The Savahila
By the death of Citrasena in the late 670's, the merchant-prince's heirs could safely say their father was the founder of a civilization. It was not, perhaps, a traditional society. While it had retained much of the culture of its colonial forefathers in India, Persia, and Hadhrami Arabia, it was also deeply influenced by the native Cushites who made up the vast majority of the population. While Savahila cities might have aesthetically retained Persian architectual styles due to similar building materials, out in the rural regions made use of a mixture of mud brick and stone. Merely a few miles inland, the foreigners could be seen to have little impact. While their crops had allowed population densities unknown previously, and their religion (Buddhism, mostly) was being spread by bright-eyed missionaries in saffron and ochre robes, if one traveled but a little further, away from navigable rivers and the long coast, even these tokens of foreign dominion were absent.
Most of the population, including a good number of urban-dwellers, were engaged in agriculture. A wide variety of products - rice, sorghum, oranges, bananas, tamarind, grapes, sugar-cane, and honey. Cattle and fish were plentiful, with the former being a symbol of status to those living in the hinterlands. Horses and sheep also existed in some numbers. But agriculture was not what brought foreigners to the shores of Savahila. Rather, that was the potential luxury trade goods which could be extracted. These included slaves (typically captured in warfare), aloe, ivory, ambergis, leopard skins, tortoiseshell, gold and iron. To the north, an incense and spice trade developed to rival that of southern Arabia and Awalastan.
The coastal cities, even as they blended with the Bantu and Cushitic peoples found themselves looking eastward, to India and Arabia, rather than westward. They were part of a global network there - wealth and prosperity lay to the east, and their trade ships and manufacturing did not benefit the peoples of the interior one iota.
Penetrating the interior remained difficult indeed. Alternatives were sought, including major naval expeditions further south, both to find trading partners and to find additional sites for cities. Perpetual rumors of great kingdoms inland and to the south spurred this interest. But after a few failed naval expeditions, the cost was generally judged too exorbitant for no gain. The whole south of the continent was sparsely peopled and the Savahila themselves were small enough in number that the additional living space was unneeded. Further, there seemed to be no goods available in the far south that could not be acquired much closer to home.
Those who chose to travel inland finally came to the great lakes, where rumors of great kings and golden cities compelled them to search far and wide. What they did find was small and disorganized by their standards, and disinterested in anything they had to offer, be it religion or trade. The early Rutara-Ganda had large villages with a degree of social stratification rarely found in their neighbors, but these were not cities in the Savahila imagination. These expditions had come from Mzishima, its domed temples adorned with terracotta carvings, its bustling marketplaces and grand apartments rising out of the waterfront like a golden hill. They had wandered the streets of Vayubata, her avenues red from river-clay. Invariably, they would return home disappointed.
However, by the early eighth century some tribes closer by, notably the Kw'adza and Iringa, had begun more involved trade. While they had little to offer the sedentary cities of Savahila, they did have two utilities - their cattle were valuable to that portion of the Savahila elite that did not hold cows sacred, and further, their raiding against the migratory Bantu provided a source of slaves. While the Savahila had little need for slaves, the floodplains of Mesopotamia and the spice plantations of Awalastan did. Slaves were one good among many, but they did provide a medium by which coinage was introduced to these tribes, thus allowing them to interact with the Savahila markets and by extension the Indian Ocean trade network. It was only a matter of time before ambitious merchants from the cities established inland forts from which to sell goods.
Across the water, the island of Izaoraika, still ruled by the Sakalava tribe, had begun to unify the island more thoroughly. By laying down stone fortifications, sometimes with the insight of Arab advisors, they were able to garrison the territories of their one-time enemies, extracting tribute more efficiently and creating an imposing reminder of who ruled the island. Certain local tribes were exalted above others, based on the order in which they had submitted to the Sakalava. These tribes in turn provided the garrisons for forts far from their ancestral territories, creating a system in which all were ruled from a distance.
Apart from a few holdouts, such as the Antaisaka and the Sihanaka, who waged low-intensity war against the Sakalava on-and-off for the better half of the seventh century, the island was subdued. By 700, Izaoraika had a thriving port city, Mahapura, which although often counted among the Savahila cities had a distinctly local identity. Like the Savahila cities, it provided an avenue for Indic and Arabic culture to enter the native consciousness. Both the South Indian model of kingship, wherein one great king ruled a host of lesser ones, and the ideas of Tantric Hinduism had appeal to the Izaoriaka, who saw in these ideas concepts that reinforced their right to rule. Unlike with their traditional beliefs, these more universal ideologies could assert the necessity of a universal ruler, seated at the heart of an intricate mandala.
The Land of Spice and Ivory
The "Missions of Heshana" claim to have converted the Makurians, who had long retained to varying degrees their traditional faith, to Christianity as early as 670. While previously many smaller kingdoms had been Christian, and there had been many pockets of Monophysites within the Nubian nation, the conversion of the Makurian King marked the beginning a new era. By 700, it seems that the Makurian King, Qalidurut, had united most of ancient Nubia under his control once more.
The Kingdom of Makuria was a curious creation. Its ruling elite looked to Rome and to Heshanid Egypt for inspiration, adopting their manner of dress and technology such as the water-wheel irrigation system around this time. Coptic was the language of the Church, and consequently the language of the high elite. Their governance, however, was done in a distinctly Nubian style, with high officials taking on some aspects of priestly dress and authority. Enormous cathedrals such as at Dongola and Faras were built out of baked brick in the cruciform style that had characterized their ancient pagan temples.
Aksum, to the south, was tottering on the verge of insignificance. With the unification of their northern neighbors, trade up and down the Nile became more profitable, and their more vibrant neighbors to the north, unmolested by Somali raids were able to reap the rewards. On sea, the Hadhramut was still preeminent, and based on architectural finds we can see that the amount of foreign goods dropped enormously, even in ports such as Massawa, and major cities such as Aksum and Senafe.
With the collapse of Kaoshid Awalastan in the south, a new local power was rising in the form of the Hawiya clan. Once a marginal tribe in even more marginal land, they had over the past hundred years slowly clawed their way to prominence. In the absence of any central authority, they prospered. With Axum on the decline and the Hadhramut quarreling amongst themselves, there was little to stop them from taking Amoud in 656. With the seizure of the Aksumite cities of Adigrat and Maqale, they put the final nail in the coffin of Axumite predominance.
Taking advantage of the bureaucracy and tributary system successfully employed by Awali Shahs, the Hawiya simply stepped into their role. No longer just a powerful clan, they expected to rule with a degree of absolute authority. While at first many of the Awali tribes might have questioned that choice, the Hawiya had the backing of the Hadhramut traders whose estates produced the spices for which Europe had an insatiable appetite. It was economics, not military power that ensured the rise of the Hawiya. While certainly their initial victories were won by the sword, their long term pre-eminence was designed by the deals they could make with the Arab and Indian merchant elite.
As the Hawiya Shahdom became more solid, they slowly moved away from their traditional roots. The language and customs of South Arabia blended with their own. The Persian styles of Amoud became the styles of their patriarchs. The Jewish merchants, long persecuted by the Hadhrami, brought their own mystical form of monotheism to pre-eminence. Much like the southern cities of the Savahil, Awalastan was a melting pot for refugees and travelers. For example, in 690, a thriving monastic community of Svetambara Jains lived adjacent to the spice plantations of a Jewish tribe, outside of the Perso-Arab city of Amoud, where carts of ivory from Sofala and silk from China might be offloaded.
[Good news, I found some sources to flesh out Berber North Africa!]
Berbers raiding the Mauri
Heresy had always been somewhat popular in Roman Africa - it served as a breeding ground for dissent from Rome, and under the Mauri this continued. The more philosophically inclined among the feudal nobility and the merchant-lords often harbored those with heterodox ideas. In part, this can be traced to a certain bitterness among the Romans of North Africa - they disliked having their religion defined by Rome rather than some more local city. Were there not many patriarchates in the East? With the fall of those patriarchs to heresy and the heathen Eftal, renewed feeling that there should be a Patriarch of Hippo or Carthage reached a fever pitch. Furthermore, the Pope in Rome was a puppet of the Isidorians.
The monasteries of North Africa were mainly of the Cassadorian school, which, while founded in Italy, nevertheless followed the liberal teachings of Cassordius, a man who some might have considered a heretic himself for his approach to the Arians. Those monasteries that were not Cassordian were often practicing what the more orthodox of the Church saw as Gnosticism. Christian North Africa was an thorn in the side of the Roman Church, and the stage was set for a spiritual battle between Carthage and Rome.
Even by the mid 7th century, Christianity was not widespread amongst the Berbers of the interior. The Romanized coastal peoples did certainly extend their dominion towards the interior, but they regarded themselves as Romans or Mauri, under the dominion of the King of Mauritania and Africa. While these people were wealthy, powerful, and cosmopolitan, connected intimately to the Mediterranean trading world, they were also on the decline. The climatological shifts favored the traditional, semi-nomadic peoples of the interior. Warlike and numerous, they were for the most part pagans, worshipping a mixture of local gods and cults.
The very climate changes which encouraged the collapse of the Garamantes, would threaten the Mauri during a period of their greatest weakness. Under King Takfarinas the Mauri possessions overseas would find themselves forced to choose between religion and their King. In many cases, this was not a difficult choice. The Mauri of Sicily in particular began adopting Roman names in this period. Factions developed within the aristocracy - and no small number of these factions sought to overthrow the King and replace him with a different candidate. Things reached a state of crisis when the Count of Caesarea was revealed to secretly be a Gnostic, and Takfarinas did not act.
Azerwal, the Mauri chancellor, did not believe that the Mauri could endure a religious conflict with Rome. Tax revenues in the interior had been on an inexorable decline for decades. Trade was the lifeblood of the Mauri economy, and trade depended on the coastal cities and overseas possessions - the very people most Romanized and most loyal to the Church in Rome. In 671, he overthrew Takfarinas and sent him to a monastery, promising a new era of religious uniformity and, in a private letter to the Pope, attempted to reassure the Papacy that he would do "all in his power to drive out the agents of Satan who dwell among us." Marrying Queen Tagwerramt to attempt to ensure his legitimacy, the new royal couple passed new edicts, reaffirming the power of the state to persecute those the Church deemed heretical, and if necessary overthrow them with violent force, as he had done.
What followed was a systematic persecution of much of the Mauri aristocracy, ostensibly for heresy but also to ensure the loyalty of the remainder to his throne. Between the Battle of Rhegium and this persecution, the inland Mauri were critically weakened at a time they could not afford to be. As the desert spread, the prominent Iznagen tribe of the Awares mountains, led by a local chief named Afalawas, began to raid into Mauri Africa. These raids culminated in the brutal sack of Theviste in 674.
The Iznagen were but a prominent example of a broader trend. Mauretania Tingitana was wholly lost in 682, after the Masamida tribe won the eight month siege of Tingis. The tribe of Iktamen, led by the famous Immeghar, known to his people as "the Prophet" came to reside in Mauretania, within striking distance of the ancient Mauri capital of Caesarea. As these tribes moved, they did not necessarily displace the agriculturalists who remained - rather they took in many cases land which the agriculturalists had been forced to abandon due to climactic changes, finding these ideal for their pastoral lifestyle. Numidia itself was threatened by two allied tribes, the Tumzabt and the Isawiyen, united by a woman named Tazdayet. Constantinia was besieged off and on between 679 and 683, when it would finally fall.
Through all of this, the Mauri did fight back. Numerous small battles between local lords and the Berber invaders more often than not saw the Mauri outmatched. While inland cities would often fall if starved, coastal cities generally fell only rarely, and most of those that fell were at the far periphery of Mauri control. Azerwal would rule until 686, when his nephew Aghilas would take the throne. Three years into his reign, Aghilas would be killed in battle near Sufes, attempting a punitive action against the Iznagen. Dying without an obvious successor, a group of prominent merchant families returned to the capital and there elected one of their own, the aging Sicilian Mauri merchant named Constans, who took the more Mauri name Amawal upon his ascension to the throne.
Constans took a different approach to his predecessors. Instead of warring against the Berbers, he sought to define the territories of each tribe and make peace. Through a combination of generous arrangements and the threat of swift reprisals if those arrangements were broken, he was able to buy his kingdom time. Urban militias were raised and he personally toured the coastal cities, ensuring their land walls were in good shape. The tax burden on the peasantry and landed nobility was lightened, in exchange for regular terms of military service - not merely being levied when called but rather as constant frontier garrisons. In spite of their losses the Mauri remained powerful, and in 693, when the Isawiyen began renewed attacks on the coastal cities and their hinterlands, they were able to resist with relative ease.
However, many Mauri were realizing than an ocean was a safer defense than walls. A not insignificant portion of those with the means fled to Sardinia and Sicily. This northwards shift would weaken the claims of North Africa to deserving its own Patriarchate, and put an anticlimactic end to the religious conflicts which had divided their society. With the collapse of inland Mauri society, many of the monasteries that had attracted the ire of the Church were in the hands of polytheist Berbers who had little concern for the broader world and their religious schisms.
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