of heaven, it is our intention to seek out the barbarians of the uncharted regions of the world, that they may know the Imperial envoy and present tribute.


~​

1542 AD

After all these years, you would think they would have bothered to know this part of the world better, Nara Tailan reflected bitterly as he hopped down out of the landing boat and onto the shore.

The bay had been hard to miss - long and shaped like a big horn, it was long known as one of the more sheltered spots along this part of the coast. Known, at least, to the Jurchens - those like him,[2] who had experience living in this part of the world. Perhaps such places as this one, the bay marked on the Emperor's maps simply as "Wanjiao,"[3] were simply beneath Suzhou's notice.

Not that it surprised Tailan all that much. Sometimes the court's thoughts seemed lost in the fluffy clouds of steam that too often billowed in Suzhou's skies on days when the weaponsmiths were hard at work.

"First order of business," the veteran sailor clipped, bringing his hands together with a sharp smack as he looked back towards the fresh-faced Chinese sailors behind him. "Let's find the stele." That should be easy enough. When the Great Wu had rolled back the Hei a century prior, they'd showed marginal interest in at least marking some spots on their maps. For all that areas like this had been neglected as mere tributaries, forgotten so long as the local clans of the Yupi Dazi[4] paid their tribute through the imperial station up north near the mouth of the Heishui,[5] they'd at least scouted them out enough that a eunuch had come through here and put up a stele more than a century and a half prior, bearing the name of the Emperor Qingzu.

That, at least, wasn't hard to find. A little shuffling around the lands adjacent to the bay turned up discoveries, first and most noticeably a small group of fishermen huddling along the shoreline. With a little bit of prodding from the crew, the fishermen were coaxed relatively easily into offering up what they could, mainly a halfway decent meal and a paltry bounty of furs and crude jewelry.

Nara Tailan accepted it with another bitter reflection. They give us their treasure when the Emperor wouldn't give this stuff to his least favourite dog. What a cynical empire I live in. Ah well.

Tribute aside, the stele itself was eventually dug out, half-buried in mounds of bushes and clubmoss. Weather hadn't been kind to the tall standing stone, discolouring and staining it in places and wearing at the edges of the carvings, but after the crew had attacked it with brushes and chisels, the inscription was clear enough.

THIS WAS PLACED HERE FOR THE GREAT EMPEROR QINGZU BY HIS HUMBLE SERVANT, AHACU

Nara Tailan closed his eyes for a moment and resisted the urge to sigh. So once again, they sent one of us to do their dirty work. Nice to know the old tradition persists.

~​

1546 AD

"Remind me again what's supposed to be out here," Nara Tailan asked.

"You're asking me?" 'Amr ibn Sa'id al-Dani held his hands out at shoulder height in a broad shrug. "Who's come this way? Not anyone I know."

"Right, I suppose that's the issue." Tailan pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger as he moved to the bow of the big junk, one of a dozen fanned out in the frigid seas and sailing off to fuck only knew where.

"Of course it is," huffed the Moorish sailor, stuffing his hands into his sleeves and hunkering into his fur cloak to try and stave off the worst of the chill. "I told you before - nobody I've ever heard of has been stupid enough to sail into nothing but open water. Maybe Ibn Maymun, but half of his people died, and that was more than a century ago and way off south."

"More than half, wasn't it?"

"Right! The stories say he had six ships and came back with two. Barely!"

Tailan scowled and looked out over the bow, staring into the grey skies ahead. Churning seas rolled against the formidable hull of the junk. "Well, we know the world is wider at the waist than at the top - and this Ibn Maymun of yours went by the waist. And you said that there are lands closer to the top. If that's true, then it would make sense that crossing the sea would be easier where it's cold."

"So long as you don't rip the bottom of the ship out on an iceberg," grumbled ibn Sa'id. "Or freeze to death to begin with."

Scowl giving way to a cynically amused smile, Tailan glanced back at the foreigner. "You really don't like winter very much, do you?"

"I have no idea how you do." Ibn Sa'id shivered heavily. "I traveled to Barshil once. It was literal hell. What your Emperor wants in places like this when your lands are the most glorious in the world, I have no idea."

"More glorious even than Xihai, eh?" Tailan's smile grew mildly curious. "I would have thought you would be homesick."

"Oh, I am. But it's a different sort of place. The scale is smaller. Besides," and here he grimaced, "for all that we're sailing into God knows where for God only knows why your Emperor thinks it's wise, it's better than dealing with idiot scribes trying to tell me how to live my life."

"Xihai seems to have a curious culture," Tailan mused, even as a whistle rang out from high atop the mast.

Both Tailan and ibn Sa'id looked up at once, to where one of the crewmen was gesticulating wildly. "Land!" he screamed down, waving an arm frantically off to the northeast. "Land, land!!"

The pair of mariners looked at each other. Ibn Sa'id was the first to grimace. "What frozen hellhole is it this time?"

"We'll see, won't we?" With a shrug, Tailan swept an arm upwards and raised his voice. "Change course! We're heading for land!"

They did just that. The dozen junks sailed on into the chilly seas of the far north, off towards the rugged jut of land rising out of the bleak waters.

One of a few such juts - rocky, cold, and surprisingly, inhabited by people Tailan vaguely recognized - people not too unlike the Ainu people living north of Riben,[6] albeit with weird accents it took their resident interpreters some time to figure out. By the time they reached the northeastern end of the chain of islets, the ships found themselves at a frigid and mountainous tip of land, home to yet another village of weirdly-dialectic Ainu with little to offer but a baffled tribute of the usual furs and small jewels. One of them offered up the black and white feathers of one of the huge sea eagles they'd been seeing off the coasts.[7]

They put up a stele anyway.

THIS WAS PLACED HERE BY NARA TAILAN AND HIS COMPANIONS, AT THE LAND OF YINGDIAN,[8] IN THE NAME OF THE GREAT EMPEROR DIZONG OF WU​

Tailan insisted on carving it two more times. Writing it in his own tongue was easy enough. Writing it out in Ainu was harder and required a lot of sounding out and guesswork as to what symbol would represent what. For all he knew, the thing said it was placed there by a giant sea snail at the Land of Unicorns in the name of two cups of tea and a hill of beans.[9]

~​

1550 AD

"I swear that this is the last time I let you talk me into one of these trips," groused an incredibly miserable Ibn Sa'id as he buried himself as deep in his bundle of furs as he possibly could.

"Oh, blow it out your nose," muttered Tailan between bites of hainiu meat. If he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend it was cow, albeit with a bizarre cured taste.[10]

They'd been stuck on the island of Little Tayan for nearly a month now. They'd reached Yingdian without much issue - beyond one ship turning back after losing one sail in a storm - but the exploration of the Tayan Islands[11] had taken a turn for the worse when two ships had been wrecked in a storm and two more, including Tailan's, had torn their bottoms out on rocks while trying to shelter from the weather. Another ship had simply gotten lost, leaving just two more vessels - one of which Tailan had sent back for help.

The other stayed - but it wasn't nearly big enough to bring everyone along. That left beaching the damaged ships and trying to patch one up with the remnants of the other, without certain key helpful amenities.

Amenities like a seaport. Or a city. Or adequate shelter. Or much by way of hammers and nails.

Or anyone around but the hainiu and enough sea lions and otters to populate a small kingdom, really. If nothing else, catching the former was easy enough - they tended to be fat and docile, and once caught, the oil was both potable and burnable. Even now, the candles in their tents burned the stuff, and the skin itself could be worked with.

Not that it did much to appease Ibn Sa'id. "This is the third time now," he muttered, scratching irritably at his beard. "We never run into anything more than villages and winter. I'm starting to think there isn't any way to get to the Gharb al-Aqsa this way, even if we ever get those ships back into the water."

Tailan closed his eyes, slumping forward with growing exhaustion. "If you spent half as much time trying to get us out of this mess as you do whining, we would be halfway back to Suzhou by now."

"Sure, blame me." Ibn Sa'id rolled his eyes. "Mister Servant of the Emperor."

Silence fell over the tent for several moments. Only the rush of the wind against the heavy canvas, rippling it persistently, mingled with the quiet clack of Tailan's utensils against the plate of hainiu meat in front of him.

It was Ibn Sa'id who finally broke the silence. "...I've been thinking."

"Congratulations," Tailan sassed past a mouthful of sea cow meat.

Ibn Sa'id shot him a sour look before breaking off into a sniffle and wiping his nose with the back of his hand. "Ghh. I'm being serious. I've been thinking about the currents we've run into. How we came back from Yingdian the last time on a current."

"Yes, and we had to sail into it on the way up. What's your point?"

"Have you ever heard of a qus al-bahr?"

"Translate it to not-barbarian," Tailan huffed.

With a scowl, Ibn Sa'id picked up a well-boiled hainiu rib and etched out a circle in the sand. "A sea-arc. All sailors on the Atlas know how to do it. The ocean currents there move in gyres. You can sail out of a place like Isbili and turn your ship in such a way that you can sail with the current all the way to Marayu. Then to go home, you turn with the current and it loops you back around. You end up back off the coast of the Andalus." He drew out another circle. "Like I said. Gyres, Tailan, gyres. Qus al-bahr is fundamental."

Sass or no, Tailan turned away from his plate and leaned forward to eye the circles. He scratched at his cheek with two fingers before nodding. "Right, gyres exist, obviously. So what you're saying is..."

"...that the current was pushing us west when we sailed out here, too. That's why we had so much trouble. What if we're trying to sail a qus al-bahr backwards?" The Moor's eyes flickered with intent.

Tailan opened his mouth slightly, but closed it as realization hit him. Frowning, he took the rib from Ibn Sa'id and marked out spots along the circumference of the circle. "Well, Yingdian is here. And these islands are here. Which means we've been sailing entirely into the return part of the current."

"Yes, exactly." Sniffling again, Ibn Sa'id jabbed a spot in the sand below one of the marks Tailan had made. "So what if we went down here? Instead of going due northeast from Wanjiao Bay, we should try to go east around Riben. If we can find the part of the current that goes east, we can probably make a qus al-bahr and it'd bring us right back around this way on the way home."

"I can see one problem with it. We don't know how far we're going."

"We can make some educated guesses. We know how far it is from Isbili to the coast of Anawak. And one thing we know is Anawak is a big isthmus that widens out the further north you go." The Moorish sailor pulled his furs tightly around himself. It was hard to tell if he was shivering, or just vibrating. "I would need charts. We know about how big the world is around. Let's assume we're sailing from Suzhou to a spot on the west coast of Anawak and back again. We'd calculate for that distance and assume we could resupply when we got there. It'd be dangerous, but...."

"....But it could be done," murmured Tailan.

"If we can get off this rock," Ibn Sa'id added.

"If we can get off this rock." Tailan sagged slightly.

~​

1554 AD

It was by far the biggest taa'un[12] Cumshewa had ever caught. Wrenching his spear out of the gigantic fish, he and the three other men struggled with the slippery mass of it. The canoe churned under them as they fought to wrestle it up over the side, but with a little effort and an assist from a forked bone-and-cedar fishhook, they finally managed to leverage the monster up and over.

"Thing fought like a warrior!" panted young Guujaaw as he sagged back in the canoe, lathered and mopping his brow. "I thought he was going to flip us over!"

"At that size, it might," Cumshewa laughed as he gave the fish a once-over. "How heavy you think, Yaahl?"

"About as much as a good-sized kid!" quipped the broad-faced man with a toothy grin.

"Hey now, go easy on Guujaaw now!"

An uproar of laughter lifted the spirits of the four tired fishermen - well, Cumshewa, Yaahl and Hlagwaats, anyway. Guujaal, barely past his sixteenth year, affected a sulk and looked off to one side.

The sulk quickly broke way to surprise. "That wasn't there before."

Still chuckling, Cumshewa followed the look off to the west, shielding his eyes from the sun with a hand. The laughter quickly faded as he tried to make sense of what the young man had seen.

It was as though a small island were approaching out of the fog, crowned by an array of flags and banners - yellow, he could tell from this distance. Cumshewa forgot about the fish in that moment as he rose in the canoe and squinted towards the horizon to try and make it out.

"What is it?" Hlaagwaats grunted, reaching for one of the fishing spears.

"I don't know. I've never seen an island ride the currents." Cumshewa frowned deeply. "And it's coming closer."

The four baffled fishermen looked on in disbelief at the unbelievable sight as the apparent island bore down. The closer it came, the more Cumshewa could make out - and the more he realized it wasn't actually an island. Yet it did nothing to mitigate the immensity of it. He'd always thought his canoe was pretty impressive, but the thing approaching them dwarfed it. If it was a ship, it was by far the biggest he'd ever seen, driven on not by oars but by some other force, banners rippling and booming above a hull seemingly carved from entire trees.

Before long, the island-canoe had nearly borne down on them - it was close enough that they could see its hull scarred and battered, its banners tattered around the edges and patched in places. And they could see men rushing about upon the massive rock of the boat, clad in clothing he could barely find words for. One of them, a pale-faced man with short hair, shouted something down at them and waved his arms.

"What?" a rather overwhelmed Cumshewa yelled back.

The man yelled something across the distance away. It might as well have been a bunch of birds babbling at each other, for all he could understand it.

"I can't understand you," Cumshewa shouted, more slowly.

The man on the boat held his hands up in frustration before rushing back onto the deck. For his part, Cumshewa blinked, then flopped back to his seat and looked back at the other three. "What do you think?"

"I think it's a giant island full of magicians," Guujaaw shot back immediately, cheeks pale. "Maybe we should leave before they destroy us. Who knows what they were shouting?"

"I think they look pretty tired," Hlaagwaats grunted more levelly.

The other three blinked at him. The brawnier fisherman shrugged and lowered his spear. "Look at their big flags. They're torn. Look at the logs on their boat. They've been through something. And they came out of the sunset. It must be hard to come from the sunset to here."

Cumshewa looked back towards the giant boat. None of the other men aboard had shouted anything else, though he could see two of them talking closely near the front of the island-craft. With a frown, he reached for his oar.

"Maybe they're lost," he guessed. "We can at least try to help them."

The other three fishermen stared at him a moment - but soon enough, they too reached for the oars. The single canoe paddled towards the gigantic island-boat, dwarfed, yet mostly unafraid.

~


THIS WAS PLACED HERE WITH AID OF NARA TAILAN AND HIS COMPANIONS, BY WUYA TOUZI WHO IS CHIEF OVER THE LAND OF FUXIAO,[13] IN THE NAME OF THE GREAT EMPEROR DIZONG OF WU​

[1] Al-Andalus.
[2] Nara Tailan is what we'd know as a Haixi Jurchen, albeit one who has become somewhat Sinicized and adapted to a maritime life.
[3] Bent Horn - the Golden Horn Bay, e.g. Vladivostok
[4] "Fish-skin Dazi" - a Chinese term applied to Jurchen-adjacent ethnic groups like the Nanai and Nivkh peoples, so picked because of an apparent tendency to make clothing out of fish skin.
[5] The Wu maintain a small fort at Tyr, near the mouth of the Amur.
[6] Japan.
[7] Steller's sea eagle.
[8] Eagle Point - the southernmost tip of Kamchatka. In general, Yingdian is what the Wu refer to as the Kuril Islands.
[9] There's no real writing system for Kuril Ainu. Tailan's attempt to translate here is the first attempt to even try.
[10] Steller's sea cow allegedly tasted like corned beef, which neither Tailan nor Ibn Sa'id have ever eaten.
[11] The Otter Rock Islands - Little Tayan refers to Medny Island.
[12] The Haida word for a Chinook salmon.
[13] Haida Gwaii. The name 'Wuya Touzi' is the Chinese explorers trying to get a Sinicized form of 'chief of the Raven tribe.'

SUMMARY:
1542: Nara Tailan's First Expedition brings him to restore contact with Wanjiao Bay in the northernmost Wu reaches.
1546: Nara Tailan's Second Expedition reaches the northern Ainu living in Yingdian.
1550: Nara Tailan's Third Expedition wrecks in the Tayan Islands, but he manages to escape on a repaired ship.
1554: Nara Tailan, on his Fourth Expedition, completes the first Chinese voyage to the Gharb al-Aqsa by following the North Pacific gyre to Haida Gwaii. A stele is raised there with the consent of the strongest of the Haida chiefs.

 

[Planet of Hats]

Excerpt: The Breath of the World: Steam, Industry and Climate Catastrophe - Mahmud Mbakari, Red Hill Libropress, AD 2015


The changes that took place in the Andalusian world in the late 1500s were rapid and dramatic, no less so because they came amidst a period of chaos. Indeed, the political and social turmoil of the time was vital: It set the table for change to happen.

On paper, the Mahdi Army rampaging across the Maghreb was unlikely to mount a serious bid to overthrow the government in Isbili: The advent of firearms made the days of nomadic Berbers riding out of the Atlas Mountains and toppling the local ruler a thing of the past. They did, however, prove a constant irritant to farmers and tradesmen in Maghrebi coastal cities, requiring annual campaigns in the mountains to try and bring the stubborn Fakhreddin to heel. The highly mobile Mahdists had a tendency to fade into the desert and engage only on their own terms, resulting in years of frustration for Hajib Uthman and the newly-constituted Majlis.

Compounding problems in the Maghreb were the emergence of brushfire rebellions in the Christian-predominated north. As with the earliest years of Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula, the Cantabrian Mountains remained stubbornly difficult to police. It's little surprise that rebellion flourished there.

While so-called Hidden King pretenders were common, the rebellion of the so-called King Diego proved to be one of the most prominent. Declaring himself the rightful king of the north, the so-called Diego - his real origins are obscure - emerged in the city of Oviedo and began delivering speeches calling for a Reconquista in the south. He soon amassed an army, killing most of the Oviedo garrison and pushing out into villages in the countryside. The rebels held out against smaller-scale police actions before managing a deadly raid on Leon, failing to take the city but capturing and murdering several prominent Asmarid officials, including the city's chief imam. The rebels made a point of targeting Mozarabic Christians as well, viewing them as traitors to the Catholic Church and adopters of Andalusian culture and language.

Uthman endeavoured to respond in force, dispatching the Black Guard north to root out Diego and his men. Sympathizers in northern towns and villages were rounded up - some of them indiscriminately - and troops marched into the mountains to try and catch up to the wily rebels. Terrain worked against Asmarid control: Diego managed to hold out until 1556 before being shot at the Battle of the Iguanzo, where the Black Guard managed to catch Diego and his most elite men in a valley town southeast of Oviedo and bring them to battle in earnest. Without the so-called Hidden King to provide a figurehead, the rebellion's leadership broke down, and much of the rebel army melted back into the mountains, allowing Uthman to restore control in the north - albeit not without protests and agitation from the more radical Catholics in the region.

The onset of the Wars of the Red Comet in the Holy Roman Empire didn't help matters. Officially, Uthman viewed the civil war over the Holy Roman Empire's succession as a matter for the Christians to deal with. Unofficially, the Asmarids supported the Papal line, even encouraging groups of mercenaries to sell their services to pro-Papal forces. Asmarid trade ships delivered weapons into the hands of Romanian and Italian forces via their trading post in Amalfi, while Navarrese mercenaries fought for the Swabian League, the pro-Papal faction that coalesced around a reluctant Gerhard von Geroldseck-Zurich. Uthman insisted that he washed his hands of these conflicts from the standpoint of the Asmarid crown. This didn't forestall French and Anglish privateers from periodically attacking Asmarid merchantmen at sea during this period, requiring new investment in ships.

These conflicts came against a backdrop of movement of men to the Gharb al-Aqsa. Large numbers of young men and their families moved overseas in the mid-to-late 1500s, many of them seeking to take advantage of the discovery of gold in Tirunah. As the Iberian peninsula filled up and the population of the Maghreb grew, sons further down the inheritance ladder often sought to take their chances on adventurism in the west rather than settling for their slice of an increasingly subdivided land holding. While these trends boded well for colonial affairs on the western continent, they came together with everything else to generate periodic manpower shortages in the core Asmarid realm - at a time when the realm needed both weapons and ships.

In some areas, local landholders filled their labour needs by buying in slaves from the Sudan. But outside of the labour-intensive plantation economy in places like the Mufajias, hiring slaves to do grunt work was rarely popular, and Asmarid slaveowners remained far more likely to purchase female slaves or eunuchs for more domestic duties.

The Asmarid realm, in other words, was primed for an external factor to put a dent in its labour woes. But it was not the first country outside of China to adopt the steam engine wholesale.

Aside from the brief dalliance of the Lavo Kingdom in steam technology, the first non-Chinese adopter of steam was the Janggala Kingdom. Steam power there was first introduced in 1555, brought in by Chinese labourers working in the coal-mining regions of southern Sumatra. The engines were used mainly to drive pumps to clear water our of mines in the river-crossed region. Transmission of the technology from China to the Janggalas was little surprise: The two powers were geographically close, bound together by trade and politics, occasionally opposed over issues like control of trade through Malacca and influence in the Ma-i Archipelago, and well positioned to pick up best practices from one another through the simple movement of people and bodies between realms.

In the middle of it all was the Asmarid colony at Mubaraka.[1] The island had come to be used mainly as a plantation hub and occasional copper mine, and while not one of the more populous Andalusian holdings, its importance as a hub of cultural interchange can't be overstated. Andalusian merchants operating from the island came into regular contact with Chinese and Nusantaran merchantmen, not only trading for unique goods but learning about new technologies and naturalistic advancements pioneered in the Great Wu realm. It served as a major conduit for Sinophiles to feed knowledge back to their homeland.

Such was the case with steam. The path the technology took to Andalusia came through the cultural transmission line with a pivot point in Mubaraka.

The early years of the Wars of the Red Comet saw the Asmarids eager to stay out of the conflict, preferring to focus on chasing down the Mahdi Army. By 1561, however, European powers beyond the catchment area of the Holy Roman throne were being drawn into the war. A market for Andalusian arms rapidly developed, with Amalfi rounding into a convenient transfer point for jazails and other weapons to filter into the hands of Romanian, Italian and southern German armies. While blackpowder weapons were no stranger to Christendom at this point, weapons manufactured in the Islamic sphere were of significantly higher quality, both in terms of metallurgy and expertise of manufacture.

The market for Andalusian guns combined with the increase in overseas economic activity to create new demand for both guns and ships. Even as demand for high-quality metal rose, so too did demand for wood - at a time when forestry was already strained. The use of coal in blast furnaces rapidly increased during the mid-1500s as Andalusian smiths and builders looked for alternatives that would get around the increasing price of timber. With rising output of metal came an increase in quality metallurgy and a spiking demand for not only guns, but common implements like ploughs and farming tools.

It is from this confluence of demand factors - rising wood prices, spiking demand for quality metal goods, increased use of coal, and shortages in manpower - that the conditions that made alternatives attractive.

~​

AD 1566
RUSADDIR[2], MAGHREB, ASMARID EMPIRE

"It's astonishing that you can do this without a river or a horse," marvelled the buyer as he watched the bellows churn away. Without so much as a man to operate it, the device churned and trundled on a regular pace, breathing air into the smith's forge. The sound mingled with the steady clink of the smith's hammer against glowing iron, the heat of it all mingling with the sweat and fire of the forge.

Hands on his hips, Al-Zanqi ibn Hurayth ar-Rammah smiled behind his coarse black beard. "It is astonishing, isn't it? They use these all the time in the land of Sin. It all happens because of water steaming off when you heat it."

"In Sin? You've been there?"

"Oh yes. I worked for a trader out of Mubaraka. We saw many machines like this. Learned how they work, even." Ar-Rammah moved around the rumbling machine, gesturing to it with a broad, callused hand. "It's a special kind of steel. The way the water burns off, it can just destroy normal steel. You need the kind of steel they make the big tanins out of."

The buyer's eyebrows rose with astonishment. "I'd heard about the amazing things that happen in Sin, but I've never seen anything like this. To think that steam could do this...." He looked over with a quick blink. "It won't get me worse weapons, will it?"

"Of course not. Your men will have the most quality jazails dinars can buy," assured the blacksmith.

Again the buyer looked back towards the forge, where work continued unabated. The scent of burning coal tinged their nostrils, the haze of it drawing sweat. Soon enough, though, he nodded to the ruddy-faced blacksmith. "Let me see the merchandise," he urged.

A grinning Ar-Rammah reached for one of his jazails.

Outside, puffs of white smoke rose above the chimney of the workshop, the telltale traceries of steam making their way into the skies above the Asmarid Empire for the first time. As they'd been doing ever since Ar-Rammah set up the new tool he'd brought back from Mubaraka, heads turned with interest.[4]

Word spread. Fast.

It would not take long before more chimneys would rise above Rusaddir. Then Oujda. Then beyond.

~


END OF ACT IX "A STORY WRITTEN IN BLACKPOWDER"

WE TURN THE PAGE
THE WORLD CHANGES
THE GEARS OF PROGRESS TURN IN ACT X

"THE BREATH OF THE WORLD"
DAWN OF THE AGE OF INDUSTRY


~​

AD 2022
THE SKIES OVER THE ATLAS OCEAN

"Releasing payload now," called the copilot.

Whisps of over-ocean cloud rippled past the six-engined aircraft as it cruised into the thick of it. Responding smartly to the crew's commands, hatches along the craft's wings and belly slid open. A silvery hail of particles began to stream free, forming a glittering fan behind the white craft as it plunged deeper into the cloud.

That's right. Eat your breakfast, cloud. The thought was silly, but Captain Karima Alasula couldn't help but think it every time. The naturialism behind it all was obvious enough by now - by seeding maritime clouds like this with just the right mixture of particles and substances, it would ever so slightly lighten the albedo of the planet, bouncing back a little more sunlight and allowing the Earth to heal. But her mind still translated it as feeding the clouds breakfast - fattening them up and letting them float along like big puffy balloons.

She tapped the controls a little. The massive aircraft - a specialized blended-wing-body transport, cruising on the power of ultra-efficient fuel cells driving six electric hyper engines banked into the wings - shifted its trajectory subtly to plot its course through the thickest and widest part of the cloud. The longer their joint mission could spend in the cloud, the better off they'd be.

The data bore it out. Nearly five hundred years of pumping excess pollution into the air had taken their toll on the world. Her effort - well, the effort she was part of - wasn't fixing it singlehandedly, but they were helping. Sea levels had decreased over the past fifty years, and cloud seeding had played its part.

To her right, her copilot glanced over with a mellow smile, brushing an errant lock of blonde hair back behind the visor of her helmet. "All going according to plan," Lilja commented in her typical lightly-lilting Pellandish accent.[3] "This cloud's large enough to take the entire payload."

"I'm sure everyone down there will appreciate that." Leaving her hand on the illuminated control board, Karima eased back in the padded command seat, smiling a little in her own right. Faint green airspeed and altitude indicators shimmered in the aircraft's viewscreen, overlaid virtually over the otherwise white-and-grey billow of the sea cloud they were flying through.

Lilja checked her controls one more time before sighing wistfully, also leaving her hand on the panel. "You wonder sometimes if anyone realized back in the day that this would happen. That there'd be a global price for progress."

"There's one for everything, right," Karima conceded. "At least we can fix it."

"Yeah... I suppose that's true."

Far below, a ground-effect vehicle cutting across the ocean towards the Sea of Pearls. Travelers gazed up at the distant passage of the cloud-seeding aircraft and the distinctive shimmering spray that faded into the cloudbank itself, the eddies and currents of its passage visible even from below.

Their wonder was all too dull. Everyone had seen joint climate-preservation flights before. They would again.


[1] Palawan.
[2] Melilla.
[3] Pelland is a country in Alasca. The accents here are a variant on something Scandinavian.
[4] While steam is being picked up here, it's coming in at a time when the general level of technology is still evolving. The world isn't quite in the mid-1700s on every front, so there's a good chance the next few decades will end up looking more steampunk.

SUMMARY:
1555: Workers in the Janggala Kingdom begin using a Chinese steam engine to pump water out of coal mines in southern Sumatra. Nusantara becomes the world's second scale adopter of the steam engine.
1566: Al-Zanqi ibn Hurayth ar-Rammah, a blacksmith and trader from the Maghreb, sets up a steam engine to power a bellows at his forge in Rusaddir. Lower-pressure steam engines enter use in the Asmarid Empire - the third power in the world to begin adopting the steam engine.