The Sultanate of Rumistan: An Alternate Anatolia
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Kiev couldn't just be destroyed now could it?
Hehehehe, the more religiously diverse Russian nation presents a unique political environment once the modern day rolls around.... but none of you all will have to worry about that for several more centuries hehehe...
Thank you all for reading my TL and appreciating it! Sorry for a long gap between the post and these responses, but I'm glad to see all of you noticing the trends and central historical events... I have such a fun time writing this timeline!
Part 28: Mahmoud Aral's Failure
Part 28: Mahmoud Aral's Failure
With the beginning of the 1420s (820s), Mahmoud Aral is incredibly overextended, forces left not under his command defending his western frontier from upstart khans while he is in the east, attempting to consolidate his control. Following the execution of the rival Serik Ali in 1417 (820), the Kirghiz steppe dissolved into a bloody roiling mess of tribal chiefs and upstart generals, giving Mahmoud Aral time to focus on his other rivals to the south. He began a gradual push into the territory of Malik Shah, following the contours of the Oxus river to join his holding in Khiva with that in Bukhara, the loyalist garrison maintaining the crumbling defense against Malik Shah’s forces. Khan Mahmoud Aral’s plan seemed to have been the securing of Transoxiana before the recapture of the rest of his territory, but his push for the recapture of Transoxiana did not go according to plan. Malik Shah pulled his troops back as Mahmoud Aral approached, holing them up in the mountains to the east, establishing a thick wall of defenses protecting the Ferghana valley from Mahmoud Aral’s attempted invasion. The Khan would continue to campaign in Transoxiana for two more years, capturing not insignificant portions of land along the rivers which flow into his more defensible lands around the Aral Sea, as well as very insignificant portions of land in the deserts of inner Asia. Seeing the writing on the wall in Transoxiana, Khan Mahmoud Aral traveled north, attempting another failed push into the Kirghiz steppe in 1419 (821), only to be thwarted by an unnamed general described only as “a black dog” in the folk histories. Disheartened by failures in Transoxiana and the steppes of the Kirghiz, Mahmoud Aral returned to the west, remaining in his fortress of Sarai, even while ordering soldiers to continue the fight in his name in the east.In the far south of the Burilgid realm, the khanate of Uthman Samarkandi continued to struggle with the uprising of the Turcomen, abandoning the siege on his own mother city in order to put down the uprising in 1420 (823), arriving much too late. The city of Merv was in Turcoman hands, and Turcish forces were parading around the Karakum desert in large bands, loosely organized around almost bandit-like rebel leaders. At their head was a certain Muhammad Ghuzza, the son of a local Turcoman magnate in Merv who was killed by Khukir Burilgi Emir Khan, a son wronged by the conquests of Burilgi much more than the envious son Uthman Samarkandi. The Turcoman uprising had taken on a very nativist nature as well, attacking Persians simply on suspicion of being administrators for the meager war machine of Uthman Samarkandi son of Burilgi. Uthman Samarkandi was completely unequipped to handle such a decentralized enemy; while he may have had the occasional victory over the Turcomen, his failure to ever retake his former capital of Merv meant that the symbolic head which unified the Turcoman movement was never decapitated. Ultimately, however, that very fate would befall him, when he was captured at the tail end of his retreating army by a force of the Turcomen in 1425 (828), brought into the beautiful capital city he never could recover, and decapitated in the public square. Uthman Samarkandi’s claim to the throne was no more, and so was the additional threat to Mahmoud Aral’s control over the cities of the Oxus. The new Emirate of Turcoman Khurasan almost immediately had struggles of its own, namely the issue of an Emir with little legitimacy to rule and little control over the decentralized mobs which brought him to power, and the state which had once controlled the whole of Khurasan was beginning to lose fringe territories by 1435 (839).
South of the remnants of the Burilgid Empire held by Mahmoud Aral is the small and weak khanate of Ashur Timur, the Karakalpak Khan on the coast of the Caspian. Ashur Timur is a very obscure and underexplored figure, one which is mostly gone from the historical record other than the occasional mention in the histories of his more prominent brothers. It is known that he was half-Ukrajinan and that he had made connections in the Karakalpak and Kirghiz following an appointment to the administration of the region by the Persian magnate which presided over him when he was younger (that much is known from the singular Karakalpak document detailing his life, a single page discovered in Khiva in the early 20th century). Very little else is known about his relationship to the other Sons of the Yurt, or of his policies as Khan of the Karakalpaks, though it is likely that he favored the local Karakalpak magnates and Persian administrators which presumably backed his rise to power. He was put almost immediately under threat by Mahmoud Aral following the latter’s return to Sarai, while prior his small corner of central Asia nestled between the Aral and Caspian seas was left mostly untouched bar a few incursions and raids from Khurasan and Manghitstan. On the way back to Sarai, Mahmoud Aral ordered one of his armies to push into the Karakalpak Khanate of Ashur Timur, and though it met stiff resistance the army of Mahmoud Aral was ultimately quite successful, albeit slow at the grinding push through the grasslands between the Aral and Caspian seas. Mahmoud Aral reached Sarai in 1423 (826), having ordered another attempt at a push into the Kirghiz steppe in 1422 (825). Yet again, the push failed, and instead the Khan ordered his forces to turn to the Khanate of Malik Shah, dividing his eastern forces into two, split by the Aral Sea.
From 1424 (826) onwards, Mahmoud Aral’s focus was on slow and steady pushes south. He already controlled the beautiful and strong cities on the banks of the Oxus, and while his western border was very porous and prone to encroachment, the Sloboda Khanate was far more focused on its own affairs to interfere much with him. He began to meet a stiff resistance in Karakalpakstan from local militias led by Karakalpak magnates and working in tandem with the more disciplined armies of Ashur Timur, prompting a transferral of some forces in the army of Transoxiana to that in Karakalpakstan. Around this time, in 1425 (828), Mahmoud Aral heard the news of the execution of Uthman Samarkandi, and (according to official histories) he wept, grieved, and held a state funeral (sans corpse of course), and withdrew himself from political and military life for a period of three years. It is unknown why he would have reacted in this way, especially given Uthman Samarkandi’s attempted capture of the loyalist stronghold of Samarkand, but there are some theories that Mahmoud Aral and Uthman Samarkandi may have been relatively close friends, or simply that Aral was given inaccurate intelligence regarding affairs in Khurasan and did not know of Samarkandi’s attempted capture of his mother city. During the period from 1425 to 1428 (829 to 831), a small clique of tribal generals directed affairs, and while many of them were experienced, their power struggles with one another divided focus and attention, lessening resources and strength on the Karakalpak front, allowing Ashur Timur time to recover.
When Mahmoud Aral re-emerged into political life in 1429 (832), he was in no shape to lead an army or even to lead a country. His generals were unwilling to dissolve the clique which had been dominating his military affairs for three years, and his heir was sickly and likely to die. Mahmoud Aral attempted to reassert his political authority, ordering the firing of the leading general in the dominating clique and issuing edicts to restructure the local Persian administration of Sarai, but this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. While in 1425 (828) it may have seemed that Mahmoud Aral was likely to reunify at least a notable portion of the former Burilgid territory, by 1429 (832) it was obvious that the great expansive empire which Burilgi the Blind established was to be no more. The Aral Khanate, dominated by the clique of Turco-Mongol and Persian generals which governed affairs for the three years that Mahmoud Aral was out of politics, established itself north of the Aral sea, dividing Mahmoud Aral’s territory into a much more centralized and easily controlled Sarai-dominated Tartary and a more distant and difficult to control Transoxiana, and while the Aral Khanate was not claiming to be a successor to the throne of Burilgi, they warred with Mahmoud Aral entirely for reasons of self-interest and expansion.
From 1429 to 1436 (833 to 840), Mahmoud Aral and the Aral Khanate were at war, pushing up against one another, engaging in military feat after military feat, soldiers from all directions pushing in and pushing out. Details regarding this war are prominent in the history of Mahmoud Aral, though their veracity is usually in doubt, fixated on repeated victory after victory. It is obvious that Mahmoud Aral was not the victorious power in the struggle with the rebellious generals, for in the end the Aral Khanate was abandoned, Mahmoud Aral signing a peace treaty with the generals which formed the rival state, recognizing their presence in the steppe, giving them land capture from Khan of the Karakalpaks Ashur Timur, and the Aral Khanate paying an annual tribute (though this last part would become increasingly ignored over time). The once glorious empire of Khukir Burilgi Emir Khan, the terrible conqueror of the known world, collapsed in on itself in one great big bang, though the power struggles within the Aral Khanate would continue to redefine its role in the region for decades to come.
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So sorry for another long gap in posts... there will be a good selection of updates in the near future, including a look over to what's been going on in Europe! I hope you all are liking the TL!
Part 29: A First Excursion to Farang: The Holy Roman Empire
Part 29: A First Excursion to Farang: The Holy Roman Empire
While our focus has been primarily on the territories of Anatolia, the Caucasus, Iran, and Turkestan, this does not mean that affairs in the remainder of the world have been untouched by the effects, both minute and major, of the developments in the dar al-Islam. To begin this examination of the more distant parts of the world, we will begin in East Rome’s rival claimant to the title of Emperor, Das Heiliges Römische Reich, the Holy Roman Empire, the expansive feudal state stretched over central Europe, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Adriatic in the south. Up to the 13th century, the Holy Roman Empire was dominated by the house of Hohenstaufen, up until the death of Friedrich II von Hohenstaufen in 1250, with his death prompting the division of the Empire between his son Konrad IV and the anti-king Wilhelm, count of Holland and Zeeland, but with the former dying in 1254 and the latter dying in 1256, the Holy Roman Empire entered a period of interregnum, the so-called Great Interregnum, wherein no single figure was able to dominate and become the Emperor for a period of more than 2 decades, from the death of Friedrich II in 1250 to the accession of Ottokar of Bohemia and Germany to the title of King of Germany in 1278. During this period of interregnum, the title of Holy Roman Emperor was fought over by two rival claimants, Richard of Cornwall and Alfonso of Castile, despite neither being German princes and the latter never having set foot in the Empire. With these two rival claimants jockeying for power and influence among the princes and electors of the Empire and the lack of any major ruler to reign them in, the princes, lords, and electors become increasingly powerful, with more and more control over their domains. After a few generations of this unhampered power, the princes were unwilling to give it up by the end of the Great Interregnum. The Pope blocked the attempts by Richard of Cornwall and Alfonso of Castile to become King of Germany, leaving the position open to be determined, and the former factions that formed around the Englishman and the Castilian suddenly readjusting themselves into new blocs. The first of these unified around the relatively unimportant Count of Habsburg Rudolf, who had never before had any position higher than a county and, or so the princes thought, would continue some of the positive policies of the Hohenstaufens while maintaining princely independence. The other faction orbited around the increasingly powerful figure of Ottokar II of Bohemia, the powerful Czech monarch who had put his lot in to be elected to the position of King of Germany as well. At first, it seemed that with all of the support which he enjoyed from the elector-princes of the Holy Roman Empire, Rudolf of Habsburg would win the election for King of Germany, but following a sudden and surprise hunting accident in 1269, there was no longer a single vacillating figure for many of the formerly Rudolfite electors to choose, dividing their vote (with some even switching sides to vote for Ottokar), and Ottokar II of Bohemia becoming Ottokar I of Germany, the first Czech to ever be crowned as King of the Germans, in 1274. He continued to centralize his control over his domain in Bohemia, Ostmark, and Styria, appointing his own sons to positions as Dukes of Styria and Carinthia, cementing his dynasty, the House of Premyslid, as the main controllers of southeastern Germany (although having a rivalry with the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria). 
The Royal Seal of Ottokar II of Bohemia
The Domains of Ottokar II of Bohemia prior to becoming King of Germany
Ottokar, King of Germany and Bohemia, was never crowned as Holy Roman Emperor however. The Holy Roman Empire would be without an Emperor for another 37 years, and after the reigns of Ottokar (1274-1283), his son Kunigunde (1283-1291), the relatively unimportant and uninfluential Adolf of Bremen (1291-1293), and Ottokar’s son Wenceslaus (1293-1309) a new problem came to the forefront of the Empire, something that brought fear to the princes considerably more than the prospect of Ottokar being King of the Germans: the French King Philip IV began to aggressively push the claim of his brother, Charles Valois, to become King of the Romans, and this outside threat from a state which had much more influence on the Papacy than England or Castile prompted the princes to quickly select one of their own to be the Holy Roman Emperor, in order to block the French from taking over their preciously decentralized state. Following a short interregnum while the electors were making their decision, Johan von Luxembourg was crowned as King of the Romans, the Holy Roman Emperor. After 37 years of interregnum, Johan von Luxembourg was the first Holy Roman Emperor since Friedrich von Hohenstaufen. The damage had been done, however; while all of the states in this period were considerably decentralized, the generations of decentralization and lack of control in the Holy Roman Empire meant that the princes, dukes, and counts have grown accustomed to nothing stopping their power in their domains. In the following centuries, while other states would have centralizing figures who strengthen their respective domains, the Holy Roman Empire would remain divided by princely divisions, factional divisions, and warfare.
The Holy Roman Empire on the eve of the Diet of Dresden
Following the election of Johan von Luxembourg, the position of Holy Roman Emperor would be an entirely elected position like that of King of Germany, and one which only princes within the Empire could be elected for (though this does not mean they must be German: simply that they must hold a title as lord, count, duke, margrave, prince, or any other holding in the Empire). Johan von Luxemburg would reign for a surprisingly long period of time, considerably longer than the weaker rulers which came before him, holding the position of Holy Roman Emperor from his coronation in 1311 to his death in 1332, a reign of 21 years (compared to Ottokar’s 9, Kunigunde’s 8, and Adolf’s 2) wherein he patronized culture and religion, paying for the construction of several churches and hospitals. He also strengthened the army of his own holdings and tried to encourage the princes to supply him with levies, though they were incredibly resistant to this idea, and the Holy Roman Empire ultimately turned back just as it was when Johan von Luxembourg died in 1332. Following his death there was a pitched electoral battle between his son Friedrich von Luxembourg and the rival candidate Tomas of Bohemia, of the House of Premyslid. Tomas won out in the election, but was a fairly ineffectual leader, quite unlike Ottokar who came before him, and he had only a short reign of 10 years, from 1332 to 1342. His reign, which was defined by difficulties in implementing any kind of meaningful controls over the princes, prompted his successor, Ivan of Bohemia, to convene the Imperial Diet of 1351, to discuss and implement reforms to the constitution of the Empire, namely the issues of electing the Emperor (during the election of Tomas of Bohemia, there was a rival set of electors who chose a candidate who wasn’t even running in the main election) and the expectations of the princes to each other and to the Empire as a whole, militarily and with regards to taxation. After weeks of intense argument between the myriad temporal and eccliastical actors invited, the Diet of Dresden published the Silver Bull of 1351, which lined out, in specific, the procedure for electing a new Emperor, specified that the Pope had no role to play in the election of the Holy Roman Emperor, lined out the procedures for taxation, and specified that any of the princes were to come to the aid of another if an outside threat invaded the Empire. The Silver Bull of 1351 opens with the following now famous phrase:
“We, the representatives, princes, and bishops of the German, Italian, Bohemian, and Burgundian nations of the Holy Roman Empire, have met in the city of Dresden, and have promulgated and decreed for the ratification of the many princes of the Empire the following laws and rulings, intended for cherishing and fomenting unity among the Electors, of the bringing about of unanimous election, and of closing off any route to detestable and disgusting discord which could divide us and our noble brethren.”
Now, whether this great imperial decree would be effective remained to be seen.
Part 30: A Second Excursion to Farang: The Neverending War
A 19th Century Depiction of King Philip IV of France
Part 30: A Second Excursion to Farang: The Neverending War
John I Valois, King of France
Following Philip V’s death in 1329, the throne of France passed to the son of Philip IV’s brother Charles Valois, John I Valois. While not technically the beginning of the Hundred Years War, the reign of John I does mark the beginning of dynastic strife that dominates French politics for the next century. His reign was challenged by Philip V’s sister Isabella, who claimed that her son was the rightful heir, as well as by holders of more distant rival claims to the throne. Most notably among these, however, is the claim pushed by King Edward III Plantagenet, the King of England and a distant relation to the French Kings, the claim which began the war between the two houses and sunk western Europe into the black depths of incessant warfare, paused only by outbreaks of Pestilence. The first phase of this war was defined by the reign of Edward III, from the outbreak of war to Edward’s death in 1377, roughly 40 years of warfare under the tutelage of a single English monarch. Referred to as the Edwardian War by historians, this first portion of the great seemingly neverending war was defined primarily by conflict in the region of Aquitaine, uprisings of the Knights Templar against John I, and a general direction of English dominance in the war. Aquitaine was already under significant English influence, with the vassals in the region generally more pro-Plantagenet than pro-Valois, and many of the figures in the region jumped at the ability to fight in the support of the English dynastic cause, while France was crippled by Flemish and Breton invasions to the north and an uprising of the Knights Templar in Occitania. John I struggled to hold onto control in the outlying areas, as English and Templar forces met up in the south at the site of the fateful Chivalric Handshake, where the respective commanders shook hands and took part in mass on the following Sunday to show their allegiance. The Chivalric Handshake took place in 1341, after a decade of warfare that was forced to a standstill following outbreaks of Pestilence in both French and English camps, and today is remembered as one of the iconic moments in the Hundred Years War for the English, the ultimate culmination of famous English victories such as the Battle of Roquefort and the Battle of Perigueux.
However, the rise of English interests in the Edwardian period of the war was challenged by numerous other factors. The issue of repeated outbreaks of Pestilence has already been mentioned, and will remain a major theme, but in addition there began a spat of uprisings of peasants called the Jacqueries in the lands occupied by the Knights Templar in southern France, displeased with the rash of famines and restrictions on the rights of the peasantry that the Templar control brought with it. Initially, the uprisings, led by a peasant leader named Bartholomew the Occitan, were very religious in nature and fixated on the destruction of debt records held by the Templars on local landlords and laborers, but following Bartholomew’s death in 1347 at the hands of the English army, the movement was taken over by a group of nobles who supplied the peasants with more refined arms and training out of their city center of Villefranche. This second phase of the Jacquerie movement is still shaped by unique theological views derived from the Bartholomean period, but with a much more political focus, shifting from destruction of debt records and toward support for the rule of John I Valois. The 1350s started a shift in favor of France in the conflict as the noble-backed Jacqueries defeated Templars in repeated battles, forcing England’s hand to make up for the failures of the Knights. England began to send ever higher numbers of soldiers into Aquitaine, leaving their northern border undefended and open to an attack from France’s close ally, the Kingdom of Scotland. Beginning in 1354, the Scottish offensive into northern England was one of the straws that broke the camel’s back in southern France, forcing the military-minded Edward to reallocate some of his forces to defend Cumberland and Northumberland from the invasion of King David II of the House of Bruce.
A Depiction of the Battle of Roquefort
The Scottish invasion was the first of a few wider interventions into the war which turn what was initially expected to be a resounding English victory into a mess that dragged western Europe into war for a century. Genoa, which had as of late been in conflict with France over trade in the western Mediterranean, saw the weakness of the Knights Templar in southern France as an opportunity, with a Genoese-headed coalition of Italian states pushing into Occitania to defeat the Knights. This was not done out of a genuine desire to save the house of Valois, but rather out of a Genoese desire to get rid of one of the groups that had been bringing so much debt upon the merchants of the republic. Venice, however, saw this as an opportunity. Engaging in the only battle of the Hundred Years War outside of western Europe, the Venetian navy laid siege to Genoese mercantile factories in the Levant, hoping to snatch control of eastern Mediterranean trade from their rival republic. The most famous of these battles, memorialized in a statue in the city of Tripoli, was the Battle of the Outcrop, where Venetian ships, armed with catapults and primitive artillery, besieged the Genoese settlement on a rocky outcrop near Tripoli. This was ultimately a victory for both Venice and the Mamluk Sultanate, with the mercantile factory taken over by the Venetians and around half of the goods stored within it confiscated by the Sultan’s guard, which had assisted the Venetians in besieging the eastern side of the settlement. This spelled war in northern Italy, as Venice was roped into an anti-French coalition of principalities with ties to the House of Capet who wished to see Valois rule in France done away with, warring against Genoa and its loose coalition of anti-Templar allies. England reached out to Venice for a formal alliance as well, and the Treaty of Friendship was signed in 1358 between King Edward and Doge Carlo of Venice. This portion of the Hundred Years War, often called the “First Italian War” by historians, is often considered as the first “modern” war in southern Europe, primarily for the lack of real knightly presence in the armies of either the Venetian nor Genoese coalitions, but also by the presence of black powder weapons, copied from Near Eastern devices used in the wars of the Mamluks. Black powder explosives and handcannons were used to effective ends by the Venetian army in the Battle of Milan in 1359, which forced the Milanese ruler to bend the knee to the Venetian coalition after a scare that he would join the Genoese cause and fight (ostensibly) for France. Northern Italy became dominated by the whizzing of missiles and the loud booming explosions of black powder on loose earth, as these destructive weapons were used for the first documented time by European armies against European armies.
The Edwardian period of the Hundred Years War came to an end with the death of Edward III Plantagenet in 1377, following a back and forth between the English and French armies in southern France. The Flemish and Breton allies of England weren’t being especially helpful, with Flanders increasingly focused on internal squabbles with rival princes in the Holy Roman Empire and Brittany under the full force of French occupation. The Knights Templar were collapsing to Genoese onslaught, and English armies were on two fronts, in Northumberland and Aquitaine. Repeated outbreaks of Pestilence marred the English and French armies, and even killed John I in 1363, leaving his son Philip VI as King of France to fight on the many fronts of the great neverending war. Following the death of Edward III, the war would enter another phase, defined by the life of his successors, for the English King had reigned for 50 years, and it is unlikely that the Crown of England would ever have a wearer so long lived for quite some time.
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Hey! Sorry for the long hiatus; my first year of college started just two days after I posted the entry about the Holy Roman Empire, and my focus has been on getting used to the new pace, new experiences, and working on projects other than this. But now that I've gotten more used to things, I hope to move toward a more regular schedule of updates for the timeline, following a back to back completion of our short excursion to western Europe. I hope you all like this look into an alternate Hundred Years War (or, at least, the first 40 years of an alternate Hundred Years War) and I hope the return to the Sultanate of Rumistan will be a welcome one!! Look forward to tomorrow for an entry to continue the Hundred Years War, with a focus on the events in the Iberian Peninsula, where the squabbling of rival regional monarchies allows for the last efflorescence of Andalusian culture in the meager Nasrid sultanate of the far south.
No worries, friend, I'm happy to see it back! Hope college is going well for you so far.
On the update, it's interesting to see the Hundred Years' War spilling over into the rest of Western Europe - with France being dogged from the south as well as the north and west, we might see a prolonged English presence in Gascony and along the Channel, with the attendant cultural, political, and linguistic repercussions.
Well good to see this tl still alive.
Seem this period will be subject of poem, romanticism, and stories in the future. Also what is general attitude by people (or more correctly historian and poet) of this age?
Seem this period will be subject of poem, romanticism, and stories in the future. Also what is general attitude by people (or more correctly historian and poet) of this age?
Glad to see this TL is back. You’ve made an interesting in-depth and engaging view of this TL.
I feel like World War I has suddenly been retconned into the middle ages. I can see the whole fustercluck be used to cement HRE solidarity though, at least for a while.
Part 31: A Third Excursion to Farang: The Squabbling Kingdoms
Part 31: A Third Excursion to Farang: The Squabbling Kingdom
The Hundred Years War was not exclusively centered on England and France, as was already incredibly apparent by the surreal proxy conflict between Genoa and Venice in the north of Italy, but the conflict only continued to spill over into neighboring regions after the death of Edward III of the House of Plantagenet. With Edward’s death, the ties that the English crown had made with the Knights Templar in southern France were severed, leaving the Knights out to dry as joint Jacquerie-Royal offensives pushed ever deeper into their territory. This was fine for the new English King, Henry IV of the House of Plantagenet, who used it as an opportunity to make new offensives into inner France before signing the Treaty of Bordeaux in 1378, ending direct hostilities between England and France for about a decade. But this period was not bereft of conflict between the two rival kingdoms, for dynastic strife in the Iberian Peninsula took their attention away from the heartland of the war, each backing opposed factions in Castile, Portugal, and Aragon. 
King Alfonso the Just of Castile, petitioning nobles of Galicia to support his cause
The first of these conflicts actually began before the signing of the Treaty of Bordeaux, when King Alfonso the Just of Castile was dethroned during a civil war in Castile. The civil war began only a few short years after the cessation of conflict between Alfonso’s Castile and the Kingdom of Aragon to his east (1355-1367), when his brother Henry of Trastamara rose up with an entourage of soldiers and mercenaries under his command to snatch the throne out from under his sibling. Fleeing the capital in 1368, Alfonso first traveled to Portugal, where he was coldly received by his uncle, King Peter I of Portugal, and sent to hide in Galicia. However, there was another source of support which he had as of yet not heard of: the Kingdom of England. King Edward’s son Charles, his eldest and his expected heir (before Charles’ death in 1376) lobbied his father extensively to intervene in support of the rightful King Alfonso of Castile, saying that gaining the support of a friendly Castile may be just the thing to ultimately win the war in France and capture the French throne once and for all. Edward was initially reticent, but ultimately gave in and agreed to support Alfonso, sending some much-needed troops from their occupying garrisons in Gascony and to Castile to supply Alfonso during the civil war. This would ultimately be a complete failure for England, and one of the factors that led to a decline in English dominance toward the end of the war. Alfonso was able to capture many prominent regions in the north by 1371, but the forces of Henry of Trastamara were too much, pushing Alfonso back to his heartland in Galicia by 1376. And then Alfonso’s great supporter Charles died, followed by his father Edward the next year. Alfonso was all alone, and while a last great push in 1379 allowed him to meet up with English forces in the Pyrenees, he would be defeated by Henry of Trastamara by 1382. Now Henry II, the first King of Castile of the House of Trastamara, dominated affairs in Iberia, and he would make it known to his rivals in Portugal and Aragon.
The French King Philip VI, son of John I, had already reached out to Henry when news reached Paris of the English plan to support Alfonso in the Castilian civil war. Henry and Philip were very much alike: both were cruel and exacting monarchs, Henry having attacked his opponent Alfonso for his support of the Castilian Jews, and both were dedicated to preserving their power above all else. They made a loose pact at some time in the 1370s (the exact date is uncertain and differs depending on sources used), wherein Henry would intervene to attack English-occupied Gascony if they threatened the passes of the Pyrenees mountains. However, this pact would ultimately prove fruitless, as the Treaty of Bordeaux was signed just after the death of Edward III of England, ending hostilities between England and France for the time being. And so, with a large force of soldiers hardened in civil war with his rival Alfonso and nowhere to use them, the cruel Henry began a war of conquest with Aragon, to capture the region of Valencia and wrest control over western Mediterranean trade from the Aragonese. Strangely enough, even though Genoa also dominated western Mediterranean trade and would surely be a rival to Castile had Henry’s plans been successful, this war actually brought Genoa and Castile closer together, with Genoese ships laying siege to coastal Aragonese cities for short periods during the War of Henry and John (1379-1388).
Henry of Trastamara died in 1379, just following his declaration of war on Aragon, leaving his son John I of the House of Trastamara to continue the fight against the Kingdom of Aragon. The war was a grueling affair, dragged out for almost a full decade with almost no real changes made on either side. The most notable aftereffect of the war was, however, the secret murders of many members of the House of Trastamara in the Kingdom of Aragon, severing many of the marriage ties between the two kingdoms. King James III of Aragon, of the House of Barcelona, was a conniving political figure who knew that there was a risk of nobles tied to the House of Trastamara rising up against him in the war with John, something which was proven correct when a few lesser nobles in Valencia rose up against him. In response, James III killed many of the prominent Trastamara nobles and forced others to agree to marriages into his own royal house, effectively purging the House of Trastamara from Aragon altogether. The war would ultimately end with neither side really achieving victory, deep rifts dug between the two rival kingdoms.
The Battle of Aljubarrota, one of the notable battles of the Portuguese Crisis
Portugal similarly experienced dynastic strife, with a civil war between 1381 and 1384 known as The Crisis, wherein there was no singular monarch to rule over the country. This conflict was disconnected to the larger war between England and France, and ultimately ended in something quite remarkable for the time period: the establishment of a new dynasty made out of the collaboration of the rising Bourgeoisie of Portugal and the nobility, establishing the Joanine Dynasty, or the Portuguese Burgundians. This pushed Portugal away from the traditional monarchical houses of the other Hispanian kingdoms and severed Portuguese history from the dynastic ties that connected it to the rest of Hispania. Portugal, with its extreme focus on naval technology and its position on the far Atlantic coast, as well as its recent revival of rule by a new Portuguese dynasty, has begun a move in a new direction, toward a new destiny defined by the Atlantic and by its relations with north African states. One of the first acts of the new Portuguese King, John I of the House of Aviz, was to write up a mutual trade treaty with the Sultan of Morocco, giving special rights to Portuguese traders in the cities of Tangiers and Sala. The 15th century for Portugal would be defined by the furthering of these developments.
In the far south of the Iberian peninsula, the last remnant of Muslim control in the peninsula still holds onto power, the Nasrid dynasty ruling over an emirate centered on the city of Granada. At first the emirate was a vassal of the Crown of Castile, but with the coming of the Castilian civil war the Nasrids wrested themselves out from beneath the thumb of the Castilians, furthering the last glorious efflorescence of Andalusian Islamic culture in Hispania. The emirate of Granada became a major entrepot between the Maghreb and Iberia, becoming increasingly Arabized and less and less Iberian in its culture, caught between the rival interests of Castile, Morocco, and merchants from Genoa. Genoese traders especially controlled its economy, financing it in order to gain control over the trade of gold from Subsaharan Africa. Granada was already in a steady decline; following the failed attempt by the Marinids to invade Hispania in 1340, it lost territory and lost prominence, turning inward and creating manuscripts and architecture that was the final reflection of Andalusian culture. One of the greatest of these was the Citadel of Granada, also know as the Alhambra, which incorporated a mosque into a large citadel complex at the heart of the city. Granada also experienced a major growth in its Jewish population following the victory of Henry in the Castilian civil war, as Henry suppressed Jews in his domain extensively. The Talmud of Granada, a beautiful document showing Medieval Iberian marginalia and Jewish icon work mixed with Arabesque designs and written in a Jewish dialect of Mozarabic was discovered somewhat recently, a unique product of the unique community of Iberian Jews in the declining emirate of Granada. Castile was too focused on its own affairs and the affairs of its neighbor Aragon to intervene much in Granada, a godsend to the emirs who were finally given a light hand in the later part of the 14th century, to rule as they saw fit for the last time they would be able to.
So Al-Andalus gets a temporary reprieve. It'll be interesting to see just how will the Iberian peninsula develop, given no union between Castille and Aragon.
Part 32: The Energetic Young Sultan
Part 32: The Energetic Young Sultan
Mehmet son of Kilij Arslan V had big boots to fill upon the death of his father in 1429 (830), the short reign of his predecessor having reshaped the infant bureaucracy of the Sultanate and rapidly expanded the scope of his domain. Kilij Arslan V was victorious against his seditious brother in the civil war, expanded the breadth of the Sultanate of Rum into Thrace, Cilicia, and the Jazira, developed the grain dole bureaucracy, and lessened the power of the nobles and iqta-holders of the Sultanate. Mehmet, the first of his name, was a young man, only 19 upon his ascension to the low-lying throne of Iconium, and he first began an effort to continue the consolidations of his father. Many representatives from the noble houses petitioned him to lessen the restrictions placed upon them by the extended grain dole system, but in response he imprisoned the sons of some of the iqta-holders and kept them as hostages, as well as settling a small Kurdish band in central Anatolia to defend Iconium. This band is what would later become the Kunya Guard, the multi-ethnic militia that serves directly under the Sultan in the defense of the city of Iconium. Initially it was made up entirely of Kurds, and it still retained many of its nomadic Iranian aesthetics up to its dissolution, even as it grew to include Turcomen and Georgians. With the Kunya Guard still in its infancy, Sultan Mehmet also attempted to establish a special force of Kurds to fight alongside the primarily Turcoman army, gearing up for his greatest accomplishment: an invasion of the Balkans.Mehmet saw the military victories of his father as the greatest strength of his reign, and idolized the victories of his predecessor in the civil war, in Cilicia, and in the Jazira. At first it would seem that he was gearing up for a decline in military activity, beginning the second year of his reign (1430) with pensions being given to a large amount of retiring generals. This, however, only signaled a change in the military structure, away from the traditional Turcoman cavalry masters and towards a mix of cavalry and infantry oriented Kurds and Romans, brought in to revitalize what he saw as an increasingly stodgy group of generals who had their allegiance only to nobles throughout the country. In 1434 (837), after only a few years of peace, Mehmet son of Kilij Arslan V raised levies from Salman son of Orhan son of Osman and of many other iqta-holders, and summoned his newly formed Kurdish and Roman contingents to his court in Iconium. He would begin the war in style, with a procession of his forces out of Iconium and into the small portion of Thrace occupied before him. They left in the spring of 1435 (838), crossing Anatolia and hoping to provision themselves on the fall produce of the Balkans upon their arrival there. No war was formally declared and he would have no treaty be signed… Mehmet was not going to stop until he reached the Danube, or at least that is what he hoped.
In reality, the First Thracian Incursion (commonly called Mehmet’s War) was a long and grueling failure that almost spelled doom for Mehmet’s reign for the 24 long years that he fought it. Initially, it seemed that all was going well for the young Sultan, older and more experienced in military matters now after training with his Kurdish and Turcoman soldiers from the ages of 19 to 25 on top of his time spent with his military-minded father. Bulgaria lay open to him, blood-soaked from years of civil conflict between noble and tribal houses and war with the myriad Serbian principalities to its west. The former lands of the Eastern Roman Empire were undefended and ill-equipped to face a real push by the joint Kurdish-Turcoman-Roman armies of Mehmet, almost 40,000 soldiers in number that utilized a mix of fighting styles, from Turcoman cavalry and infantry to Roman formations, Kurdish nomadic fighting, and the occasional use of black powder explosives, including the first use of a cannon by the Sultanate of Rum in the Siege of Sofiya in 1436 (838). Kniaz Petr, the most dominant of the princes of Bulgaria, led the Slavic forces against Mehmet, heading the defense of Sofiya (although the city would ultimately fall to Turco-Kurdish onslaught) and recuperating his forces in northern Bulgaria to form alliances with his former enemy princes and defend the Danube from Mehmet. They were given a bit of a respite by 1440 (843), as Mehmet turned his forces to the west to capture Macedonia, splitting his force to leave behind a primarily Kurdish garrison to defend the captured Bulgarian territories from Petr’s forces.
Macedonia was even less well defended than Bulgaria was, with the main city centers either under-garrisoned or even completely unguarded. The minor tribal leaders and local magnates of the small Macedonian polities could do effectively nothing against Mehmet, as he stormed Stromnitsa, Petrousa, Alexiotsa, even reaching as far west as Chlerinon before garrisoning the mountain towns in 1444 (847) and transitioning into the more grueling portion of the long war: the push northwards. He was not worried about any push from the south, seeing the unstable Slavic-dominated principalities of Thessaly as no threat to his control over Macedonia and Thrace, but he wished to eradicate the Serbian and Bulgarian principalities once and for all, to secure the whole of the Balkans for himself. But by 1444 (847) everything started to fall apart, first with the uprising of the Thracian magnates in 1445 (848) and then with the formation of the informal alliance of Bulgaria (under a resurgent Kniaz Vasily, Petr’s rival), Nishava, and Rashka, a sort of unified Balkan alliance against Mehmet’s invasion. Mehmet moved his forces into Thrace in order to put down the uprising of the local magnates there in 1445 (848), following this up with an attempted push to the north. Initially he was met with victories, but quickly these turned to defeat after defeat in the mountains of Bulgaria, as the Macedonian front was broken by Serbian forces in 1447 (850) and Sofiya was recaptured by Bulgarian forces in 1448 (850). He turned back and recaptured the lost territories, but now he was on the wrong foot. Another attempted northern push took place in 1453 (854), when he tried to capture the two Serbian principalities for himself, but ultimately a defeat in Kosovo spelled the end of any further pushes north. He was able to turn Nishava into a vassal of Rum, however, forcing it to pay annual tribute. This, along with the death of Kniaz Vasily in 1452 (854), spelled the end of the impromptu Balkan alliance. Ultimately, however, there was no more progress that could possibly be made, especially as his Kurdish and Roman forces grew ever more anxious. An attempted uprising by one of the garrisons he placed in Macedonia spelled doom for his invasion of the Balkans, and a treaty was signed between Bulgaria and the Sultanate of Rum in 1459 (863), with only Thrace, Macedonia, and Nishava under Turcoman control.
With this, Mehmet returned home to Iconium, having achieved a pyrrhic victory. He was now 49, a much older man, and one who lost all of the great energy of his youth. He expended himself on warfare, leaving Anatolia to fend for itself, the second Vizier of Bread (a Muslim Roman named Ismail) rising to dominate court politics, strengthening his position against that of the nobles who were increasingly antsy to have their levied soldiers returned to them. He returned to a court increasingly hostile to him, having expended his youth on a needlessly long war that just drained them of resources and manpower, and while he could show the world the conquests in the Balkans for himself, he could show little else other than that. He also abandoned his commitments to the Kingdom of Georgia as they solidified control over their little patch of the Caucasus, and strained the already harmed relationship between Rum and the Roman Empire when he invaded the Balkans, promising to return captured land to the Eastern Roman Empire but doing nothing to actually meaningfully assist them, even blocking off land routes from the captured cities to isolated metropolises like Thessaloniki. Mehmet had good intentions, and he had high hopes, but he ultimately failed to reach them.
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Sorry for the later post... I meant to release this on Sunday, but oh well! I will also be putting out a new and improved map of the Sultanate of Rum as of 1459, with their territories stretching from the Adriatic in the west to the Tigris in the east. Thank you all for liking this TL and being here for its return!
Part 33: Mehmet and Ismail, the Frail and the Strong
The Sultanate of Rum following the arrival of Sultan Mehmet in Iconium
Part 33: Mehmet and Ismail, the Frail and the Strong
While a somewhat fanciful reimagining of the scene that may have greeted an onlooker in the city of Iconium upon Sultan Mehmet’s return in 1459, it does do much to represent the dynamics that shifted so rapidly in the capital while the sovereign was off leading the conquests of the Balkans. Mehmet followed in the footsteps of his father in leading from the front, and while at first it seemed that his absence was only for a time and that he would return sooner rather than later, it quickly became obvious that Sultan Mehmet was going to be gone from Iconium for quite some time. He did return to Anatolia repeatedly, such as the multiple times when he visited the iqta of Salman son of Orhan son of Osman, but for the whole time he was away in the Balkans he was nigh completely absent from his own capital, leaving politics there to be redefined. Ismail, a Roman convert to Islam who was appointed by Mehmet to be the Vizier of Bread, came to dominate the court, and even (or at least supposedly) entered into an adulterous relationship with Mehmet’s wife Fatima, all the while sending regular reports to Mehmet on the Balkan front describing the distribution of bread and the situation back in Iconium in flowery and positive terms. While on the battlefield, Mehmet considered Ismail a good friend, the only side of him that he could see being the friendly picture that Ismail himself painted, but this was changed with Mehmet’s return to Iconium as a haggard old man, unable to do anything to stop Ismail’s effective rule.
A depiction of Ismail al-Rumi from a 20th century novelization of the lives of Mehmet and Ibrahim
While he was gone, Ismail had empowered the young grain bureaucracy and contributed to its entrenchment as a major institution in Rum’s government apparatus, forcing local magnates and holders of iqta to hand over large amounts of grain, with specified amounts sent directly from Iconium to Mehmet’s front in the Balkans. With Mehmet and his armies contented by the steady flow of grain coming from Iconium, Ismail was able to redistribute the rest to his allies and their holdings, while using Kurdish militias to confiscate land from some of the land-owners in east Anatolia. There steadily grew a notably vast swathe of land owned directly by Ismail, administered by Roman and Armenian bureaucrats, both Muslims and Christians. Mehmet’s return to Iconium was to a city that was more or less hostile to him, and greatly owned by his friend turned rival Ismail.
Mehmet’s first course of action upon his return in 1459 was to wrangle with Ismail’s entrenched control over the Ministry of Bread and his influence in the court, but not before the birth of his second son, Ibrahim. His first son died while he was away at the front, but there are some mysteries regarding the actual father of Ibrahim son of Mehmet, with some scandalous writing pointing fingers at the supposed adulterer Ismail as the father of Ibrahim. Mehmet’s first attempt to curb the power of Ismail was to hand out holdings to allied nobles, using his de jure power as Sultan and position above Vizier Ismail to confiscate minor land holdings and redistribute them with the assistance of his personal Kurdish guard. After this, he took some of the booty acquired during the conquest of the Balkans and invested it into mosques and shrines in Iconium, Prusa, and a few of the newly conquered cities in the Balkans, sending emissaries to his new vassals in Nishava, as well as commissioning new artistic works to rebuild the aging centuries old mosques and madrasahs of his predecessors. His second direction was to curb the influence of Ismail’s allies in Iconium by reaching out to them with bribes, but his lack of vitality and energy, his body filled with aches and pains from decades spent on horseback and on the military campaign trail, confined him mostly to his bed. As he grew older and older, he was less and less able to influence the nobles he had ignored for so long, abandoned for the glories of military victories that did little but bring woe to his soldiers and weaken him.
The next decade of his life would be defined by failures and political weakness, as his son grew up in a close relationship with his father, and Mehmet slowly turned his focus to family matters, and away from matters of state. He gave only a few specific edicts and delegated powers to numerous ministers, attempting to lessen the power of Vizier Ismail by spreading out his powers to numerous other ministers who he trusted considerably more than Ismail. Ultimately, however, Mehmet’s influence would only continue to decline, leading up to his death in 1468, with his son Ibrahim becoming Sultan at the age of 9, and Ismail swooping in to become regent for the boy-king. The power-hungry Roman would completely redefine Rum’s politics for decades to come, having already cemented his power and now the most powerful man in the Sultanate, with influence stretching from Nishava to Georgia, spanning the Adriatic, Mediterranean, and Black Seas. He was Sultan in all but name, and he would take full advantage of this.
Part 34: Ibrahim, the Powerless and the Conqueror
Sultan Ibrahim son of Mehmet
Part 34: Ibrahim, the Powerless and the Conqueror
While Ismail’s leadership helped to heal the relationship between Rum and Georgia, he was much less effective in the south, where the two most stable powers of the day, the Sultanates of Iconium and Cairo, quarreled for influence in the squabbling states of Iraq and southern Iran. While Ilkhanate rule had collapsed in the region with the conquest of Burilgi, regular raids from the northern remnant of Mongol control in the Iranian highlands had kept down many of the smaller states in Fars, Hormuz, Balochestan, Basra, and Baghdad, stopping any real active development on the part of the warlord states of southern Iran, but as Burilgi’s Empire collapsed in on itself in Tartary and Turkestan, the last remnant of support for the meager Ilkhan state collapsed with it. By 1468, the only pocket of remaining Mongol control in Iran was centered on a thin strip of land from the Ilkhan capital of Sultaniyeh stretching eastward to Rayy, the remainder of the mountainous land having fallen completely beyond their control, now ruled by local Shi’i magnates and clergy or by Turcic or Iranian nomadic warlords. With Iran essentially a non-entity among the Middle Eastern powers, Rum and Egypt turned their eyes to influence the struggling statelings of the easily reachable south.
The descendant of the warlord who declared himself Sultan of Baghdad, a Persian by the name of Mahmoud al-Baghdadi, was a very imposing man, his long black beard one and tall stature commonly remarked upon by the records of the time. His father, Uthman, paid tribute to the Ilkhan in Sultaniyeh, but upon his death, the newly crowned Mahmoud cut off all ties with the Mongol overlords and began a policy of expansionism, trying to establish a powerful state centered on Iraq. He very quickly consolidated the south of Iraq, putting down the rebellious emir of Basra with black powder weaponry, and began a push northwards that put him at odds with the Sultanate of Rum, whose control over the Jazira was uncontested. Mahmoud attempted to make in-roads into the Jazira by supplying members of the Kurdish bands who were exiled from the region following Rum’s conquest, but ultimately this did nothing, and his focus on eliminating any threat from the north had to be placated in another way. In 1469, Mahmoud al-Baghdadi received a missive from the court of the Sultan of the Mameluks in Cairo, which promised the Sultan protection in the case of any invasion by the Sultanate of Rum, as well as a long litany of rather symbolic protections and assurances awarded Mahmoud by the Caliph in Cairo. It would seem that Iraq would be in the hands of the Mameluks in one way or another, though this was challenged by an emissary sent personally by Sultan Ibrahim of Rum (though it is far more likely that the emissary was sent on the orders of Ismail al-Rumi) in 1472, which assured Sultan Mahmoud al-Baghdadi that there was no intention on the part of the Sultan of Rum to invade his holdings in Mesopotamia, and ensuring that the Sultanate of Rum would provide Kurdish levies to protect the defenseless Iraqi heartland from incursion from the Iranian plateau. Mahmoud al-Baghdadi seemed to have become a focus of much attention almost overnight, and he appreciated this, attempting to play the two powers off of one another in local politics. The Sultanate of Rum also made in-roads into Iran, but the more ideologically defined Shi’i magnates there resisted the influence of either of the Sunni powers, and the merchant-dominated regions of Hormuz and Fars fell readily into the sphere of influence of the Mameluk Sultanate of Cairo. In the foreign stage, Ismail al-Rumi and his child Sultan Ibrahim were failing to gain much influence, and were failing to expand the scope of the state. At first, this did not seem like an issue; while abroad, the influence of the Sultanate of Rum was declining, at home and with regards to their close allies in the Caucasus and Balkans, everything was alright. But, with the coming of famine in 1475 and an attempt to revive the alliance of the Balkans in 1478, it was obvious that something had to be done to reassert the power of the Sultanate of Rum.
Sultan Ibrahim (here depicted older than he really would have been) and Vizier Ismail meeting with Venetian shipmasters
The planning was already well under way in the earlier part of the 1470s. Emissaries were sent to Venice and Genoa, and new levies were called up from the iqtas of the nobles of Rum. The aged Ismail al-Rumi seemed to be gearing up to something, but what exactly it was was unclear to all those who noticed it. The young Sultan Ibrahim was now a young adult, able to assert himself more, but even he was quiet on the plans that were being implemented. It would seem that they did not want any news coming out about what the young man and the old man wanted. Then Ismail al-Rumi died in 1479, leaving the 20 year old Sultan Ibrahim to make do with what was already done. In late 1479, war was declared by Sultan Ibrahim on the Eastern Roman Empire, bringing a new war to the Balkans. In the initial part of the 15th century, the relationship between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sultanate of Rum was cordial but challenged, with the Roman Emperors knowing the obvious fact that the Sultans of Rum were by far their senior. The Roman Empire controlled only disparate islands and peninsulas, barely controlling their section of Asia Minor that was more or less under the rule of independently acting local magnates who only on occasion sent taxes to Constantinople, and by the 1450s, Constantinople had to pay tribute to the Sultanate of Rum, for Turcoman and Kurdish mercenaries who protected the northern fringes of their meager holdings from Slavic incursion. The newly crowned Emperor of Rome, Constantine, broke off this payment in 1466, but nothing could be done about it with the powerless and aged Sultan who had to contend with holding onto his newly conquered territories in the Balkans. But Ibrahim, the clever and strong young man who had grown into his own after years of powerlessness in a state dominated by the Roman Ismail, was able to finally put meaning behind the years of rhetoric and argument that had dominated the politics of the Aegean and Anatolia.
So war had come to the Balkans yet again, and this time it was the great conflict between the last remnant of the greatest empire on earth and the rising star of the Turcs, but who was involved in this conflict, and how were the factions arrayed? Quite obviously, the war can be understood as being between two camps: that which supported Basileos Constantine and the Eastern Roman Empire, and that which supported Sultan Ibrahim and the Sultanate of Rum. On the Roman side was the revived Balkan alliance of Bulgaria on the Danube and the smaller principalities in Serbia, all subject to the Patriarch of Constantinople and all committed to protecting the leader of Eastern Christendom. On the Turcoman side was the vassal of Nishava and, most surprisingly, the Most Serene Republic itself. While Venice and Genoa were quite recently embroiled in conflict in northern Italy as part of the Hundred Years War, Venice saw the opportunity to rapidly expand their control over the trade of the Eastern Mediterranean and sided with the Sultan against the Basileos, promised unchallenged ownership over Crete, the Peloponnese, and the islands of the Aegean, as well as special trading rights, if they assisted the Sultanate of Rum with naval operations and some overland support. The Kingdom of Georgia and their vassal in Trebizond were in a strange and precarious position: on the one hand, they were closely allied with the Sultanate of Rum, and thusly would realistically side with the Turcs against the Romans, but they were also subject to the Patriarch of Constantinople and saw the Basileos of Rome as the leader of Eastern Christendom, and so could not in good conscience support the violent invasion of the state they look up to for religious and ideological leadership. Georgia remained neutral in the war.
This war was a considerably shorter affair than the grueling conflict that Ibrahim’s ostensible father waged in the Balkans decades earlier. The loose alliance of Balkan states was rather unstable, and was split apart when the Hungarian crown attempted an invasion of Wallachia in 1480 to put down a peasant uprising there, something which the Bulgarians felt was a fundamental challenge to their stability, while the smaller Serbian principalities felt that Hungarian influence was not too major of a challenge to focus on. Bulgarian forces had pushed deep into Turcish territory by late 1480, but with the internal squabbles between the Slavic principalities and the last-minute decision to focus on the defense of the northern Danube frontier, the Bulgarians began to fall back, as joint Turcoman-Venetian offensives on the city of Constantinople itself challenge the safety and control of the Eastern Roman Empire. Hungarian forces pushed deep into Wallachia as Turcoman forces pushed northwards to the Danube, capturing the Bulgarian capital at Sofiya in 1480, and completely occupying the Danubian lowlands by early 1482, with the Serbian principalities unable to do much of anything other than protect the Kniaz of Bulgaria as he flees to Belgrad.
With the northern frontier secured, the siege on Constantinople could be honed in on by Sultan Ibrahim. Great cannons, the inheritance of the great developments in black powder begun first by the Chinese so long ago and brought to the dar al-Islam by the Mongol conquerors, were blasting the immense Theodosian Walls of Constantinople since the siege began in 1480, with smaller arms from the push to the Danube brought down by early 1481, and regular attacks on the western end of the city by Turcoman and Kurdish pikemen and nomads and on the eastern coast of the city by Venetian ships trying to destroy the ports and blockade any access into the city. The Theodosian Walls fell by 1482, with the forces of Sultan Ibrahim pouring into the glorious city and capturing it for the Sultan of Rum. The fate of Basileos Constantine Komnenos is uncertain and obscure, though there is a folk tradition that he took up a sword and himself fought in the defense of the city, but there is no real evidence for this narrative. Sultan Ibrahim was a young man when he achieved that which was only a dream for so many before him, only 23 years old, his beard short and a vibrant black on his high cheekboned face as he strode into the city of the world’s desire. In truth, he cannot take credit for this; the planning and preparation was, for the most part, done by Ismail al-Rumi, the conniving Roman who took power from himself and his father, but he took credit nonetheless, and almost immediately moved his state’s capital to the great city of the Romans.
"Verily you shall conquer Constantinople. What a wonderful leader will her leader be, and what a wonderful army will that army be!"
-A tradition of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him
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Sorry for the long wait on this one... I want to have a more regular schedule for releasing updates to the timeline, but it is all too easy to get busy and focused on other things... I hope this deeper look into the world of the late 15th century and the coming of one of the most momentous events in world history makes up for the delay! Thank you all for reading my timeline, and I hope I only continue to make an ever more interesting timeline for you all to read!
Well, that took a while! I wonder if there was something deeper to the whole conflict, or was Ibrahim and his regent motivated by plain ego?
Part 35: The New Order
Doge Carlo of Venice and Sultan Ibrahim of Rum (here depicted toward the end of his reign)
Part 35: The New Order
Sultan Ibrahim was not without challenges to his power and position, however. For attacking the great Roman Empire and the unorthodox alliance with the Venetians decried by the ‘Abbasid Caliph al-Sayfuddin denounced Sultan Ibrahim as a fraternizer with Christians who ate dogs and pigs behind closed doors. This did not stop the Mameluk Sultan from maintaining his trade ties with the Venetians, nor the presence of Venetian factories in the Levant. Another challenge faced by Sultan Ibrahim was the matter of the integration of the recently acquired Balkan territories into the Sultanate, now stretching from the Danube in the north to the Aegean in the south, from the Black Sea in the east to the Morava river in the west. The south Balkans were rather peaceable, glad to finally have peace after a century of bloodshed and warfare after the collapse of the Serbian empire, and the imposition of the jizya onto the Romans in Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly was a rather easy process. In northern Macedonia and some regions of Bulgaria that were captured by his father, a system was established of military service in exchange for not having to pay the jizya, implemented in order to ensure the loyalty of the men who rebelled against his father during his wars in the Balkans. The area along the Danube would remain under increased military control, with semi-autonomous Kurdish bands patrolling the countryside and settling along the mountains, in order to keep down the Bulgarian population there that supported the invasion of the now exiled Kniaz Vasily. The Serbian vassal of Nishava was expanded to include lands east of the Great Morava, leaving only the Principality of Belgrade, now a protectorate of Hungary, as the last remnant of Serbian independence. This period is also the last we hear of the Alexionites, who had been so thoroughly suppressed by the Rumi leadership over the years that they simply fade out of the historical record. The last instance of any mention of the followers of Alexios Kristos is a collection of tombstones in Thrace inscribed with typical Alexionite clerical phrases. The zealous rebels of days gone by are no more.
Not only was this period a new order for the Aegean and the Balkans, but it was a period of artistic and cultural efflorescence in Anatolia as well. With increased cultural contacts with the Roman world of Smyrna, Constantinople, and Thessaloniki, more Roman aesthetic influences entered into the art of Turcish Anatolia, including the adoption of Roman mosaic styles for popular art. This process was resisted by the ‘ulema of many of the major population centers in Anatolia, a pushback against Christian influence in the visual language of the day. This cultural struggle, which is recorded in the form of letters and writings by imams and qadis of the 1460s-1510s, could also be interpreted through a political lense, as the clerical elite of Iconium, increasingly referred to using the Arabic spelling Ayquni (rendered in Turcoman as Akoni), resisted the shift to Constantinople of the political elite. By pushing against Roman influence in culture, they could, in a sense, resist against Roman influence in politics. Rather unpopular and commonly ignored fatwas were issued by religious leaders in this period banning the sale of mosaic tiles and fish from the Aegean, both major exports of the Roman-majority territories of the Sultanate, and both associated with the Christian communities there (mosaic tiles for the decoration of churches and fish primarily due to the simple fact that it would mostly be Christians catching them).
The renovated face of the Great Mosque of Constantinople, with its twin minarets just out of view and recently added script tiles visible
And there goes one odd spark in the history of Eastern Rome. Have these remnants migrated into Central and Eastern Europe? There could be some fun to be had in their teachings hybridizing with local beliefs.
On another note, how is Europe viewing the snuffing out of the Eastern Roman Empire?