WI: Empress Yodit Restored Israel

Fatimids have an empire, gold, and slaves soldiers who are most likely better quality troops, they tried to take andalusia during their peak i.e. this period.
 
It was 450K including conscripts asnd mercenaries recruited to put down the revolts, and the navy was 100 ships, and two thirds of the sailors were mercenaries or hired pirates.
An army that big cannot be sustained for an offensive war food wise or money, the fatimids will cut the trade routes they had a powerful navy as well. Some of the hired hired priates and mercs could be bought off. Also alot of those pirates will be shia as they might be coming from yeman, i fouvt they wpuld want to destroy their caplihate.
 
Also, her empire was filthy rich. She could always afford more mercenaries, so manpower wouldn't be an issue. Problem was that all the Coptic Kings beneath her wanted her gone. However, her dynasty held the crown for several generations, so that shows that they didn't have the power to unseat her.
 
Oh. They were rich, too. So… That's an issue. But, is there any way they could be beaten? Just to carve out Israel? According to my timeline, the Gideons (her dynasty) gets the boot in 1062 by the Saracens, and have to take advantage of the First Crusade to get Israel back again. What would be needed to take it for a little under 70 years?
 
I'm working on a scenario for a game mod, and I want to have her take Israel, Jordan and Sinai. I just want to know what the PoD would have to be, and what would have to happen. I really thought it would be easier, but I'm willing to rewrite it. What would be necessary for her to take the Holy Land back for the jews?
 
There is just no way this is happening; the Fatimids were one of the richest, most advanced, most innovative empires on Earth at this time period. The evidence of Empress Gudit in of itself is completely contradictory: some say she was a Jewish queen, but she was more likely a Muslim queen who founded the Sultanate of Showa, which makes much more sense than a Jewish renegade plundering Ethiopia for decades. It also explains why there are records of her sending gifts to various Muslim rulers in Yemen as well. There is also no reason for the Jews to revolt against what might be the most tolerant pre-modern state to ever exist.
 
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Yeah, the only possible way that this might work would be if the Fatimids get stopped in Tunisia and the decline of the Abbasids is far messier abd bloodier than iotl.
 
Yeah, the only possible way that this might work would be if the Fatimids get stopped in Tunisia and the decline of the Abbasids is far messier abd bloodier than iotl.
Well, Let's go with that. I'm fine with the highly-unlikely. Just not the impossible. And as for the dubiousness of Yodit existing, I picked her becuase the time where the Jewish Gideon dynasty held the Imperial throne was stated to have started with her takeover. So… Just what if the Gideons were able to return to Israel before the Saracens took over? I guess I can restructure this to begin with a challenge: Gideons take control of the Holy Land, Sinai, and Jordan before the Saracens can take over, the Gideon dynasty abdicates the throne of Abyssinia to rule over the new restored Jewish kingdom, and they have enough time to complete the third temple and restore the High Priesthood before the Saracens arrive.
This is what I want to use to start the scenario, so anything that's possible, no matter how improbable, is allowed. So, let's start with the Fatimids getting stopped in Tunisia, and a far messier decline of the Abbasids.
Is there anything else that would be needed to make it happen with that in place? I don't know much about the campaign in Tunisia, nor the decline of the Abbasids, and how they would even play into it.
 
Good question.

The Jewish population in the conquered homeland would likely revolt against the Fatimids, and Abyssinia had a massive army at the time. Having to put down revolts and repel a massive army would likely prove too much for the Fatimids, and I believe Yodit would indeed be able to proclaim herself Queen of Israel. As for the Christians, that's a tougher one. I'm pretty sure there'd be a constant back and forth with her dynasty (the Gideon royal house) getting kicked out by invading forces and having to reclaim it over and over. This is why I see it as an interesting idea. Taking it is one thing, but holding it is another. A three way conflict over the holy land makes it far more interesting.

The Sassanids were helped by the Jewish people in their conquest of Byzanrine Palestine, but that didn't help the Sassanids hold the region.
 
This is, unfortunately, better suited for a Paradox game than history. Best-case scenario is Ethiopia proclaimed as some kind of "New Israel" (and an unstable mess of one at that) and more Jewish-conversion-justified-as-descent than OTL, which is an interesting idea in itself.
 
An issue with this that no one has addressed yet is that we don't even know if there ever was a historical Jewish Queen Yodit. Frankly, to say so is speculation. While we do know from contemporary sources that there was a "warrior queen" ruling some part of modern day Ethiopia (sources say her domain was in the southern part of the habasha), the claim that she was Jewish comes from oral sources. But we have other oral sources saying that she was a pagan Sidama queen, so we can't pick and choose the sources saying she was Jewish just to make for a more exciting story. The claim that she could be pagan Sidama is reinforced by the fact that many Sidama polities were historically led by women. There's even Somali references to a Muslim queen in Hararghe, although the connection of her to Gudit is much more tenuous given that Somali sources tend to place her all over the place (from the 10th century to the 15th) and conflate her with other female rulers.

I think what we do know for certain from the sources is that there was a very unpopular queen around 960 AD Ethiopia. Claims about her religion and ethnicity are tenuous at best, especially because they're coming from oral accounts trying to explain the fall of the Axumite Empire, and oral accounts never give boring stories like "the shift of Red Sea trade routes led to economic decline and state collapse." Instead they invent some "outsider" to invade and collapse the Empire in one fell swoop, because that makes for a good story. For all we know, Gudit could have gotten to power through a much less exciting palace coup during the politically unstable waning days of the Axumite Empire, and the economic decline that characterized her reign made her so unpopular that she was mythologized as a pillaging Jewish warlord. We don't know.

EDIT: Also, claims that Yodit had 450k troops to work with are definitely impossible. Ethiopia's population in 1600, 600 years of population growth later, was around 2,104,000. I don't have figures of Ethiopia's population in 1000 AD, but it's reasonable to assume it must have been less than 2 million given that Ethiopia at the time wasn't as famine prone as it became later on. If we're absurdly generous and assume a population of 2,104,000 in 1000 AD as well; 450,000 soldiers out of that population would represent 21% of the population in the army. To put this in perspective, the Kingdom of Prussia, considered to be one of the most highly militarized states in the world, had an army that was 3.4% of the population at most. Such a disproportionately sized army is unprecedented and logistically unfeasible.

Claims that Ethiopia at the time was rich are actually not true either. It wasn't as poor as it was in the 7th or 8th centuries, but it was still pretty impoverished. A sign of this is that ancient Axum stopped producing coinage as it declined and fell; we still didn't see any coinage in the period we're talking about, suggesting that economic recovery was incomplete at best.
 
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Isn't this ASB, claiming ethopia has a almost half million strong army marching said army through the middle east. Defeating the most some of the powerful states on the planet, which we have evidence showing they are more rich, advance technological wise, more soldiers, better quality soldiers. When we have so little evidence for this Yodit.
 
Look: I regret starting this, and I hoped that not replying for long enough would get that across. I guess not. I was trying to get help witing an alt. history scenario, but too many people just jumped at everything. "But what if she didn't exist?" There are churches in Ethiopia that still bear scorch marks over 1000 years old that they attribute to her, and they attribute her to how the Gideon Dynasty took over the empire for a few generations. There is evidence that King Gideon IV of Semien left his throne to his only child: his daughter, Yehudit, who led her people in resisting forced conversion to Christianity, and retaliated with extreme vengeance. She filled churches with hay, lit the hay on fire, and a lot of the ones that survived stand to this day with scorch marks on the ceiling, that they attribute to her rampage. But, with no one caring, when I just wanted to get help writing an alt. history scenario, no matter how improbable, because I'm working on an alt. history mod for a Paradox game that revolves around this scenario as the first of many scenarios to go completely differently. But since on a site where discussing the improbable happening is encouraged, apparently this one subject has to be met with such harsh criticism, I'm done. Happy? You win. You stood against the very spirit of the site you use, and stifled it in one person. I hope you're happy.
 

Kaze

Banned
If she was single at the time, she might make it easier - marrying one of the potential Kings of Jerusalem might also forge an alliance. Though there might be one little problem - her Jewishness might be a no go with the marriage suit.
 
@Dolphy Blue Drake: I, for one, thought this was an intriguing scenario, since I know next to zip about most history between Emperor Constantine and the Battle of Hastings.

I don't say that one should COMPLETELY ignore the facts, but history HAS been known to get facts screwy as well. An army of 450K might be ASB for the period or even regards percentage of the populace, but just because different sources attribute different religions to her isn't necessarily an issue. The first Europeans encountering Buddhists believed them to be Christians IIRC.

It is also possible that the reasons for the conflictign sources on her religion were written by the very people who had been opposed to her in her lifetime. So, to a formerly persecuted Coptic retelling, in the redacted version, she could be cast as a Jewess or a pagan or a Muslim (or anything NON-Coptic) to demonstrate why she was offensive. I don't normally bring religion up where it's not asked for, but the Biblical books of Kings and Chronicles are a case in point. Presumably they date from AFTER the Northern kingdom fell, so they were eritten by scribes from the YHWHistic southern kingdom who had a bias against the north, and as a result NO king in the north is seen as having done ANYTHING praiseworthy.

It wouldn't be ridiculous for Yodit/Judith to have undergone a similar smear campaign. She was a woman ruler, she was a foreigner and she wasn't liked by her underlings. All things that would've been unpopular. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we were to find sources alleging she was a lesbian or a nymphomaniac or both. The fact that she WASN'T unseated AFAICMO by a revolt seems to say something about her.
 
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