The Rise of the White Huns

[Practical Lobster]

Berber Africa

A century of Mauri rule in Africa had led to an increasingly centralized but nevertheless feudal state. As tribal distinctions began to blend, the Rex of Mauritania and Africa, [FONT=&quot]Takfarinas presided under a continued zenith of Mauri power. Takfarinas spent much of his reign in Sicily and Sardinia, where he played a sort of Roman Emperor to those local potentates who hosted him. In the wake of the declining power of Constantinople, the African King was remarkably well received. Though Takfarinas had dreams of a campaign against the Visigoths, he would ultimately listen to his advisors and avoid upsetting the status quo. [/FONT]

Back in North Africa, after Isemrases II's death in 574, a renaissance of theological debate began. Influenced by Cassodorian apologism and a growing monastic tradition in North Africa, the ideas that began to take vogue were often bordering on the heterodox. But where their European counterparts would press towards a unification with Arianism, the African movement tended towards Gnosticism, encouraged by Manichaeist holy men from Syria. These refugees were often persecuted, but due to the patchwork nature of North Africa, they could move from region to region, enjoying the patronage of certain tribes which developed into a small but nevertheless influential following.

Takfarinas died in a hunting accident in 586 at the beginning of this movement. Under his wife [FONT=&quot]Meghighda[/FONT], who took power after his death however, the opportunities Takfarinas longed for would become a reality. During the first years of her reign, she was forced to negotiate uneasily the loose feudal structure that the Mauri Kings so commonly held together through force of will, and the displeasure of the Church, which not-so-quietly considered herself and her late husband to be almost heretical. But against the odds, she gained the respect of important vassal tribes and the critical cities of Hippo and Carthage. The army, a mix between tribal levies retained by nobles and a central corps of late-Roman style soldiers, was initially torn, but after the centralized legions, commanded by a "Roman" general named [FONT=&quot]Massensen began to work for her the remaining tribes were forced to quickly fall in line.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]However, in 604 Northern Italy decisively fell to the Avars, and [/FONT]Doux Isidorus' coup swiftly displaced the remaining Gothic hold on the peninsula. Now undisputed master of Southern Italy, he sought to consolidate his power by driving the Mauri from their few remaining strongholds around Rhegium. Drawn into a war, the Prefect of Sicily, a Mauri by the name of [FONT=&quot]Ilayetmas respectfully asked for the aid of the Queen. Isidorus, who had proved adept at backstabbing Gothic garrisons, proved less adept in a proper war. Massensen sailed to Rhegium with a large fleet and reinforcements, ending the siege and marching north with the Prefect. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Unlike Isidorus however, the Mauri armies lacked the loyalty of the Italian citizenry, who found Isidorus, a Roman like them, preferable to a new era of foreign rule. Despite setback after setback and a chaotic retreat to Naples, the Mauri could not win the hearts and minds of the Italian people. Despite the conquest of Canusium, which was awarded to General Massensen, the bulk of Italy fought back hard. The Doux learned to delegate his command to more capable subordinates, and in a skirmish near Capua, the Mauri were brought to a bloody stalemate that cause Massensen to stall. The General had already won from his Queen an enormous prize - the whole of Apulia and Calabria was his to rule as Doux, if he could hold it. There was little chance he would receive additional territory. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Rather, he made a pact with Ilayetmas and together the men approached Isidorus, who bit his tongue and accepted the concession of Apulia and Calabria in exchange for peace and the promise of future assistance against the Avars. When the Queen Meghighda[/FONT] [FONT=&quot]discovered this, she was furious, but cautious of angering the two commanders. Rather, she waited until the bulk of their forces began to trickle home and then quietly arranged for the Prefect's arrest and execution. In 608 her orders were carried out, and with Illayetmas out of the way, she divided Sicily into numerous small city-duchies under the command of handpicked Legates. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Massensen was no fool. He saw the future and his own impending demise. The royal army had been placed under the command of the Queen's heir and nephew, Amezwar and for two years now it had been stationed in Africa. He was the tenuous tyrant over a war-scarred province which had little love of him. Meghighda[/FONT] [FONT=&quot]could defeat him even without calling her tribal vassals. He appealed to the Langobard King, [/FONT]Valthar, for aid, but the young King sent his ambassador home with only empty promises. With the Queen closing in and his own paranoia growing, Massensen packed up his household and his remaining soldiers and fled - at first to Roman Asia, but when that proved unpromising, to Egypt, where he offered his services to Shah Syavush as a mercenary.

Apulia was granted to Amezwar within mere weeks of his departure. Under his patronage, it would become a thriving addition to the sprawling Mauri Kingdom, a realm now larger than the Vandal state it had supplanted.


Chaos in the Balkans

King Alboin could not live forever. The young conqueror whose clever leadership had brought his people dominance over Greece was an old man, riddled with gout by the time he passed away in 589. His son, Valthar, would prove to have few of his talents at a time when talent was in short supply. The warlord Zvonomir still ruled much of the Peloponnese, and the various Slavic tribes he and the Bulgars nominally ruled over were difficult to coerce into unified policy. Pannonia was overrun, and the Lombard powerbase had shifted south, to Illyria, or as many were beginning to call it, Langobardia.

Langobard culture was difficult to summarize. It was a mixture of many different peoples, a loose confederation whose aristocrats were independent at the best of times. The more ambitious of them carried out their own raids, either north on the Bulgars or into the remaining Roman territory, and increasingly commonly against local Slavic tribes. In the main, the Langobards were pagan, but increasingly were converting to the local Christianity. Valthar was among those who converted, shortly after ascending to the throne. While many Germanic kings found the realm unified by the adoption of a new faith, this merely lead to increasing instances of violence, now along religious lines. The Roman population themselves did not care that the barbarian invader had adopted their faith, and did not support him, and the Christian Langobards were firmly in the minority. Despite Valthar's attempt in 603 to stage a mass baptism, he found himself increasingly isolated.



This isolation would culminate several months after the "Baptism of the Few" when a Christian gastaldi (ambassador) was murdered by the Slavic lord Bogomil, and general chaos erupted. A massacre of Greek-speaking Romans living in the city of Argithea followed shortly thereafter, and the burning of several churches. Valthar rode south with a core group of his retainers and executed Bogomil, placing a Christian deputy in charge of the city, but the damage had been done. In many cases the already much diminished Greek population of the Balkans had been safe primarily in cities, but that was no longer the case. The history of the pennisula was slowly annihilated in revolts and genocide. That Valthar and his Christians would ultimately emerge victorious was almost irrelevant, given how greatly they weakened themselves in the process.

After the few hundred-day reign of the Roman Emperor Justin in 607, the throne would pass to a general by the name of Constantine, who inherited a much better position. Helped to the throne after Justin died on relatively suspicious natural causes, he quickly turned his attention to shoring up the situation of a crumbling Empire. He would find Ioannes had not been idle. With Alan tribes guarding the east, the Emperor had turned his attention westward. Federates of the Xasar-Sahu cheerfully raided the northern border of Bulgar lands, carrying off slaves bound for Eftal markets. The Avars cheerfully accepted Byzantine aid in pressing southwards into Illyria.

Constantine could not have missed the growing weakness of the Langobards. To protect the Roman citizens being massacred, he ceremonially revoked the status of "Doux" Valthar. Sending an embassary to the Bulgars, he struck an alliance and after a quick naval engagement, prevailed and scattered the Langobard fleet. After landing, he met Valthar in battle at Dausara and smashed the Langobard army in a two day battle which was decided when a detachment of Bulgar cavalry arrived and encircled the Langobard forces. Valthar's regime unraveled shortly thereafter. While the Roman campaign stalled in Illyricum, the reconquest of much of Greece marked an impressive resurgence in the fortunes of an Empire which seemed from the perspective of many to be finally dying. As far north as Macedonia was now Roman once more.

And yet Constantine's reconquest could not have been more hollow in many ways. He recovered a ruined land populated in large part by Slavic tribes, burnt out by years of raiding and war. Economically devastated, it would take much work to leave the region a prosperous again. And the Romans, after finding out the devastation inflicted on their coreligionists and countrymen were more than willing to forestall the prospect of prosperity in favor of vicious vengeance against the remaining Germanic and Slavic peoples. Massacres and mass enslavement were the order of the day.

Central Asia

While relations between the Eftal and the Gokturks had remained friendly throughout first three decades of their "eternal peace" fragmentation in Sogdia meant opportunity, and a new khagan, Kultegin Shad, saw opportunity. The Gokturks had only grown in power, particularly by cementing an alliance with the stubbornly un-sinicized Jin dynasty, the descendants of Rouran Khagans ruling over northern China. Trade along the silk road had allowed them to become wealthy far beyond their local subject clans, and the slow decline of the Eftal in the East presented opportunities which they began to exploit.

At first this exploitation was subtle. Local dhiqans in frontier cities such Khojand as were intimidated or forced into paying tribute. The Qangli Turks, under their vicious Khan Yarin, killed Shah Gokharna and left much of Sogdia unprotected. Difficult choices had to be made. In the south, around Baktria, the Johiyava were quick to offer protection to the various petty dhiqans who established themselves. Eftal companions accustomed to war with both the Gandharans and the Turks, they bit their tongue and accepted the interference of Johiyava tax collectors and clansmen, the latter of whom they were often required to settle on choice land. While in the wake of Turkic raids this was not necessarily difficult, it was a humiliating concession to men who had enjoyed relative autonomy under the nomad Shah Gokharna.

The northern cities however, including fantastically wealthy Samarqand, fell. In 612, a native Sogdian lord in Samarqand was given the title of Iltabar by Kultegin Shad Khagan, replacing almost two centuries of White Hun rule. In general, those cities conquered to the Turks were granted to local Sogdians, and while the distinction between Sogdians and Eftal was by this point not always clear, it was nevertheless a clear indication of who had power on the steppe.

More tragic than the loss of Samarqand for the Eftal was the loss of Piandjikent. The palace-city had long been outside even their largest pretensions to empire, and yet it had remained in the hands of an Eftal. Now Kultegin Shad rode through its hunting grounds and subjected the city itself to a brutal sack from which it would not recover for centuries.

Asvhastan and Xvarazm, two powers in their own right, resisted the Turkic menace rather more strongly - but Xvarazm's tribal warlords slowly folded into the growing Turkic state, and Asvhastan was forced to seek protection from the Eftal.

 

[Practical Lobster]

History Repeats


The Eftal viewed the deteriorating situation on the steppe with no small measure of concern. They had not forgotten history, nor that they had begun their rise to power much as the Turks now had, pressing slowly westward. Khauwashta, whatever his personal religious convictions, was inclined to see time as cyclical. The Eftal had become the settled people, not so different from the Iranians they ruled. Those Iranians had hired Eftal mercenaries, much as the Eftal now hired Turkic warriors to augment their armies. They had come to rely upon those mercenaries to prop up a weakening state, never imagining that it would only take a single battle to permanently undo native rule. The Pahlava before them had been nomads as well, once. The river Wehrot (Amu Darya) was no barrier to an ambitious Khagan, nor were promises of eternal peace.

And yet Khauwashta, unlike his predecessors, was actually equipped to do something about the threat. When the Shah of the Asvha, Salanavira appealed to his "elder brother" in Susa, the "elder" sent money and soldiers, allowing the Asvha to fend off Gokturk raids. Mihiradata, the younger brother of Khauwashta and his close confidant, rode to the relatively neutral ground of Samarqand along with two of the Shah's sons, and attempted to broker a new peace with the Gokturks, perhaps based on marriage as many of the Eftal-Gokturk pacts had previously been based. But the Khagan was ambitious, and unlike many of his predecessors, well aware that previous treaties had been disproportionately favorable to the Eftal. Historically Turkic part of the Silk Road could be more easily circumvented than the whole of Persia, and Kultegin Shad had little desire to yield up this newfound source of revenue. More travelled than his predecessors, Kultegin knew well that the Eftal elite lived lives of ostentatious luxury, even relative to the wealth and power of his own retainers. According to our Eftal sources, the Khagan had seen the opulence of Piandjikent and the prosperity of Eftal cities, and might well have imagined similar wealth for himself and his people, or perhaps believed that the Eftal had forgotten their origins and become weak and lax in their virtues.

Accusations of avarice aside, Kultegin was also clever. The Gaoche confederation had been displaced by his ancestors, and had attempted to invade Persia after being repulsed from the high mountain passes of India. A hundred years ago, another warlord named Khauwashta had seen them back with relative ease, and brought the survivors under his wing as mere vassals. The Gaoche had served only to strengthen the Eftal, uniting them around a common foe and allowing their Shahs to maintain control over their eastern territories in a time of fragmentation.

Kultegin made careful preparations, and struck only after receiving some fortuitous news. In 617, Khauwashta had slipped from a horse while travelling to his royal hunting grounds, and broken his neck. Mihiradata was forced to return from the East with haste. There was no doubt as to Khauwashta's choice of successor - his oldest son, Shahriyar, was already acclaimed. And yet Mihiradata needed to arrive, personally pledge his loyalty to the new Shah, and ensure that he was not seen as a threat by the new Shah's companions, who might well have considered him a potential usurper.

However, these months of cautious politics among the Eftal allowed the Turks a window of opportunity to mount a massive invasion. A series of three columns of Turkic cavalry rode south. The various tribes and nations of Eftal who lived south of the Wehrot however, did not respond timidly as their northern cousins had. Rather, they used night raids and swift ambushes to cause chaos in the larger Turkic armies. But ultimately these outnumbered raiders were dispersed and the Turks proceeded deeper into the heart of Iran, striking for Spahan.

This penetration of the Eftal heartlands ensured a swift response and near-total unity behind the new Shah, Shahriyar. Displaced tribes from the East rallied what mount warriors they could, their style of warfare having changed little since the first Eftal arrived in the region. Heavy cavalry armed with cudgels from Pars, archers from Mesopotamia, the famed Armenian horsemen, their shields painted with Christian imagery - the united Eftal Empire was a potent force. The young Shah rode east and met Khagan Kultegin near Spahan.

Spahan (618) would become a battle for history. It represented the high-water mark of the short-lived Gokturk Khaganate, a time when it seemed that the Eftal could well have been subjugated much as the Persians had a century ago. The Turkic columns converged, but rather than resting and preparing for a pitched battle the next day, Kultegin opted to attack Eftal vanguard in their camp. Under the command of an Eftal general named Artavazda, the vanguard held until the sixteen year old King could bring the bulk of his army around. Contingents of lightly-equipped Eftal cavalry seized two of the Turkic camps, causing a general rout to develop as word spread. Despite being largely cavalry, many exhausted Turkic contingents were surrounded and slaughtered.

Artavazda was named commander and chief for his role in the day's masterful defense of the Eftal camp, and Kultegin himself was captured three days later as his scattered army was ridden down by relatively more fresh Eftal troops - their supplies lost and their horses exhausted, countless Turks were captured and sold into slavery. Kultegin himself would be paraded in an opulent triumph through the streets of Susa, after which time he was executed.

Between 620 and 625, Artavazda led a series of campaigns into Sogdia and Xvarazm, pressing as far as Kashgar. With royal authority, he created a series of new satrapies out of this territory. While some of these battles, particularly those against the vicious Qangli Turks, were hard-fought, they demonstrated the power of a unified Eftal state against the steppe and ensured the enduring power of the Iranic cultural sphere. The battle of Spahan ensured a stricter East-West division of the steppe, preventing the whole region from falling under Turkic cultural hegemony. While these victories would do little to weaken Turkic power in Turkestan proper (although they did for a time reduce it to a squabbling succession crisis) they did re-assert Eftal power in such a way as to encourage the Johiyava to cease their raiding and direct their energies into the subcontinent, which would ultimately lead to the general subjugation of them and their fellow Kamboja tribes as tributaries of the growing empire of Visnuvadhana Maukhani.

History Repeats in the West too

Just when fortune had seemed ready to consign what remained of the Roman Empire to history, the Emperor Constantine had scored, thanks to the internal division of his foes, a magnificent triumph. But it was not enough. The Balkans represented a sink for manpower. The region known as Illyria Langobardia remained outside the grasp of his soldiers, and anarchy reigned. Rulership required negotiating settlements with the surviving Gepidic and Slavic settlers, making treaties and acknowledging the claims of certain local warbands - arousing the ire of the Constantinopolitan elite. Constantine no doubt intended to strip these "grants" at the earliest convenience, but they were still taken as an insult by the aristocracy, who whipped the population of Constantinople into a frenzy.

While the riots were ultimately dispersed and the aristocracy and soldiery placated with promises and land they could not realistically claim, the Romans still incurred great expense garrisoning Greece. The Avars were moving south. Khagan Anakuye had struck south at Constantine's request, but he had made Slavic and Langobard vassals in Illyria and even had the Bulgar Khagan sending a token tribute and referring to him in deferential language. Moving against either of the invaders who now settled south of the Danube with impunity would cost him. The Bulgars in particular had been reforming their military, raising a standing force of soldiers paid in money and land. Constantine's reign would be one of frustrations. Unquestionably brilliant, reportedly a multilingual polymath who in his relative youth had been concerned with theology and the natural science and in his middle age wrote book on military tactics (published posthumously by his daughter), he found himself beset on all sides by threats. The Alans he'd settled in Eastern Anatolia were often restless, and in times of regional famine (notably the year 621) they nearly erupted in open rebellion. Two years later, a general of Alan birth named Eutychius attempted to lead a coup in the city after his soldiers went without regular pay for the better part of a year. But for the timely intervention of the Excubitors. The Imperial Guards arrested most of the conspirators and mass executions were held, but many managed to flee and escape the city.

As a result, distrust of the Alans would grow. The Roman military officers in particular began to refuse to cooperate with them, favoring the hiring of Xasar-Sahu or Avar mercenaries - but these were relatively less available and as a result the military suffered.

Further, in the south Shah Syavush was yet another "heathen" holding the holy city of Jerusalem. The holiest city in Christendom languished in the hands of the "pagan Persians and the vilest Hun." The Western Eftal and their Arab allies still held Cilicia and rumors among the Romans held that the Alans were willing to cooperate with them, so as to gain immense power and become themselves counted amongst the ranks of the Eftal. Syavush for his part would be Shah of Rome, and within years the Byzantines would be forced to worship the Sun and the demonic figure of the Buddha. ...Or so the most alarmist of the Roman patricians believed.

Constantine, a devout Christian, was inclined to agree, but he was also a realist, aging as each year in supreme power over the Roman state took a profound toll. In 623 he signed a new treaty with the Avars, attempting to drive a wedge between them and the Bulgars. It was only partially successful however - the Avars were rampaging through Italy, and very distracted. Further, the Bulgars were building a fleet, and repairing the Roman navy was a top priority of his. Opportunistic pirates had begun to operate on Crete, and even Syavush was building himself a navy - although composed entirely of native auxiliaries - the Eftal had no tradition of naval warfare to speak of, and the Arabians who comprised his state were traditionally landlocked. However, Syavush's advisors had learned well the value of navies from Heshana's campaigns, where it had been one of the great disadvantages of an otherwise seemingly unbeatable army.

But for now, Syavush focused on the short term. Preoccupied by rebellions and matters of administration, he would spend the 20's primarily in Egypt. On his coins, he portrayed himself stylistically as a Greek or Roman monarch, adopting a style radically unlike that of Heshana. He made an effort to accommodate his new, more Hellenized subjects even as he remained at heart an Eftal. Like his father, he was an able administrator and leader, and in the Egyptian tradition, he became a capable master of propaganda, playing Roman to his Roman subjects and Eftal to the rest. Speaking Greek, Aramaic, and Persian, he was in many respects a match for Constantine much as Mihiragula had been for Kallinikos some eighty years ago. When the cautious, diplomatic Narsai passed away in 629, it would set the stage for a new confrontation.

[I hope I've set up some interesting plot twists. Not much new on the western front, but the Turkic conquest of the Eftal I may have foreshadowed a few times has been either delayed or averted. Frankly it seemed both too early and also something that should have happened during the "civil war" if at all. Now, despite the regionalism of the Empire, its unified and invasion would only be a catalyst for that. The reference to "tribes and nations of Eftal" represents just the degree to which Eftal has become a term for all the various nomadic peoples under the Eftal banner - even the Turkic ones to some degree. Of course the ancestors of the original Eftal are higher on the totem pole, and those who can trace Akhshunwarid lineage even higher...

Syavush's Empire right now is a shaky one. There's only so many Eftal in Syria and Osrhoene, and only so many Arabs. Have they reached the limits of their conquest? I don't know. What I do know is that the Roman revival is equally unsteady at this point. I like the idea of two talented leaders who have very little to work with - I think this could become something of an interesting narrative and something worth focusing on. Unless you guys are more interested in developments with say, the Avars or in India.]

 

[Practical Lobster]

The Ride Never Stops - the Eastern Mediterranean aflame

The Avar Khagans had, within a few generations, created an expansive state. From central Pannonia their raiders ranged across the Danube basin and into Italy. The Avar warriors formed a martial aristocracy maintained by labor of Slavic and Germanic client tribes - and increasingly co-opted Roman estates. Material evidence suggests a culture which had much in common with those of Iranic peoples such as the Sahu, but also incorporated many Turkic, Slavic, and Roman elements. Documents found from the era indicate the Avar venerated many Turkic deities, chief among them Tengri.

The Avar in many ways were becoming victims of their own successes. Victory after victory had brought them a sprawling empire, but much of it was unsuitable to their nomadic raiding lifestyle. Accommodating the Slavic and Germanic tribal aristocracy into their own armies provided additional manpower, but the system was fragile. Their conquests in northern Italy and Illyria had brought vast populations loosely under their control, and this uneasy state of affairs was complicated by the migration of Slavic tribes such as the Abodrites and Sagudati into the Po Valley, and the settling of the Hrvati and Smolyani in Dalmatia. Much like their Roman rivals, the Avar were forced to make accommodations with the far more numerous by internally divided Slavs, but because of the lack of cohesion amongst the multitude of tribes, the Avars were able to more often than not control these migrations.

The Bulgars faced similar concerns, but were more able to handle them. Khagan Sulabi ruled a vast, territory whose original inhabitants were largely replaced with Slavs. Further, the longer history of cooperation between the Bulgars and their subject peoples allowed cultural synthesis to begin. Perun and Tangra/Tengri grew to be seen as two sides of a similar coin, and this religious fusion would be promoted by the ruling elite. The Roman-style bureaucracy and monumental architecture that would characterize the later Bulgarian Empire were still in their infancy, but both had their origins in this time. Like the early Eftal, adopting the customs and techniques of settled peoples allowed an enduring society to develop. Gradual linguistic shifts had also begun to homogenize the Slavic dialects into a single language which made use of extensive Hunnic and Greek loanwords. In time this language would also become the language of the elite.

Unlike the Avars, the Bulgars were not overstretched. The occasional raid southwards from tribes at the periphery of the Xasar-Sahu proved the primary concern, and these were also not an existential threat to what was overall a stable society. The Avar could by and large be bought off with ease, and the Romans under Constantine were wary of provoking their neighbor to the north - with good reason. Further, Constantine's ambitions, after his conquest of the ruin that was Greece, had shifted to internal reform (desperately need) and finally, by 620, to the relatively more valuable Southeast.

Within Syavush's regime, Egypt remained a thorn in his side. While rebellion within Egypt proper was generally difficult, owing to the lack of viable places for rebels retreat into, the country was still vast and prone to riots. In 627, Syavush was baptized into the Monophysite faith at the urging of the aging Narsai ben Apram, who himself received a deathbed baptism into the faith. While this was disappointing to the Nestorians among the Eftal and Arab armies, and worrying to the Jewish population (who had enjoyed undreamt of privileges under the Eftal, who delighted in playing the local populations against each other) it seems to have been almost entirely a political move. Apart from a few close converts, few other Eftal converted, and Syavush paid at mostly lip-service to the new religion.

What conversion did bring him, however, was the cooperation of the Egyptian Church. The incidence of rioting dropped dramatically, and the Church very quickly began to see the Eftal not merely as pagan invaders but rather as a people who might be amenable to mass conversion. They would be somewhat disappointed when their victory at converting the Shah did not immediately result in a groundswell of support for Monophysitism amongst the ruling elite.

Meanwhile, Constantine prepared for an invasion of the western Eftal. The Romans had been whipped into a frenzy over the pagans and heretics that occupied Jerusalem, and their army was renewed, battle-tested in Greece, and augmented by a large force of Alan mercenaries - swift horsemen intended to blunt the traditional Eftal superiority in cavalry. Unlike in previous campaigns, there also came the promise of plunder - Emesa was said to be a city of incredible (stolen) wealth, and Constantine swore not to rest until Jerusalem, much farther south, was taken.

In the spring of 630, the invasion began, crossing through Cilicia almost uncontested. The Eftal harassed the baggage in Flat Cilicia, slowing its advance and allowing the Eftal to gather a large army, under the command of Koshnavash, Syavush's childhood friend. The Shah himself spent critical weeks raising additional troops from among the Egyptians and Arabs before marching north.

Koshnavash however, was reckless, and sought to interdict the Romans before they crossed the Syrian Gates. His motivations were unclear. The Romans decisively outnumbered his force, and ultimately cooler heads prevailed. The abortive Battle of the Syrian Gates had few casualties except among the Roman vanguard, but Eftal morale plummeted and the myth of their invincibility, built up by Heshana's long history of victories, was shattered.

Syavush, on his arrival, was furious. He had nearly doubled the size of the forces available to him, and critically he had brought a large infantry contingent, evening the odds. Meanwhile, Constantine swept south, besieging Antioch. Antioch was a largely depopulated city, a shell of its former glory, but it would make an excellent base of operations. However, Constantine's initial attacks proved futile to say the least - the garrison, bolstered by a contingent of zealous Jewish soldiers who had been dispatched just in time, refused to surrender.

For several months, Syavush would shadow the siege, endeavoring to cut the enemy's supply lines with vicious raids and deny them forage. The Alans and other Roman auxiliaries fought several small skirmishes but came off worse, and Constantine, becoming desperate, attempted to offer pitched battle. When Syavush failed to take the bait, he redoubled his efforts to gain entry to the city, and in late August as rationing became severe he finally achieved his goal at the cost of very heavy casualties, only to find himself now trapped in a city without adequate food reserves. The men were quickly reduced to eating their own horses, and starvation was not far off.

The Eftal bided their time, and when they attacked the walls themselves, it was with waves of Egyptian troops. They wore down the Romans, until, in an act of savage desperation, Constantine sallied out at dawn, personally leading the heaviest Roman cavalry. The act caught the Eftal off-guard, and the desperate Romans fought their way through to the Eftal camp, which they plundered greedily for provisions.

Constantine hugged the coast as he advanced southward, denying the Eftal another chance to cut off his lines of supply - the Roman navy had easily brushed aside the small Eftal fleet, and now provisioned their countrymen with ease. He avoided the temptation to strike into Osrhoene, where the Eftal were numerous and well-prepared, and instead marched south, finding loyalists and coreligionists willing oftentimes to yield cities without a fight. Another battle was fought near the coastal city of Laodikeia, and here the Eftal failed again, but both sides were exhausted. The same year, Hujr ibn Wa'il died, and with his death, the outlook seemed even more grim. Constantine settled in to Laodikeia to await reinforcements, and the Eftal retreated to Emesa to lick their wounds.

Syavush's court was suffering a great crisis of confidence. His companions, who he trusted above all others, spoke freely. They told him that his failure lay in his refusal to venerate the more martial Eftal Gods. The God of Christ and the Jews was one among many, and awarding him even the pretense of exclusivity was a foolish mistake. The Egyptians made unreliable soldiers, and the Jews were too few in number. The entire Egyptian venture was a mistake - it had overstretched them. Finally, when they saw their Shah slip into a depression, Koshnavash advocated petitioning the Shah of Shahs for assistance. Shahriyar would come - technically was not Syavush his tributary?

A deal was struck. The ambitious Shah of the eastern Eftal was advised by Mihiradata to radically alter the terms of their treaty, increasing the tribute immensely. But in secret he had little interest in maintaining the treaty at all. Syavush was a legacy of an era when the Eftal were divided, and thus personally distasteful to a man who saw himself as the sole ruler of all the Eftal.

In 631, the commander-and-chief of the Eastern Eftal armies, Artavazda, lead a force some eighty thousand strong through Syria. He retook Antioch with ease, his veteran troops overrunning a small garrison before reinforcements could arrive. Artavazda sent a small but elite contingent north under Mihiradata, retaking Cilicia and striking out into Anatolia towards Ikonion while the main body of his army descended on Laodikeia, where Constantine made the bold decision to press on. His troops were hardened by a year of suffering and starvation, and though he was heavily outnumbered, even his reinforcements were veterans, stripped from garrisons in Greece.

Artavazda met up with Syavush near Apameia, and the two men took an instant dislike to each other. Mihiradata, an elder and more conciliatory figure, was in the north, raiding an Anatolia which had only just begun to recover from the brutality of the previous century. Artavazda had little regard for Syavush, feeling it necessary that he be placed in overall command, and Syavush refused to give way on account of his rank. The battle of personalities ensured relatively little would be done until Constantine began to march inland towards Emesa.

When news reached Artavazda, he ordered his forces to sweep west and intercept the Roman army. Syavush stubbornly refused to go along, arguing that a defense of the rugged terrain around Emesa was a better tactical decision. And yet, In some anonymous valley lost to history, a numerically superior Eftal force put the Roman army to rout. Constantine himself barely escaped with his life.

This battle, historically, has been considered something of a paradox, and has often been considered a tale inflated by Eftal propaganda. Contemporary Romans seem to have regarded it as a minor setback. Despite the initial rout, the elite core of Constantine's army remained intact and retreated in good order back to Laodikeia, where it was then shipped back to Asia Minor. On his return, the Emperor found that a usurper, a general named Nikephoros, had proclaimed himself Emperor and taken Constantinople, mistakenly thinking Constantine to have died in battle against the Eftal. Despite the imminent threat of Mihiradata's forces in Asia, the Emperor was forced to fight for his throne.

This circumstance has more to do with the increasing illegitimacy of the Roman Emperors than anything else. From the reign of Kallinikos onwards, no Emperor in Constantinople had lived a peaceful life, and most had to seize power with some mixture of force and bribes. Those who did not were nevertheless suspicious of the military beneath them - in these turbulent times it was Generals with provincial armies who posed the greatest threat. The trends of the Late Western Empire in many ways repeated themselves, with the critical exception that Emperors were expected to be first and foremost military leaders, and thus the candidates for their successors themselves had to have equivalent military credentials or risk being viewed as weak.

The Eftal failed to capitalize overmuch on their victory. Artavazda celebrated his victory with a triumphal ceremony organized in Emesa, but behind the scenes tensions were at a fever pitch. Artavazda was forced to consider Shahriyar's true instructions - to overthrow Syavush's monarchy and reorganize it along the lines of the rest of the Empire. Many of the Eftal in Osrhoene and Syria would even be amenable to such a change after Syavush's poor performance in battle, and during the festivities would be the ideal time to engineer such a covert betrayal.

At the same time, there were many risks. Currently, the Roman Empire lay wide open. Artavazda believed he could but reach out and seize Anatolia away. The Romans were crippled and in chaos, their momentary resurgence seemingly nipped in the bud - but they could recover - their state was nothing if not resilient. He might never get such a chance again... to be the conqueror of the Roman Empire. And yet if he waited, Syavush, who was clever and adept at the game of politics, might well improve his position and prove impossible to dislodge.

In 631, sitting in the golden palace of Emesa, sipping Syrian wine, Artavazda had to make a decision which would change history.


[If you believe in some sort of "great man" theory of history, that is. But this makes a sort of PoD within the broader story. I imagine if Alt-History develops in this timeline, loads of people will wonder what might have happened if he makes the opposite choice.

Also, I don't really buy that particular theory about Islam, fi11222. That said, it seems plausible that something like what you described might happen here. Maybe.

Next post will cover Arabian developments and probably answer the cliffhanger I've left.

Also, Count Peter, not to spoil anything, but I rather agree that the endurance of dharmic religions in the Middle East is a cool concept, and one that I intend to explore for a good while yet. But I have no idea if they'll go as far as say, Constantinople. That will take time and a lot more planning than I've currently done.]

 

[Practical Lobster]

Emesa, 631 CE

Artavazda, after making his decision, immediately sprung into action. Employing the talents of a local bureaucrat, he created forged correspondence between Syavush and the Emperor Constantine, correspondence which discussed a plan to unify against the greater threat of Shah Shahriyar. In the correspondence, Syavush clearly had designs on becoming ruler of all the Eftal, and in return would offer to restore a large portion of the original Roman Empire to Constantine. Despite the exact terms of the agreement being blatantly absurd, and more a testimony to Shahriyar's fears than anything else, it was all the phony justification Artavazda needed.

Before his soldiers were to depart and strike at Rome, before a ceremonial dinner to be held in his honor, Artavazda's companions and a group of elite infantry stormed the palace, dispatching the royal guards. Syavush attempted to organize his companions to escape, pre-emptively sending away both his wife, Hafsa, and his young son, Heshana. If he could make it to his army and rally them, he might yet retain the city and defeat Artavazda.

But the Eftal moved too quickly. More prominent officers within their army had been informed of the plan, and as the general signal went up, they attacked, besieging the royal barracks and disarming those soldiers encamped with them, outside the city walls. There was little resistance on either front. Those soldiers in the barracks opted to negotiate with their besiegers, avoiding bloodshed, while the main camp was merely taken by surprise. A large contingent of Arab cavalry fought their way free of the camp, and isolated units sometimes chose to fight rather than surrender, but these isolated units were generally quickly dispatched.

Meanwhile, in the palace, Syavush's men fought back viciously, but were outnumbered. Eftal troops were swarming the streets. Hafsa and young Heshana managed to escape through a servant's passage and make it out of the city with a bundle of royal insignia and three of Syavush's companions, including Koshnavash. Syavush, however, would not be so lucky. After escaping the palace in relatively flimsy disguise he and a group of his men made it three blocks to the market district, where a group of Eftal soldiers identified him. They attacked the Shah and wounded him badly, and as the Shah and his men attempted to flee, the Eftal soldiers signaled loudly, drawing the attention of many nearby units. Unable to escape and unwilling to be captured or to die at the hands of Artavazda, Syavush ordered one of his companions to kill him and then gave them permission to surrender.

However, this swift and relatively bloodless victory was not complete. Many were loyal to the memory of Heshana, who forged a kingdom out of nothing. Many of the Eftal and Arab soldiers had ridden with Heshana in battle, and though the northern tribal Eftal were assuaged by Shahriyar's giving of the satrapies of Syria and Osrhoene to local tribal patriarchs, the Arabs knew well that in such a vast Empire, their contributions were less necessary. They and a small faction of the Eftal chose to rally around the child Heshana. Further, the Egyptians knew well that Shahriyar would not adopt their religion - again they would have to languish under a heathen. They negotiated the baptism of young Heshana, and the surviving veterans of Paulos' rebellion in 627 were rallied to help train a new Egyptian army.

Constantinople, 631-633

Constantine was trapped between a rock and a hard place. Much of Greece had betrayed him, crowning a commander he had personally appointed, Nikephoros, to be Basileus after his presumed death. While they had assumed it to be his will, Nikephoros could no longer back down without at the least being consigned to a monastery. Adding insult to injury, Nikephoros offered Constantine a similar fate - if he surrendered, Nikephoros would be merciful.

With Mihiradata closing in, Constantine made a bold decision. He turned back East, rallying additional Alan mercenaries to his cause, and then, his army restored to full strength, he met with Mihiradata. Realizing he was outnumbered, and having recently heard that Artavazda was preoccupied with his coup, Mihiradata proposed a peace treaty wherein the Romans agreed to pay a moderate indemnity and recognize Shahriyar's right to all of Syavush's territory - in exchange for a five year truce and a recognition of the current borders. Shahriyar would later confirm this arrangement, ensuring a period of peace which would benefit both sides.

Constantine was now free to move west, and he did. Using his navy, he besieged Constantinople by both land and sea. The subsequent year he would mount several assaults along the section of wall adjacent to the Golden Horn, where he judged the defenses to be weakest. But Nikephoros had extensive food reserves, and sufficient forces to easily repulse the assault. The worst blow, however, came when Nikephoros' small navy, using a flammable liquid compound which could be bottled and hurled by catapult to great effect, broke the naval siege. "Usurper's Fire" as it came to be known made the siege all but untenable, and Constantine considered surrender.

As the year progressed, the Bulgarians seized the opportunity to renew their raiding into the Roman-held Balkans. Finding them stripped of their garrisons, the raids quickly became outright conquest. Cities such as Thessaloniki, which held out against the Lombards on-and-off for decades fell outright. A group of Nikephoros' officers, seeing the existential threat, and realizing their Emperor had put personal ambition ahead of the Empire's survival, opened the gates of Constantinople, and Constantine's vengeful soldiers took delight in torturing the usurper to death. But the Balkans were again lost, and before long, a Bulgarian army was outside the gates of Constantinople.

Arabia - the religious experiment of the seventh century

With the increase of overland trade and the beginnings of the seventh century religious experiment in Arabia, one city in particular must stand out from the others: Al-Ta'if, home of the powerful and mercantile Banu Thaqif, and one of the most important pilgrimage sites in the Arabian peninsula after the fall of Makkah in 624. Cosmopolitan and wealthy, al-Ta'if was the seat of a growing cult to Alilat, a religion which took elements of Arabian paganism and mixed them with the Persian and Indian influences Arab traders brought back from the broader Eftal world. A mysterious religion, emphasizing sunrise prayers, paradise as a metaphor oneness with the divine, and the role of female priests, the cult would gain broader recognition within the Hedjaz. Even though the cult made Alilat chief among gods, its willingness to compromise and recognize other divinities made it palatable to a broad audience. The devotional poetry of early prophetic figures in the religion, notably the prophetess Fadia and her merchant husband Abdulilat would eventually be summarized in a text known as the Suwar.

Meanwhile, in the south, the "religious experiment" tended towards greater Indian influence, merging with the Judaism and monotheistic trends commonplace in that area. Here, Indian missionaries actively traveled and proselytized, leading to such unlikely things as a community of Jain merchants in Aden. While the Jewish population proved largely unwilling to convert with a few notable exceptions, defining their faith in opposition to the pagan Hadhramut who ruled them, the Hadhrami themselves, ever cosmopolitan, eagerly adopted the foreign ideas which came to them. It was among the Hadhrami that the iconoclasm of early Buddhism was preserved, with the Buddha represented by absence.

Among the northern Arabians however, Christianity remained most common, and this Christianity would slowly spread south. Early in the seventh century, the prominent central Arabian tribe of the Banu Tayy converted en masse, and the Arabs who lived near to the Eftal began to convert as well, especially in the aftermath of Syavush's death. Due to the proximity of these tribes to major Christian communities, relative orthodoxy was maintained, and over time these tribes would often integrate their identities with those of the Syraic speaking settled peoples. Certain of these converted tribes, like the Banu Sulaym would war against and raid the caravans of the Banu Thaqif and their Quraysh subjects, and in time be driven north into exile from their traditional homelands, exacerbating the process of assimilation.

These wars however took on a religious connotation, both sides attempting to some degree to insulate and defend themselves from the influences of unbeliever societies. However, these reactionary efforts were rather ineffectual by both sides - the importance of trade allowed ideas to spread like wildfire. The text of the Suwar reached the massive tribe of the Banu Ghatafan by 640, where their young and warlike patriarch, Nu'maan ibn Mundhir al-Sa'ih pledged himself to Alilat and made worship of the goddess the religion of his people. From there, he would launch vicious raids against the "unbeliever" tribes of Jews and Christians, culminating in the sack of Yathrib in 646 and the capture of Tayma' in 647. Nu'maan al-Sa'ih would become one of the principle founders of the religion in its enduring form, laying down elaborate legal codes which afforded additional rights to women, and laid down strict punishments on those who violated the sanctity of priestesses or their "marriages". Taking a legalistic perspective to faith, he codified specifically which gods could be considered "beautiful birds" and "children of Alilat" and which ones were explicitly false tricks and "illusions". This was an authentic, Arabic religion, and its influence on the later history of the peninsula cannot be understated.

[No, this new religion (I'm considering Saihism for a name, your thoughts?) shouldn't be considered an alt-Islam though, but rather a consequence of 200 years of very different influences on Arabic thought and a much-subdued Jewish presence. Anyhow, next up is India, Egypt, and the Bulgar Siege of Constantinople! I apologize that very little got done in this post, but I wanted to answer the cliffhanger and get some of this stuff out of the way, although I've probably raised more questions than answers at this point.]

 

[Practical Lobster]

Society, Culture, and Law in Central Asia
(and the broader Eftal world)

The 4th to the 8th centuries were at time of major changes in the material culture of Central Asia and Persia. These changes are perhaps best viewed as a series of waves - contraction and crisis followed by short-term expansion which inevitably contracted due to environmental and political factors.

During the 4th and 5th centuries, the predecessors of the Hephthalites, the Chionites, did immense damage to the urban culture of the one thriving region, and brought about economic crisis and decentralization.

Archeological evidence shows that agriculture did not recover until the period of Shah Akhshunwar, when large fields of cereal crops and cotton can be again found. Irrigation systems were reintroduced and the Hephthalite tribes which would coalesce into the broader social group known as "Eftal" began to build lavish palaces - of which the royal palace-city of Piandjikent is perhaps the best example. Striking artistic works, jewelry, and oranmented weapons have been found in these sites, in styles heavily influenced by Persian and Indian culture.

Into the sixth century, many of these palaces began to develop into proper cities. The conquest of Persia allowed a chaotic amalgam of tribal arrangements and ancestral ties to coalesce into a proper state. Tribal rulers became Satraps, and bureaucrats were sent forth to collect taxes on these growing urban areas. Careful city planning becomes more commonplace, and archeological digs have revealed goods from global sources. During the invasion of Persia, irrigation fell into neglect and population dropped significantly. Cities shrank and many sites show signs of abandonment. While the Hephthalites were more than willing to patronize urban regions and accommodate them, many traditional urban sites would not recover fully until the seventh century. By contrast, there was a proliferation of small urban sites, walled and centered around local sources of water. These formed a hallmark of Hephthalite and later Eftal settlement, especially in peripheral such as Syria and Osrhoene and Sogdiana and Tokharestan. These "castles" contributed to the defense of these regions and enabled them to survive endemic raiding and sporadic times of upheaval and civil war.

In times of upheaval, these "Satraps" and local nobles would quickly revert to the complex tribal alliances that underpinned their legitimacy. As much as they integrated in dress, language, and culture into the broader Iranian world, the Eftal political system remained distinct from that of their more autocratic subjects. By the sixth and seventh centuries, we have written legal codes from the Eftal, confirming the earlier accounts of foreign travelers. Law tended to be strict, with the only mercy being that minor crimes were often overlooked or settled by inter-tribal arrangements. Those under Eftal rule who could not take advantage of such connections were at a severe disadvantage - a disadvantage which explains why the Persian mercantile, artisanal, and noble classes all frequently attempted to marry into this tribal network - ultimately ensuring that tribal loyalty would penetrate all levels of Eftal society save the lowest.

Hephthalite succession law was complex. Written codes indicate that from the earliest times, only "the best" could rule. There was no allowance for heredity in these early codes. Rulers regardless of rank were expected to choose a worthy successor and receive the acceptance of their companions and tribal affiliates. In practice, primogeniture was occasionally used, and the ruling family frequently sought to consolidate power - but these early codes provided legal legitimacy to pretenders and usurpers because of their vagueness and factions developing amongst the companions. Court title and ritual in the early period was primarily derived from Kushan and Chionite precedent, but this would slowly evolve, taking on Persian and Roman elements. As it did so, among the Eastern Eftal in particular the role of the companions would become smaller and smaller, until ultimately they were reduced to an elite bodyguard unit and a pool from which talented commanders could be drawn. Because of their lack of blood ties to important dynasties, the companions could be trusted more than many of the powerful clans within Eftal society.

In the seventh century as Turkic raiding would become more pronounced, we see the trend shifting towards economic and social crisis. While few cities actively shrunk, growth and new urban foundations became rare. The fortification of monasteries and religious sites became prominent. Escape into these sites became a common method for the common people to avoid raids, as the Turks respected the sanctity of Buddhist sites in particular, despite their frequent wealth and relative vulnerability.

The flight of the Asvha due to these raids marks the end of a growing agrarian culture in Asvhastan and a return to the traditional nomadism of that region. Unlike the Hephthalites, the broader Eftal world, and the Sahu, the Asvha were newer converts to the sedentary life, and their abandonment of it also marked the end of their distinct culture and rapid assimilation into the Eftal. It would seem the majority of the Asvha settled on the central Iranian plateau, accepting a place in the Eftal social hierarchy and the loss of their independence in exchange for safety. Their migration is but a single example of the broader collapse of semi-settled culture around the Aral sea region, even as it endured and weathered the storm in many parts of Central Asia.

A Look to the East

Past the sweeping plains and arid deserts of Central Asia, China, long at turmoil, was once again reunited. The Ruru had been driven back, the tottering, deeply decentralized Liang dynasty overthrown after a series of peasant rebellions. An ambitious general named Yang Baxian, promoted to deal with both the Ruru and peasants rioting in the wake of famine accumulated power to himself until in 620 he dethroned the Liang Emperor, establishing the Qi dynasty.

Baxian, more commonly known by his ruling name, Wen, embarked on a massive program to centralize and strengthen his new China, unified for the first time in centuries. Chang'an was restored, and the Nine Ministries created, an immense, regulated bureaucracy which was given expansive powers to reorganize society and address the concerns of the common peasantry. Emperor Wen however distrusted his fellow Generals, perhaps recognizing how he himself came to power. He surrounded himself with a loyal corps of Turkic soldiers, a palace guard of sorts, and he kept his commanders on the frontier, frequently rotating them between postings, something which would overtime degrade the effectiveness of the army.

Like many of his predecessors, Wen portrayed himself as a Chakravatin. "May all the world between the Four Seas be brought to enlightenment and be governed by dharma." He proclaimed in the first of many edicts. In many senses he was not dissimilar from Rajyavardhana, but unlike Rajyavardhana, he had a greater tradition of centralization to work with - the Gupta had never been quite as expansive as the whole of China, and though they certainly possessed a strong bureaucracy it did not rival the Chinese tradition.

Meanwhile, to his north, a power vacuum was developing. With Khagan Kultegin's death, his ancestor's steppe Empire collapsed overnight. Old animosities exploded, and a northern tribe called the Kirkur aligned themselves with a Uighur Khan named Bayanchur and rose in rebellion against the Ashina clan - who struggled to find a well-respected replacement for Kultegin Shad. This led to a snowballing series of wars, beginning the displacement and migration of a new set of Turkic tribes. The displacement of the Gokturks would spell the permanent demise of the Eftal-Turkic treaty system which had provided relative peace and safety for transcontinental travelers. As the power of the Uighurs grew, they found themselves confronted by the Basmyl and the Kimeks, and this warfare left only the southern desert roads safe for travel - and even they became more risky.

Attempts by the Eftal to renegotiate these treaties were met with no successes. The "Four Turkic Nations" or the Turgish, Qarluq, Kangar, and Qangli all were feeling pressure to migrate west, leading to more common outbreaks of violence on the frontier. Those who headed north came into contact with the growing hegemony of the Xasar-Sahu, and those who headed south came to blows with Eftal tribal groups along the borders, notably the Asvha, many of whom fled deeper into the Eftal Empire. The two settled, Iranian states would be forced from 640-650 on to confront increasing pressures which the battle of Spahan had ultimately only exacerbated.

Syavush's Legacy

Queen Hafsa, the four-year old Prince Heshana, and Koshnavaz would, after their escape from Emesa, quickly arrive in Al-Jabiyah, where they would be greeted warmly by Hafsa's kin. Arabs who owed their fortunes to the elder Heshana and Syavush alike, they had sent back only the decapitated head of Shahriyar's embassy. However, no sooner had they done so than some might have regretted their rash decision. Nanivadh, the onetime rival of Syavush's for the throne, had come to a deal with Artavazda. He would rule the Satrapy of Palestine as Syavush's successor.

Though Nanivadh lacked Syavush's charisma and personal touch, he had fought alongside his younger cousin with distinction, and in the eyes of many Eftal, he was a better alternative than a four-year old child. With the northern Eftal mollified to a large degree, the situation was slipping out of the hands of Hafsa's faction. Al-Jabiyah was defensible, and most of the Arabs and a not insignificant number of Jews and Eftal supported the young Heshana (who was helped in no small part by the legacy of his namesake).

Raising an army, Koshnavaz and Hafsa's cousin, Aiham, prepared to face down the inevitable invasion from Emesa, where Mihiradata had finally linked up with Artavazda. Together the two Eftal commanders had an army of perhaps 75,000 men, and the primary army that Syavush had raised had either melted away or been disbanded. There was little hope for anything more than a delaying action, harassing the massive Eftal army as it swept through hollow Syria. Ultimately, they were able to achieve relatively little, and finally, despairing, Koshnavaz sent Aiham and the bulk of his forces south. Queen Hafsa arrived in Egypt and was well received. The Monophysite population rallied around them, seeing the young child as the best hope for a truly Christian King in Egypt. New forces were trained and mercenaries hired, but the army was nevertheless small, and would only truly begin to grow after the arrival of Aiham, who was himself baptized two weeks after his arrival.

Koshnavaz meanwhile, made a final stand at Al-Jabiyah with a group of Syavush's companions and a motley force of warriors. Attempting to gain the sympathy of the populace (and little more - he was a devout pagan according to most Eftal historians, a fact corroborated by his criticism of Syavush's decision to be baptized) he ordered his soldiers to paint crosses onto their shields. This act would build in the retelling into a defense of Christianity against a massively superior heathen army - it would become the subject of poems and tall tales, be embellished with miracles and heroic last words. Regardless of the truth, Koshnavaz and his retainers were ultimately slaughtered. Artavazda, eager to subdue what he now saw as rebellious territory, ordered a series of sacks of coastal cities such as Tyros which refused to surrender on his arrival.

[FONT=&quot]Only after subduing Palestine totally did the Eftal general turn his attention to Egypt.

[/FONT] No we can't go back to Constantinople

The Bulgar Siege of Constantinople was, appropriately, a tremendous affair. Having struck a temporary treaty with the Avars to their north, Khagan Sulabi was free to draw on the tremendous resources of his young state without fear out outside interference. All the other European territories of the Romans had fallen with ease - the shrunken, dilapidated cities and depopulated countrysides were easy pickings for a Bulgar army said by the Roman historians to number over a hundred thousand (hardly a realistic estimate).

The territories around the lower half of the Danube were some of the most populous and least ruined by war in the whole of the Balkans - having been securely under the patrimony of the current Hunno-Bulgarian dynasty for some time, and thus being capable of supporting a large population of Slavic migrants.

Of the extensive siege works built by Constantine in his attempt to regain his city, the engines and palisades had been wrecked, but the ditches and latrines were still viable, and the defensive walls were quickly repaired and expanded. Meanwhile, the Bulgar fleet, under the Khagan's son and heir, Asparukh, while keeping a respectful distance of the city walls, was able to prevent food shipments from reaching the capital. Constantine's own devastated fleet now possessed the Usurper's Fire, but the first attempt to use it resulted in the annihilation of a large stockpile without any effect. The second time it was used to greater effect, but the Bulgar fleet could not be entirely annihilated, and the land siege continued.

The Bulgars concentrated their efforts on the weaker Blachernae walls, where there was but a single line of defenses, and the Second Military Gate. Waves of Slavic soldiers were able to gain significant ground, including several footholds on the first line of walls, but Constantine had concentrated some of his elite guardsmen in the Blachernae and there the Slavs were repulsed with heavy casualties. Unable to cut off the city's food supply, victory for the Bulgars depended absolutely on control of the walls. However, as the months wore on, the Bulgar army began to be bled thin with little to show for it. However, with a new fleet, built using expertise gleaned from a group of Mauri shipwrights and Langobard mercenaries, the Bulgars were able to bring freshly levied soldiers and a fresh naval force to the siege. Despite heavy losses from the Fire, the Bulgar fleet was able to finally destroy the atrophied Roman navy, and the City's defenders drew up the harbor chain.

Assaults on the city's Sea Walls began in the second year of the siege. Towers were mounted atop two galleys lashed together, and with favorable winds the contraptions were able to truly threaten the city, forcing the Romans to spread their forces thin. Starvation began to break out amongst the defenders, who themselves were unable to bring on fresh soldiers from the East due to Bulgar naval superiority. And yet, for all of this, the Bulgars were suffering even more. A new Avar Khagan, Zavargan, had risen to power, and raids deep into Bulgar territory caused much of the Bulgar besieging force to break away.

With this news, the Romans sallied forth and dealt a crushing blow to the remaining forces - and with the siege on land broken and rumors of a new fleet being constructed in Asia, the Bulgar fleet retreated, allowing fresh food and soldiers into the city. Emperor Constantine took part in massive public celebrations thanking the Virgin Mary for the victory over the "massed armies of the Huns." When the siege began anew in 636, the Roman navy was able to deal yet another crippling defeat to its Bulgar counterpart, and within twenty days sally forth.

Constantine's cavalry were brutally mauled by hidden metal spikes laid by the defenders and subsequent volleys of arrows by the Bulgar army, but the disciplined, veteran Roman infantry, accustomed to standing their ground against reversals and retreating only when truly overwhelmed, held their own and routed the undisciplined Slavic levies arrayed against them. Only the personal intervention of Sulabi was able to stem the rout and push back the unsupported Roman infantrymen, who took great pleasure in burning sections of the Bulgar camp as they retreated.

Sulabi, vexed at every turn, did not lack for patience. Constantinople's capture became a fixation. The city's advanced walls resisted his engines with almost contemptuous ease. Attempts to mine the walls had been defeated by effective Roman counter-mining, and been almost as costly as his failed naval attacks. For seven days he prayed and offered sacrifices to the gods, and missives to the Eftal offering them all of Roman Asia in exchange for their assistance. From a preoccupied and overstretched Shahriyar he received no encouragement. Upon reading the Shah's reply, his son Asparukh encouraged his father to make peace with the Romans, but the Khagan refused until his troops erupted into open mutiny - incensed at their losses, they refused to mount another assault on the city.

Finally, concealing the fact that his own soldiers had nearly deposed him, Sulabi finally met Constantine beneath the walls, and the two Emperors signed a truce honoring the current status quo.

[Sorry that the last section is essentially a huge post wherein nothing happens. But it will have immense ramifications for the future of both the Bulgarian and Roman Empires down the line, both of whom are pretty exhausted by this slugfest for all of nothing. Constantinople in this timeline is much reduced from the version of it that exists at the same time OTL (no Hagia Sofia, for example, smaller population) but it's still the toughest fortress-city that I can think of, and the Roman bureaucracy is pretty good at coping with shortages, given that shortages have been the story of their life since Anatolia was depopulated/settled by Alans and Egypt was lost.]

 

[Practical Lobster]

The First Holy War
For the Monophysite population of Egypt, it would take a miracle to deliver them from the hands of the Eftal army. Fortunately, they believed wholeheartedly that their God could deliver such miracles. After a five month siege of Gaza, it was some twenty thousand Egyptian soldiers that sought to deny the Nile crossing of some fifty thousand Eftal. Despite being outnumbered and poorly equipped, the Egyptian army had high morale bordering on outright fanaticism and an elite corps of Eftal and Arab soldiers. As Artavazda built rafts and waited (while secretly planning to effect a crossing several miles south) the Copts sang hymns and shouted jeering taunts across the lazy course of the Nile.

Artavazda had hoped for far more men, but the depletion of the main Eftal army can be attributed to Mihiradata remaining in greater Syria with a large force of his own, campaigning against the various partisan forces arrayed in favor of Heshana. Despite his political acumen, Mihiradata was a poor commander - he stalled and exercised caution when decisive force was called for, and had a frequent habit of overestimating the foes arrayed against him, much as he had in Anatolia. Finally, a year later, the Shah recalled him and replaced him with one Ariasb of Hariy, a favored hunting partner who had distinguished himself in the campaigns against the Turks.

Meanwhile, Artavazda's plan was complete. Under the cover of darkness his army moved south and crossed near Hvarabad, but defectors in his camp had forewarned the Egyptian army. As the first rafts came ashore and columns of infantry waded out into the marsh, the more lightly equipped but mobile Egyptian soldiers fell on them in great numbers. Well-armored, many Eftal sunk and drowned, and they could not bring their peerless cavalry to bear in any numbers.

Despite relatively light casualties, the defeat was a stinging one. Supplies were running low - raids prevented Artavazda from establishing regular supply and rationing was in effect. Morale dipped low, and the Eftal were unable to utilize any of their advantages while the Egyptians could merely bide their time. During the second attempt to cross, Artavazda was struck by an arrow, and the festering infection left it to his second-in-command to organize the retreat back to Pelousion, and from there back across the desert. Artavazda would die in Gaza and with him the dream of Egypt would be put on hold. Negotiations recognized the young Heshana's rule over Egypt and also free transit for pilgrims to Jerusalem.

Syavush's legacy would endure. The regime's loyalists fled south to Egypt en masse in the ensuing months, against the often-violent persecution of Ariasb. This exodus, while relatively insignificant in total numbers, helped to preserve the hybrid Eftal-Arab culture of Egypt's new ruling elite. Hafsa would rule as queen regent until her son came of age, with the backing of the Patriarch of Alexandria. However this new era was very different - there were no illusions that this would be an Egyptian regime, even if its monarch and his companions happened to be foreign. The loss of Syria and Emesa ensured that, forcing the new rulers to focus on the wealth and strengths of Egypt, rather than their traditional semi-nomadic lifestyle. Coptic would be the language of the state, and Monophysite Christianity its religion. Young Heshana would in due time be called Basileus, not Shah.

Subcontinental subterfuge in an era of expanding frontiers

The Johiyava were the greatest of the kamboja warlords in the Hindu Kush, but they had yielded their sovereignty to the Maukhani. By binding themselves to the ruling dynasty they had ensured their continued power, but found themselves forced to work within the bureaucratic system established by Visnuvadhana. And yet they proved adept at such manipulation, using Karmavati's influence on the Maharajdhiraja to establish a system of patronage in the Indus valley region. Their kamboja subjects were granted posts as local administrators and overseers, and through this system tribes which otherwise had little reason to remain loyal to them still answered to Samantayava in Purushapura.

The Turkic raids into Tokharestan which so vexed the Eftal effected them to a much lesser extent. While the Johiyava controlled, essentially as a personal fief, much of the region, including prosperous cities such as Balkh, the Johiyava were able to alternately buy off or intimidate any wandering Turkic forces - the largesse of an empire allowed their people to remain relatively safe. It would not be until the latter decades of the seventh century that they would have to ride in force against the Turks. The Johiyava had seamlessly transitioned from warrior-princes to bureaucrats, and though they may have found that transition distasteful, they were nothing if not pragmatic. In time, the Maukhani Empire might fall - but for now there was no sense in fighting the storm.

In the south, others were discovering that firsthand. Visnuvadhana's southward expansion was almost entirely unchecked. His army, reorganized, professional, and under the command of officers hardened by the reversals of his earlier campaigns, was unparalleled in the subcontinent. Between 630 and 640, the Chalukya were broken, and the Deccan plateau fell under his control. Despite an enormous defeat at the battle of Manyakheta in 633, the campaign continued. The secret to his success was a well-organized state apparatus, something his father's whirlwind conquests had neglected. Eager to not repeat the same mistakes, centralization was the primary focus of his administration. Local Rajas and urban councils found themselves hamstrung by bureaucrats and heavy tributes. Magistrates called Vishayapatis (in deference to the earlier Gupta title) in time reduced local tributary kings to mere figureheads. These positions were non-hereditary and thus the Vishayapatis owed everything to the state.

This central administration allowed him to directly recruit large armies and raise them to a relatively uniform standard. Taking advantages of the vast population of the Indo-Gangetic plain, his armies were more numerous and could afford greater losses than those of his rivals. The coastal mercantile cities in particular were ill-equipped to face such threats, and preferred to negotiate favorable treaties rather than fight. The proud inland despots, by contrast, put their faith in what now seemed like antiquated militaries. In particular, the Maukhani fielded an extraordinary cavalry force, trained in the Eftal or Johiyava style - horse archers augmented by an elite force of heavy horse. Their standard infantry were armored and disciplined, their elite corps equipped with fine steel weapons, maces and axes, backed by a huge standing force of foot archers.

As the Deccan and Orissa were subdued, Visnuvadhana remained in his capital, a rebuilt and massively expanded Pataliputra. Surrounded by ministers and scholars, he did not lead armies or personally oversee the expansion of his empire, setting a precedent that would be followed by his son and heir, Ammaraja. This detached system worked excellently so long as the bureaucracy was running effectively, however it did allow corruption to seep into the system. No matter what centralizing measures he introduced, the periphery would find ways to subvert them. The subcontinent was simply too vast to be easily ruled by a single standard, but Visnuvadhana would not understand that.

[Any regions I've been neglecting or anyone would like me to expand upon?]

 

[Practical Lobster]

Hispania

The decline of the Gothic identity as separate from that of their Roman subjects was a long time in coming. In Italy, invasions and uprisings had contributed to the final straw, but in the relatively more peaceful Hispania, undamaged by endemic warfare and raiding, the Visigothic identity was able to endure longer than that of their Ostrogothic cousins. However, with the decline of Arianism under King Gesalec (582-611) the Gothic elite had increasingly begun to identify themselves as little different from the Romans among which they lived. In dress and speech all differences had dissolved, leaving a form of provincial Latin sprinkled with Gothic loanwords. Legal codes published in the latter years of Gesalec's reign were the first to not address the cultural divide, which had gradually been effaced.

Accordingly, it did not take long for Gesalec's successor, Sisenand, to accept Nicene Christianity as a state religion and enforce the mass conversion of the remaining Arian aristocracy. However, Sisenand, encouraged by the Nicene church, also persecuted the Jewish population viciously, encouraging a unified state and seeking to bolster state revenues through the confiscation of Jewish wealth. Unfortunately, this would have the negative effect of further damaging the declining Hispanic urban culture, and causing many of these Jews to flee south to the Mauri Kingdom, where they were welcomed with open arms.

Despite urban decline and the consequent growing power of landed estates, Spain was prosperous. The peasant classes were relatively prosperous and did not fear upheaval or warfare. Shielded by the sea and mountains, the unified peninsula thrived. The growth of the Hispanian economy, based around agricultural produce and mining, was spurred by trade with the Mauri which brought luxury commodities from the East to the new Romano-Gothic elite in exchange for the export of bulk goods.

In the north, a distracted Frankish Kingdom posed little threat, although Narbo was not recovered. The Pyrenees made an excellent natural border, one which King Sisnenand did begin to fortify, establishing a line of watch-towers, waystations and forts. Some of these forts, such as the famous citadel at Elna, would in time become the residences of local nobles seeking safety from occasional small-scale raiding. Stylistically, the buildings patronized by the Gothic nobility, be they churches or villas or fortified castles, resemble the architectural styles of the late Romans to the point of being indistinguishable.

Doux Isidorus

Doux Isidorus, a Greek general by birth had clawed his way up from humble beginnings as an officer in Emperor Kallinikos' campaigns against the Eftal. After being assigned to Sicily, then still a Roman province, he had through acumen and personal charm managed to become Doux Maurice's second-in-command. Then, when Sicily was lost to the Mauri, he had found himself in the service of the Ostrogoths. Now, he was the ruler of most of Italy.

Knowing when to cut his losses had been the secret to Isidorus' success. A small army, modeled after the Roman forces he'd fought in for most of his early life, and his personal charm and gregariousness had allowed him to dismantle the crumbling Gothic state from the inside. By 604, he was functionally independent. The Roman Senate heaped on him whatever titles he desired, and the Princeps Senatus served as a chancellor of sorts for his regime. When Pope Honorius died in 608, it was he who appointed the successor. He might have paid tribute to the Avars to the north, but it was small and served as an insurance of sorts against invasion by the Mauri to the south, who fancied themselves heirs to the Roman legacy much as he did. While he never took a title greater than Doux, in correspondence between his nation and others, particularly the Avars, he was frequently referred to as "King of the Romans".

Notably, in the later years of his reign he kept his court in the small but well-situated city of Florentia - a city which he greatly expanded and fortified. Ideally positioned to watch over the Avar frontier and serve as a military base, it would also host a decadently furnished palace. Ravenna, more traditionally the Western capital, was now occupied by a Sagudati warlord named Radomir, and while this proved frustrating to the ambitious Doux, he was incapable of rectifying the situation.

Isidorus would finally pass away in 615, but before his death he took steps to ensure that his son, Julian would step smoothly into his position, effectively making his title hereditary by granting Julian the same senatorial privileges he had enjoyed. Equally critically, the Avars recognized his position, ensuring that the status quo would be maintained on the Italian peninsula.

The first fifteen years of Julian's reign would pass quietly. He confronted the ad hoc nature of the state his father had fashioned, creating uniform legal codes with the help of the Senate, and making an unpopular but necessary census of the "provinces" he ruled, allowing for tax collection that was more organized than mere military extortion. As the Avar grip over the Po valley weakened, the Khagan invited him to garrison Liguria as well. This request, given in 622, is an artifact of how the Avar Khagan (Bati Savaryan) saw the Italians as federate vassals, rather than an independent state. Julian was forced to play a double role, acting as defender of the Romans and also a loyal servant. The need for Roman soldiers in Liguria also shows the growing Avar fear of Frankish power.

The Franks and Slavs

By 607, the disunited Frankish kingdoms had been brought under the banner of Chlothar II. Militarily powerful, Chlothar was able to call on numerous retainers and the levies of many tribes. If it was not for the hopelessly fractious succession system, guaranteed to ensure war upon the death of any monarch, and the limited power of the Frankish King, the state might quickly have developed into a regime to rival the Roman Empire. Instead, the Frankish kingdom was held together only by compromise and decentralization. Different tribes were allowed to keep their varying legal traditions and the nobilities of these tribes fiercely guarded their rights.

Frankish Gaul did not have a significant urban life, however. Trade networks had atrophied with exception of the southern coastline. There, Mauri merchants provided an attenuate connection between the Franks and the great Eurasian networks which stretched as far as India and China. In 616, the prominent Eftal-Persian traveler Kanaran found travel on one of these mercantile missions, traveling as far north as Paris. He was singularly unimpressed with the city and the Frankish society as a whole, writing a scathing critique of their "ignorance and barbarism which knows no bounds in its dismissal of the whole of the wider world." However, he was impressed with the monastic tradition, and perhaps rightly so. The monasteries patronized by the Frankish monarchs, the Benedictine and Cassadorian orders provided a system by which classical knowledge could be preserved.

The migrations of the West Slavs had proven less disruptive than those of their southern cousins. Rather than empires and nations, they had moved into a vacuum left by the migration of the Germanic tribes, and they conquered and assimilated those who remained. There, amongst the deep forests of central Europe, the infrastructure for complex states simply did not exist. And yet these tribal princes nevertheless were capable of putting pressure on the Germanic tribes under Frankish rule. Overtime, these princes would come to establish larger states, but for now their main impact was cultural and demographic, fundamentally altering the character of the region around the Elbe river much as their southern cousins had done to the Balkan peninsula.

[I'll be the first to admit that much of this is as OTL. Main difference is that Hispania is doing better and Italy is looking to retain a lot more "Roman" character than in OTL. Still, its good to check in with Western Europe and keep everything up to date. The two major European powers I haven't yet touched on, the Avars and Bulgars, are due for an update as well - especially to show what happens to the Huns after the costly siege of Constantinople takes its toll.]

 

[Practical Lobster]

Tibet - the foundations of Empire

In the mountains of [OTL] Tibet, a Prince named Tri Nyentsen had great ambitions. Already a first among equals in the sparsely-populated alpine country, he married a relative of the Maukhani Emperor, using the dowry to fund an ambitious campaign of conquest. The first Emperor of Bod, as his Empire would become known, he used a combination of military power and the growing religion of Buddhism to unify his people. Much like the Sahu, he was building a state out of nothing - laying out new-founded cities such as his capital, Rhasu on an orderly grid pattern, establishing garrison fortresses to secure key regions.

Small, and pressed between the Eftal, the Maukhani, and Qi China, the Bod Empire was insignificant in the broader scheme of things, but it also assimilated the ideologies and cultures that surrounded it and remade them in a distinctively Tibetan style. Tri Nyentsen's people merged their local deities seamlessly with the Buddhist faith they adopted. They designed a beautiful city whose architecture was a mix of north Indian and Chinese styles, and defended it with an army that fought like the Eftal mercenaries Tri Nyentsen hired early on in his conquests.

While the Bod Empire was constrained by the simple facts of geography, it would also expand and prosper taking its share of wealth from the Silk Road routes that brushed against its northernmost border. It was perfectly positioned to take advantage as Eftal influence in the far east declined and the Turks remained in a state of anarchy. What it could make of this position would remain to be seen.


Peace in our time - the reign of Shahriyar (617-647)

In 637, the Eastern Mediterranean was again calm. Egypt was independent and secure, the Eftal Shah ruled a vast and reunified territory (their largest to date), and the Hunno-Bulgars and Rome had finally made peace. But under this calm exterior, divisions lingered.

The Eftal conquests had placed new strains on their government. Extensive garrisons and fortifications were necessary to bring the newly conquered regions of Heshana's territory under control. Compromises with local potentates such as Nanivadh, Heshana's nephew, and a number of Arab tribes such as the Banu Kalb had to be made. Unlike in previous generations, there was no wave of settlers who could be brought in to displace the settled population or help to enforce Eftal unity.

However, the first twenty years of his reign, Shahriyar had presided over an uninterrupted period of unity and prosperity. Scientific and philosophical debates, begun under Khauwashta, continued. The preaching of Narsai of Argan had founded a small but growing ascetic movement. In contrast to the traditional Buddhist monasteries, they eschewed the establishment of communities and buildings, preferring to wander and preach. Narsai's followers were Mahadevist in their beliefs, believing that escape from rebirth would come in the form of realizing one's unity with Ahura Mazda, the uncreated spirit. They wandered the rural countryside, frequently encountering persecution but drawing a significant following among the poor and outcast. Their rituals revolved around ecstatic chanting, dancing, and the distinctively Iranian-inspired touch of meditation on sacred fire. It was Narsai's innovations that allowed Mahadevism to spread beyond the mercantile and tribal elites and become a religion of the common Iranian.

Shahriyar however, was a Buddhist of the Sogdian school. Unlike Khauwashta he made little attempt to hide his personal convictions. While he remained tolerant, knowing he could not afford to act otherwise, his patronage extended purely to the growing Buddhist communities in Gilan and central Iran. He established missions and monasteries in the traditional holdouts of Eftal paganism (such as Syria) with mixed results. Religious debate at in his court became less common, and ochre-robed monks were a frequent sight amongst the courtiers and ministers of his court. Between 629 and 636, while Mihiradata was away, Shahriyar's "grand minister" was a Sogdian monk named Shevupantuo.

Shahriyar's wife, Navaqat would be remembered as a famous poet and diplomat. She, like her husband, was a devout Buddhist and after their marriage would form with Shevupantuo an enduring pro-Buddhist faction at court, much to the irritation of the more secular and pragmatic Mihiradata. Their friendly rivalry would define the politics of the era, but after Mihiradata's shameful recall to the capital, this religious faction would retain the ear of the monarchy until Mihiradata's death in 642.

Shahriyar had only a single son, named Avyaman. From a young age an athletic boy, a lover of hunting and wrestling, he was a disappointment to his vegetarian mother and the intellectual, Buddhist court, who had hoped for a more reserved, scholarly heir to the throne. However, he was popular with the companions, who found in him a more warlike and less reserved successor to Shahriyar. On his sixteenth birthday (638) Avyaman was formally named heir, and shortly thereafter he toured the Empire as a whole for the first time, proving exceptionally popular with the various Satraps he met, developing a brief but close friendship with his great-uncle Mihiradata.

While Avyaman toured the provinces, Shahriyar was rather more isolated. Like his father, he preferred to cultivate distance. Susa became his home. As a young man his ambitions had been vast, but after the conquest of Syria and Palestine, he began to see how difficult conquest truly was. A student of history, he realized that Mihiragula's attempts at conquest nearly broke the Eftal. Instead, he resolved to be a builder, focusing the latter half of his reign on immense prestige projects - ranging from grand monasteries and temples to humbler roads and new irrigation systems.

Sulabi's Blunder

By 637, Sulabi Khan was back in Adrianople, much reduced. The siege of Constantinople had drained the revenues of his state and physically exhausted the Khan. The mutiny that had forced him to abort the siege had not really ended, either. His army, largely composed of Slavic levies, had gone home and seemingly deserted him. Taxes, which depended on the same tribes giving up a share of the revenue they collected, had all but stopped. Even his fellow Bulgars, the Utigurs, were cautiously demanding additional privileges.

A large portion of the Bulgar state was recently acquired after either the death of Alboin or their recent war against Rome. Had that territory been wealthy or easily cowed, the Bulgars might have been able to hold it. Instead, they now ruled a vast depopulated and thoroughly pillaged region, a region which would require investment and careful management to become profitable to hold. The Bulgars lacked the capacity for either, especially as the Avars raided along the Danube.

The final straw came when the Utigurs, rebuffed in their attempt to gain additional territory and de facto independence, betrayed Sulabi to the Avar Khagan Bati Savaryan. The Bulgar state collapsed quickly. Sulabi yielded the throne to Asparukh, his son, but both men were tarnished by the failed siege of Constantinople and neither could address the fundamental weakness of the Bulgar state or the opportunism of the various Slavic princes under their hegemony.

The Khagan rode south and besieged Adrianople, making alliances with prominent tribes such as the Severi and the Antes along the way. Asparukh refused to surrender despite promises of leniency and protection as an "ally" of the Khagan. Due to this refusal, when the city fell it was subjected to a seven day sack and Asparukh and Sulabi were blinded, tortured and finally executed. The much reduced Kutrigurs would be pushed out of much of their traditional land, which was granted to Avar nobles.

In the south, various tribes would break away - the stronger ones would become regional polities in their own right, though all these "princes" would pay tribute to the Avars. These early "Kingdoms" of Thessaly, Epirus, the Peloponnese, and Thrace were anarchic, and though the tribes that made up their core population had slowly transitioned away from raiding and exploitation, they had essentially replaced it with subsistence farming and proto-feudalism.

The Romans however, were unable to capitalize on their successes. Their treaty with the Bulgars notwithstanding, they were preoccupied, and rightly so, with the powerful Eftal state on their borders. Constantine's campaigns had backfired - his attempt to eliminate Heshana had unified the Eftal. Egypt to the south rebuffed his attempts at an alliance - while many among the Coptic elite were tentatively interested, the monarchy remembered all too well that but for Constantine's invasion, they would be in a far stronger position, and further many others among the Copts had never forgiven the Romans for centuries of persecution.

Further, piracy in Crete had left Roman shipping imperiled, and trade with the Xasar-Sahu alone was insufficient to keep the Roman economy going. The Eftal were now capable of trading directly with the various peoples of the Mediterranean, without middlemen for the first time in history, lowering the prices on the European end of the Eurasian trade network by a not insignificant percentage. Roman attempts to interdict this trade would force the Eftal to begin building a fleet, crewed almost exclusively by Syrians and Palestinians. Further, shortly after the end of the truce, the Eftal would begin large-scale raiding into Anatolia once more, undoubtedly sponsored by Shahriyar. These raids, and retaliatory Roman naval attacks from Cyprus would lead to the resumption of war in 643.

 

[Practical Lobster]

The 5th Eftal-Roman War

Roman historian Isaac Kourtikes described the "long history of our wars against the Hephthalites" as "...the slow decline of our Empire and the inexorable ascent of the Huns." He was not wholly incorrect. While the wars were to the detriment of both powers, sapping manpower and resources in endless back-and-forth campaigns, the Romans had generally come off worse. Many different theories exist to explain this - the relative resiliency of the young Eftal state, or the core of Eftal manpower being relatively undamaged by the Egyptian plague, or superior tactics which led to a trend of Roman defeats which in turn led to erosion of territory. Regardless, the tide of Roman defeat and Eftal victory would be complicated by the 5th Eftal-Roman war, despite the desperation of the Romans and the power of the Eftal at their zenith.

An aging Shahriyar did not lead the Eftal armies. Indeed, he had not been among the party arguing for war most vehemently - rather, his son Avyaman had taken up the banner of the Eftal armies enthusiastically. Despite his lack of military experience he did have a relatively veteran force of raiders and officers to compensate for his shortcomings as a commander. However, Constantine was experienced, battle-hardened, and had spent almost his entire reign at war or preparing for war. Though he was in his mid-sixties, and despite having an army only a fraction of the size of the Eftal one, he waged an effective delaying campaign.

In spite of Constantine's best efforts, the Anatolian plateau fell with ease, but the ambitious Prince regarded that as merely a stepping stone to greater things. Avyaman continued onwards, disregarding the warnings of officers who had faced the Romans before. In the narrow passes of Phyrgia, they fell into an ambush. Avyaman's companions were slaughtered nearly to a man, as was a large contingent of Armenian troops who attempted to rescue him. The prince, fatally wounded himself, was finally pulled from the field by a group of Eftal cavalry, and despite the survival of the bulk of his army, the Eftal retreated in disorder.

Constantine followed their retreat, entering into Cilicia, where he found himself welcomed by the locals. Taking the time to resupply and rest, he burst into Syria in early 644, reducing the local strongholds and sweeping towards Edessa. Unlike his previous campaign, he aimed for Mesopotamia - opting to split open the Eftal Empire, leaving Palestine and greater Syria as easy targets for reinforcements and his navy to mop up. Edessa would take several months to fall, but it did, and Constantine pressed on to Nasibin.

After news of his only son's death reached him, Shahriyar and Navaqat both fell into deep depression. Her surviving poetry from this era takes on a darker, elegiac tone, and according to evidence in these writings and from contemporaries, her husband wandered the vast palace gardens aimlessly. His new grand minister, Datuvahya was forced to effectively run the affairs of state. The annihilation of the companions, many of whom had been close friends seems to have been an equally devastating blow to the monarchy. With Shahriyar unreachable, the husbands of the monarch's various daughters, many of whom themselves were important tribal leaders, began to quarrel on the matter of succession.

The Eftal army however, had recovered. This was their territory, and they knew it far better than Constantine. Despite the fall of Nasibin, the Roman found his supply lines imperiled. As fall came on, he was forced to commit a larger and larger force to foraging and guarding the increasingly disrupted lines of both supply and communication. As at Antioch, his tendency to ignore the basic fundamentals of logistics in favor of bold sweeping attacks cost him. A brilliant defender of walls and a capable tactician, he had little understanding of the broader scope of the war. It mattered little how deep into Mesopotamia he struck if his troops could be isolated and destroyed.

To Constantine's credit, this would not come to pass. Shortly after the fall of Sigar, word reached him the Eftal army, now under the command of Tistyra, the Satrap of Arbayestan, was rapidly approaching. The Emperor fell back to Nasibin, where he found himself with little option but to fight. The battle of Nasibin, however, is textbook example of Constantine's aggressive tactics and their successes. Conceding both flanks early in the battle, he struck the center hard with his disciplined infantry, cutting through towards the Eftal command. Tistyra, seeing his center breaking, fled, and the Eftal themselves pulled back in disarray.

However, the next day, Tistyra's forces attacked Constantine's forces dawn with three columns of heavy cavalry. While the center column was blunted and thrown back by the Roman cataphracts, Constantine's troops took heavy casualties before they were able to repulse the attack. That the Eftal losses were roughly equivalent was little consolation to the bloodied Roman forces. Constantine fell back towards Cilicia, scoring one more stunning but inconclusive victory at the Battle of Issus. In this battle he himself was wounded right at the moment of his apparent triumph, and in the confusion of battle he was assumed dead. The army panicked and halted their attack, failing to deal the deathblow to the Eftal army.

In spite of these successes, the Eftal were badly bloodied and shocked by this campaign. It had been decades since their heartland had been this threatened by a foreign power, and despite pure logistical advantages they had been forced to mobilize a large proportion of their populace purely for an exhausting stalemate. Tistyra had little desire to press onwards into Roman Asia. As the campaigning season of 645 came, there were rumors that the eastern satraps needed soldiers to defend against the resurgent Turks, and further that Tistyra, who was married to Shahriyar's third daughter, Roshana, was distrusted by many of his fellow tribal leaders - all of whom were trying to stake the best claim to the Eftal throne should the aging Shahriyar finally pass away. Attempting to win the favor of the Shah, Tistyra sent a portion of his most disloyal forces east under the command of his nephew.

As spring came again, Constantine, approaching his seventies, finally died, either of complications from his wounds or some other condition. His son Mauricius took power, but came into an unenviable position. The Roman treasury was nearly exhausted, especially after a naval battle in 644 saw their fleet decisively defeated and the 'Eftal' navy effectively blockade the Mediterranean ports of the Empire. While there was little dissention in the ranks yet, he was forced to maintain the army on a shoestring budget. Meanwhile, the Eftal Satrap of Armenia, had, with careful bribes, incited the Alans into open rebellion. Forced to send troops into Cappadocia to deal with this new crisis, Maurice's strategy was accordingly defensive.

A stalemate developed. Tistyra was more concerned with internal politicking than warfare, and as such he was slow in taking advantage of the distracted Romans. It was the Eftal admiral Shennushad who would do the most to weaken the Romans - utilizing troops provided by the Satrap Nanivadh, he landed soldiers in Cyprus, besieging the city of Konstantiea, and helped a force of ambitious but perhaps foolish Avar adventurers cross the Hellesponte into Lydia, where they would wreak havoc on one of the few Roman provinces yet untouched by war.

It was not until 646 that Tistyra would finally invade the Romans once more, linking up with the rebellious Alans and capturing Ikonion again. From there, he struck east towards Laodikea, which he took after a two month siege. Using it as a base of operations, he pillaged Anatolia, building up an extensive stockpile of food and valuables, the lion's share of which he would ensure went to commanders who had personal ties to him. Dissent was growing in the ranks, and at councils of war the other Eftal officers rightly pointed out he had little official right to be commanding the army. He had taken command out of necessity, but perhaps it was time they determine a new commander.

At this point, Tistyra, perhaps out of paranoia or perhaps out of legitimate concern for his life, abandoned the army, fleeing to Mosil, which he began fortifying. Messengers were sent to Susa, asking who should take command, but Datuvahya's attempt at neutral choice (a Persian commander) was unsatisfying to the traditional Eftal factions within the military, who mutinied and had the Persian assassinated. Datuvahya, as representative of the Eftal bureaucracy who now had near-absolute power, was seen as usurper and distrusted by the rank and file as much as by the elite.

A commander by the name of Hiramaosha was finally elected by the Eftal commanders, but the Alans, thoroughly disturbed by the lack of cohesion within their allies' army, returned back to their traditional homelands. Freed from the responsibility of coordinating with a rapidly disintegrating army, they scored a minor but important victory over a small Roman force and were able to bring Maurice to the negotiating table. For his part, Hiramaosha would advance, besieging Sardis. The Roman army had nearly totally collapsed, exhausted by the seemingly unending wars that they faced. Maurice was effectively confined to Constantinople and critical shortages of both money and food ensured that his remaining mercenaries, a motley mix of Slavs, Alans, and Xasar were openly in rebellion. A group of Xasar mercenaries would seize Nicomedia in the autumn, and despite the destruction of the Avar bandits roaming in the vicinity of Prousa, the Empire had all but dissolved - information was scarce, but rumor had it that local city councils were negotiating treaties with the Eftal, surrendering on the condition that the Eftal did not occupy them directly and that their tribute would be reasonable.

Finally, in 647, Maurice fled Constantinople, disguised as a merchant, hiding the imperial regalia under common wares and escorted only by a small group of friends. Within a few months of sneaking through the various Balkan kingdoms, he would make it to Florentia, where Doux Julian, nominally his subordinate, would greet him cautiously.

In a curious twist of fate, not long after Maurice's desertion, Shahriyar would finally die. Almost immediately, the Eftal were thrown into further chaos. The army rushed south, leaving only token forces behind. Hiramaosha attempted to proclaim himself Shah as soon as they reached Nasibin. Ironically, the death of the royal companions in Avyaman's foolish campaign had led to a vacuum of legitimacy. No tribal leader had greater authority than any other, there was no clear successor and no universally recognized body who could invest anyone with the authority necessary to rule. Further, there was no figure to directly revolt against - no current Shah in Susa who clearly needed to be overthrown. Datuvahya wisely chose not to claim power himself, instead claiming that he would support Taxamaspada, a minor Eftal noble living in Tokharestan married to the second (and, according to Datuvahya, favored) daughter of Shahriyar. Undoubtedly Taxamaspada was chosen not for any particular virtues but because he was believed to be tractable and was importantly for the court, a Buddhist. However, these two qualities were far less important to the broader tribal networks, who valued kinship above all else.

Hiramaosha lacked any real claim by marriage, focusing instead on a distant claim of relation to Shah Akhshunwar Malka - and as such by the time his army reached Tagrit his army would be badly weakened by desertion. The final straw was when Tistyra interdicted him, commanding a mixed force of arab mercenaries and his own companions. Hiramaosha's army nearly dissolved overnight, and most humiliatingly, he was taken into custody along with almost all of the men in his immediate family, who had accompanied him on campaign.

Despite no treaty ever being signed, the Fifth Eftal-Roman war was for all intents and purposes over. It left no clear answers in its wake but rather caused near total anarchy across the whole of the crossroads of civilization.

[End of an era. I hope this continues to feel semi-plausible. Obviously we've gone pretty far from the overall point of divergence (where a Persian Emperor refuses to pay his Eftal allies) but I think the general trends are dovetailing somewhat with history as we know it. The Romans are doing worse than OTL, but at this point the Eftal are exhausted (losing every battle and still winning a war is super costly, even if at the end of the day you can claim to have won) and the setup to this civil war is such that unlike the previous one, I don't see this one being resolved simply or maybe resolved at all.]

 

[Practical Lobster]

[ The events of this update are why we can't have nice things. My apologies for the sheer barrage of names.]



The War of Petty Kings - Societal collapse in the latter days of the Eftal Empire

The anarchy which gripped the Eftal Shahdom after 647 was at first seen by those who lived through it as little more than another succession crisis. The Eftal were familiar with such crises - their lack of succession law ensured that they happened with a degree of regularity. However, unlike the previous civil wars and coups, circumstances were changing.

A wider swathe of the population was seen and saw themselves as distinctly Eftal. This larger umbrella provided even small regions with deep wells of manpower personally connected to the network of tribal alliances that would come to underpin society in the absence of a central state. These new Eftal inevitably built their own palaces and adjusted to the semi-sedentary lifestyle followed by the bulk of the traditional Eftal. Entire regions became heavily fortified, increasing the difficulty of sweeping conquests and reducing warfare to inconclusive raiding and sieges. Stirrups, or as the Romans called them, 'steps' were now almost universally used, increasing the utility of cavalry and correspondingly leaving massed infantry, never the strongest arm of Iranian armies, as an afterthought. Because even the heaviest Eftal cavalry were typically armed with a bow, spears were considered ineffective, and the more maneuverable Eftal horsemen could more easily remain out of range of infantry archers.

Further, this was a time of charismatic religious movements. The monk Shevupantuo, longtime chief minister of the Eftal Shahdom had, at the news of the Shah's death fled to Syarizur, where he counseled his local coreligionists on a distinctly Buddhist approach to Just War - preserving peace and the dharma through necessary and regrettable bloodshed. Compassion for the common people not only justified but indeed required an armed defense by the believers. While his words would not necessarily increase the amount of religious violence, they are emblematic of a general trend of violence.

Meanwhile, in Pars, Narsai of Argan's preaching had divided the locals into two rough camps. Those who adhered to traditional religions - traditional Zoroastrianism, various Eftal and Hindu sects, and Buddhism all found common cause against the growing authority of the rural Mahadevists, beginning persecutions which would be opposed by the wealthy, urban mercantile class who sympathized with their fellow Mahadevists even if they looked down on their social class. Similar communal violence would reach a fever pitch in Mesopotamia, where the Nestorian Christians often found themselves persecuted and excluded from an elite which rarely shared their beliefs. However, after the failed experiment of Shah Isaiah a generation earlier, and the bloody reprisals the Christians had endured in response, the Christian Eftal largely fell in line - with the exception of a rebellion focused around Kashkar, which managed to adeptly play both sides against each other and survive until 649, when the ringleaders of the rebellion would finally make an agreement with Tistyra in exchange for relative autonomy.

The predominant power in Mesopotamia after Hiramaosha's capture was Tistyra. The Satrap of wealthy, well-fortified Arbayestan, his abandoning the main Eftal army early had provided him with a strong position - his military was already assembled. However, Tistyra was also cautious - his ambition to be universal ruler was tempered by the fact that on all sides, he was surrounded by enemies. Despite making a marriage alliance with the Satrap of Osrhoene, Ariasb, he did not feel much safer than before. Armenia had formally rebelled under Ashot of Artashad, and the two had begun feuding off-and-on. On all his other sides, raids and incursions were commonplace, stymieing any attempt to take royal power for himself.

In the south, at Susa, Taxamaspada had finally arrived with a large retainer of Sogdian cavalrymen. At first he seemed the pliant lesser noble that Datuvahya had hoped for, unskilled in statesmanship and reliant on the bureaucracy to handle his rapidly disintegrating Empire. However, he quickly began to assert himself as he became more comfortable, alienating the bureaucracy and, perhaps unwisely, calling for Tistyra's removal from his Satrapy. When no response from Mosil came, Datuvahya had little choice but to assassinate the newcomer and appeal to the Satrap of Syarizur, Kaosha Prajana, to come and claim the throne. Ascending the throne in 648, Kaosha was for a time hailed as a solution to the growing separatism in the Eftal Empire - he was widely popular with the aristocracy and had a decent claim to the throne.

However, with Kaosha Prajana came a figure that Datuvahya found incredibly distasteful - the militant monk Shevupantuo. Datuvahya had perhaps miscalculated the extent of his rival's influence on Kaosha, and he found himself banished from the capital within a matter of weeks.

Fleeing south to the city of Argan, Datuvahya joined the newly-formed Mahadevist rebellion of the Satrap of Pars, Tarkhsuna. Despite Kaosha Prajana's best efforts, they could not dislodge the Mahadevists from southern Mesopotamia, despite seasonal raiding, a series of small engagements, and a three year inconclusive siege of Sostar. A sign of the times, the city of Khishiwan declared its independence as well, causing further chaos in an already war-torn region and inciting Arab brigands to raid deep into the province. The population of southern Mesopotamia, called by the Persians Asurestan, dropped to the lowest levels since the Egyptian Plague a century prior. As the Ghatafan moved north, spreading word of their new goddess at sword point, Arab tribes were pushed into the region causing disruptions and famine, weakening the central authority of Kaosha Prajana even further.

Meanwhile, the region around the western and southern coasts of the Caspian sea was relatively untouched by war. Having emerged unscathed from many previous conflicts, its Satraps bided their time. Khalinga, the Satrap of Gilan, a famous warrior-poet known as the "Heron of Royan" himself had an impressive lineage, related to the late Shah Huviskha as well as some of the earliest Eftal. Gaining the allegiance of many local tribal leaders, including many Asvha, he simply ceased paying taxes to the central government, but like many others he did not take on a higher title, despite receiving tribute from warlords such as Syavusha the Red.

In the east, Sogdia and Xvarazm broke away, followed by the Kidarite Eftal of Kerman, who founded their own independent state under a Shah named Vinayaditya. The central Iranian plateau was quickly overrun by local tribal warlords fleeing instability or seeking to cause it to their own profit. Anarchy reigned, with local warbands rising and falling rapidly, striking out and further distracting the few centralized powers remaining from their petty grievances. Turkic tribes began to migrate south as well, and as in the previous war all sides who could afford to used them as mercenaries.

"Mercenaries" became an increasing fixture of this new Eftal period of warring Shahs. Tribes recruited with promises of plunder and land would rewrite the patterns of settlement across the Eftal world. While in many cases they would assimilate into the broader Iranian cultural sphere, in many other regions they would retain a distinctly Turkic identity. Even among the Eftal many tribal groups would take this opportunity to carve out greener pastures in more fertile lands long held by their enemies.

Endemic small-scale raiding and conquest shattered the overland trade network that the Iranian and Mesopotamian urban societies depended upon. Without the guarantee of safe transit, trade declined and economics regressed towards subsistence. The primitive manufactories of Eftal cities became provincial and operated on far smaller scales. Many of the larger cities shrunk massively, with the exception of those in Sogdia, those around the Caspian, and those in the far West, all of which were able to escape the spreading anarchy and could focus upon other routes of trade than those imperiled by the Eftal wars. In 652, Susa was sacked by the army of Tarkhsuna, who carried off what treasures and insignia of royal office had not already been relocated to the city of Syarzur by Kaosha. By the time the two men would sign a treaty in 654, the damage to royal prestige was already done. The Eftal Empire was little more than a rump state in western Iran with no claim to universal sovereignty.

This collapse, however, was not all bad. It would result in a rise in oceangoing trade from India, East Africa, and Hadhramut Arabia, and as silk road trade became imperiled, maritime cities profited - with the exception of those in the Persian Gulf, whose fates were too intertwined with the Eftal to avoid atrophy and social collapse. Nevertheless, this was a time of unprecedented wealth and prosperity for the maritime states of the Indian ocean. One of the particular beneficiaries was the Red Sea trade, which represented now the only safe way to bring goods to the Mediterranean market and vice versa.

The Fall of Rome

Unlike their eastern counterparts, the Syrian Eftal saw the collapse of the Empire as a return to business as usual. The Satrap of Syria, Akhsaman the Elder, viewed Anatolia's crumbling defenses as an opportunity for more of the raiding that had brought him his position to begin with. While many turned inwards, he was carving himself what was in all but name a Shahdom, reinforcing Eftal garrisons in Asia Minor, extracting "taxes" from the Roman cities there, and offering grants of land to any Xasar-Sahu, Bulgar, or Eftal mercenaries who were seeking a fresh start in the region around Ikonion.

To the north, the Alans had won their own independence, and despite a series of small-scale border clashes, lines were quickly drawn. A motley mix of Christians and pagans, the Alans living within the Roman Empire had culturally diverged significantly from those who lived among the Eftal and often called themselves Eftal. Retaining much of their original character from their time on the steppe, the Alans opted for a rather decentralized form of rulership, ignoring cities and farmland in exchange for suitable grassland for their herds. Like many other invaders, they defined themselves as a distinct people from those they now found themselves ruling in large numbers, and as such it remains difficult to determine the exact borders of the Alan Khanate in this era - its ruling elite simply did not keep clear borders, though we can determine that most cities in northern Anatolia paid them at least a token tribute.

By 648, a number of Slavic raiding parties had crossed the Hellesponte in first. At first drawn by the prospect of easy plunder yet outside the boundaries of Eftal rule, these raiders, mostly from the small Ezerite clan, gradually turned from plunder to outright conquest, carving themselves out a petty Kingdom which existed entirely at the pleasure of greater powers like Akhsaman and the Alan Khan. Roughly simultaneously, groups of Kutrigurs, feeling pressed out of their traditional territories by the Avars, and refusing to give up their traditional nomadic lifestyle began crossing as well, and in the absence of central power to stop them, they settled in great numbers around Sardeis.

Many other Slavs and Bulgars would travel north and join the Shahdom of Nikaia, a small state carved out by the Sahu mercenary commander Birhar Manas. With humble origins as a rebellion by unpaid soldiers, it grew into conquest in accordance with "Shah" Birhar's ambitions. Displacing the local Greek aristocracy and replacing it with loyal soldiers and adventurers from his home country, within the first four years since his rebellion he grew astronomically, exploiting the power vacuum and defeating one of the few remaining Roman military forces.

In 649, however, he seized upon an elaborate plan. The Emperor Maurice, he claimed, had been captured, hiding in a monastery in Bithynia. He offered to deliver the Emperor back to Constantinople, to the mercies of the now starving mob, led by a priest named Basil, in exchange for a modest sum. Due to poor communication and a preponderance of rumors, few in Constantinople knew that Maurice had escaped to Florentia. Further, he offered to help defend the city in exchange for a series of land grants in Asia and Europe. Happy to offer territory they did not control as a reward, a group of prominent Patricians (some of whom perhaps hoped to ascend to the Imperial throne) and Basil both agreed to his proposal. When his terms were agreed to, he sailed across the strait with a squadron of captured Roman ships. Within were many of his most trusted soldiers, and at a signal, they emerged and seized the city with only a minimal fight, opening a series of gates to allow in the main bulk of his army.

The Queen of Cities, which resisted a multi-year Bulgar siege, once the mightiest and most impregnable city of the world, fell anticlimactically to a ruse. It had been starving, isolated from the grain of Anatolia and without imperial taxes to provide a dole the citizens had already turned on the bureaucracy. There were barely any defenders left, but in spite of the relative lack of resistance, Birhar turned over the city to a nine day sack. Everything of value was taken to pay his soldiers. Sacred relics were smashed for jewels and gold. The city was burned and her inhabitants sold into slavery. The wealth seized was extraordinary.

The shock of Constantinople's fall would reverberate throughout the Mediterranean. "Is not the end of the world upon us? Is Rome's fall not its harbinger? Shall Christ not soon walk among us once more? All we are left with is pale shadows of what once was, and only God himself in final triumph shall restore those shadows to radiant light." One prominent monk, Desidarius of Doclea wrote several months after the sack. Apocalyptic predictions were rife. "All the seats of Christendom save one are in the hands of unbelievers and heretics. Schismatics and blasphemers, worshippers of the Antichrist who they call Boddo defile the temples of our God in Constantinople itself."

In a time of limited trade and travel, the collapse of the Eftal Empire was also not well understood or known throughout much of Europe. Rather distant rumors of the persecution of Christianity beneath a unified horde of pagans and unbelievers became the stuff of legends, legends which would have a dramatic effect on the shape of European religion. In Anatolia, these movements were more immediate, and though the local governments often attempted to suppress them, charismatic preachers and local crowds began seeing the fall of the Roman Empire as the beginning of the end of the world in a manner far more tied to regional politics. The role they assigned themselves was similarly more immediate, and many came to believe that their mission was to prepare the way for Christ come again with a sense of unprecedented immanency.

[Thanks to Fi11222 for the inspiration for the Christian reaction to the fall of Constantinople. Next update will focus on Heshanid Egypt, Nanivadhid Palestine, and Julian. Apologies to the lovers of the Roman Empire in its various latter incarnations.]



Here's a map:

[Notes regarding the map:

The Akhsamanid Satrapy has limited effective control over much of the Anatolian part of the "Satrapy" - and they have no naval strength to bring islands such as Rhodes under their control. As such their power ends at the coast. All Anatolian borders are quite porous - another map might have almost the entire region under the control of the Alans, who have a significant home-turf advantage, or choose not to display Birhar as holding such a large territory when he's effectively a brigand calling himself a "Shah".

Nanivadh's Palestine and Akhsaman's Syria have borders because they're less involved in the general anarchy, so fewer people are invading them. As such they get clear border lines. By contrast, someone like Tistyra controls a vague region around Mosil, stretching down the Tigris and the Euphrates, and my mapmaking skills aren't good enough to mark out every mountain fortress that makes up the base of Kaosha's power - to the point that Susa being sacked is a minor setback.

I have mostly restricted myself to only naming major warlords. ]

 

[Practical Lobster]

The Coasts and the Great Lakes

As Eftal civilization imploded, many of those who lived in the Persian Gulf and could afford to do so sought new homelands safe from war - a mass flight of artisans, merchants, and nobles. While some would flee to India or Arabia, establishing small communities of exiles, many would travel west instead, settling down in the country of Savahila. There the growing coastal city states would welcome them with open arms. The city of Mzishima [Dar es Salaam] in particular swelled, becoming the predominant metropolis of the East African coast. Simultaneously, Indonesian and Indian migrants seeking a fortune and often an increase in social standing began to arrive, bolstering the numbers of these cities and allowing them to rapidly expand production of the trade goods that were their lifeblood.

This expansion would not always be easy. While many of the Cushitic ethnic groups along the coast such as the Sabaka and the Ma'a found cooperation and trade to be beneficial, opening themselves up to Indo-Iranian cultural influences and slowly assimilating into the foreign culture on their borders, further inland the cattle-herding Mbisha would come into conflict with the newly founded city of Vayubata, on the Tana river. Raiding back-and-forth along the frontier would prove indecisive - the foreign settlers lacked the manpower and the military experience to drive off the Mbisha, but were too well entrenched and too well fortified to be defeated themselves.

The Mbisha culture was based around a semi-pastoralist lifestyle - they raised cattle and cereal crops in the high hill country of the Taita. They worshiped an abstract creator god, associated with the sky, and had a society deeply stratified by age and experience as opposed to the caste and ethnic divisions which defined the Savahila states. Unwilling to yield and being forced south by the migration of northern Cushites as Awalastan crumbled, they were only finally driven off by an alliance of the "Three Cities" - Vayubata, Kintradoni, and Rhapta. Organized by Citrasena, a local merchant-prince, the Three City alliance would grow through the Seventh Century into a confederation of all the major Savahila cities, enabling a coordinated defense against invasions from the interior and attempts by various external factions to gain preferential trading rights.

By contrast, the neighboring highland people called the Asa welcomed trade. Despite having little that was directly of value to the mercantile cities to the east, they felt less threatened and as such maintained cordial relations with the Savahila - even allowing missionaries and explorers to pass through their lands in search of rumored great kingdoms further inland. Their primary trade was based around exchanging cattle for iron tools - their economy, like that of many of the inland East African civilizations, was rudimentary.

Trade penetrated the southern interior only infrequently. Riverine travel was common, allowing more advanced blacksmithing to spread inland, but in few places did a serious volume of trade build up - beyond a few rarer commodities, most of what East Africa offered the broader Eurasian trade networks could be found with relative ease within the coastal lowlands. Tribes such as the Ruvu were brought under the hegemonic power of Mzishima, but beyond the lowlands independent societies were able to continue their traditional lifestyles without any interruption.

The south was the country of the Kw'adza and Iringa. Two Cushitic tribes, they were slowly being threatened by the influx of Bantu along their periphery. By the seventh century, east Bantu farming communities were scattered across the Great Lakes region - but notably concentrated in those regions blessed with high rainfall, where the yam could still be grown. As such, the core lands of the Cushitic pastoralists were safe - marginal by the standards of the Bantu, who were unwilling to give up their traditional lifestyle or their proximity to the forest. However, with time population pressures would force the Bantu further towards the coast, bringing them into conflict with the Cushites.

But for now, the Bantu communities of [Lake Victoria] and [Lake Tanganyika] were not yet pressured to expand. Bantu civilizations such as the Rutara, the Ganda, and the Cushitic Takama lived and prospered around the great lake, giving rise to the myths of kingdoms in the interior of the continent. In truth, they were kinship-oriented societies not dissimilar to those already encountered. However, with their iron-age advancement and agricultural package, they were able to push out local hunter-gatherers and nomadic peoples and establish sedentary communities.

The reorientation of trade

As overland trade through much of the Middle East became impossible, the cities of Arabia and Egypt blossomed. The goods of India and East Africa both had to be either sailed or carried by caravans up the Red Sea, to Egyptian ports. In Heshanid Egypt, the young Basileus Heshana made such trade easy - even low tariffs were enormously profitable for the Egyptian monarchy. To avoid imperiling this trade, against the recommendation of many of his advisors, he chose not to challenge his immediate rival Nanivadh, for control of Palestine, choosing instead to maintain a yearly exchange of gifts with his "beloved cousin". While this was unpopular with the Coptic majority, trade uninterrupted by endemic warfare would pay immensely. It was no secret that Nanivadh had a strong fleet and a well-trained Arab-Eftal army - victory over him was by no means assured, especially due to Heshana's lack of military expertise.

However, problems remained. With the collapse of the Roman Empire, piracy, once confined to Crete, was able to expand across the Eastern Mediterranean. In response a Mauri expedition, launched from Italy would capture Crete and subdue several other nests of pirates by 654. Once this was done, Mediterranean trade blossomed for a time, but the Mauri lord of Crete, Asulil, would gradually grow independent and begin his own policy of coastal raiding, further destabilizing the region.

The Mauri King, Izdarasen, would be slow to respond, and his attempt to recall in 660 Asulil led to Asulil declaring himself King of Crete. After this, Mauri trade would primarily be confined to southern routes, avoiding the Aegean which became progressively more hostile to trade. This in turn would have a negative effect on the Xasar-Sahu to the north, whose riverine trading network relied on the relative security of maritime routes through the Black and Caspian seas and stable marketplaces in the former Roman and Eftal Empires. The Sahu Shah, Vashtawar, found state revenues declining and at least in the short term sought to supplement this with raiding into Pannonia and Armenia - a policy which had mixed success. More successful was his policy of paying off Asulil to ensure that trade could continue. The slave trade in particular remained lucrative as landholders with depopulated territories sought to acquire a new labor force.

In the Vacuum

After the fall of the Eftal Empire, atrocities were widespread. Dashkart, Tesifon, Bavel, and many more were all sacked in the back-and-forth warfare which claimed untold thousands of lives. Shah Tistyra's infamous commander, Nijara the White, built a pyramid of human heads outside the city of Hulwan after it defied him for three hundred days. In Mesun, the Mahadevists, once a peaceful sect, ironically fearing for their own lives, turned on their Christian brethren and massacred them, selling those who survived the first bloody nights into slavery. Yet in spite of all these atrocities, war did not take so many lives as hunger and plague.

Over the first five years of the Warlord Era, the greatest calamity to befall Mesopotamia and large parts of Iran was the widespread abandonment of the irrigated farmland due to ceaseless raids. As farmland was allowed to go uncultivated, famine wracked much of the region, and forced mass migrations of regions of relative stability, which, then overburdened by refugees were forced to ration. While the actual losses of population are difficult to estimate in any premodern time, they can only be assumed to be immense - perhaps a fourth or a third of the population. Further, there would be no immediate rebound, but rather a long period of stagnation. Reduced manpower allowed bandits, both Eftal and also Arabs from the desert to roam freely, slaughtering and stealing indiscriminately out of the picked-over husks of once great cities.

Outside of Mesopotamia, the crisis was no less real. The flight of much of the mercantile class from the Persian Gulf was followed by several decisive raids from Kaosha Prajana which lead to famine and the abandonment of urban sites such as Ram-Ardashir which had been key to Iranian trade. In spite of these successes however, Kaosha, whose authority weakened steadily through the early 650's was finally assassinated by a retainer in 656. If our Eftal historians are to be believed, he was killed after sleeping with the wife of this retainer.

Kaosha's death did not grant Shah Tarkhsuna of Pars and his Mahadevist partisans the victory they wanted - almost immediately they were overrun by a migration of Asvha and Turkic tribesmen fleeing the central Iranian plateau, and two years later, in fighting outside the marshy floodplains of Karka, Tarkhsuna would be killed, and a new warlord, Shativash, would emerge almost as swiftly. Unlike Tarkhsuna, however, Shativash was a traditional Iranian pagan, his Asvha followers primarily worshippers of Anahita and Hvarna, and the Turks a mixed bag of Tengri-worshippers and Buddhists. As such, Shativash would side with the Buddhist and more traditional Zoroastrian population of Pars, and spent the period between 657-660 engaging in a series of massacres against the Mahadevists, many of whom fled to Arabia or southern Mesopotamia, outside of his reach. Narsai of Argan was martyred in 658. Without him, his organization would splinter, with the rural bandits and radicals forming armed mobs, while the traditional urban congregations attempted to fortify various "safe" places and stockpile grain, aiming to wait out the crisis.

In Syarzur and Gilan, mountain monasteries, both Nestorian Christian and Buddhist, would provide conduits for the preservation of the knowledge, both religious and scientific, that came out of the Eftal golden age. Relatively isolated and difficult for a raiding party of cavalry to assault, they would endure, often hiring armed guards or more rarely, training their devotees in self-defense. After the death of Kaosha, it was a few major Buddhist monasteries in the Syarzur region, such as the monastery of Adhur which, by allying with a loose confederacy of local Eftal tribes such as the Oadhya and the Hitivira, began to gain secular power, repelling an invasion by Tistyra in 661. Their impromptu coalition would become known as the Syarzur Confederation, or the Eftal Nations. The latter is considered a poor translation, while the former is anachronistic.

Meanwhile, Khingila declared himself a Shah, as did his ally Syavusha the Red. Together, they were able to generally repel raiders and an invasion by the Shah of Armenia, Ashot, who coveted the semi-independent city Naxcavan. Here, the religious tolerance and relative security of trade and travel which had defined the Eftal era was preserved, albeit in a limited form. Distant from the anarchy of Mesopotamia, they were able to avoid being drawn into the chaos, promote ties between their regions, and still patronize authors, poets, and philosophers fleeing the anarchy all around.

Even more distant, the Sogdian Shah was similarly able to avoid being drawn into war. Fortunately for them, the Johiyava were cowed by Maukhani hegemony, and the Turks were frequently content to pass through in search of riches and land further south. In Samarkand, a local despot named Shanoshach was able to maintain a rough hegemony over Ferghana, Marv, and Ustrushana and a similarly vague hold over the countless cities and castles which comprised his own confederated kingdom. Theoretically acknowledging the sovereignty of the Maukhani granted him the ability to in practice act with autonomy, warring and aligning with various Turkic tribes on the frontier as he chose. In practice this directed them towards Xvarazm, which was overrun by the Qarluq tribe in 659. By 662, with the floodgates now open, Turkish warlord named Iltamish carved out a petty state for himself around the city of Abarsahr, driving the local Eftal south. Another, Baghatur, would conquer much of Sakastan in 665.

These conquests would only exacerbate the pressures on the Eftal. Amidst famine and mass migrations not seen since their initial conquest of Iran, they were forced into increasingly desperate and violent conflicts against each other and the Turks. While the Eftal undoubtedly suffered as a result of these wars and massacres, it must also be remembered that they were a societal elite. The settled peasant populations and the urban artisans and merchants suffered the brunt of regular raids and exploitation at the hands of these desperate elites, elites which already often maintained a semi-nomadic lifestyle and were thus in far less danger than their settled subjects.

However, after fifteen years of warfare, many factions were becoming exhausted. Claims to superiority or sovereignty over more than a small locality were increasingly viewed with skepticism and derision. Most of the original claimants for the throne were dead and aging, and Eftal armies had atrophied significantly. Large military forces and field battles were rare after 650, being almost entirely replaced by raiding parties and sieges. While armed men were ubiquitous, the resources to support them were rare, necessitating pillaging as a tool of warfare not merely for terror or loot, but for survival.

In 663, Tistyra, whose power was on the wane, would be assassinated by Nijara the White in a palace coup. Tistyra's chosen successor, a Nestorian Eftal named Khauwashta Taoma was forced to flee with his retainers and family to Syria, where he would become a guest of Akhsaman's court. Mosil would fall into the hands of Nijara, whose brutal legacy preceded him. Three weeks into his reign, as the death toll began to mount, a group of Tistyra's retainers assassinated him in turn and Khauwashta Taoma was able to return and become Shah of Arbayestan. Less ambitious than his father and less bloodthirsty than Nijara, he sought peace with his neighbors, marking the beginning of the end of almost a generation of unending internecine war and warlordism. Bringing peace to even the territory within his nominal borders would prove challenging, however, and on the Iranian plateau various tribes such as the Khiash and the Panjadh would continue to feud, accumulating regional coalitions around them.


[Don't worry, there will be a new map coming after the next post, which is mostly written and focuses on a few different rebellions, Italy, and the former Roman Empire.]

 

[Practical Lobster]

Apocalypse Now?

The various Christian apocalyptic movements which emerged in the wake of Constantinople's fall did not emerge out of nowhere. Apocalyptic thought had its roots early in the Christian tradition, but after so much of the Christian East was overrun, it enjoyed a revival. Beginning with the plagues in 540, many preachers, bordering on heretical, began to whip the populace into a frenzy of messianic fervor. While this fervor would wax and wane over the coming century, after Constantinople's fall it burst out into the open once more.

Beginning with the writings of Desidarius of Doclea, the movement in Italy preached that the end of times had begun - that a great Eftal warlord was coming out of the East to usher in the beginning of the end of the world. The warlord "Birharios" who had sacked Constantinople was his harbinger, much as Desidarius was the harbringer of Christ. When Desidarius was made to recant his claims, he would flee his monastery and travel the countryside, preaching. His execution in 653 would only strengthen the conviction of his disciples.

Similar movements grew in Greece and Anatolia, where the fall of Rome had been most acutely felt. Often called Procopians, after Procopius of Sardis, the founder of the movement, they believed similarly, only that Procopius was a sort of reincarnation of John the Baptist, come back to usher in the new era. Despite being widely condemned as heresy, the Procopians gained quite a following, and one which in many cases was violent, attempted to rebel against the "pagan overlords" to whom they were subjected, especially in those places where strong authority was scarce. While these rebellions were often quashed, the Procopians did not fear death or the end of the world. Unlike the more peaceful Desidarian movement, the Procopians tended to inspire violence against unbelievers and strict social codes, feeling that with the end of the world so urgent, there was little time to repent. In response, a less strict and more peaceful sect, the Phrygians (so named after Phyrgia, where the movement originated) developed, but it was similarly condemned as heresy for seeing Procopius as a prophet of the coming Apocalypse. Among the Slavs, Avars, Eftal, Alans, and other peoples who found themselves ruling Christian populations, these movements were treated with suspicion, derision, or bemusement, depending on the paranoia of the local rulers and the size of the apocalyptic congregations. Obviously, these movements did little to foster assimilation on either side.

Far in the East, among the Nestorians, deliverance was considered to be imminent as well - and not without good reason. Despite generally having a much better knowledge of the various religions with which they shared the world, the Nestorians had suffered horribly since the collapse of the Eftal. In a few places, such as Mosil, tolerance remained, but daily rumors and tales of atrocities left certainty in the hearts of many, even high up in the Nestorian establishment in Mesopotamia, that the end was nigh.

Here, various figures - all of them much closer to home - were successively cast as the Antichrist or some harbinger of apocalypse - each acknowledged as such and then dismissed in turn as their power weakened. However the true apocalypse was little more than mass starvation and endemic warfare, a plight which was indiscriminate in its targeting of Christians and "unbelievers" alike. Deliverance would have to wait. In several cities, uprisings began in the latter days of the collapse, prepared to join the armies of Christ. However, these uprisings were incapable of coordinating and unlike in earlier periods, lacked manpower. Despite being a movement in which a not insubstantial number of Eftal were swept up in, after the destruction of cities such as Tesifon by Nijara the White (one of the favorite candidates for Antichrist) it began to lose steam in Mesopotamia, not for a lack of faith but a simple lack of available manpower.

Christians, of course, were not the only group to rebel in this time period. Many cities and peasant communities sought to throw off the increasingly exploitative Eftal yoke for a variety of non-religious reasons. However, generally speaking these groups, regardless of origin could not afford to field cavalry to the same degree that the Eftal warlords could. Frequently these rebellions turned into small battles where a disorderly mob of armed peasants would be outmaneuvered, worn down, and overrun by more agile bands of mounted raiders. Rebellions in this era tended to survive only with some combination of elite backing, a defensible stronghold, and a willingness to negotiate.

A Light in the West - Florentia, 647

Having abandoned Constantinople, Emperor Maurice quickly found himself having leapt from the frying pan into the fire. Julian's condition for allowing him to stay in Florentia was that Maurice name Julian co-Emperor. Maurice could see where such a deal would lead him - sooner or later he would be set aside, sent into retirement or to one of the many monasteries that dotted Italia. Then again, if Julian wanted to throw away his life pursuing the dream of Empire, so be it. Italy was comfortable and safe.

There was no reason not to give away a title which had caused him nothing but stress and premature graying. Even a monastery would not be so bad. Maurice had been married once, but his wife had died young, in childbirth. He had no desire to marry again - and at least in a monastery he could devote himself to his studies.

Three weeks after his arrival, Maurice proclaimed Julian his Co-Emperor, and began his slow premeditated withdrawal from public life, a withdrawal which suited him just fine. At first, Julian treated the announcement with caution, refraining from using the title of Basileus too frequently, or in his regular letters to the Avar Khagan. Despite his growth in power he feared, perhaps rightly, the Avars, and further seems to have had a cordial relationship with the Khagan which he was unwilling to jeopardize. However, the Avars were similarly unwilling to jeopardize their relationship with Julian, who provided them generous tribute and preserved the status quo.

When Constantinople fell, Julian almost immediately began considering a campaign to reclaim it. However, he knew well that the Avar Khagan would likely not support such an ambitious move, and without a strong fleet or Avar support, he would never be able to strike at Constantinople. Frustrated at the seeming logistical impossibility, he attempted to stay active, overseeing further renovations in Florentia and marrying a Sicilian Mauri noblewoman named Menna. While this choice angered many of the old Roman Patrician families, who hoped that he might favor them and thus grant them further prestige and exalt them above their competitors, it kept him aloof from their petty squabbles and strengthened ties with the various semi-autonomous nobles to his south. Despite the growing apocalypticism and panic that gripped the religious scene of Italy, Julian was a cautious, conservative leader. He took a moderate hand towards the Desidarian movement, persecuting outright heresy but otherwise turning a blind eye to their apocalyptic preaching. Privately, he undoubtedly hoped it would die down, feeling such fervor was dangerous to the state he had designed, particularly as it often directed its anger against the Avars who more than nominally controlled northern Italy.

Over the next ten years, Julian's reign would be remembered as a period of calm as the east disintegrated and in Francia another round of warfare broke out between rival heirs after Clothar II's death.

Picking over bones

The decade after the fall of Constantinople was, as already noted, one of cultural despair for the Greek speaking peoples of the Balkans and Asia Minor. Religious visions of apocalypse and chaos gripped the people. Constantinople lay in ruins and many assumed it would never recover. Without the Empire, a fixture of civilization here since time immemorial, what was there?

Birhar Manas, despite enormous wealth and decent land to settle his loyal soldiers in, was in an uncomfortable position. As the destroyer of Constantinople he earned himself the wrath of many. Most of the cities within his small territory had not anticipated that he would sack Constantinople, and despite their relative weakness and his relative strength, he found himself struggling to retain the loyalty of the Romans that made up the majority of his citizenry. He significantly lessened the tribute he demanded from the Roman cities, knowing that the sack of Constantinople had made him wealthy regardless and that the token submission was more important than anything else.

To compensate for this humiliation, he sailed around the northern Aegean, playing pirate for a time with his Sahu. In his absence, a Roman patrician named Isaac, living near Nicomedia gathered a small number of former soldiers and, joined by increasing numbers of disaffected locals and displaced peasants, he captured a network of towns in the Bithynian hills. When Birhar returned from his bloody adventuring, the self-proclaimed "Shah" was forced to fight for his life. That he ultimately won the battle and slew Isaac was little satisfaction - many of these former soldiers melted into the hills and proved a long-term thorn in his side.

After this rebellion, Birhar became distrusting of his subordinates. He had left Constantinople and a not insignificant garrison (including ships) in the hands of a lieutenant, Kormisosh, and paranoia that Kormisosh would act against him distracted him for the better part of a year, while another of his subordinates, an Avar mercenary named Umor, fanned the flames of his suspicions. Birhar alienated more and more of his men and finally they appealed to Kormisosh to overthrow him in truth.

Kormisosh was a more pragmatic, practical man. Like Birhar a Sahu by birth, in his youth he had been a traveler, and he had seen much of Europe and the Middle East, fighting both for and against the Eftal and the Romans. Finally settling in the Roman Empire, he had been quick to opportunistically join Birhar when the Empire began to collapse. Naturally, due to his talents and affable nature, he rose quickly to a position of subordinate command. Beneath his affability, however, was masked a profound ruthlessness which allowed him to seize control of the petty kingdom under the guise of restoring order.

However, in 658, as he sailed into Nicomedia and declared himself the new King (following a swift and relatively bloodless coup) his mission seemed nigh impossible. The Sahu and their various mercenary allies were all foreigners, outnumbered and despised by the native population. They faced a rebellion in the hill country of Bithynia and their greatest potential source of wealth, Constantinople, lay in ruins from which it might well never recover. And if rumors were true, both the Avars and Alans alike were eyeing their territory.

Alans and Eftal - Anatolia Divided

The Alans ruled a large and mostly depopulated region of Asia Minor. Apart from a ring of cities along the black sea coast that paid them tribute, they came out of the war with the least internal issues. By offering to work with the Eftal under Akhsaman the Elder, they were able to secure territorial concessions from the overstretched Eftal and in return supplied them with mercenaries - a relationship not dissimilar to that which they had with the Romans.

The Alans tended to eschew large urban foundations - although several fortified palaces were built in the westernmost parts of their territory, perhaps as a way to solidify their control. A mixture of Christians and traditional Iranian pagans, in the wake of the Roman Empire's fall, adherence to Nicene Christianity became less essential to advancement. Nestorian Christianity would subsequently gain a not insubstantial following, and Alan paganism would endure as Christianity failed to gain the official support of the Alan Khan, Celbir. Alan culture bore many similarities to that of the early Eftal - their ornate pottery and elaborate sewn banners were frequently decorated with scenes of horses and horsemen, and also pastoral representations of herdsmen or gods and goddesses, frequently portrayed dancing. Unlike the Eftal, these figures rarely bear any resemblance to Indian or Persian iconography, but more frequently bear resemblance to late Roman images.

Akhsaman the Elder perhaps bit off more than he could chew with his sweeping spate of conquests. He made arrangements with local orthodox religious leaders, landholders and cities, but these arrangements were often complicated by the desire of his own people to settle this "newly conquered" land. He lacked the soldiers to enforce order, and as a result the Kutigurs and Slavs were able to raid areas which paid him for supposed protection. He was according forced to spend most of his early reign riding from place to place, solving local disputes and using military force to suppress bandits and potential rebels.

A battle against Slavic raiders left him with lingering wounds and accordingly by 660 he was an aging man with a young (third) wife, Vitushoana. In court rumor and in fact she came to utterly control the affairs of state, coming the closest to creating an organized census and a regular tax rate for the various subject peoples under Akhsaman's yoke. It was she who moved the court to the more central city of Tyana. The near-total abandonment of the city and its hinterlands played into her decision, because it could be repopulated with Eftal and Akhsaman's retainers could be placated with large estates of pastureland nearby. The city of Ikonion underwent similar treatment at the hands of Vitushoana's brother Disiapata, but remained less prestigious and less powerful because of its distance from the heartland of Syria. As a sort of counterbalance, the "golden city" of Emesa would be granted to Akhsaman's cousin, Akhsaman the Younger as a personal territory, bound by tribal ties to the central authority but otherwise autonomous. In these turbulent times, Akhsaman would fortify the city and many others along the border with Palestine, never wholly trusting Nanivadh or his successor Avyaman of Damascus. (Avyaman was crowned co-Shah in 653, and would assume total power in 654, with Nanivadh retiring and dying several years later.)

Like so many other opportunists, the Kutigurs did well for themselves in Anatolia. Roughly unified under the leader Bayan Irbis, they subjugated much of Lydia and despite having only a few thousand warriors, they were able to negotiate their submission to Akhsaman the Elder, becoming effectively the Eftal tax collectors. It was a role they excelled in, effectively besieging cities until they were paid, and then splitting the proceeds equitably with the Eftal, whose effective power was confined further south and east. The Ezerite Slavs, who clung to the coastlines, were a frequent target on their aggression as well. Neither the Slavs or the Bulgars left much material culture in Anatolia - both were relatively few in number, and overwhelmingly militaristic. Much of what they used was taken from the far more advanced society they ruled. Both would often make use of Roman-made weapons and armor. Furthermore, Roman historians after only a generation or so seem to regard the Bulgars of Asia Minor as no different from the Eftal.

This pillage, rebellion, and general decline in urban population was really nothing new. The population of Anatolia by 660 was at a low not seen in centuries - having never fully recovered from the Egyptian Plague and being subsequently wracked over the next hundred years by invasion, famine, warfare and several resurgent outbreaks of plague. However, it is a testament to Roman society that along the west coast, the Roman cities endured. Even as the surrounding countryside reverted back towards subsistence agriculture and pastoralism, these cities and their environs remained both strongholds against raiding and important, if diminished economic centers with food surpluses. Their churches, with beautiful mosaics and jewel-inlaid relics, were never pillaged. Their public forums and marketplaces remained lively and distinctly Roman. Perhaps most importantly the "barbarians" who claimed to rule them rarely interfered in their daily function, preferring to simply extract tribute and move on to the next city.


[Big update! I know I packed a lot in there. As ever I welcome questions and comments and thoughts.

The big initial period of chaos is winding down, but the aftermath will take some time to sort out. I have to admit to being a little uncertain where to go from here - I'm not operating with much of a plan anymore and I'll need to develop one again. I'd love to hear some suggestions on that front, if anyone has any. (Although I reserve the right to disagree, it's not like I'm totally devoid of plans or ideas.) And yes, the map is coming along. I just need to update it to accommodate some last minute changes to this post. Apologies for not having it out sooner - I know I for one would be totally lost without it.]

 

[Practical Lobster]

Kings of Hispania

Sisenand (611-632)

Prosecutor of the Jews and Arians, Sisenand's reputation through history is one of a callous butcher, thanks in no small part to the role of the Jewish historian Matthaeus of Acci. However, this is an unfair assessment of a reign best seen through the lens of the times in which he lived. Sisenand's world was a changing one. The Nicene Church was growing in power and influence. Urban development was at its nadir, and large estates dominated Hispanian agriculture.

Sisenand's attempts to divide these estates and satisfy the demands of the Nicene Church led to communal violence, rebellion, and the dissatisfaction of the nobility upon which he depended - all of which threatened to undermine the later years of his reign. Fortunately, due to the general distraction of the Franks to his north and the lack of other meaningful threats, Sisenand was able to confront these issues without fear of outside interference - and indeed the Church was able to bankroll his hiring of Frankish and Mauri mercenaries.

By 630, the rebellions were defeated, but Sisenand himself was an aging man, wearied by war and court intrigue. He sought to retire and yield up the Kingdom of Hispania to his son, Amalaricus, which he did two years later, after a period where his son was given broad authority as Doux of Tarraconensis (a territory smaller than that of the former Roman province).

Amalaricus (632-639)

Amalaricus' short reign was remarkably peaceful and prosperous. He oversaw the building of a grand cathedral in Toledo. He was notable, however, for having grown up in a Hispania totally ruled by the Nicene Church, and for, unlike Sisenand, using Iberian Latin almost exclusively at court. He began minting a new line of gold coins, the Iberian Solidus, to combat the inflation his predecessors had increasingly used to balance the Hispanian budget.

His Lord of the Palace, the Romano-Gothic noble Ardonius Iagari, dominated the affairs of state for the majority of Amalaricus' short reign. Having grown wealthy by manipulating the land seizures of Sisenand, he maintained his power under the new King by way of Amalaricus' mistress, Heva. After Amalaricus grew ill and died at the age of 33 without an heir in 639, he manipulated the council of nobles to ensure that his handsome cousin, Chinavintus, the Count of Calabria, was named King.

Chindavintus (639-650)

Chindavintus was, shortly after his ascent to the throne faced by a threat in the form the Basques, who sought to rebel, feeling that the Kingdom was weak and disorganized in the wake of Chinadvintus' election. When a large group of nobles, dissatisfied by Chinadvintus' election, and fearful of Ardonius Iagari's power over the new King, joined their rebellion, Chindavintus proved that he was more than a puppet, satisfying their demands by sending his cousin into exile, and defeating the Basques in a campaign which lasted until 642.

After handling the Basques, he turned around and executed some six hundred nobles for their suspected part in the rebellion, a move which would solidify his support. He would never allow Ardonius to return to Hispania however, and the former minister would live out his life in relative comfort in Hippo as a guest of the Mauri King, Izdarasen.

The Avar Khaganate - Balkan Hegemony (640-670)

In the reign of Bati Savaryan, the Avar Khaganate would begin to settle down. Bati Savaryan, unlike his predecessors, rarely left Sirmium, which became a sort of de facto capital. Managing the complex layers of tribal loyalties he had inherited was inefficient for a mobile Khagan. With a single hub, linked by courier riders to the rest of his expansive empire, he could rest assured that messages would reach him in a timely manner.
The early success of the Avars had been based on their peerless, stirrup equipped cavalry, but as stirrups spread and the Avars became overstretched, it was more through a combination of accommodation and assimilation that they maintained their legacy. The Avar people were always few in number, relative to the vast numbers of Slavs that they ruled. But, through the use of settled tributaries they maintained their dominance, despite slowly becoming more and more Slavic and less Iranian. Apart from occasional back and forth raids on the Sahu frontier, the Avars military structure slowly began to atrophy in the decades following 650. There were few good targets for raiding anymore - and the relatively safe business of extracting tribute allowed the core military aristocracy to slowly lose their edge.

Unlike the Eftal, who by settling down enhanced and strengthened their dominion, for the Avars, settling down was a paralytic. Their last major victory against the Bulgars extended their hegemony over the entirety of Greece, bringing countless petty Slavic Kings into their orbit. These Kings paid heavy tribute to the Avars, whose military reputation preceeded them.

The Southern Slavs and the Bulgars, however, were becoming Romanized. It was perhaps inevitable, surrounded by history, that they would not begin to adopt the language and architectural styles of the people they conquered. By 660, cities such as Thessaloniki were even being restored - and these major building projects undertaken by the Slavic Kings had a distinctly Roman style and grandeur to them. Nicene Christianity too, spread like wildfire. While the Slavs had little interest in the apocalyptic visions of the Procopians, they sought out Christianity as a way to bridge the gap between themselves and their Greek population. The South Slavs were a people who had long ago left their homelands and traditional, local gods, behind. To many it seemed logical that they should adopt the God of this new land.

King Casamir "the Great" of Thrace was famous for being the first of these converted Kings, being baptized in 654. Unlike the disastrous attempt of Valthar, by this point his people were already accustomed to living beside the Romans, and a series of mass baptisms followed. Local churches were restored and in 656, Casamir would go on a pilgrimage to Rome, where he would be awed by the beauty of the city. His example encouraged the mass conversions that would bring most of the Slavic nobility throughout the Avar hegemony to Christianity by 670. Further, it reinforced Casamir's position as a sort of "first among equals" in the pecking order of Slavic kings, much to the irritation of Bati Savaryan's son, Aybat Kalga.

Aybat Kalga lacked the brotherly relationship his father had with Julian. The elderly Roman finally passed away in 656, leaving the throne solely to his now 37 year old son, Sergius Constantinus. Having grown up a soldier, Sergius, unlike his father, seems to have harbored dreams of restoring the Roman Empire to its full potential. Knowing this, Aybat Kalga saw in the spread of Christianity an attempt from Rome to undermine the unity of his Khaganate - drawing the Slavs into the religion of the Romans was but a first step. Casamir's pilgrimage he saw as little more than collusion amongst his various tributary vassals in a plot to overthrow the Avar hegemony.

Accordingly, in 658 he asked Sergius to withdraw his soldiers garrisoning Liguria, granting the region to the Utrigur Bayan clan, who he viewed as more loyal vassals. To the Isidorians, Liguria, a wealthy region from which they extracted enormous tax revenue, was not negotiable. Sergius refused.

Isidorian Italy

The latter years of Julian's reign, now as Emperor, proceeded as well as could be expected. Because of his unwillingness to jeparodize the status quo, he put off his visions of reconquest until it was too late. Early in the 650's, his sight began failing him, and soon after he was afflicted with gout and a variety of diseases which left him increasingly more infirm. He was forced to name his son, Sergius, co-Emperor in 651. Sergius was by all accounts an able commander and a natural-born leader, but he and his father saw eye-to-eye on little. Regardless, there was no other choice. The Isidorian dyansty had built its prestige on remaining aloof from the squabbles of the Patrician families, and as such no other suitable candidate existed.

Sergius' coronation however, represented a new system. Crowned by the Pope himself in Rome, Sergius was granted a sort of divine legitimacy and right to rule which the Isidorians had previously lacked. That Julian had been instrumental in choosing the Pope who did so was quietly overlooked by the dynasty's partisans, who were quick to hail Sergius as a sort of holy emperor. Furthermore, in a return to a more classical form, Sergius was the first Isidorian Emperor to use the title Imperator Augustus.

The Italian Army was a potent force. Italy was populous, untroubled for the most part by raids or warfare, capable of sustaining armies of perhaps more than thirty thousand in the field for extended campaigns and extensive garrison forces besides. It was this full field army which accompanied Sergius north. Aybat Kalga called up what cavalry he had on hand and met Sergius as Patavium, where the two men had a tense meeting. Aybat Kalga was concerned, not merely by the size of the Roman force assembled at short notice against him but by how well equipped and disciplined it seemed, in contrast to his own motley assembly of nobles.

Feeling cornered, Aybat Kalga blustered and threatened, promising to "Burn Florentia to the ground and use the Patriarch of Rome as a footstool." He reminded the Roman how easily his ancestors had broken the back of the Gothic Kingdom and demanded that he be obeyed. To these threats and provocations, Sergius remained coolly dismissive, waiting until the Khagan was finished ranting before he left the tent. At dawn the next day, the Italian army deployed and marched on the Avar camp, and the Khagan's soldiers retreated north, to great celebration.

But the Avars would return, two months later, with a far, far larger force, most of it mounted. Despite several attempts to bring the Romans to battle, Sergius did not take the bait, knowing well that time was on his side. As long as Aybat Kalga was bogged down in inconclusive skirmishes and long sieges, he lost face and merely confirmed to his vassals and allies that Italy was lost. Finally, frustrated and defeated, Khagan and Emperor met once more, and this time, the Khagan, humbled, agreed to both acknowledge Sergius' independence and officially cede the remainder of northern Italy to him.


The 6th Scroll of the Suwar

[The following is an (invented) excerpt from the Saihist holy book, the Suwar. ITTL, Saihism had its origins in the cult of Alilat, but grew into a universal religion with the patronage of tribal groups such as the Banu Thaqif and the Banu Ghatafan. While it had little appear outside of the Arab cultural sphere, by the eight century there were also small communities of believers in East Africa. The Suwar is one of several texts considered holy by the Saihists, and is attributed to the priestess Fadia and her husband Abdulilat.]

This is true thought, written by the priestess for the benefit of all. Through true thought does one attain the Absolute.

True thought [given] to the God is the proper path, the path which will not lead you from truth to falsehood, as so many paths may. Alilat is the garden at the end of the path.

The God is the season and Alilat the child of seasons. What the God is, Alilat is the child of. What the God is, Alilat is the mother of. Each mote is the God, and each mote is birthed from Alilat.

Alilat, who is the first and is without equal, bless this verse. May your beautiful birds, your bountiful companions shelter us and give us strength to not err...

When you pray, pray not as a polytheists do, to the multitude of idols in the crowded temple. Go instead into the desert, into the place of silence and there turn your mind to the God.

When you pray, pray not as the Christians do, to the image of a man. Man cannot be the compass of the God. That [role] belongs to Alilat. Go instead to some place where you can see the vastness of the Absolute and praise the beneficence of Alilat...

When you pray, pray not as false prophets [Mahadevists?] do, to the thought of the God and not the substance. Alilat is the substance, and to forget her is unbelief.

 

[Practical Lobster]

Kral Darvan

With his tributaries under pressure by the growing Slavic migrations, in 623 Clothar II went east, touring the frontier. While his mission was ostensibly to provide reassurance, he also sought to acquaint the nobles of the Kingdom with his first (and favored) son, Charibert, and further, through a display of Frankish military might, dissuade potential rebellions among the Thuringians and Saxons, whose dukes resented his hegemony.
By the time Clothar II returned to Paris, he was supremely confident the eastern borders were safe. However, within two years he would be back on the frontier, facing an invasion by Kral (King) Darvan of the Veleti. Over the past twenty years, the Slavic tribes had been slowly unifying, to defend against and also better persecute the low level-warfare that characterized their borders with the Franks. But it was Darvan who finally bound the various fractured tribes together through clever inter-tribal marriages and skill at warfare. While there are essentially no Slavic sources from the time, account of Frankish monk Suger of Merseburg provides a factually inaccurate but useful picture of Darvan's loose Kingdom. Religious ritual was the key to the stability of the Kingdom, with the springtime festival of Jarilo providing an opportunity for tribal leaders to meet in council and hear the King's proclamations. The King was in many cases effectively a first among equals within the tribal oligarchy, but in matters of war he had absolute authority.

The western Slavs, known to the Franks as Wends, were primarily a rural, agrarian people. Their cities were relatively crude and small, even by the standards of "barbarian" Europe. What urbanization they did have was based around temple locations or fortifications. Lacking infrastructure and a central identity, their early history was characterized by internecine raiding and relative isolation from the broader world. Their history and culture was primarily oral, though they did have a written language which saw limited use. If their own history is to believed, it was Kral Darvan who truly invented the Slavic civilization.

Darvan's legacy as a warrior and a semi-mythic founder of the "Wendish" peoples would be cemented by a battle called Bautzen, where Duke Helinand of Thuringia, the Saxon Duke, Theoderic, and a contingent of Frankish cavalry attempted to stop an expedition by the Slavs which, while it had begun as a mere raid, had snowballed into a full-scale invasion. Helinand and three of his sons were slain, and Saxony and Thuringia were left open. After Bautzen, the Frankish kingdom was overrun as far as the Weser.

The Frankish Mayor of the Palace, Vedast, lead a response, but was summarily defeated in battle near Fulda. However, by the end of the year, Darvan was forced by his own nobles to retreat back across the Elbe. In spite of his skillful campaign, the Slavs feared for their homesteads in their absence and had little ambitions beyond looting and taking slaves. When Clothar II himself took the field, he was able to chase Darvan deep into his own territory, but the brilliant tactician succeeded once more. His infantry advanced in a loose formation, harassing the rigid units of Frankish heavy infantry and wearing them down with arrows and throwing-spears. As the Franks impetuously charged, the Slavic infantry melted away into the forest, and Darvan, having flanked the Frankish army and driven off their horse, charged his cavalry into the unprepared Franks, themselves scattered in their pursuit of the lighter-equipped, faster, Slavic troops. The Franks retreated, humiliated. Clothar was effectively forced to buy peace with vast quantities of treasure, which Darvan distributed to his people, solidifying his position as leader.

This description of the Slavic cavalry seems to imply that Darvan took much inspiration from the Avars, using spear and bow equipped cavalry as the mainstay of his army.

After this defeat, Clothar's Kingdom began to break apart. The Burgundians and Saxons rebelled and while Clothar was able to convince the Burgundian nobles to return to the fold, the Saxons remained independent, ambushing a Frankish army sent to bring them back into the fold. Clothar was forced to grant the nobles additional privileges, and on his death in 636, the Frankish Empire splintered once more. His many sons ended up with their own Kingdoms, and while Charibert, King of Neustria, was nominally first among equals, that did nothing to prevent vicious brotherly infighting from beginning anew.

What was notable is that over the next twenty years, no single victor would become clear. Agilbert of Austrasia would come closest, but he would die in 651, and his two sons would spell the end of his victories by warring against each other for the throne.

While Darvan would die in 647, his son, Radem would take on the mantle of his father's legacy. He had distinguished himself as a leader of Darvan's cavalry, a position in which he had come to form personal relationship with the tribal leaders whose support was critical to ensuring the peaceful transition of power. Radem would conquer the Thuringians, forcing them into submission. However, as much of Radem's legitimacy was based upon pagan religious ritual, the Christian Thuringians proved unreliable subjects, a problem which Radem was aware would only grow worse with time.

Radem was an effective monarch in an era where such a thing was desperately needed to prevent the entire makeshift Kingdom from collapsing. By confirming the makeshift alliances his father had created and strengthening them, he ensured that the western Slavs could fight off Avar and Frankish attacks throughout the latter half of the seventh century, and strengthened the artificial identity that Darvan had created. However, the Kingdom was still almost entirely based on having a strong leader at the helm - without one, Radem knew it would quickly disintegrate. Although he intended to create a written code of laws based off of a combination of Germanic law and Slavic traditions, he died in 663, before this could be accomplished. His son, Czimislav, would be left to continue the statebuilding process Darvan began. Only time would tell if he was up for the challenge.

Orthodoxy and Enlightenment in the Maukhani Empire

With the death of Visnuvadhana, his son Ammaraja took power, and would largely continue the policies of his father - detachment from the day-to-day affairs of Empire, military expansion, and attempts at central unification. The Johiyava dynasty remained powerful and influential - Ammaraja surrounded himself with his mother's family, earning Ammaraja the ire of the bureaucrats and the military, whose interests conflicted with those of the Johiyava. The final straw was Ammaraja's creation of vast fiefs in the Punjab for the Johiyava and their vassals in 651, whose territory in Tokharestan was increasingly coming under threat and desired safer territories. Distanced from the popular mood and surrounded by fawning courtiers, Ammaraja had little idea how much policies which seemed simple to his sheltered position could have such a negative impact.
The bureaucracy in the Punjab had a strong relationship with the local aristocrats and tribes whose positions were directly threatened, and a rebellion broke out in Takasashila, seeking to place Ammaraja's nephew, Dhruvasena in power. As a sort of local Viceroy, Dhruvasena stood apart from the (mainly Brahmin) bureaucrats and yet had their implicit support, which proved to be invaluable in gathering troops, especially the semi-professional military units which formed the core of the Maukhani army.

The Johiyava, by contrast, fought much as they had a century ago, relying on their vicious Indo-Iranian cavalry and raiding tactics. However, they found themselves outmatched and outnumbered. The Maukhani army had adapted steppe-style cavalry tactics from the Johiyava, countering the raiders, and once they dragged the Johiyava into a pitched battle, the kamboja cavalry found that the enemy foot soldiers were equipped with high quality weapons and armor, long spears and heavy bamboo longbows ideal for repulsing their charges.

Dhruvasena quickly laid siege to Purusapura and then, taking a token military force, marched east. As he travelled he gathered a large army, and laid siege to Pataliputra. Ammaraja surrendered, hoping for leniency, but was executed, along with much of his court. With this, the Johiyava abandoned their fight. Purusapura was captured, and Gandhara came with it. However, the Maukhani did not press beyond the Khyber, opting instead to fortify the pass. The Johiyava beyond it lost much of their power to a rival clan, the Siyaposha, a border group with Eftal and Kidarite origins who claimed, not entirely untruthfully, Kamboja ancestry. By 660, they conquered the city of Kapisa, making it the capital of a new kingdom. Using money from the Maukhani, they hired Turkic mercenaries to fight the remaining Johiyava holdouts, and when the war was done in 665, they settled these Turkic soldiers on old Johiyava lands, where they would in time become the core of the Kapisa armies.

Dhruvasena, for his part, would be a pawn of his ministers and generals. The structure of Maukhani government had developed such that it was difficult for a monarch to exercise power. Generally speaking, the bureaucrats and viceroys designed policy and the monarch's influence was more abstract. Despite this weakness, Dhruvasena's reign would be massively influential. The Maukhani empire would reach its greatest extent, solidifying its borders in Deccan and Orissa. Further, the religious changes in Dhruvasena's reign would be long lasting.

Hinduism as developed by the guru Indrapada and promoted by Dhruvasena (and to a lesser extent his predecessor) was nonsectarian and nondualistic. Rather than the young bhakti movement, with its devotion to a personal god, Dhruvasena's Hinduism was based in Vedanta philosophy, and sought to compete with Buddhism by emphasizing the pursuit of enlightenment and the fundamental unity of the Self and Brahman. Monist Hinduism would spread like wildfire, being able to incorporate any number of local or universal deities as not fundamentally incompatible with its teachings.

While sectarian movements such as Mahadevism, and the bhakti sects such as Shaivism and Vaishnavism would endure, and in the west even thrive, Hinduism on the Indian subcontinent would gradually begin to unify. Further philosophers would expound upon the ideas presented by the mystics of Dhruvasena's court, and while philosophical debate and disunity would remain an essential part of the Indian character, monism was central to the Hindu worldview in the Middle Ages, both on the subcontinent and in much of the Indianized east. The principle of overarching unity while allowing for radical regional innovation and difference, as applied to both government and religion, would define the era.

[In another world, with the rise of Islam and Indian feudalism, Hindu religion would become personal and devotional. Here its tending towards the philosophical, abstract, and has the key theme of "unity" - of self and Brahman, of the gods in their myriad incarnations, of everything in existence. Hinduism in this timeline I think will continue to develop sharply away from its OTL form, although many things will seem familiar. It won't be any less diverse ITTL, but the core trends and influences are different.

The Eftal Mahadevist sect, with their Zoroastrian and Bhakti roots and need to compete with the Abrahamaic faiths, have a lot more of that personal devotional aspect. The typical Eftal pagan or Hindu, by contrast, mixes ecstatic rituals, gaudy festivals, and personal devotion with Buddhist inspired philosophy and might find the religious trends of the subcontinent not unfamiliar.]

Mauri Hegemony

King Izdarasen was the grandson of the famed Mauri Queen [FONT=&quot]Meghighda, having succeeded his father, Ayrades in 633. The eldest son, he was widely regarded as a disappointment, an arrogant and spoiled youth without much inclination to rule. In comparison to his brother Takfarinas, a pious and scholarly boy, Izdarasen came off even worse. However, after ascending to the throne in Hippo Regius, he proved not wholly incompetent. His father's reign had left the affairs of state in good order. Trade was booming, with Mauri merchants being a ubiquitous presence in the Mediterranean.

[/FONT] [FONT=&quot]Over the past two hundred years, North Africa had become more arid. While its harvests were still sufficient to keep a large urban population, the Mauri found themselves being pressed by Berbers from the desert whose societies were based in more fragile ecosystems. The collapse of oasis civilizations such as the Garamantines had caused overland trade to gradually dry up as well. These migrations had preoccupied Ayrades' reign, and the dangers posed by these migrants had pushed more and more Mauri towards the coasts, where maritime work beckoned.

[/FONT] [FONT=&quot]The Mauri "colonies" scattered across the Mediterranean provided another outlet for those seeking an escape from marginal lands or intermittent raids. While these had essentially ceased by the time Izdarasen had come to power, they had finally caused the Mauri to commit to a maritime existence. Much of their farmland had become far less productive pastureland to support migrants with a semi-nomadic lifestyle. Income from agricultural estates was low, and the traditional tribal power-brokers, who depended on these estates, were weaker than even, replaced by a new urban elite which allowed the monarchy to centralize power and gain wealth from tariffs.

[/FONT] [FONT=&quot]Izdarasen's policies reinforced these trends. Overseas expeditions became a hallmark of his reign, establishing the Mauri as far afield as Crete. The large budget of the state was used to maintain an even larger fleet, and though the Mediterranean could not be called a Mauri lake, with the decline of the Roman Empire it was almost exclusively policed by the Mauri. However, to the north a new threat was growing.

[/FONT] With Emperor Sergius Constantine's reconquest of the Po Valley, the Mauri holdings in the south, under a local doux named Takfarinas, were the next logical step, as was Sicily. While the Isidorian Empire had a fleet, it was small and feeble compared to that of the Mauri - who would have unquestioned naval dominance in any war. The stage was set for a war not unlike the Punic wars almost nine hundred years ago - only this time, both sides believed themselves to be the proper successors to the Roman Empire.

The Mauri Kings had long been rivals of the Isidorians over the issue of Sicily, which the Isidorians saw as a symbolic "birthplace" of the dynasty, and the Mauri saw as a vital trade hub. With an easy victory over the Avar Khagan under his belt, Sergius demanded the submission of doux Takfarinas. When he did not receive it, he marched south to complete his dominion over the Italian peninsula.

[I think most of the world is now caught up to roughly the 660 mark. The Darvan stuff was born out of reading about the early western Slavs and wanting something interesting for them to do, so I decided to give them a brilliant leader just to throw things off the course of history. Of course, said brilliant leader is really working against history in a sense, because the Slavs lack any of the institutions or traditions to create a strong state at this point. They're just a bunch of tribes and trying to centralize them into an unholy sprawling leviathan kingdom is an uphill battle - and I'm not sure how it could last much longer. An early conversion to Christianity is probably in the cards though, I'm thinking. But it seems too early at this point.]

 

[Practical Lobster]

The Wars of Sergius

Sergius, flush from his easy victory against the Avars, marched south a year later against doux Takfarinas of Apulia in 658. His prior successes had made him confident that this would be an easy campaign - that like the Avars, the Mauri were overstretched and would crumble quickly in the face of a disciplined foe.

Takfarinas would prove otherwise. The Mauri commander had a contingent of his own native cavalry, fleet-footed and adept at harassing the larger Roman army, which for all of its strengths had a critical lack of lightly equipped horsemen. The Isidorian infantry in the era of Sergius had been taught to fight in close ranks, to form a sort of anvil on which to break enemy formations with the hammer of the heavy cavalry, spearheaded by a unit of cataphracts. As such, their outriders and baggage trains found themselves hard pressed by these skirmishers.

While this had a deleterious effect on morale and logistics, it does not seem to have been sufficient. Furthermore, many local cities and fortified villas defected early on, and were able to supply the Roman army. Takfarinas had not been a popular ruler, favoring Mauri settlers and magistrates over the existing Roman population to a degree which had left them resentful. His army was also relatively small, and reinforcements from the mainland would take some time to arrive. As such, he opted to fall back to mountainous Calabria, abandoning his duchy entirely. Shortly thereafter, what forces he had raised among the local population deserted him entirely, returning home to their families.

The doux there, Iugertes, opted to simply pull back and defend Rhegium. The two leaders and their army were quickly besieged, and while Sergius had engineers and plenty of soldiers, the siege dragged on through the hot summer months, and finally, the Mauri King, [FONT=&quot]Izdarasen, had sent reinforcements and begun supplying the city from the sea. The small fleet of the Isidorian Emperors was utterly insufficient to break this supply line, and further, they found themselves inadequate to stop sporadic raids on their ports, most notably Pisanus and Ostia, the latter of which would never recover from the sack. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]As one year stretched into the next, the siege wore on. Well-garrisoned Rhegium resisted all of Sergius' attempts to capture it. Fortunately, Izdarasen was also frustrated with the slow progress of his fleet. Taking to the field himself, he landed an army near Rome, threatening to overrun what he believed was a poorly defended city and then march north and invest Sergius' capital. His plan was fundamentally flawed. The Isidorian Emperors maintained a large garrison, both ceremonial and functional, in the Eternal City. They had maintained its walls at great expense, and Rome was more than capable of resisting the Mauri attempts at a siege. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Frustrated, Izdarasen opted for a new plan. He took his army south, believing he could invest Sergius' forces in turn. However, as he marched down the coast of Calabria, Sergius, being alerted to this new threat, abandoned his siege lines in the night and marched to meet him. Izdarasen's army would be defeated quickly - he quickly revealed himself to have little grasp of tactics, and Sergius displayed unquestionable brilliance. Of a Mauri army of perhaps forty to fifty thousand, almost none would be able to escape - Mauri ships waiting offshore were able to rescue a few hundred, but the bulk of the infantry, including Izdarasen, attempted to flee only to find their avenues of escape cut off. Thousands drowned as they were pushed slowly back into the sea by the advancing Isidorian army, while thousands more were captured. Izdarasen's body was not recovered. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]While certain isolated groups of cavalry were able to escape the battlefield, they had no way of communicating their position to the Mauri fleet and were ultimately run down and captured in the end. The siege resumed three days later, and Mauri morale was low. As word of the defeat spread through the ranks, a group of local Italian soldiers opened the gates to the Roman army. Both of the dukes would ultimately be ransomed, but the common Mauri soldiers were slaughtered, their heads left on spears outside the city walls. The city itself was only spared a sack because of the locals who opened the gates. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]In spite of this victory, the campaign itself stalled. The new Mauri King, Takfarinas, the brother of Izdarasen, had little desire to rule. He was an ascetic with gnostic leanings, rail-thin and prone to outbursts of hysteria. While in his youth he had been considered a pious and godly boy, an ideal heir to the throne, middle age had turned him into a fanatic who spurred all worldly things, including the woman he had married, [/FONT]Tagwerramt[FONT=&quot]. His brother's councilors were forced to manage affairs of state, and while Tagwerramt assumed an active role in management, she was not as capable as some of the ruling queens who had come before her. It seemed Italy was lost - but for a plan devised by Azerwal, the Mauri chancellor. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Rather than accept their losses, Azerwal proposed simply continuing as before. Raids on Roman ports would force Sergius to spread his army thin. The ongoing embargo for Italian trade harmed Mauri merchants, but it harmed the Italian patrician families and their recently acquired insatiable desire for eastern luxuries far more. Between 658 and 660, the entire Italian peninsula was effectively blockaded - had already ground to a halt, but now, even non-Mauri merchants were dissuaded from shipping to Italy, knowing their ships could be attacked at any moment, even in port.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]While this trade was primarily in luxuries, slaves, and other things which were only of interest to the elite, tax revenue in Isidorian Italy was largely derived from trade. The great landholders of Italy paid relatively small taxes on their estates, because Isidorius, after his original conquest, had desperately needed their support. Furthermore, the Goths had not taxed heavily, and as such the Isidorians, to maintain the loyalty of their people were unable to do so either. These port tariffs, raising the price of already exorbitantly priced goods, were one way to quietly extract revenue from the elites without risking rebellion or discontentment among the people whose estates dominated the agricultural economy of Italy. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]With state revenues collapsing, Sergius was forced to levy the first major tax upon his nobles. This was met with widespread discontentment, even after his marriage to Antonina, the daughter of the prominent landholding family. Even this was insufficient to raise money - Sergius debased the currency and even sought donations to the war effort, the former of which worked but would have long-term deleterious effects. However, in the meantime, the Mauri, feeling pressure from the merchants to reopen the Italian markets, and realizing Italy was lost, agreed to terms in early 661. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]While the war was relatively brief, the loss of an entire army, and consequently most of the tribal nobility who rode with the King in times of war, was one of the worst catastrophes that could have affected the Mauri civilization. While the loss of manpower could be absorbed by a populous region such as North Africa, the death of the tribal nobility left a vacuum in the political organization of the Mauri state, which depended upon them for the administration of their territories and for the defense of their frontiers. While a strong King might have been able to help the Mauri adapt to this blow, there was no such strong King available. Instead, there was Takfarinas - childless, despised by the nobles, and considered a heretic by the Church.[/FONT]

The global slave trade and the Sahu

From the earliest days of their expanding dominion, chattel slavery was among the primary economic motivators of the Sahu. There was great wealth to be had in human cargo - particularly as the turbulence that had wracked civilization in the near east faded. Those warriors who came out of the collapse of the Romans and Eftal as holders of vast tracts of agricultural land had two simple choices - make it into pastureland for their horses or find people to work their newfound fields. The clever among these new landholders would choose a measure of both. However, massive population decline had made finding native workers difficult.
Fortunately, the Sahu, who had long traded in slaves, were able to meet this demand. The new landholders of the middle east had often accumulated vast amounts of wealth in plunder, and thus were able to purchase many slaves for their new estates. While the early Sahu slave trade had been based upon a combination of existing markets and the constant raiding of the steppe, this new demand required expansion. The Sahu monarchs, flush with wealth, began building fortifications up the Dnieper and Don rivers, and making pacts with the various Slavic tribes of the region, inciting them to raid each other and take prisoners which could be shipped downriver to markets in Tangrabad and Apaxauda, and from there to estates across the broader Eftal world.

This influx of wealth further centralized and solidified the Sahu Shahdom's dominion over the steppes. Rival tribes to their east could be bought off, enlisted as mercenaries. In time, many of the Sahu fortifications would themselves swell, becoming cities not merely based around the economics of the boom in slavery, but trade cities for amber, fur, and timber with thriving agricultural hinterlands to support them. Persians and Greeks fleeing the instability of the south could make a new life for themselves.

In time, these colonists, largely isolated from their mother countries, would assimilate. The Xasar-Sahu were numerous, and their form of Buddhism, acquired from Eftal missionaries, had a particular appeal to the Iranian peoples who settled in their territories. Even the Greeks, with a stronger identity and many of their countrymen living among the Sahu, have been found in certain temples to have worshipped "the Bodhisattva Christ" - often conflating saints and deities from the various traditions that inspired them. This unique synthesis of eastern and western thought would come to profoundly influence the Iranian culture of the Xasar-Sahu. Their language would become peppered with Greek, Persian, and Slavic loanwords, a synthesis of the myriad cultures with which they had come into contact.

Consolidation and Frashokereti

In Iran, the feuding between the Khiash and Panjadh tribes finally ended in 662 with the defeat of the Panjadh. However, unlike in many of the previous wars between tribes, rather than displace the Panjadh clans, the Khiash ruler, Vasiskha, merely demanded their submission. Once it was obtained, the Khiash were able to quickly defeat their neighbors, establishing a sort of confederal Empire powerful enough that he could declare himself a Shah. By 665, the Khiash ruled a heterogenious mixture of peoples. Their many subject tribes, be they Asvha, Turks, or Eftal often had settled in such a way that claims frequently overlapped. This was one of the main causes that had led to the continuous raiding and violence of the past few decades, but it would have to be resolved if the Khiash hegemony was to survive. Because the Khiash lacked any stable bureaucracy, Vasiskha spent much of his reign traveling to these disputed territories, attempting to resolve the strife and maintain his authority.

It was a project met with mixed success, but when it failed, the Khiash were able to sternly persecute the aggressor. The tribes generally feared losing everything more than they desired additional land, and as such after the first few failed raids, warfare in central Iran, previously endemic, fell to a managable level. However, despite Vasiskha's campaign of unification, he still controlled only a small fraction of Persia. All around him were regional states not unlike his own.

In Syarzur, Shah Syavaragula ruled a similarly fragmented dominion. Elected by the various monasteries and confederal tribes, he was a member of the prominent Hitivira tribe. Syarzur was mountainous and well defended, meaning that he had little to worry about in the way of raids, but like Vasiskha, he had little bureaucracy. Taxes were difficult to levy, despite having an abundance of literate monks at his disposal. The collapse of the Eftal-Persian bureaucracy made rule over Syarzur adhoc at the best of times. Tribute was levied but it could not be easily verified that each tribe was paying their fair share, and in general it was in the best interest of all tribes to keep it that way.

By contrast, in the north government beyond the level of disorderly confederation had endured. Shah Ashot of Armenia, Shah Khalinga, and Shah Syavusha all maintained strong governments and a relatively uninterrupted flow of trade. However, all had seen the relative chaos that had afflicted the south during the period of war, and none of them desired to reignite that conflict or see their own territories subjected to such devastation. Fortunately for Khalinga, he would not have to. Syavusha was thrown from a horse he was trying to tame in 667, and broke his neck, dying instantly. While he had a son, the child was three years of age and his fifteen year old daughter's sole desire was to become a Buddhist nun. Khalinga rode north, offering to be regent for the boy. Any objections Syavusha's companions might have had were overruled by the size of Khalinga's army. The retainers had been divided, jockeying for power and angling to marry the daughter. Only too late did they recognize the true threat to the south.

While there seems to have been a level of altruism involved - the daughter was sent to a monastery as she requested and the child was cared for, Khalinga effectively usurped the state from Syavusha's companions. Because Eftal laws did not recognize any inherent right of sons to their father's Kingdom, the regency quickly became unnecessary as Khalinga managed be recognized as co-ruler with a few well placed "gifts" and land grants. And further, the boy ever did become a problem, Khalinga knew he would have at least another twelve years to decide how handle the boy-Shah.

Ashot of Armenia, seeing the danger, rallied his own retainers. The Eftal-Armenian army however, was defeated near Naxcavan once more by the famed Heron of Royan. The battle was swift but decisive, with the Khalinga himself leading a feigned retreat into an ambush in a narrow mountain pass. Ashot himself was killed, and the Armenian kingdom collapsed. In its wake, Khalinga brought many of its provinces into his orbit as satrapies under the local nobility, promising them freedom of religion, protection, and almost total autonomy in exchange for tribute. The north, which was primarily populated by Alans, fell under the rule of the Turko-Sahu mercenary Balgatsin Khan, an exile from the Sahu Shahdom.

Unlike the north, where relative order prevailed, the Persian Gulf was in ruins. Shativash's rule in Pars was far more absolute than that of most of his northern neighbors, but his attempts to rule southern Mesopotamia were stymied by the Mahadevists and the Christians. A believer in the traditional Iranian pagan religion when he first arrived in Pars, like many of the Eftal nobility his worldview was heavily influenced by Indian philosophy and the tolerance of the steppe. As such, he would never understand what was happening among his subjects.

Shativash was a warlord, and a successful won. He did not understand the despair and millennialism among the diminished Zoroastrian population of Pars - a population which was composed of peasants fleeing the devastation of the their homelands, and seeking safe haven in the fortified, if ruined cities along the coast and in the mountains. Having seen their homelands overrun by the Eftal, and the conversion of many to Buddhism, Hinduism, Mahadevism, and Christianity, the remaining Zoroastrians were largely either of the priestly, peasant, or menial classes. Their religion had changed greatly as well. With the decline of the various charismatic movements that characterized the late Sasanian era and their replacement with foreign faiths, the Zoroastrian believers had lost hope. Zoroastrians, particularly the peasants, began believing like their Christian counterparts, that they were living in the end of times. Indeed, due to the proximity of the two congregations, it is possible that rather than developing organically in both religions, it was instead an idea transmitted from one to the other.

Several local peasant movements developed, aimed at putting some rebel leader into a position of power so that he could bring about the final renovation of the world, these movements were born out of desperation and small. The Turko-Eftal warlords who ruled Pars easily crushed them, dealing out grisly punishments to captured rebels.

It was not these movements that would lead to the most famous "Saosyant" - rather it was among the Mahadevists that such a figure would rise to prominence. Narsai of Argin had never been one for apocalyptic predictions. His faith had been focused on the here and now, on growing the congregation. However, with his death, the rudderless movement had given in to the same apocalypticism that gripped their Christian and Zoroastrian neighbors. The various atrocities committed by the Mahadevists were done with a panicked knowledge that the end times were coming, that soon they would be reunited with the God of Truth. Even if they died, their rebirth would be into the World of Light, and they would become one with the Creator, Mahadeva-Ahuramazda.

Their chosen messiah was a charismatic twenty-three year old Eftal noble named Husrava from Sogdia. "Located" by a disciple of Narsai's, he claimed to have been born to a virgin from the very seed of Zoroaster (obviously, Zoroaster was actually the first Mahadevist, whose teachings have been corrupted over time) himself. While the traditional, urban, priesthood refused to believe his wild claims, the peasantry, even many Zoroastrians, erupted in celebration. Large crowds, many of them armed, gathered to hear this noble preach, and the priesthood was forced to fall into line, granting him legitimacy.

After the priesthood was usurped, Husrava effectively controlled the Mahadevists. There was no other real authority left in southern Mesopotamia, none at least that could resist him. Husrava, unlike the disorganized Persian rebels of previous rebellions was an aristocrat, with knowledge of military strategy and organization. As a young man he had fought in the armies of various tribal warlords, and he immediately set about organizing military units, hiring Arab mercenaries to train his "Immortal Chosen". Thousands flocked to Vahman-Ardashir to serve. The renovation of the world was coming. Soon the world entire would be reborn as they had been. The cycle of birth and death would end, and perfect truth and justice would be brought to the world.

A lot of other people would have to die first.

Crowned in kingly radiance, Husrava rode east. Shativash treated this at first as merely another rebellion; a view encouraged by several simultaneous rebellions within his own territory. These were dealt with - with customary viciousness. At the battle of Rustak (670), however, he realized his error. He faced an orderly army. They had cavalry and organized units, but also a fanatical devotion to their holy bringer of truth, the breaker of the wheel of fate.

Many of Shativash's soldiers, realizing the extent to which they were unprepared for this battle, deserted. Knowing that the main body of the enemy army was still peasants and still lightly equipped, Shativash decided to charge them directly, believing his heavily-armored retainers would punch clean through. He could see the Royal Standard of Husrava, together with icons of the Great God in meditation, in the distance. If he could make it to those banners, pull them down... the army might well lose heart. It had worked before, on other battlefields. It could work here.

Shativash was captured, killed, and his body left for the vultures. His retainers died in great numbers before they could break free of the mob that enveloped them, and even more were captured by Husrava's Arab and Eftal cavalrymen.

[I hope this might be semi-plausible as a Mahadevist movement. Their wacky mixture of Zoroastrianism with Shiva is difficult for me to portray convincingly. I'm thinking this will be yet another deathblow to Zoroastrianism as a religion - while obviously it will endure in many, many places, as a majority religion I think this might as well be it. Especially as they increasingly embrace this guy as the savior and then he inevitably doesn't actually cause the end times. It doesn't help that the Slavic slaves being brought in by a lot of landholders are probably going to not choose a religion tied to ethnicity like Zoroastrianism, but rather more likely the religion of their masters.

Up next: Afghanistan, Central Asia, Anatolia, Mosil]

 

[Practical Lobster]

Turkic migrations and the new face of the steppe

On the Turkic Steppe, tribes such as the Basmyl and the Kimeks were moving increasingly westwards. Hard pressed by the growing power of the Uighurs, who were more numerous than most of their rivals, and were able to exploit that fact to drive out their opponents, particularly the old supporters out the Ashina. Further, the Chinese Qi dynasty, seeking a power which could secure their relatively poorly defended northern border, aligned themselves with the Uighurs, who they saw as the likely victor in the latest round of tribal squabbles.

Placating the Uighurs with gifts and an Imperial marriage, they played a significant role in solidifying the predominance of the Uighur Khanate. Uighur delegations were taken south, to the Imperial capital, where they could be overawed with finery, gifts, and impressive displays of martial prowess. Diplomacy, the young Emperor's councilors argued, was cheaper than raising tens of thousands of fresh soldiers and attempting to control the wide open steppe with brute force. It seems, for a time at least, that the Emperor's policies worked. The Uighurs sought to imitate the Chinese in many respects, in 670 laying the groundwork for a centralized capital city in imitation of Chang'an - in truth more for show than anything else, but it was a potent symbol nonetheless.

It may have been cheaper for the Empire, but it posed threats for many others.

The Kyrgyz, under the leadership of the famed warrior Tonyuquq, formed a coalition with the Kitai and the Tatabi to prevent the Uighur Khagan from rising to power, and while it seemed that this would ensure the defeat of the Uighurs, both the Kitai and the Tatabi were persuaded to betray the Kyrgyz. At Tonyuquq's war council he was struck down by the two embassies from his supposed allies. While these ambassadors were captured and tortured to death, the Kyrgyz without Tonyuquq's leadership preferred submission to a war they could not win.

Many other tribes chosen to flee westward. Tribes such as the Kimek and the Qarluq would settle within the boundries of the old Eftal Empire - a risky proposition, requiring a combination of strength and a willingness to work with the still numerous Eftal, with whom they fiercely competed for land. Those of military age among these tribes in particular could find lucrative employment and a chance to gain land, wealth, and status - something which drew Turks from across the steppe. Other tribes including the Qangli and Basmyl, would settle around the Aral Sea, preferring the security of the steppe to the lure of still wealthy Eftal Persia. Another Turkic tribe, the Turgish, would settle in the northern Volga, becoming in time a trading partner of the Sahu.

These tribes, by and large, subscribed to the traditional Turkic religion, venerating Tengri and an assortment of other gods. Buddhist ideas had their place for the more philosophically inclined but these new tribes, unlike the Gokturks were less Sinicized and without the Gokturks the traditional religion had made a resurgence.

While many Turks would work for the Sahu, often assimilating and settling down to varying extents, the Khirichan Turks were one exception. From 665 onwards, they would pressure the Sahu, defeating the Shah in open battle and, between 668 and 673, extracting a heavy tribute which would only be reversed by a Sahu victory. Challenged by a large, unified tribe for the first time in ages, the Sahu found that settling down carried with it remarkable disadvantages. They had fewer cavalry to call upon, and their traditional tribal loyalties had atrophied. There was little profit in fighting the Khirichan compared to the Slavs. Many advisors in the court of the Shah advised that continuing to provide a minor tribute to the Khirichan might work as an indefinite strategy - perhaps they could be turned into allies, a buffer against even more warlike nations to the east.

However, the Khirichan Khagan was simply content to bide his time, take the tribute and wait. The question of being a buffer was to him a laughable notion.

Tibetan Empire

While disorder reigned on the steppe, the Tibetan, or Bod Empire had not been idle. Brystan Tsenpo, the newest Emperor had reformed the administrative system. Previously independent chieftains were brought into a centralized government ruled from Rhasu, where they were required to foster their children and swear elaborate oaths of fealty. Thus were the various local chieftains Brystan's grandfather Tri Nyentsen had conquered brought into the Empire and given a direct stake in its success. Khotanese monks, pious and dignified, were brought to the capital to educate the fostered children. While there were some objections, it became clear to most of the local leaders early on that cooperation had greater potential rewards than the alternative, which was dealt with harshly and without compromise.

With each oath of fealty, every local clan and its territory effectively became responsible for maintaining one of perhaps sixty local military units, under the auspices of the central military. In practice, these units often became cosmopolitan in origins, as soldiers from other clans, the royal army, or mercenaries were hired to fill gaps caused by casualties, desertions, and the like.

Using the oasis city of Khotan as a staging ground for their military, the Bod Empire was able to expand their power into the Tarim basin, taking advantage of the collapse of the Gokturks. Hami, Turfan, Karasahr Kashgar - the cities along the silk road either desired the protection of the Tibetans or were made to desire it with raiding. This orientation towards the north brought great wealth to Emperor Brystan Tsenpo, but it angered the Sogdian Shah, Zhishifan and led to numerous border clashes, most notably the battle of Balasagun (668), where the Zhishifan met the Tibetan commander Namrisrong in six days of battle. Despite an excellent performance by the Ferghanan cavalry, the Tibetans held their own, leading to a grudging respect between the two men, and ultimately their nations. The Tibetans became deeply interested in acquiring Ferghanian horses, and the Sogdians conceded Tibetan hegemony over the southern part of the Tarim basin (with the exception of Kashgar) and much of the north.

The Tibetan Empire's sudden emergence into regional politics frightened Qi strategists, who had long assumed that a few border forts were sufficient and that Imperial policy in Tibet could be one of fundamental disinterest - the Tibetans posed neither threat nor opportunity to the Middle Kingdom. However, the Tibetan conquest of Tarim (away from the feeble, independent kingdoms who had sprung up in the wake of the Goktruks) proved quickly that the Bod Empire was a serious threat.

After a Tibetan military incursion in 671, Emperor Yang ordered another twenty thousand soldiers deployed to garrison the major fortresses and cities of the An-hsi Frontier Protectorate. The effectiveness of these soldiers has been brought into question, however. The Governor-General of An-hsi was reported as frequently complaining about their lack of discipline and training, and the poor quality of their equipment. It would seem that the Qi still regarded other frontiers as more critical, and their deployments represented either merely an attempt to increase the paper strength of the garrisons or the state of Qi military training. Atrophy certainly had been allowed to atrophy under Emperor Yang's predecessors so as to prevent a recurrence of the circumstances which led to the founder of the dynasty, Emperor Wen, taking power - the question must be to what extent. Certainly subsequent decades would reflect poorly on the Chinese army, but if this was a concerted policy is unclear.

Consolidation in Anatolia and Conquest in Palestine

In 663, the death of Akhsaman the Elder led to the fracture of his territory. A small but wealthy and populous region of southern Syria around Emesa and Apamea broke off under his cousin, Akhsaman the Younger. From Osrhoene, the satrap Toramana, a vassal of Akhsaman's, asserted hegemony over the remainder of northern Syria. Only the city of Laodike resisted. In Laodike the local governor, a Christian Eftal influenced by Procopian beliefs believed that the world would end within three months due to a series of calculations made by the monk Gabriel of Edessa. Defending the city with a militia composed of "believers" he was only defeated after three months passed without any sign of apocalypse, after which point most of his partisans attempted to blend back into the general population, leaving both the governor and Gabriel of Edessa to be executed by Toramana.

The Anatolian territories of Akhsaman's kingdom supported Disiapata who opted not to contest Toramana's claim to Syria, despite the support of the Bulgars and many of Akhsaman's retainers. Both powers were roughly evenly matched, and neither wanted to effectively double their territory and expose themselves to attacks from all angles. Disiapata would move the Eftal throne to Ikonion, where it would remain. The "Rhom Shah" as he was called would preside over a period of stability and consolidation. The Slavs and Bulgars in the west were brought to heel, enticed to settle down with land grants which allowed their nobility to establish large estates, often at the expense of some of the few remaining Roman landowners.

In the north, after the death in 653 of the Alan Khan Celbir, his half-Greek son Chodainos took the throne of the Khanate. A Nicene Christian, the Greek historians regard him favorably, as a wise and pious man. While he did not actively persecute the pagan population of the Khanate, which may well have been a majority, he did favor his fellow Christians for advancement. Unlike his father, a traditionalist, he established a permanent capital for himself in Ankyra, paying for Greek architects to construct a fortified central palace, and also to construct a beautiful basilica opposite it, the Church of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) which would become famous for its striking blue dome and brilliantly illuminated interior.

Unlike the Alans, the Eftal of Anatolia felt less pressure to convert to Christianity. While they were the hated target of several Procopian rebellions, they were generally adherents to the dharmic religions to various degrees, products of the missionary efforts of Shah Shahriyar. Despite being few in number and increasingly Romanized over time, they retained their original religious beliefs, much to the consternation of the displaced and increasingly fanatical peasants who made up the Procopian movement. Their preachers frequently portrayed Shah Disiapata as an Antichrist.

Even the lingering source of instability that had been Birhar's Shahdom had been replaced with the measured and pragmatic rule of his second-in-command Kormisosh, who took power in 658. The ongoing low-level insurrection of Bithynia was dealt with in time with a combination of bribes to officials sheltering the rebels and brutal reprisals every time the rebels struck. Kormisosh, unlike Birhar, understood to some degree how to maintain a kingdom as well as gain it. He allowed a Patriarch to be named and to hold services in Constantinople's largest church, Megale Ekklesia. It was something of a hollow gesture - the Megale Ekklesia was a burnt out husk, and without the funds to repair it, services were instead held in a smaller church near the Blachernae district. The Patriarch had little prestige - his actions were mediated by handlers appointed by Kormisosh and the church in which he gave services was small and in the middle of Constantinople - an enormous ruin with a population of perhaps ten thousand, perhaps a third of whom were Sahu merchants living around the Prosphorion harbor.

Kormisosh faced many foreign threats. The Alans occasionally raided into Bithynia and he lacked the manpower to retaliate in force. Kniaz Casamir in Thracia made rumblings about recovering Constantinople from the unbelievers, but perhaps afraid of meeting a fate like the Bulgar Khagan, he did not strike. As such, he extended overtures to Shah Disiapata, who offered to protect him in exchange for tribute and the rights to place a small garrison in Constantinople and base the Rhom Shahdom's growing fleet out of the Harbor of Theodosius. After some haggling, which saw Kormisosh gain the city of Kyzikos from the Bulgars, his terms were accepted.

To the south, Palestine was ruled from Caesarea by a nephew of Avyaman (653-661), Datuvahya (661-667). Unlike Heshana's kingdom, Palestine had been intentionally designed as a sort of rump satrapy by the Eftal. Lacking the Syrian provinces from which they might recruit loyal soldiers, the small number of Eftal who ruled were forced to strike compromises. Both Avyaman and Datuvahya would both marry into the Arab tribal elite, and the latter would nominally convert to Christianity, although his lack of sincerity and his general tolerance would render this conversion meaningless in the eyes of the local clergy.

While money from Christian pilgrimage provided one major source of revenue, Datuvahya was incapable of managing the 'satrapy' he inherited. Caught between competing factions - the local churches, the Jews, and the Arabs, he floundered more often than not, granting sweeping concessions to each in turn, angering all of them. Unlike Avyaman, who had adeptly played the various religious factions against each other and reveled in their willingness to tear each other apart rather than focus their animosity at his throne, Datuvahya merely stumbled from weakness to weakness, and attracted the sinister attention of Emesa.

From what was now effectively his throne in the golden city of the sun, Akhsaman the Younger opened communication with King Heshana of Egypt in 666. Datuvahya was weak, and his kingdom could be easily partitioned with little risk. Heshana tentatively agreed, lending his fleet and some thirty thousand troops, ten thousand of which would be deployed to capture Cyprus, which had already been slipping from Datuvahya's grip.

Datuvahya marched south to face Heshana near the ruined town of Raphia, wholly abandoned since Syavush's conquest of Egypt. His army was composed primarily of Arab mercenaries, and several of his coastal cities, including the fortress-city of Gaza, had lowered their banners, massacred their foreign garrisons and accepted Egyptian rule in his wake. The two men met face-to-face, and Datuvahya threw himself on Heshana's mercy, appealing to their shared religion. He would agree to sweeping terms that would have left him with a rump Satrapy under Heshana's sovereignty, and Heshana agreed. The two men marched north on a tour of Palestine which ended in Scythopolis, which marked the new northern boundary of Heshanid territory.

Akhsaman the Younger arrived himself after a lengthy siege of Damascus. The two armies celebrated together and the two Shahs met in private and after a conference, Datuvahya was brought back to his capital of Caesarea and publicly executed to much rejoicing from the mob.

[Next post will cover the Slavs and also we'll get back to Iran to see how the Saosyant is doing.]

 

[Practical Lobster]

The bringer of truth

The earthly incarnation/representative of Shiva-Ahuramazda is said to have been the bearer of khwarenah from the moment of his birth. Indeed it could be no other way. However, he still needed to be crowned, a ceremony which took place in the damaged but still-impressive Eftal capital of Susa. Crowned Shahanshah of Iran, he took a sacred vow to restore first the country of Iran, overrun by unbelievers and false prophets, and secondly the world entire, which he would rule as universal sovereign and bringer of truth.

It was a tall order, to say the least. Husrava had defeated Shativash and at least nominally united the Mahadevist community behind him, and gained no small number of converts from the Zoroastrians of Pars. His armies were swelling wildly - but they were untrained and untested, and as they sprawled west across Pars and even further they would encounter Turkic and Eftal warbands who they could not easily fight. Shah Vinayaditya of Kerman faced the initial brunt of this spread eastward. The last of the Kidarite Shahs, his people had declined significantly in the hundred years since the loss of their independence. A thoroughly Indianized people, they were a mix of Hindus and Buddhists who spoke a language with many Sanskrit loanwords.

The leader of the disorganized mob of peasants which trekked into Kerman was one Farrokh, an insurgent against Shativash who was able to rally a large army to his cause. However, while he was excellent at leading chants and motivating men to follow him, he lacked tactical knowledge. After the peasant army captured the city of Daravkirt, they stalled, forming an enormous camp outside the city's walls. There was no easy way to feed the entire mob - it had swollen beyond the wildest expectations of any. When Farrokh ordered that the granaries of the city be opened to the benefit of his mob, the people inside, even those who were previously amenable to the cause of the Saosyant, rebelled. The gates were closed, and Farrokh was captured inside the city with a small force of his men, while the bulk languished outside the walls, lacking any equipment to attack the city with. They pounded on the closed gates while the defenders hurled rocks and fired arrows down at the disorderly assault.

However, this was insufficient to disperse the mob. It was only when the Shah himself arrived with a force of Kidarite cavalry and assaulted the peasant camp that the disastrous siege of Daravkirt became a massacre. The Shah would later claim that over a hundred thousand had died in that battle. While the claim of a hundred thousand men has been met with skepticism by later historians, it certainly conveys a massive defeat and the superiority of the mounted elite against even a huge host of peasants.

The competent core of the Saosyant's army was rather smaller, and much better trained, and he chose to strike his first blow against the rising warlord Vasiskha Khiash in 671. Vasiskha, much like Shativash, deeply underestimated the forces arrayed against him, the "Green Banners" as they were coming to be known. At the battle of Goyman, Vasiskha's clan, the Khiash, were nearly annihilated. His confederation broke down almost immediately. Many fled east, seeking the protection of the Gorkhanids or the various Turkic warlords. The Panjadh, meanwhile, joined the Syarzur confederation under Syavaragula Hitivira.

The Nestorian Christians were old enemies of the Mahadevists, and Shah Khauwashta Taoma of Mosil was no exception. Furthermore, he held the Sasanian capital of Tesifon, which Husrava felt the need to liberate for political reasons. Unlike the mountainous uplands of Syarzur, campaigning along Mesopotamia would prove to be relatively easy. Marching north along the Tigris, his army seemed just as unstoppable as in its battle against Shativash. Cities were taken. Dastkart, Sumra, Tagrit. At a massive battle near Huniyag-Sabhur, Shah Khauwashta Taoma was captured, and, when brought to the walls of Mosil, he supposedly recanted his faith (quite probably under torture, or otherwise an apocryphal tale) and pleaded with the inhabitants of the city, including his own nephew, Akhshunwar Quba, to open the gates and be spared.

Akhshunwar Quba refused out of hand. God and Christ and the strength of the Eftal would protect them. Mosil was well fortified, a legacy of Tistrya's extensive defensive projects. The refugees fleeing the Shahanshah's armies had been directed north, towards Nasibin - Mosil still had ample grain and full cisterns. For the better part of a year, Husrava would besiege Mosil while his army melted away. The bringer of truth besieging a single city seemed far less inspiring than the legends claimed it would be. Without easy victories and fresh plunder, the army was whittled down to its hardened core.

But that was what Husrava planned. He addressed his now small army, hardened by the rigors of campaigning and tested in battle.

"I never promised you it would be easy. I never promised you that those who walked beside me on the path of truth would not be beset on all sides by the agents of darkness. I never promised you glory or riches, nor even tears for the dying. I promised you life beyond this. I promised you paradise. I promised you victory!

"Though it all you have remained by my side. And the God, while I meditated last night has shown me a vision. If we assault the Gate of the false St. Elijah at dawn tomorrow, and we fight with all our strength, we will win the city."

Or so those his partisans claimed the speech went, after the next day's assault on the Gate of St. Elijah was a success. Mosil was subjected to a five day sack. The self-proclaimed Shah of Shahs seemed unstoppable. His armies routinely scored incredible victories, and where once the Mahadevists were an isolated and persecuted sect, now they were perhaps the greatest power on the Iranian plateau. The legend of Husrava was spreading like wildfire. For the conquered Christians of Mesopotamia, the Antichrist had a name.

With an unending series of victories under his belt, Husrava marched into Syarzur (OTL Shahrizor) with utter confidence. The Great God had brought them victory after victory without fail. Everywhere his ranks swelled as Zoroastrians and Mahadevists alike joined forces to drive out the unbelievers. And there were few places the unbelievers were more numerous than Syarzur, a region dominated by Buddhist monasteries and Eftal mystics. As he marched into the lands of the Confederation, the monasteries hired mercenaries and in many cases the monks themselves took up arms. While many monasteries would be overrun and burnt, many more would survive, isolated and well defended, often difficult to reach.

In the mountainous uplands, the Green Banner armies of the Saosyant were repeatedly harassed and ambushed. By the end of 674, the Saosyant's forces retreated, humiliated for the first time. However, they would return with reinforcements the next year, and unlike before they would not be turned aside. The various tribes of the Confederation one by one were driven off their grounds, broken and made to pledge their fealty to the Shiva-Ahuramazda and his earthly representative, Shahanshah Husrava. The fate of the great monasteries of Syarzur depended on who captured them. Isolated bands of fanatics tended to burn and loot the monasteries, but those taken by Husrava or Green Banner troops were simply made to pay tribute and allowed to endure - a similar fate to the Christian monasteries in Mesopotamia after the initial massacres subsided.

Between 669 and 675, the Mahadevists captured almost the entirety of the core of the Sasanian regime. Husrava's Shahdom was in theory the ultimate Zoroastrian theocracy, run according to the teachings of the various Prophets, Zoroaster, Arash, and Narsai. It was the harbinger of the end of the world, and as such had to prepare its people for the coming apocalypse, by instructing them in the way to salvation. In practice, however, it was very disorganized. Local religious leaders had almost absolute power unless another, more charismatic or more important religious leader came along. The old Persian bureaucracy lay in shambles, and Husrava's attempts to restore it were insufficient. Taxation was sporadic and it was uncertain to whom taxes were supposed to go. The movement ruled over countless tribes and regions, most of whom were not Mahadevist, let alone Zoroastrian. In the east, their subjects were often Buddhist or Hindu (following either a Bhakti or Eftal/Sogdian creed philosophy) while in the west their subjects were primarily Christians. While much of the Iranian peasantry was Zoroastrian still, there was little doctrinal uniformity, owing to Eftal tolerance and patronage of Buddhism over the indigenous Iranian faith.

As such, the Mahadevist experiment stalled. The lightening conquests that had defined its early expansion came to a halt. Husrava returned to Tesifon and attempted to establish some degree of governance, struggling to unify his followers, and reconcile their often conflicting notions of the Saosyant and the coming apocalypse. It was an impossible challenge, but it had to be done.

[I'd finished this part, and it had grown long so I figured I'd post it. I've got an unfinished segment about Western Europe coming soon, and a map in the works detailing all the myriad changes to this part of the world.

To answer your question, Bmao, yeah it's totally plausible. Indeed, its likely. Especially as the Mauri decline they'll probably expand into the Western Mediterranean as well.]

 

[Practical Lobster]

The foundations of a "Slavic Century"

It took roughly five years after the ascension of Knaiz Czimislav to his father's position for the empire Darvan had built to collapse. Lacking the intimate connections to the nobility which Radem had developed, Czimislav lacked his father's personal charm, being stadoffish, sarcastic, and accustomed to power. As such, despite his being acknowledged as the leader of the "Dravanid" Empire, Czimislav only had the loyalty of the Veleti, his own tribe. In 668, at the Council of Radagast, he was formally stripped of his power by a vote, and the various tribes went their own ways.
While this might have had disastrous effects for Slavic influence in central Europe, it did not. Their neighbors were still distracted - the Avars were weak and struggled to contend even with the numerous peoples settling along the Morava river and the Slovaks, both of which raided the northern borders of the Avars at a time when the Khagan could ill afford the additional pressure. Slavic power and influence was on the rise. As early as the 690's, the Vistulans to their north were building ring-shaped hill-forts, establishing a permanent dominion over their territory. Some have theorized that the aggression of their expansion and consolidation is what forced the Slovaks to strike south into Avar territory.

The westernmost of the Slavic tribes, the Obodorites and the Sorbs, were able to maintain relatively consistent pressure on the various Germanic tribes adjacent to them. Indeed, the Obdorites even took to the sea, with small-scale expeditions ranging as far as Jutland. Known as the "Saal Burnings" these events, despite consisting of raiding parties of no more than a hundred men attacking local mead halls for slaves and what limited plunder they could drag off, would have a profound impact on the culture of the southernmost of the early Norse peoples - or at least plant the apocryphal seeds for a rivalry which would last for centuries. The Sorbs meanwhile attacked the Barvarii with great frequency, under the leadership of one Prince Godzomir. As his own prestige increased, Godzomir by the 690's was able to subdue the Moravians and the now weakened Veleti, bringing them among other, lesser tribes, under his newly established Sorb Empire.

To celebrate his newly established power, he added the name "Darvan" to his own as a sort of regal title. In doing so, he implied a connection to the previous regime, hoping to win over at least the Veleti with this gesture of deference.

In the Balkans, the stage was set for a similar period of unification. The Avar Hegemony had been in a state of decline since their defeat by Sergius in 657. Apart from an unsuccessful campaign against the Xasar-Sahu in 665, the Avars would remain largely at peace and with their extensive tributary system intact, but nevertheless, successive Slavic princes had asserted greater and greater levels of autonomy. By 670, Khagan Anakuye faced what was effectively a confederation of Slavic princes to his south. Individually these four petty kingdoms were little threat, but together, unified by shared religion and tired of exorbitant tribute to the Avars who provided essentially no protection, they began seeking alternatives.

It was Prince Casamir II of Thrace who led the push. Like his father, Casamir was an ambitious man and also a pious one. Fortunately, he lived in a time when his piety and his ambition conveniently intersected. He and his fellow Kings, including the Khan Isaac of the Utigurs, another recent convert, approached the Khagan of the Avars in 673, seeking a negotiated solution. Their terms were simply a recognition of the current political situation - a reduction of tribute to mere token levels, the return of select hostages from the Avar court, and in return peace could be maintained. However, the Khagan took the entire party into custody, accusing them of treason.

They were given a summary trial and each one of them was beheaded. The "Martyrdom of Princes" as it came to be known, incensed the Christian population of the Balkans. Khagan Anakuye had made a grave miscalculation indeed, and he would pay for it. He ordered his vassals to elect new Princes, and, so long as there was no implicit threat of rebellion, the Kings and their hostages would be treated with respect and dignity.

While new Princes were certainly elected, such as Theodosius of Thrace, Vladimir of Thessaloniki, and Presian of Epirus, these new rulers would waste little time in declaring war on the Avars. Vladimir of Thessaloniki struck south, dispatching the Kingdom of Attica (which remained loyal to the Avars, seeking to gain territory) at the Battle of Thermopylae (675) and then marching north to meet his fellow Princes. The Slavic armies linked up and marched towards Sirmium, the Avar capital. The three armies, unified under the de facto command of Theodosius, resembled the late Roman armies they had overcome. Equipped in much the same style, but with a stronger cavalry arm and generally lighter infantry, this disciplined army was a far cry from the Slavic warbands that had crossed Danube a century and a half ago.
The Siege of Sirmium in 675 would represent an early setback. The Avar city was defended too well, and as Avar vassals rallied around their Khagan and the Khagan himself returned from defeating the Utigur Khan Yoanes, Theodosius' army beat a hasty retreat south towards the coast. Chased by the Avars, they turned and gave battle at Ulpiana, where they would score a decisive, but costly victory.

While peace would not be signed until 677, the Avars were beaten badly. The terms were not humiliating, but the loss of even a single Avar noble hurt a society whose elite was only a tiny fraction of a much larger population. Henceforth the Avars would be almost entirely on the defensive, reacting to new threats but not adapting.

The Italian Job

Emperor Sergius benefitted extraordinarily from the dynastic struggles and weakness of the Mauri regime. As centralized authority diminished, the Mauri merchants lost their ability to maintain their stranglehold on the Mediterranean. And while Sergius did not desire another direct confrontation with the Mauri, he could pick away at their overseas trading posts. The city of Marsalia [OTL Marseille] remained an important center of trade, with a thriving Mauri quarter. Unlike so many other great cities, it had survived the collapse of the Roman Empire largely intact, maintaining relative autonomy from the Frankish Kings, elegant bathhouses and a thriving intellectual tradition.

Eyeing this wealth with envy, the Franco-Burgunidan King Goscelin of Burgundy, the city's nominal sovereign dispatched a governor to replace the locally-elected magistrate of the city. While Marsalia grudgingly accepted this, they secretly appealed to Sergius for liberation. Sergius responded, mobilizing his famous, experienced legions and marching south into Burgundy, "liberating" the cities along the southern coast. The people of Marsalia rose up and executed the governor, Lothar the Fat in 664. King Goscelin raised an army of his noble retainers and their associated levies and marched south. At the battle of Arles, the Burgundian shield walls found themselves outmaneuvered by the more flexible Italian army and defeated. Goscelin made peace - Sergius, worried of overstretching himself, did not press further up the Rhone.

Marsalia was quickly assimilated into Sergius' Empire, as was all of Provence. A new Rector of Province was appointed by Sergius, named Crescentius. Crescentius' first mandate was to enact a reign of terror against the Mauri merchants, confiscating their stores and ships and redistributing them to Gallo-Roman merchants favored by the state. These acts of aggression were strongly protested by the Mauri King, but there was little that could be done.

On his return to Florentia, Sergius awarded himself a magnificent triumph. But the exaltation of victory was not long to last. A group of his nobles sought to assassinate him and replace him with his infant son, Valerian Constantine, whom they hoped to mold into a more pliant leader. Their grievances were long - they felt that the Emperor had too much influence over the papacy, which was traditionally theirs to control - they felt that the Emperor was willing to exhaust the treasury and bankrupt them in the process, and perhaps most importantly, they felt unimportant to the running of the regime.

The assassin was captured by the Emperor's elite bodyguards, the Xasari Guard, and reprisals were swift. The Romano-Italian patricians, with their sprawling estates and powerful mercenary bodyguards, were not to be trifled with. Much of rural Italy worked and lived and died on their enormous estates, expanded by the conquests of Sergius and the expulsion of the Goths and Slavs. However, they were also utterly incidental to the running of Sergius' army. At its core, Sergius' military was a professional one. While patrician nobles had the potential to rise to towering heights as officers, these men were rarely those who joined in the rebellion. Unable to be assured that they could mutiny as one cohesive force, most officers toed the line and followed their orders.

The Italian nobility, meanwhile, was scattered across Italy, unable to defend themselves. Like dominoes they were beaten or made to flee one by one. The terms of their surrender involved the confiscation of their large estates, which were broken down and divided among the upper echelons of Sergius' officer corps. By 670, the power of the great landholders was broken for good.

The Mahadevist Dilemma

Husrava's regime was based in apocalyptic desperation and fanaticism. His attempts to rebuild Susa and restore the bureaucracy were mired in uncertainty. It had been too long since the Eftal Empire - there was nothing left to build off of but dusty sallow records of better times. As Shahanshah, Husrava's options were few. The main repositories of education and knowledge that remained to him were Nestorian Christian and Sogdian-school Mahayana Buddhist monasteries, both of which were untenable choices for a religiously mandated ruler. The Zoroastrian priestly class, while educated, was unaccustomed to such administrative work and lacked adequate records or survey skills - skills which the monks of Syarzur had been developing during their brief period of political power.

As such, Husrava opted to do the one thing he could - sending messengers to local leaders, he demanded that tribute be brought to him on a yearly basis. Using old Eftal records scrounged from the ruins of Susa he attempted to determine reasonable figures and appointed legates to go forth and bring back what they could. It was a crude system, but it was a beginning. For the first time, loyalties were tested and proven. There were very few attempts among the Mahadevist leaders of his movement to cheat their holy savior of his taxes. In general, their shortfalls were due to massively reduced production and wealth in the conquered areas, rather than betrayal. However, the Christians in particular realized quite quickly that they could exploit this feeble tax policy. No region was more ruined than Arbayestan and Mesopotamia. It followed then that there would be the greatest disparity between actual and expected income there, to the point that Eftal records were useless. As such, the Christians often cheerfully turned over paltry sums, overstating the devastation of Mesopotamia. Their Mahadevist overlords, few on the ground, rarely had the manpower to audit these claims, and were forced to return near empty-handed.

The Shahanshah did not claim to be a god, merely a human harbinger of the end of times. However, it was critical for his image that he maintain some level of health and kingly image. As such, he increasingly sequestered himself in his palace, beginning to refine his role, which became more ceremonial as he attempted to hide any failings or frailty from his subordinates. In the early days of his ascension it had not mattered - his reputation and unstoppable momentum had sufficed. Now he relied more and more on ceremony and Persian conceptions of monarchy to divert suspicions. To some degree this was unnecessary. Few in his inner circle would question, and most of the rest would not for fear of being silenced by the majority.

After 675, it was mostly local leaders who fought to expand the Saosyant's empire. They lacked the resources to make much of a dent. A campaign against the Khalingids was met with disaster, as was an attempt to strike into Osrhoene which died after an abortive siege of Nasibin. What these campaigns did do was sap manpower. Local leaders, regardless of their fanaticism, were forced to call on Turkic mercenaries to maintain order. These mercenaries were often unreliable, but they were numerous. Kimek and Qiriqanid warriors were willing to fight in exchange for land grants and pay, and many would even pledge their belief in the Saosyant if it meant additional money or a higher rank.

The necessity of these mercenaries was proved after an eastern coalition formed. The half-Turkish half-Eftal warlord Tengin Shah brought the southern Asvha, Eftal tribes including the Gorkhanids and Panjadh, and the Kidarites under his wing. With the growing threat of the Mahadevists, he proved himself more than capable of defeating their armies in battle and striking a daring raid into Siraz (680). A worshipper of Tengri and culturally Turkish, he nevertheless represented the Eftal heritage: tolerant and cosmopolitan, he was a fierce warlord who was comfortable either in a city or in the saddle.

As Tengin Shah grew more bold in the early 80's, the Mahadevist Green Banner armies were assembled by Husrava. However, this mostly infantry force was augmented both by an elite force of Eftal-style companions, armored in the cataphract style, and also by thousands of Turkish cavalry, led by the Qarluq warlord Sulukichor, whose recent conversion to Mahadevism had propelled him to leadership of this large mercenary contingent.

Husrava and Tengin Shah met near the town of Yazd, both aware they could not retreat. The former had built his reputation upon being an invincible messianic figure, the latter upon being able to defeat said invincible messianic figure. Both had cobbled together rough coalitions, forces that were mere shadows of what their varying predecessors had commanded. For Husrava, this would be yet another great battle of light against dark. For Tengin, this was a battle for survival.

The first day of battle would consist of a series of duels, of which Husrava's Mahadevists came off better. Towards the evening, Tengin's cavalry harassed the Mahadevist flanks, driving back Sulukichor's cavalry, who seemed cautious, preserving their strength against Husrava's order for a general engagement. The second day, battle was joined. The Asvha, who held the center against the Green Banners, were badly bloodied, but as the sun set the battle was yet again inconclusive. The third day at dawn the Mahadevists attacked Tengin's camp, retreating with heavy casualties, particularly to their lightly-equipped fanatical levies who flung themselves against the camp's walls to little effect. Later that afternoon, battle would rejoin in earnest. Sulukichor's mercenaries, representing perhaps a quarter of the Turkish cavalry, began to retreat from the field, sensing that the battle was lost. The other mercenaries, both Turkish, Alan, and Eftal noticed and began to retreat themselves. However, Tengin's line, exhausted from three days of fighting, broke and the Mahadevists spilled through the center, encouraged by Husrava and his cataphracts. However, in the melee, Husrava was gored by a spear and struck by several arrows. Borne from the field by his royal guards, the Saosyant remained alive but badly bloodied. The only consolation was that Tengin could not follow up on his victory.

Sulukichor and most of the mercenaries did not return to camp that evening. Some distance away they formed a secondary camp and held a council of war. At first, Sulukichor was blamed for the day's events. His cowardice had ensured the Mahadevist defeat and ruined their chances of ever receiving payment. However, when the (inaccurate) news that Husrava had died reached the mercenary council, the tenor of the conversation shifted. One of the mercenaries, an Eftal named Sefandiyar, captivated the assembled leaders, promising to lead them to greatness.The mercenaries represented a large contingent of armed men in a world that was defined by large contingents of armed men. Why should they beg for scraps from this Eftal Shahanshah? Because he claimed to be the Saosyant? His victories had been against feeble, divided opponents. If they acted together, perhaps one of them could be Shah. Perhaps the Eftal Empire could be restored. By the end of the night, casks of Persian wine, liberated from the Mahadevist camp during Sulukichor's retreat were broken open and each of the leaders pledged for follow Sefandiyar to whatever end...

Meanwhile, many miles away, with the armed help of the Syrian Shah Toramana, and money from the Khalingids, the Oadhya clan of Eftal rebelled in Syarzur. Lead by an influential local patriarch named Mihiraban, they quickly gained the loyalty of the monasteries and the local clans, and prepared to assert not merely the restoration of the Syarzur Confederation, but rather of the Eftal Empire...


[I look forwards to seeing thoughts and questions. I think the Mahadevists had too many enemies to prosper in the long run. Too many people who could take advantage of their state and all their legitimacy is based in one man, and one man can all too easily be wounded taking some heroic risk in battle...]

 

[Practical Lobster]

[good point, good point. Although a Papal-dominated Isidorian Empire would suffer from many of the same problems as a militarily dominated one. But anyways, now for something completely different: apologies for the spoilery-title.]

The Fall of the Maukhani Empire

The fifty years between 670 and 720 are regarded as the final stage of the Maukhani Empire. While later historians would sometimes see them as a mere successor or continuation of the Gupta era, this overlooks the distinctive trends of the Maukhani dynasty, the changes in religion, culture, government, and warfare that would affect the entire subcontinent. Where feudalism not wholly unlike that seen in Europe had grown with the Gupta decline, the Maukhani nipped this feudal, regional tendency in the bud. Their artistic and architectural styles may have resembled the Gupta, but they drew inspiration from as far afield as Indonesia and East Africa. They were insular to some degree, isolated from the changes happening in Central Asia and Persia, but their periphery was tightly bound to the networks of maritime Indian Ocean trade, networks that had only grown more potent as overland trade became a risky endeavor.

The Maukhani frontier had become somewhat solidified during the reign of Dhruvasena. The city of Vinukonda became a center of resistance, with the surrounding region of Andhra becoming heavily fortified. Bankrolled by the wealth of Narasimhavarman Pallava, a mercantile king whose coastal empire was heavily involved in the East Asian trade, Maharaja Vikramaditya Yuvaraja of Vinukonda was able to serve as a buffer state of sorts. Maukhani armies were ground down against the fortresses of Andhra and the walls of Vinukonda, and Vikramaditya's capture of Amaravati and subsequent campaigns into the Deccan Plateau. His victory at Vengi in 673 was perhaps the best example of his military capability, defeating a Maukhani army perhaps three times the size of his own force.

Vikramaditya proved to be a wily commander, more than a match for the Maukhani on his home turf. His origins are unknown - his surname Yuvaraja meaning "Son of a King" we can infer that he was born into royalty, perhaps to some local client of the Maukhani. His regime was never more than local, but its ability to resist the central authority projected from Pataliputra showed the growing weakness of the Maukhani Empire and inspired others at the periphery to assert their own independence more strongly.

With the death of Dhruvasena in 676, his son, Naravardhana took power smoothly. There were few options for the throne that had not been eliminated in the earlier purges. Uncomfortable amongst large groups of people and prone to bouts of spontaneous shaking and nervousness, Naravardhana would be dominated utterly by his Brahmin prime minister, Sumalya. Sumalya, for his part, was paralyzed not by crowds but by fear of the military, whose commanders he feared saw themselves as petty kings in their own right. He continuously shuffled the command structure, purging commanders who he felt had remained too long at important postings on the frontiers, and granting these vital positions to inexperienced commanders. This would in turn cause local polities and viceroys to look elsewhere for their defense.

The samanta system of the latter Gupta had represented a semi-feudal approach to governance. Indeed, no small part of the reason for their collapse had been the feudatory kings whose power eroded direct royal control. The Maukhani, in undoing that power, had reduced many of these kings to impotent figureheads, bound by guild-councils (sangha or ayat) and the local viceroys (uparika and vishyapati). Within their Gangetic heartlands, these kings had been bound directly to the extended royal clan and gradually denied authority except through ceremonial offices at court. By taking the Kings away from their territories, the guild-councils, run by local Rajas, established their power to solve disputes at the local level. The appointed, non-hereditary uparika who generally chosen with a degree of input from these local councils, became arbitrators and judges who more often than not were persuaded to take a hands-off approach to local affairs.

Semi-republican governance on the Indian subcontinent had a long tradition, dating back to before the Maurya. This was not to say that these societies were not deeply stratified along social and ethnic lines, but rather that the tradition of communal self-governance existed to be drawn upon, and in many ways represents a regression to the pre-imperial era. Where the Maukhani sought to undo the decentralization and feudalization of the latter Gupta, they instead only defeated the feudal Kings. Decentralization was inevitable. The urban population of India was growing once more after several centuries of marginal decline under Gupta mismanagement. As this population of skilled urban workers grew, with it the power of the local community. As the professional Maukhani military atrophied under Sumalya's mismanagement, portions of the kshatriya of these communities banded together to form militarized guilds, which would contract themselves to the uparika.

This can be seen as regression - an advanced polity collapsing along primitive, tribal lines. However, in truth it was far more complicated than that. The sangha or ayat was not an inherently tribal affiliation, but is indeed better seen as an alliance of local powers. Indeed, this was a renaissance of the Indian republican tradition, repressed during the era of the Three Empires and their various feudal interludes. Unified by shared religious and philosophical traditions and shared local languages and customs, these sangha laid the foundation for networks of city-states.

The uparika and vishyapati may have slowly taken on royal titles, but this royalism was based not around their own claims to rule but the approval of the broader communities and the assemblies of kshatriya. As Sumalya lost power, he attempted to turn the military on these viceroys, only to find that his weakening of the military allowed the small but well-equipped guild-armies to hold their own against his reprisals. In 684 the Adhikarana of Ayodhya, within the traditional heartlands of the Maukhani broke away. The Ayodhyan viceroy, Hasti, led a coalition of local cities and successfully was able to defeat the royal army in a pitched battle.

With the rebellion of Prayaga two years later in 686, the empire was effectively split in two. The two cities dominated the Gangetic plain north of Pataliputra, denying the empire access to many of its provinces. While the Empire would totter on for some time, reaching various accommodations with the rebels, its fate was sealed. As various local potentates realized how easy it was to extract concessions from their viceroys, and by extension the Maharajadhiraja himself, rebellions became frequent. Kakushthvarma of Pratisthana in 689 established his own kingdom on the Deccan, mixing the feudalism of South India with the communal republicanism of the north. By allying with the coastal metropolises such as Sopara, he was able wrest control of the valuable trade lanes, and by subjugating the local petty kings, who here on the frontier still retained power, he established a source of vital military manpower.

With Naravadhana's somewhat suspicious death in 698, his cousin Visnuvadhana took the throne. While Visnuvadhana lacked those aspects of Naravadhana that made him a weak king, Visnuvadhana had been isolated, like much of the royal clan. He had never left Pataliputra, and never would. He spent his days in luxurious palaces and gardens, meditating and speaking to philosophers. He was a lover of beauty, an artist at heart. Sumalya encouraged these hobbies up until he was executed by the general Amogha Karkha in 701. Amogha was determined to restore the power of the Maukhani, but his futile wars against the cities of Bengal sapped the strength of his armies and earned him the ire of many Buddhists, whose holy sites he did not treat with respect.

Regardless, Amogha would stutter on for twenty more years as prime minister, until 721. As part of a court intrigue, Visnuvadhana attempted to act against him at the urging of a collection of lesser councilors. Ernaged by this lack of respect to his efforts to restore the empire, Amogha would order his mercenary corps, largely foreigners with no great loyalty to the Maharajadhiraja, to execute a coup. He massacred the royal clan in their apartments and ruled the city for a few years until a collection of ministers assassinated him and established a greatly reduced kingdom which consisted essentially of Pataliputra and its hinterlands.
In Gandhara, the fall of the Johiyava and the rise of the Siyaposha led to a paradigm shift in the greater Hindu Kush and Balkh as well. Unlike the Johiyava, the Siyaposha were Turko-Eftals who were Indianized to a moderate degree. Unlike in the interior, where local communities were required to defend themselves, in this portion of the Maukhani frontier as the military atrophied it was an open invitation for the Siyaposha and their Turko-Eftal retainers to take over the role of 'protectors'. Much of the Punjab was smoothly annexed with a minimum of warfare. Between 670 and 700, a few local military commanders provided only isolated resistance which had little chance of victory.

Between the Siyaposha and the Sogdians to the north, overland trade did continue, albeit much reduced. The early Kapisa Shahs, as the Siyaposha became known, left little sign of their dominion. They were largely forced to repurpose Johiyava fortifications and structures, repairing and renovating those which had fallen into disrepair, but otherwise they left no architectural mark on their territory. Cities such as Purusapura and Takasashila which did expand in this time period did so under the auspices of their ayat councils, in styles which seem imported from other parts of the subcontinent rather than in any authentic Gandharan style.

Further south, the Siyaposha were met with stiff resistance. The descendents of the Saka and Kushan satraps had never abandoned their warlike ways and fought as cavalrymen every bit the equal of the Siyaposha, and the Gurjars of Srimal prevented their entry into the Thar desert. Along the Indus, the Rai dynasty led by Rai Sinhasena Raja, was equally capable of defending their river valley, resurgent in the wake of the collapse of the Maukhani. Recognizing these borders, the Siyaposha did not push their luck overmuch. The Thar desert was marginal territory in the estimations of the Siyaposha kings, and the Indus valley while wealthy would be a hard fought conquest. Indeed, the majority of the strength of the Kapisa Shahs would be focused westward, where another ambitious Turkic warlord could rise up just as easily as they had and take what they had won.

[Thoughts on the plausibility of making India a patchwork of kingdoms underpinned by local councils? Questions? I feel like this is one of the bigger risks I've taken so far in terms of changing history, but it made little sense to me for the Maukhani, who fought feudalism from nearly the beginning, to be succeeded by kingdoms that resembled those of OTL.]

 

[Practical Lobster]

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.