[quote=@Nilesapa]
I swear I recall the map extending across continental europe.

S'ppose twas just me imagining' things again.

Now where to learn about this corner of the world?  All my medieval audiobooks I found all centers in northern and Western Europe.  All I know about this place is the Christian Egyptians and the massive mosque the Byzantines- I mean romans- built.
[/quote]

Syria and the Levant - which is being claimed by Vilage last I checked - is pretty much the core financial center of the Roman Empire in the east with Egypt being the bread-basket as much as northern Africa is. In the recent history up to this point this region would have been the battleground between they and the Sassanids in Persia.

I don't imagine the war went as far, but with one of the major conflicts with the Persians, the Sassanids managed to get as far as Egypt and Constantinople when fighting the Byzantines. This conflict would have been a decade or two before this RP begins, or at most before Mohammad. During this conflict the Sassanids looted Jerusalem and stole the pieces of the True Cross which they took back to Persia as war trophies. When Heraculius ascended to power as Emperor he reversed the failing Byzantine favor (if in part because Constantinople was impenetrable) and drove the Sassanids back, and I think reclaimed the pieces of the True Cross from the Persians.

It was of course this conflict that laid the groundwork for what would be the weakened Byzantium and Sassanids so that Abu-Bakr and his successors could sweep in and start taking over, and for the Arabs to seize some of Byzantium's richest provinces.


And the Byzantines did not build Mosques. Mosques are a Muslim concept. The Byzantines - and later Romans - were Christians and they would have built churches. Many of which were ad-hoc'd as Mosques early on as the population of the region converted to Islam.