The New World of the White Huns

[Practical Lobster]

Sri Lanka (a New Challenger Emerges)

[Much of this post is me playing catch-up. Sri Lanka has been alluded to a lot over the course of this narrative, but rarely have they gotten the spotlight themselves. Here we go.]

To the broader world, Sri Lanka in the tenth and eleventh centuries CE was often seen either as a peripheral concern, a center of Theravada scholarship, and a place of origin for money and trade ships. This was the heyday of the Kashyapani, a mercantile guild whose travels took them from Watya to Japan. They focused on the transport of cargo and the accumulation of wealth, which they reinvested into their community in the form of shrines, stupa, centers of scholarship, and substantial irrigation works.

For the Chola, of course, Mahatitta in particular and Sri Lanka in general was an obstacle to their imperial hegemony, which stretched as far afield as Sri Vijaya. And by the early eleventh century, the Sri Lankan monarchy, centered in the city of Anuradhapura, had entered into a period of near-terminal decline. The Chola dynasty launched repeated attacks on the northern coast, most notably sacking the mercantile city of Mahatitta in 1066 (although it subsequently recovered). The Chola were able to seize many of coastal cities for a time, including Gokanna and the growing port of Vaddapura. However, the royal mercenary soldiers, many of them South Indian themselves, remained essentially loyal to the wealthy Anuradhapuran regime[1], and continued enforcing royal order. The rural villages and complex irrigation networks that the island depended on were substantially unaffected, and the Chola contented themselves with establishing political dominance over these coastal cities (which perhaps in part explains the retreat of many Sinhalese urban elites towards Vaddapura, which remained outside the scope of Chola conquest).

Notably, there is no evidence that the Chola army ever sacked Anuradhapura[2], nor that there was a violent overthrow of the sacred city, with its great collection of Buddhist relics and monuments. Certainly, the Chola made numerous attempts to redirect trade towards their cities and guilds, and their conquered outposts along the northern rim of the island. And there is substantial evidence that Anuradhapura itself declined precipitously over the next century, even as the hinterlands remained largely intact.

However, the Sri Lankan companies had substantial overseas contacts and major imperial sites like Polonnaruva and Yapahwwa remained in the hands of the inland Sinhalese regime, meaning that by the early twelfth century, after a substantial period of back-and-forth, and series of invasions and counter-invasions, the Chola were largely expelled. The biggest victims of this constant warfare had been the sangha - the powerful monastic communities who had served as landholders for centuries. Their concentrations of wealth had made optimal targets for plunder, compared to rural communities and fortified royal cities. While Anuradhapura would remain a potent religious center, a site of coronations and religious festivals, the monarchy itself transferred its administrative seat to the fortified and defensible Yapahwwa, where it was freed from the sangha. In the thirteenth century, with the Chola preoccupied further afield and the current ruler, Kassapa confident in the security of his regime and the power of his navy, the capital was moved to Polonnaruva.

The thirteenth century marks a period of “cold war” between the Chola and the Sri Lankan monarchy. Sri Lanka had survived the “test” of South Indian imperial aggression. When the two powers next went to war, in 1236, the Sri Lankan fleet actually scored a decisive victory, which they followed up with a raid on the port of Nagapatnam. It had made evident that it was not another kingdom to be humiliated and subsumed - possessed of a powerful fleet and substantial material wealth, it made itself a difficult test for any would-be Tamil conqueror. This was a time of material progress - the expansion and redevelopment of irrigation works damaged in the fighting - increased overseas trade and the increased voyages of Sri Lankan merchants westward beyond Cape Watya.

Perhaps this reversal of fortunes owes much to the gradual shift in the balance of power. The Tamil had profited from a disunited Southeast Asia, where their merchants and guilds could play sides off one another. The unity of Majachaiya was a dangerous threat to their ability to project power - no longer could fleets of Tamil warships “maintain order” in the Malay archipelago. This reduced, in turn, the concessions that the Tamil could extract. Tamil trade companies had to play ball on a relatively even playing field, lacking the ability to force concessions from individual, isolated polities or establish plantations without oversight. While the Majachaiya were happy with the plantation system and the trade networks they had inherited through conquest, they mandated a sort of even playing field - tax revenue had to come in and everyone had to pay their dues.

In this era, Sri Lankan trading guilds began to buy property in the ports of Cape Watya and establish foriegn quarters in cities ranging from China to Bakhtiyar Egypt, where the Canal of Akhsau Mansar still provided a shipping lane for those who wanted to bring their goods overland into the Mediterranean. Although this brought them into direct competition with the Chandratreya and the Tamil, any thought of crushing the expansion of their trade was put aside as the Chandratreya embarked on their half-century long period of warfare against the Pala, plunging the subcontinent into war and changing priorities overnight for many of the great trading and banking houses. The Sri Lankans, like the Tamil, had been excluded from the White Elephant Concordats, and this drove their policy of securing concessions, at times by force. Furthermore, their soldiers and sailors had been honed by decades of on and off war with the Tamil - meaning that when, for example, a Sri Lankan fleet arrived off the coast of Aden in 1339, seeking repayments for the Malik’s debts, their demands were taken very seriously, even when their demands included a fortification near the harbor. A subsequent naval conflict with the Haruniya in 1346 was resolved after the Battle of the Barim, where a fleet of dozens of Haruniya warships were crushed by a force of Sri Lankan perhaps half their size.

The Sri Lankan elite, having inherited memories of Tamil occupation and several decades of warfare, was not slow to react when the Tamil launched their major intervention in Siddhapura. A few months after that intervention, Sri Lankan ships under the command of one Prince Vatta showed up on the Watyan coast, arriving at the town of Ankaramena [OTL Cape Town]. There, against the (ineffectual) objections of the local Randryan, they established a fortified harbor in the previously sleepy shipping village. Imported Mahratta mercenaries set to work erecting shore batteries and fortresses. The Sri Lankan sailors christened the the new fortification Sihanuwara, and set to work expanding and fortifying the harbor.

The town of Watya itself [OTL Van Dyk’s Bay] was equally incapable of responding to this new provocation. The Randryan had always been rural in their focus - settlers and farmers, primarily, they had relied on the protection of Kapudesan and Chandratreyan fleets and soldiers to defend them. But the fleets had been recalled, and the soldiers based in Watya refused to risk open war without orders which would take time to filter down. Kapudesa in particular was bought off with certain diplomatic promises and assurances that the favorable status of their merchants would be maintained. The Sri Lankan coup over Watya was completed over the course of a few years. The few other coastal towns, such as Tandrano [Port Elizabeth] and Antsiranama [Durban], were able to mount more effective resistance - gathering soldiers from the hinterland and digging in cannons along the shore - but by 1342, there was an understanding that the conquest of Watya was essentially a foregone conclusion, although the Sri Lankan soldiers never made any attempt to disrupt the Randryan in the hinterlands - and indeed acknowledged their property rights and offered them gifts.

The seizure of Watya essentially brought an end in fact, if not in law, to the fiction that trade in the Indian Ocean and beyond could be regulated by the agreement of local monarchies and trade councils. In a matter of a few years, the Yapahwwa monarchy demonstrated that they could, and would, project power without the consent of their peer competitors, and due to the distraction of their principal rivals in Thana, their power would grow unchecked by any adversary except the Pandya - who, to their immense detriment, still had to guard against Pala and Chandretreya incursions from the north.

[1] A major divergence from OTL.

[2] This is actually as OTL.

 

[Hobelhouse]

So Sri Lanka has the Cape, if it can keep it. Going to be jealously contested by Kapudesa, Ispania, and probably a long list of others.

I feel like there's so many maritime players in India it might be nice to have a rundown of the major power blocs?

I don't the Kongo has been mentioned thus far TTL either, what's happening with them?

 

[Practical Lobster]

So Sri Lanka has the Cape, if it can keep it. Going to be jealously contested by Kapudesa, Ispania, and probably a long list of others.

Kapudesa, I'm not sure has recently been a particularly active maritime power in their own right. The cities of the East African coast don't necessarily have a uniform foreign policy, even if they notionally have a single Shah. Much of their focus is on resource exploitation - plantation economies, ivory, and slaves. We've seen them project power indirectly in Madagascar and into the interior of Africa, but I'm not sure there's much precedent for them taking interest in foreign policy outside their immediate sphere of influence.

I feel like there's so many maritime players in India it might be nice to have a rundown of the major power blocs?

That's a very good point. I think it should be a post-Chandratreya / Pala wars rundown though. It would feel futile to talk about the great Indian Empires while they're on their deathbeds - and the new era of national identities and political thought, as well as a period of local, regional monarchs that is going to be much more dynamic and interesting in any event.

As we push towards major colonial confrontations among the European, Indian, and Near-Eastern powers though, this thread is crying out for a discussion of their alliances and positions. So I will definitely do that.

I don't the Kongo has been mentioned thus far TTL either, what's happening with them?

Good point, that will need a post.

 

[245]

Sri Lanka (a New Challenger Emerges)

[Much of this post is me playing catch-up. Sri Lanka has been alluded to a lot over the course of this narrative, but rarely have they gotten the spotlight themselves. Here we go.]

You forgot to put the notes in.

 

[LostInNewDelhi]

Lanka and Tamilakam have a Britain/France dynamic going, interesting. But right now it seems like the Tamils are mostly winning in the east while the Lankans scoop up the west.

A subsequent naval conflict with the Haruniya in 1346 was resolved after the Battle of the Barim, where a fleet of dozens of Haruniya warships were crushed by a force of Sri Lankan perhaps half their size.

Where did this battle happen, and over what?

 

[fernerdave]

Do you have a glossary of the various peoples of your TL?

 

[Practical Lobster]

You forgot to put the notes in.

Oh, good catch, thank you. Added.

Lanka and Tamilakam have a Britain/France dynamic going, interesting. But right now it seems like the Tamils are mostly winning in the east while the Lankans scoop up the west.

Where did this battle happen, and over what?

Oh don't worry, they'll start to compete everywhere soon enough.

I hope to address that (brief) conflict shortly but it fits better, I think, in another post. For now, the basic explanation is that the Haruniya consider the Red Sea and such to be their sphere of influence. Barim is off the coast of Aden.

Do you have a glossary of the various peoples of your TL?

I have one from 1104, but ooh boy have things changed. That's a really good project I should do - go around the world in a more systematic way - probably ideally before the major global conflicts over trade and colonies start up in earnest...

It would be a good way to catch up as well on places that haven't been discussed in a while in a systematic way. But that (and new posts more generally) will probably be on pause until after May 15.

 

[Practical Lobster]

Good Question Hobelhouse, What is Going on with Kongo?

Equatorial West Africa in the period between 1100 and 1300 was marked by the expansion of Bantu languages and the migration of Bantu peoples, the development of sedentary civilizations marked by use of iron tools and weapons, reliant on cereal grains for agriculture, and the displacement of hunter-gatherer peoples (although in some cases these hunter-gatherer groups continued to subsist alongside the Bantu, speaking their own autochthonous tongues and existing much as they had for hundreds of years). By 1300, the first regional ethnic groups had begun to develop, principal among them the Imbangala, comprising the Lunda, Luba, Ovimbundu and Ambundu. The complex riverine network of Equatorial West Africa permitted constant communication between tribal groups, often facilitated by fishers, who sold fish and pottery in exchange for vegetable produce and meat. This in turn permitted certain blurring and uniformity of language and custom, although more isolated groups such as those in the alpine Maniema forest maintained greater cultural unity by dint of their isolation.

By 1100, agriculture was already uniform throughout the Equatorial regions. Cultivation was based around red sorghum and the African yam, with sorghum predominant in the coastal and riverine savannah, while yams predominated in the forested regions. Bananas and sugar-cane were cultivated in limited amounts, primarily in the forest. Meat came from hunting and fishing primarily, although goats and chickens were commonplace - unlike south of the forested equatorial regions, where the Bantu kept great numbers of horned cattle, the forest-dwelling equatorial peoples were limited in their protein intake from domesticates, and consequently relied to a far greater extent upon hunting and fishing to supply meat. However, there was an abundance of fish and consequently, protein was rarely scarce even in times of crop failure.

By 1100, the techniques of metallurgy and pottery production that defined the Bantu peoples were well-established. At some indeterminate point, steel was independently invented. The iron mines at Munza and salt extraction from marshes provided useful commodities for trade, creating the first networks of regional trade. Cross-shaped copper ingots were used as a primary method of exchange, at first mostly along the upper reaches of the Zambezi, but in time spreading through the Kongo. In this early period, local villages and other small tribal polities were run on matrilineal grounds, with village leaders staking claims to territorial authority. In contrast to the southern migrants, who had explicit hierarchical systems and leaders with explicitly political authority, the forest peoples were slower to develop these institutions. The forest peoples had formed small chiefdoms or nkumu, ruled by councils of elders whose role it was to assist the chief. Age was the most important criteria in establishing local political importance, but there were few horizontal, much less vertical networks which would allow anyone to establish political authority outside of their immediate sphere.

It was in the south, on the savannah, that the Kingdoms of Luba and Lunda would form. Agriculturally rich and with plentiful opportunities for mining, these polities marked the first true patrilineal monarchies in the region, arranged in loose feudal structures. There were similar kingdoms to their north, in the Kongo basin - most known to outsiders was the kingdom of Mpemba Kasi, polity near the coast. These states however, were essentially embryonic in this time period, and for the traders and explorers who visited the region, there was little of value. The Indian explorers in particular made a habit of looking for sophisticated, urban polities with which to interact - they considered the villages linked by loose tribal affiliations that they found to be beneath their interest. The dense population and substantial resources of the region was beneath their notice simply because it did not reflect the systems and organizations they expected. Accordingly, although ships would stop from time to time and carry out some trade, this trade was limited essentially to European traders stopping to seek out slaves or ivory, and a few attempts by missionaries at (very one sided) cultural exchange.

Later in the fourteenth century, the Mpemba Kasi kingdom, under the auspices of the Kilukeni dynasty, would begin to expand, conquering a substantial territory by the early fifteenth century. They set their capital at Banza, a stone-walled city of some thirty thousand which finally began to attract serious attention from foriegn traders. From the first, Mpemba Kasi, or Kongo as it came to be known, was involved in trade of slaves, which were initially gathered during its campaigns of conquest. Society came to be more stratified through the process of conquest - the villages were placed under the authority of kitomi, or lords, who ruled their territories from stone-walled provincial capitals, and refused to marry outside of their caste. Iron-smelting within the regions controlled by Kongo became a task reserved solely for the nobility. Slaves, always an element of society, became viewed increasingly as a commodity for export rather than a part of the workforce.

Christian missionaries from Ispania and Neustria had been a part of life since the early fourteenth century, engaging the populace and performing baptisms when they found interest. These initial missionaries were primarily Augustinian monks, led by (Saint) Nicolau of Bordeu. The first Buddhist missionaries were sent by the Mahasvami Sariputta of Sri Lanka, in the mid-fourteenth century, after tales of Banza's size and growing importance filtered back to the subcontinent. It was at Sariputta’s urging that the guru Jayaratne (who in time would become known for his treatise “The Calculus of Essence-Meaning”) would spend six years in the Kongo, before moving on to La Tomzepanda, where his teachings would arouse the ire of the local authorities.

[Divergences here essentially revolve around the fact that TTL's Kongo is more explicitly a state based on taking captives for chattel slavery, and that it has more extensive foreign contact earlier. Regardless, it develops mostly as per OTL, since that contact is relatively peripheral at first, and I can't think why there would be huge changes yet.]

 

[Practical Lobster]

To be honest, I really like these little prompts to discuss an undercovered element of the timeline. I do intend to do a global coverage post eventually, but in the interim are there any parts of the White Huns world people feel need more coverage? Or even themes/cultural trends you'd like me to deep dive on?

 

[LostInNewDelhi]

Regions: Pula.
Trends: What does Asian medicine look like-- without the Islamic popularization of Galenic/humoric theory, is everyone using Sushruta Samhita as their theoretical foundation instead?

 

[245]

Trend: Whats happening in music and literature?

 

[Practical Lobster]

Trend: Whats happening in music and literature?

Can you narrow it down to one or two places you'd like me to research/discuss in depth? Or I can.

Regions: Pula.

Ooh yes.

Trends: What does Asian medicine look like-- without the Islamic popularization of Galenic/humoric theory, is everyone using Sushruta Samhita as their theoretical foundation instead?

I will be running to the books!

 

[245]

Can you narrow it down to one or two places you'd like me to research/discuss in depth? Or I can

Trend: how much has music has change compare to otl?

 

[Jito]

This doesn't need a whole post to answer but since I'm currently taking a class on Islamic Architecture, what do religious/monumental buildings look like across West/Central Asia at the moment? Any particularly divergent styles or trends as compared to OTL?

 

[Practical Lobster]

This doesn't need a whole post to answer but since I'm currently taking a class on Islamic Architecture, what do religious/monumental buildings look like across West/Central Asia at the moment? Any particularly divergent styles or trends as compared to OTL?

Near Eastern religious architecture is substantially divergent from what was seen in OTL. Certain features, such as domes on squinches and rib vaults would be familiar, but the general pattern would look uncannily different, especially with the incorporation of some North Indian styles. I like to think of the cities of the Bakhtiyar middle east, especially in their monumental aspects, would look like an uncannily "off" version of OTL. While there is an iconoclastic element to Near Eastern art, it simply does not extend to the same extremes. Thus even if a given temple frowns upon having an image of the Buddha or a deity or other holy figure (and this rule as an absolute prohibition is upheld mostly by the strictest sects), there is no broader prohibition on representations of living things. Often the Buddha would be pictorially represented as a tree. More generally when it is present, imagery of religious figures in the Near East can still be traced back to a certain Greco-Indian sensibility, although stylistic choices have evolved over time.

Iranian interpretations of stupas and viharas (bahar) tend to be laid out very differently than mosques. Minarets would be notably absent. Typically there would be a central shrine - usually domed - centrally located on a broader campus of religious buildings including places for monks and nuns to stay, libraries, etc. Bare stone being frowned upon in religious buildings, the outsides would be covered in reliefs or mosaics, depicting scenes from the lives of Buddhas or saints. Simpler/smaller religious temples/shrines would be single room buildings that are essentially circular, surrounded by a vaulted colonnade. Even smaller shrines might be little domed, four-columned structures without walls.

I'm not a student or architecture or even someone particularly equipped to talk about this. But with my layman's understanding, I believe that Iranian architectural styles profoundly influenced Islamic architectural styles, and thus you'd see a great deal of similarity.

 

[Practical Lobster]

What does Asian medicine look like-- without the Islamic popularization of Galenic/humoric theory, is everyone using Sushruta Samhita as their theoretical foundation instead?

I think you'd be right to suggest that the Sushruta Samhita and the Caraka Samhita are the foundation of medical knowledge throughout the broader "Indoesphere," both through translations and by later commentaries and expansions on their work by medieval scholars. In general, surgical knowledge and knowledge of anatomy are advancing apace, although riddled with misconceptions. One piece of good news is that there's no general taboo against dissection, although certain communities likely do regulate it in the interest of morality or cleanliness. The Tibetans, being intimately familiar with dissection as part of their religious rituals, have created some remarkably wide-spread treatises on anatomy and physiology.

Scientific rigor, germ theory, etc. are all severely lacking. But such is life in a pre-scientific world. For all anyone knows, illness is caused by thinking disharmonious thoughts.

I think traditional Chinese medicine is quite similar to OTL, but I'm open to changes if people have other ideas.

Iranian and Central Asia/Near East medical theories are largely based on a mixture of Greco-Roman and Indian theories, with Chinese texts on medicine as supplements. For many centuries after the fall of the Sassanian Empire, medical knowledge was still largely transmitted in Syriac, but over time there was a gradual shift as doctors began to realize it was a pain in the ass to teach students a dead language, and Syriac lacked the prestige of say Latin in Europe (although much medical terminology is still in Syriac). Major schools such as Sere Kaniye in Syria and Danesgah Jundisapuriya at Nasibin enjoy royal patronage from the Haruniya. These schools trace their accumulation of knowledge back to Roman and Sassanian times, and accordingly have been less willing to accept some of the latest innovations from the East - whereas schools in Iskandara and Asvahan are seen as more cosmopolitan schools of learning, where students debate and translate the latest Hindi and Chinese texts.

 

[Hobelhouse]

How much Greco-Roman knowledge has been lost compared to OTL? I think at one point you said the early fall of Byzantium wiped out a lot of stuff, but OTOH the Frankish Empire was much more stable TTL and would be better able to preserve whatever it had. There was probably also (and maybe continuing) a sizeable Greek diaspora, especially to South Italy, Cyrenaica, and perhaps the city of Alexandria, which were also predominately Greek communities. I've heard it argued that the fall of Byzantium kicked off the Renaissance OTL, as many fleeing scholars moved to Italy and brought their superior knowledge of that tradition.

 

[Practical Lobster]

Majachaiya

[Update. I forgot the Chola dynasty fell in the late thirteenth century. Certain previous posts have been amended. Incredibly, this doesn’t change too much. But it is worth remembering that the Tamil aren’t ruled by the Chola, and embarrassing that I forgot. I also changed who they fell to - erasing entirely the prior dynasty’s name, because on further reflection it didn’t really make any sense and seemed kind of like lazy writing.

So in summary, the Pandya launched a successful rebellion against the Chola at the end of the fourteenth century. About six different posts have been substantially edited to reflect this dynastic trade-off. Honestly, it was amazing how little I actually had to change - the biggest changes came in the description of the Chola intervention in West Africa. Since the Sri Lankan post is mostly catch-up, nothing of value really was edited.

I need to talk about Majachaiya before I can talk about Pula. So here we go - a history of the golden age of the Radiant Tree Empire.]

The city of Majachaiya (literally “Radiant Bael Tree”) had an auspicious foundation and an auspicious name. In a certain sense, it was a reference to Sri Lakshmi, goddess of wealth and prosperity, who, along with Shiva, was said to have a special connection to the bael tree. It was also a reference to the bael trees and their fruit, the cultivation of which had once been important to a small village a few miles from Mahadaha, the city of canals and festivals, of glamorous bathhouses and red brick palaces, of temples adorned with bas reliefs. It was at the site of that village that a young Prince, who would later call himself Nararya Jayavardhana, but for now was merely the third son of an unremarkable Isyanian adipati (lord) established a fortified palace stronghold. Nararya Jayavardhana did not know that he would become King of the entire Malay Archipelago yet. At the time, he merely hoped to create a prosperous estate that would safeguard his family’s fortune. He was freshly returned from Kitai, where he had spent his boyhood as a hostage.

Twenty years later, that palace, now vastly expanded and garlanded with the plundered wealth of a hundred cities, would become the centerpiece of a new world empire.

It was the institutions that Nararya Jayavardhana created that enabled his regime to conquer so effectively. Those institutions did not arise in a vacuum, nor were they without precedent. As a hostage in Kitai, he had been educated in buyan. He had learned the disciplined cavalry tactics that the Kitai aristocracy used to hunt wild game. He had been given ample opportunity to observe military drill and the professional Kitai army (although likely never in battle) and the professional Kitai bureaucracy (although at a distance). It appears, based on the rhetoric of some of his recorded pronouncements, that he had been profoundly influenced by the exoteric thought of the late Kitai. In other words, the innovations of Nararya Javavardhana were not without precedent - they were imported.

Traditional Javanese warfare had relied heavily on the well-armed, well-armored nobility, backed by massed levies who usually could not afford tufenj. Indeed, by the dawn of the fourteenth century, most firearms and artillery in the region were still produced by the Cevirukkai (who, even while serving as the premier banking institution for the Chandratreya still maintained their original role as arms manufacturers). Establishing indigenous firearms production required imported manufacturers to serve as tutors, and accordingly most of the warlord states in the pre-Majachaiya era did so. Nararya Jayavardhana was simply one of the earliest and most aggressive adopters of the idea of an indigenous firearms industry, importing, for example, Tamil gunsmiths from the Pandyan. Within a decade, a visiting Chinese traveller described his cannons as “of unparalleled quality.”

Undercutting the levy system proved easy in a time of political and social disruption. “Creating bands of armed men was no difficulty at all.” Nararya wrote. “But without any difficulty they had no value.” Systematized drilling of his soldiers into a professional fighting force, at the same time that the Chandratreya and Pala were drifting towards a levee en masse style of warfare, reflects the massively different needs that the Majachaiya had.

Military service had to be a career, as it was in Kitai. This was Nararya’s sole real ambition, and all others stemmed from it. In order to do so, the power of the nobility had to be broken. The nobility had two real rivals - the caste of absentee urban landholders whose plantations were outside of the traditional feudal system, and the artisan and mercantile guilds (or in other words the city-dwellers). Accordingly, both of these parties would become allies of the new regime. The nobility and monarchies of conquered countries were rarely shown any leniency in their options to surrender. That their estates were forfeit to the state was an unquestionable requirement. Massive religious complexes which owned substantial land were also required to surrender their land. These requirements made the Majachaiya conquests remarkably bloody and long-lasting. While tribal communities and cities could expect substantial leniency, Majachaiya policy required near total submission from the elite.

However, with the exception of the inland Minangkabau, no major power on the archipelago was successfully able to resist. One of the few longer holdouts was Temaseka, which did not fall until 1319. A Srivijayan prince had fled there in the aftermath of the destruction of his city. There he crowned himself Raja Paramesvara and declared the kingdom of “Simhapura” - a last bastion against the Majachaiya advance[1]. It was an utterly futile gesture of grand ambition. Temaseka or Simhapura was an island city, easily besieged by the vastly superior Majachaiya navy and cut off from land by thousands of cannon laid in batteries. After a decisive naval battle and a few weeks of shelling, the city surrendered. It was subsequently renamed Vijayakota, and over the next few centuries it would become one of the wealthiest and most populous cities in the world. Majachaiya, meanwhile, the perfect capital of Nararya Jayavardhana, would not outlive its dynasty.

A relentless desire to improve and perfect motivated Nararya, best exemplied in his ordering the complete abandonment of Mahadaha in favor of his new capital, Majachaiya, which was laid out in a perfect grid, in Chinese style. His love affair with cannon and nautical affairs would eventually lead to his deafening, and in his old age, Nararya Jayavardhana would largely retreat into study of weapons and ships, leaving power primarily to his son, Rajasanagara, who was entrusted with the management of his father’s enormous empire in 1334.

Rajasanagara, born Prince Gaja, for his part had grown up well aware of the burden of ruling. He was aware almost from birth of the crushing responsibility of an empire which, at the time of his sixteenth birthday was a dream in his father’s eye, and by his twenty-sixth controlled most of the archipelago. As a child he was close with his brother Tojaya, but as his father’s power increased, he plotted to push Tojaya out, sending him to a buddhist monastery to avoid threats to his inheritance. He spent his time among his father’s board of ministers, among the bureaucrats and lawyers that made up his father’s administration, devoting himself totally to the minutiae of ruling. Described as humorless and dour to those who knew him, he was a stressed and neurotic man in private, keeping the company of his wife Citra and few others. In his own estimation he was a near-divine power, set on this world to rule it, and rather than fill him with egotism that thought filled his nightmares.

Still, Rajasanagara would preside over a period of relative wealth and prosperity, of unparalleled economic expansion and expansion of the plantation economy which brought vast quantities of wealth into his court. Majachaiya expanded further under his reign, although the port of Surabaya began to overtake it in overall size and perhaps even economic output, becoming a major shipping and shipbuilding hub.

It was in the reign of Rajasanagara that Javanese culture began to truly disseminate to the rest of the archipelago. Gamelan music expanded across the islands. The red brick architecture of Mahadaha became ubiquitous across the archipelago in the forts and temples the dynasty founded. Administrators, priests, and soldiers from Java were settled across the empire as managers and tenant-owners on the vast estates that had been seized. In the urban centers, literature and literacy flourished with the patronage of printing-houses and universities, competing for the first time with the great temple-complexes and their extensive libraries. Vernacular Javanese literature, at first printed versions of old legends and folk stories, such as Vishnu and Brahma peopling the island with human beings, but later truly original epics (often set in a mythologized India), began to flourish. Rakavi, poet-scholars, were patronized by wealthy merchants and artisans to create original and clever stories, rather than repeat oral folklore. These innovations spread like wildfire, pushed across the continent by the flattening uniformity of Majachaiya’s imperial project.

At its core, Majachaiya depended on a strong ruler. The bureaucracy was ponderous and immense, tens of thousands of ministers and administrators from the provincial level to the village level overseeing the production of everything from rice to sandalwood to spices. The whole system worked because at the top there was someone to direct the increasingly ponderous ship of state. The economy was based almost overwhelmingly on agricultural production of luxury goods to satisfy foriegn markets. Those same foriegn markets brought avaricious traders to the doorsteps of the realm, and only the enormous and unchecked power of the bureaucracy and the military kept them in check. Over his life, Rajasanagara feared perhaps most of all that the foreigners would destroy what his father had built. He also feared placing on any one of his beloved children the burden of ruling a state that was becoming dangerously restive.

Conquest was the traditional driver of the military. But there were diminishing returns - those places which could be attacked were now far afield - distant Khmer cities or perhaps the Champa. An assault on the Visayas would require even more attenuate supply lines. So the army, victim of its own success, sat quiescent. Where was Majachaiya to conquer next? The armies and fleets began to atrophy in the absence of any need - whole units became effectively provincial security forces. Minangkabau tribes were the sole remaining enemy, and their lands brought no real prospect of plunder outside of a few slaves.

In the end, he chose his son, Kirtavijaya, as his heir, which was fortunate because he died suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of forty-seven in 1341, leaving Kiratvijaya in control. Kiratvijaya, to his credit, was not incompetent, necessarily. Unlike his father, he had grown up in a life of comparative luxury and also comparative fear of his brothers - the uncertainty of the succession having gnawed at him almost a decade. Ascending the throne at the age of twenty-nine, he would rule only four years, when he would be killed in a hunting accident, dying childless but asking his sister Gayatri to rule as regent on behalf of her infant son.

Gayatri immediately faced a threat from her brother Singavardhana, leading to a brief but bloody civil war. Losing control of the royal city of Majachaiya to an overnight palace coup, she withdrew to Surabaya and compelled the soldiers garrisoned there to return her to the capital. According to legend, when her soldiers insisted that they wait and gather reinforcements from other towns, she simply told them that she would ride to the city regardless, and the soldiers followed.

More accurately, it appears that Singavardhana had the loyalty of the army but not the navy. There are accounts of several major army garrisons being destroyed systematically early in the reign of Gayatri, after she returned to Majachaiya. Similarly, the soldiers who escorted her back to the capital are often referred to as sailors, and the depiction of their arms and equipment (short-barrelled tufenj in particularly being a common sailors’ weapon used in boarding actions) matches that.

When she returned and executed her brother, Gayatri established herself as the ruling Queen with the assistance of her husband, a prominent administrator named Kembara. Although she ostensibly ruled as regent for her infant son, her son died of an unspecified illness at the age of thirteen, and she then ruled for her eleven year old son, Adityavarman who upon his ascension to majority named Kembara the Prime Minister. Gayatri effectively ruled until her death at the age of eighty-eight in 1404. She had overseen the golden age of her empire, a state of unparalleled wealth and majesty. She guided the state through numerous crises, rebellions and conflicts between the bureaucracy and army. What she had not done was prepare for succession. She had numerous sons, some it was widely and treasonously whispered, not with Kembara but with handsome young courtiers who had caught her eye.[2]

She was the last person who could balance the competing interests and impossible burdens of state, and although she was a woman of incredible competence and skill, her children and grandchildren were born into impossible luxury and utter comfort. They won positions of great rank without undue effort, and since her glorious ancestors had destroyed every royal family and brought down every great noble house outside of their own on the entire archipelago, they really had no competition.

Or so they assumed.

[1] Get it? Get it? Guys?

[2] Generally, it was other sons whispering that, as the game of “who will mom pick to run the empire?” became increasingly bloodthirsty.

 

[Practical Lobster]

How much Greco-Roman knowledge has been lost compared to OTL? I think at one point you said the early fall of Byzantium wiped out a lot of stuff, but OTOH the Frankish Empire was much more stable TTL and would be better able to preserve whatever it had. There was probably also (and maybe continuing) a sizeable Greek diaspora, especially to South Italy, Cyrenaica, and perhaps the city of Alexandria, which were also predominately Greek communities. I've heard it argued that the fall of Byzantium kicked off the Renaissance OTL, as many fleeing scholars moved to Italy and brought their superior knowledge of that tradition.

Decent bit of medical and scientific knowledge was lost. Its tough to quantify. The Frankish Empire's stability helped, as does the substantial (and you're right, continuing), but I think the Greek East got pretty unequivocally wrecked. A lot of stuff that survived OTL Islamic raids were simply sacked and burned. Lots of pillaging waves of Eftal horsemen will do that to you.

A lot of stuff survived of course, preserved diligently in monasteries in Europe and North Africa. Now the question is, how much of that knowledge is easily accessible? How much did monasteries share what they maintained? How much lost knowledge was due to poor maintainence?

 

[Practical Lobster]

Syria

In 1321, Khoja Firuz ibn Nima owned many fine sailing ships and lived a comfortable life. He kept a stately apartment which was situated outside crumbling old Roman walls of Akka [Acre], but within the more modern fortifications and artillery parks of the Haruniya. In the countryside he had a villa, with many horses and several profitable olive presses. His brother Kaikavus had been appointed to high rank in the armies of Ikramihira ibn Abduldarma, mostly recently being named to serve as bodyguard to the crown prince, Aksunvara ibn Ikramihira[1]. Of his daughters, the eldest had become a nun, and now resided in Antayukha at the great monastery there. The youngest, Seher, would along with her husband inherit his estates. Firuz still mourned the loss of his son Shurena, who had died a warrior’s death in Anatolia during the wars against the Xasar (who he hated), and the loss of his wife, who had died giving birth to Seher. He had never remarried.

Firuz ibn Nima had lived his entire life as a subject of the Haruniya, although some of his earliest recollections were of his elder brother riding south with Khayam ibn Mehrdata, the conqueror of Egypt whose own victories were quickly usurped by the rising star of Mihrdata Yasuj. In his adolescence, he remembered cheering the victories of Mihradata, the great conqueror whose victories against the god-worshipping Khardi[2] were the stuff of legend.

Firuz was honest in the fact that he had ridden his elder brother’s coattails to financial success and comfort. The rewards of loyal service had been heaped upon the family, and with the profits of managing the estates his brother had been rewarded for his military career, along with a sizeable inheritance, Firuz had managed to buy sailing ships and become a trader of spices - running his vessels from Iskandara to Italy and Konstantikert. This was the era of good times, accompanied by the heady enthusiasm of a growing empire, fat on conquered territory and seemingly unstoppable in battle. Firuz leased a compound in Iskandara itself, and owned several warehouses near the Canal of Akhsau Mansar.

But by the fourteenth century, Firuz, along with many of his contemporaries, was dismayed with the way his country was changing. His material comfort and advantages had not dissipated - quite the contrary. Christendom and the Xasar were insatiable in its demand for eastern commodities, and the Syrian Ifthal-Arab landowners had stake or owned outright many of the ships which ran those luxury goods west. Unlike Italian or Mauri traders, the Syrians had special rights and privileges by virtue of their loyalty to the state (usually military or bureaucratic service) that exempted them from some tariffs.

The world was changing. Lankan and Mahratta merchants and their agents were simply more present than before. Sah Ikramihira was absent more often than not from the affairs of state. He was a wartime leader, comfortable in a saddle or tinkering with weapons (or his pet project - attempting to mount balsa-wood wings on his slaves and force them to fly). He was also a drunkard, a condition which grew worse and worse as he entered into his middle age. As a young man he had abandoned his harem and his concubines - a gift to his Iranian wife Roshana, some suggested. Others, rather less romantically, claimed it was a necessary concession to the powerful monasteries of the Nowbahar. But in his middle age he had begun to take mistresses, and his military successes had come decades ago. He was always talking of starting a war with the casual ease with which a noble child might talk of playing caukan [polo].

This was not particularly alarming. What was much moreso was the presence of Mahratta embassies at court, and the whispered rumors that they were becoming brokers who controlled the most important political resource of the state - access to the monarchy. Ikramihira had expensive tastes in his own personal decadence but also in firearms and ships. He was always seeking out new loans to keep the state afloat - and the rumor was the state had been indebted to foreigners since the early conquests.[3]

Mostly, Firuz ibn Nima learned of this through his brother, who had always been a bit of a gossip when he was in his cups. It was around this time that Firuz left Antayukha and the royal court for his hometown of Akka. There, in the more exclusive coffeehouses and bathhouses of the city, he began to meet with others who shared his growing fear.

The coffeehouse was a peculiar institution of the near east, a place of performative drama and public social gatherings, where meetings could be seen but rarely overheard amidst the chaotic hubbub. Zanj drink, tea and wine flowed freely. The tayzig ritual of conducting private business in public made these conspiratorial meetings have a certain openly provocative feeling. People of means and power knew that dissent was being voiced, but it was difficult to prove unless one was willing to themselves speak against the monarchy. Still, there was danger, and Firuz recognized that. Ikramihira had murdered an entire family because of the successes of one general. If he truly believed his throne to be in danger, he would do much more - and under the legal codes of the Bakhtiyar he would have every right to strike against treason.

Akka was not a major seat of power for the Ifthal world. It was a trading port of middling importance. The inland cities had always been more prominent, and as far as ports went, the Levantine cities simply did not connect to the most important trade routes anymore. But Firuz was not alone. In many of the great cities, Ifthal landlords began to suspect the time was nigh for a change of power. Firuz was among those who gathered in Dimaskha and approached the heir to the throne, Aksunvara ibn Ikramihira. The fact that Firuz was the brother of one of Aksunvara’s bodyguards made such a meeting easy to arrange. And their intent was not openly treasonous. They suggested simply that Aksunvara should take a more open interest in the affairs of state.

Aksunvara rebuffed them, and it was not long before Firuz came to believe he was being watched by agents of the monarchy. The conspiracy began to harden. Their meetings became more secretive, conducted in houses and in temples, enabled by the passing of furtive notes and the distribution of printed documents. But there was little expectation of success, until in 1322, when Firuz met with Ariaxa ibn Demir Herati, the Ifthal governor of Xvaristan, and the son-in-law of Ikramihira.

Ariaxa was a pragmatist. He recognized that there was no going back to the old days - that trade from the East required concessions and alliances. But he also feared a situation wherein the Mahratta mercantile community had too much influence over royal policy, and was given essential control over the state. Accordingly, he tentatively offered support to the conspirators. Furthermore, as the scion of a Turko-Ifthal family of great wealth, he appealed to a certain section of Ifthal society.

Several months later, Ikramihira and Aksunvara were slain at a state function by Kaikavus. Ariaxa, now calling himself Ariaxa Sah, rode to Antayukha. One of his first decrees was to order the arrest and execution of Kaikavus. Firuz did not find himself granted unprecedented royal power, but rather forced to flee to Kapudesa with whatever valuables he could carry. His daughters inherited nothing, and his property was seized by the state.

Ariaxa Sah, to his credit, attempted to chart a path away from growing foriegn influence, while still maintaining the historical role of the Syrian Ifthal as middlemen between the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean. To this end he would be a signatory to the Second White Elephant Concordat, his attempt to establish himself as a power on equal footing with the Chandratreya and their guilds. As long as the Chandratreya remained powerful, he was permitted a relatively free hand in southern Arabia and even around the Horn of Africa. The powerful guilds of Thana continued to finance his border wars in Anatolia and provide advanced weaponry and valuable luxury goods. But the Second White Elephant Concordat would not provide the stability and certainty of the First. Lanka was on the rise, her merchants increasingly ubiquitous and her guilds more than capable of subverting their rivals in Thana. Chandratreya naval dominance had been slipping for centuries, and their ability to dissuade piracy and privateering was at a nadir by the middle of the fourteenth century. Ariaxa Sah found himself forced to devote more and more royal funds to the Red Sea Fleet.

The Chandratreya had few overseas naval bases. They frequently contented themselves with basing rights within allied ports - in large part because they relied on guild fleets to conduct overseas expeditions rather than maintain a large royal navy - which they could ill afford during the fourteenth century. Indeed, much of the foriegn policy of the Chandratreya was run by nonstate actors, in contrast to the more centralized and efficient south Indian dynasties, who exerted far more royal control over their economies. Much as the Pandya would exploit the collapse of the Majachaiya and the Pala, the Lankan guilds would secure major concessions at the hands of the weakening Chandratreya.

Ariaxa’s son Roshtam ibn Ariaxa (1334-1349) would preside over the disastrous naval battle at the Barim, which would bring the Haruniya monarchy into a state of functional submission to the Lankans as far as Indian Ocean affairs went, and end Ifthal naval power in the Red Sea for a generation. Unable to prevent the Lankans from securing Aden, Roshtam was overthrown, leading to the Anarchy of Emesa and a suite of new concessions granted to Lankan merchants and their allies. By the time Firuz ibn Nima returned home in 1351, now an old man, he did not recognize his own country.

[1] Wonder why we’ve never heard of him before?

[2] His enemies were largely not Khardi, but who lets facts get in the way of a good story?

[3] Debatable. Although revenue collection was always a difficulty for the Haruniya, who granted tax exemptions to religious institutions both Christian and Buddhist, it seems unlikely that the early Haruniya state had significant foriegn debts. Most likely early debts came in the form of voluntary contributions from the major landlords of Ifthal Syria, for which repayment was expected.