Main Interest Check. Posted here because I've elected this forum as being a candidate to contain the RP: http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/59151/posts/ooc?page=1#post-1824267
Just lemme drop this here.
______
In the name of God, merciful and great!
This work is written by William ibn Pepin Al-Okatania and professed to his disciple as a summarization on the Grace of God on our people for his study. For praise be to God and the philosopher who would take up the art of studying his name and his people. Of on the year 132 the house of Utman did retire by God's grace, ensuring the roots of Cordoba's growth, if God wills it.
Of whom on the Death of Marwan, Omar ibn Sulayaman took disposition to the new Caliphs and became his own Emir. He who embattled with the Sons of Agila to find peace with the Dhimmi of northern Isbānīya. Who's graces founded a Sultanate to rival Egypt, and the Byzantines, if God wills it.
Upon looking upon the great city of Cordoba take a moment to realize the fortune bestowed upon it that it would be a jewel on the western edge of the sea, nestled as the precipice of the worlds. Though we are not the center of the world – as this is in Mecca – we are aligned with the dignity of faith and reason. So take from your teacher the wisdom well learned that aligned to this moment.
When you travel the country roads of Andalusia, and come to a village of peaceful Christians: note if they are sons to Agila, the last enclaves of his legacy. For though of the Christian Aryan faith sought not to endanger his throne in prosecution to the Catholics to now rule the rugged north of Isbānīya, where they build their fortresses. For in his faith and recognition of humility in the prophet Īsā kept a unified kingdom.
Though do not examine this period as a defeat to the Mujahedin as they came with the Holy Word. For though the fighting was honorable and hard, what it thrust upon us I would dare to say – if God wills it – that it kept us from the eyes of the Kafirs in Rome as they turned on to Sicily or to the Holy Lands.
For thank the old Emir Omar for seeking their peace. To grant upon the pilgrims their continued safe journey to the holy sites and whose passage has only made Cordoba greater, if God wills it. And whose traveling monks have only helped to build a second Bayt al-Hikma, a new House of Wisdom.
Weep for the fated original House, which met with fire by the Kafirs from beyond Ṣin, who burned the library, before declaring themselves Munafiq. And upon them in Persia conducted their hypocrisy as Shia. And so too the House of Osman, who would shame us by denying from us the roads to Ṣin. Though we may sit upon the tables with the old Roman books saved from their Istanbul we can not trade further.
And God praise to Caliph Muhhamad ibn Hisham, his benevolent leadership who doth in seeking circumnavigation of the Turks and Persians sought a new road to Ṣin and Hindustan. Commissioning the spirit of the Barbary sailor Hammud al-Tunes who set out to settle the challenges of the courts in the width of the world. And on his return brought back not silks and spices from the far east but returning with birds as if plucked from paradise, and foreign women. Telling stories of a land not Hindustan or Ṣin, but of Q'ba,
Upon his return the Caliph named Hammud emir this strange land. Charging on him the great task of overlooking it. To spread the Word of God. And to see what wealth it may have.
But the greed of man pursues our mission. As do the Kafirs.
God is Great!
***
The year is 1535, in a world where through a few rolls of the dice has become different from our own. What has happened instead is a political landscape in which the Muslim powers of the Iberian Peninsula remained, extending Moorish dominance far beyond what it was in our time line. Dominating southern Spain with the Hispanic Christian Kingdom now occupying the rugged mountainous span of Northern Spain, hugged against the Pyrenees. In the hills and mountains, these new Spanish are not renowned for the naval voyages they commissioned, but as a side-effect of the events some many centuries, and far beyond the memories of any man there have become more renowned for their castles than their ships, or anything.
For over Spain does rule the Caliphate in Cordoba, with its Sultans and Emirs.
To best understand this world, you should know how it ruled in ours, parallel to the events that have changed. To understand this we must go to the 6th century.
Since the fall of Rome the Iberian peninsula came to be ruled over the Germanic tribe of the Visigoths. With the advent of Christianity this Gothic kingdom of Spain aligned itself to the Pope in Rome, or to the Christian philosophy known as Arianism, a humbler less decadent vision of Christianity that focused itself on the Humanity of Jesus Christ as attributed to the Libyan Theologian Arius. During the 6th century the king Agila ruled over the Visigoths of Spain.
Agila was a devout Arian, who often times condemned the Catholic populations of Spain. His aggressive outlook on the Catholics and the civil strife that had rocked Hispania prior to his ascension – and as a mechanization of his ascension – marked a undoubtedly disputed rule. His rule was marked with civil war. Facing defeat and contest from his brethren as the countryside of Hispania burned in war, the Byzantines arrived.
Summoned by Agilla's rivals and due in part to the Emperor Justinian's lust for a restored Rome the Greek Armies of Byzantium landed on the Spanish Peninsula and quickly partook in the fray. Breaking Agila I and occupying much of Spain.
Byzantine rule over Iberia would come to an end as Justinian's Empire collapsed and the Muslims of the Ummayad Dynasty arrived. Having swept across Northern Africa they went on a grand conquest of the the Iberian Peninsula, breaching the Pyrenees mountains before being defeated and sent into retreat at Tours at the hands of Charles Martel and the founder of the House of Karling.
After which in Spain progressed a slow Reconquista.
Despite this, the Arab world flourished through much of the 7th to 13th centuries in a golden age of reason and thought characterized by a school of Islamic academic thought: Mu'tazila. The Mu'tazila school of Islam characterized an academic and analytical study of the Koran and the Hadiths much akin to Greek analytical thought, as well as an absorption of Divine Justice. In fact, the Mu'tazila school was strengthened by the vast compendium of translated Greek Work housed in their great library in Bahgdad. They were a catalyst to the advancements in Medicine, politics, and their own theology (affecting such things as Islamic Cosmology) during a period of considerable tolerance (if relative to Europe at the time).
This golden age though wouldn't last, as Crusades called from Europe in the 12th century stressed the Arab caliphate and fractured its politics, marking the beginning of a steady decline to be finished by the Mongol sacking of Bahgdad in the 13th century, followed up by subsequent invasions from Mongol successor states such as the Timurids.
Islam's relevance in history though was not lost. By the fall of Constantinople to the Turks and the closing of the Silk Road to European merchants the Spanish Reconquista had come to a close. At this point we reach a stage where it's all grade-school history. The Spanish crown commissions Christopher Columbus and in 1492 he discovers the Americas on a quest to prove the width of the world and the practicality of straight-up sailing to Asia.
As well, throughout the centuries Spanish threats of a naval invasion of Britain spurred the British to construct a lasting naval tradition which lasted clear to the 19th or 20th century, and acted as the means for it to throw itself into colonialism.
And now let us turn back the clock to the 6th century again. What would happen if Hispania saw unity at the rise of Agila I?
With the cessation of hostilities among the Gothic kingdoms of Spain Agila rules in a fair amount of peace over Hispania. Applying Arainism in a less dogmatic approach he lives his ruling years in tolerance of the Catholics and musters enough allies to quash what rivals he had, thus prevent Byzantine conquest of Iberia by not giving Justinian the ticket to enter the Gothic wars.
By the arrival of the Ummayads, the Arabs and their Moorish subjects find instead a unified Gothic state in Spain. Though still with the backing of Northern Africa and the Arab world and Persia behind it the Ummayads mash the number game through Spain's southern half before stalling itself as they reach the rocky north of the Penninsula. At the foot hills of the Pyrenees they stall and their conquest ceases in the face of stalwart Christian defenders. Hostilities briefly cease.
At the closure of the Ummayad dynasty the local Emirs in Spain move for independence naming one of their own – Omar ibn Ali – as the Sultan of an independent Moorish kingdom in Spain. Omar, an old man and a pacifist by nature senses the potential hostilities from the Christian north. On advise from Christian courtiers who point out the Christian shrines and holy sites in Iberia, Omar moves for peace with the Christians, promising guarded passage for pilgrims by Christians in his demesne.
This move lessens the relevance of Iberia on the Papacy's radar and a papal supported campaign to push out the Moors from Spain is never called, fancying more to reclaim the Holy Land in the 12th century.
As it happened, the Mongols burn Bahgdad and destroying the House of Wisdom, scattering Muslim scholars. Though, with their beacon darkened in the east there was one which glowed distantly in the west.
Without the military stresses of a Reconquista to contend with, the Moors of Spain have evolved a rich society. The typical levels of tolerance leveed on Christian and Jewish communities has permitted the growth of a vibrant intellectual and legal network in their kingdom based in the common execution of Gothic and Sharia law to some level. Cordoba – the seat of Muslim power and academia and the name-sake of the local Caliphate – rises above the kingdom as a crowning jewell of success and academic study.
Monks from the north on pilgrimage to the holy sites in the south often bring with them a vast amount of intellectual knowledge that the Mu'tazilah of Cordoba are all too eager to hear and adapt in accordance to the Hadiths. It is said that Cordoba was a vast rival to Constantinople herself, and it still holds that title.
The richness of the local libraries of Cordoba is enhanced at the arrival of refugee scholars from the west seeking a new home after Mongols burned their library, marking a shift in importance from the East to the West.
In the Mongolian wake the importance of the Mu'tazilah school wanes and dies, but lingers and plants a second house on the soil of Andalusia. The Ashari school rises to dominate the Sunni world in the east, and in some way Taqleeq – imitation – becomes a norm in Academia from Damascus to Cairo.
Cordoba, as a mixing pool of thought ascends by the 15th century as a center of Humanism. Islamic Humanism.
Cordoba had little interest in European affairs, and as such never made continuous threats to dispatch an Armada north. The Christian kingdom of Hispania provided a stalwart defense on land, built of stone and rimmed in steal. And for all intents and purpose the practicality for Cordoba to march north was close to nill, and there was much greater interest in asserting its power over local Arab kingdoms, such as Tunis.
Meanwhile in the east, the Ottoman family arose from what was left of the Mongol khanates. Founded by Osman in the late 13th century the House of Osman held numerous titles from Sultan to Khan. With connections to the Mongols the Ottoman house somewhere down the line converted to Shia Islam, alienating themselves with the more popular Sunni Islam. But it did not make them all the less powerful as they absorbed the last vestiges of Genghis Khan's vast Empire to push west and to take Constantinople.
Declaring themselves the new Rome they initiated a campaign into Europe and locked out the Sunnis as well as the Europeans from trade with Asia, seizing all product along the Silk Road as their own. Angered by such a disaster Cordoba commissioned for exploration west-ward to arrive into the east.
And well, it can all be gleamed from the above.
So, without further ado it's owed to the RP that the relevant factions your character(s) will be serving under is introduced:
CALIPHATE OF CORDOBA (Khilāfat Qurṭuba)
The Moorish kingdom in Spain was founded after the disintergration of the Ummayad dynasty, after which Omar ibn Ali claimed the local throne of Andalusia. It was named Sultan of the Moors in the west, though quickly over time he named himself Caliph in a bid to compete with prestige with his neighboring Muslim kingdoms.
Peace had also been secured with the Christian kingdoms of Hispania, which spans Iberian Galacia to the Catalonian pyrennes. Creating the standing promise to keep safe the pilgrims of Europe as they journey to the numerous odd Christian holy sites in the Muslim controlled Spanish Kingdom the two have lived in a state of peace with one another. With the Christians in too defensible of terrain and in too high a number to take on, and the Muslims posing no tangible threat to Christian lives not even the clergy could muster the support to make holy war.
As a whole the Cordoban Caliphate exercises a large degree of tolerance to the non-Arab groups and faiths in their kingdom. In either case, the Cordoban Caliphate has a wide range of diversity with local Jews and Christians, often deviant from what the northern Catholics would prefer. Several old schools of Christianity branded as heresy in the Catholic world have found a home in Muslim lands, if in secluded and distance enclaves. Such schools as Catharism and Arianism.
Cordoba's prestige is only doubled given the contact it has with European pilgrims traveling into or through Spain. Though initially cold, as the existence of the Moorish kingdom became more common-place the exchange of ideology became more common place and the wealth of view-points available to the dissection of reason from the Mu'tazilah.
With the raise of the Shia Turkish Empire in the East and the effective closure of the Silk Road through Anatolia and Persia – itself a Shia kingdom all the same – there came a desperate feeling in the kingdom that something had to be done to reproduce the Silk Road and initiate the flow of thread. On Greek knowledge from Bahgdad's former House of Wisdom and some Greek Refugees from what was once Constantinople the question of the Earth's size was again revived. A number of theories were postulated on the theories of the Pythagorean school, or Plato and Aristotle as to the circumference of Earth. The question was only made more complicated with the number of local measures that had made their way to Cordoba's court that made a calculation all the more difficult.
In time it was settled the only way to settle the dispute was to sail to Asia themselves and prove a sea route is possible. Conscripting the Berber sailor Hammud the caliphate sent west an expedition to seek Asia, and instead found the New World, establishing initial trading posts and then a full colony on the island of Cuba, adapted from local language to Arabic as Q'ba.
Cordoban colonies dot the Caribbean but they have yet to flirt with the mainland, with much wealth for their use thus far on the islands. Products such a sugar cane becoming big in the Andalusian courts at home.
Upon being named Emir of Q'ba, Hammud took the name Hammud Al-Q'bahi.
MORROCAN SULTANATE
Though sharing relation to Cordoba in the north through marriage between the dynasties of the lesser and greater nobles of either state, it does not mean the Moroccans were willing to sit idly by. Though coming in second place – in not only colonization but politics as well - they've had the financial misfortune to come far behind their northern neighbors in exploring the new world.
Morocco attempts to maintain through direct crown control small colonies along the coast of what is in our time-line Brazil, though adapting into Arabic the name of the region by the Guarani people to be: Pindrami.
Recent renewed attempts at seeking a work-around by the Morrocans to Asia have instead treated them to the coast of Maine. Though the troubled colonies talk much about abandoning their cold settlements to defect to live in Q'ba or to simply bolster down in Pindrami.
Of interest in the Morrocan politics is a lighter tolerance to Shia than their neighbors in the north. Though intolerance to the branch doesn't manifest in active violence, the Sunni crown of Andalusia has often chosen to actively alienate Shia fortune seekers. Many of whom travel to – or were forced by merchant lords – Pindrami to assist in working on small farms growing palm farms, or assisting in administrating Banana plantations, largely operated by natives captured as slaves in raids into the inland.
THE SERENE REPUBLIC OF VENICE
Of the European powers most at risk from the closure of Byzantine docks and the severing of the Silk Road to Europe is the Republic of Venice. With dominance over the Greek peninsula and Croatian coast since the years of the Crusades Venice has long been the dominant power over the Mediteranean. However, this power is beginning to be challenged with the marked rise of an Mahometan power, and the shattering of the Greek state. And with their trade with Asia closed and their sphere destabilized the patricians of the mighty Republic.
At home, Venice subsisted with an industry built on the mining of salt, which was a high-priced commodity across Europe. Its swampy island city befitted greatly from the income, and just as well the taxes it held on its main-land territories (themselves little more than a buffer against Italian powers and the Germans) and their Croatian and Greek colonies. They only had more power when they were allowed exclusive access to the Byzantine docks at Constantinople affording them immense prestige and economic benefits for sitting in the front row of Constantinople's economic concert.
But, as a Venetian poet once wrote in the days after Constantinople's fall, and the loss of their exclusive rights: “Even the plunderers of Byzantium must face God's punishment.”
On a thin ledge they stood as the Turks waged war into Bulgaria and against the Hapsburgs. On the arriving news of the discovery of a new world the Patricians and the Doge saw an effort at carving out a new source of wealth for Venice. Setting sail out through the Straights of Gibraltr they sailed for the New World.
Hoping to find a river that cut the New World in two in which they might sail through to the other-side, the Venetian expedition instead landed on the coast of what is today's Georgia, opting to name the land they found Agostinea instead, after the Doge of Venice Agostino Balatia.
Planting the Venetian standard they declared the land in the name of the Serene Republic, before establishing a number of small colonial holdings in our world's Puerto Rico, Florida, and Nicaraqua (respectively declared: Borincana, Tequestana, and Ludivaca).
As a whole, Venice is one of two powers in Italy attempting to make a desperate bid for the New World to rebalance its position of power. As with their counter-part their colonists mostly involve Catholics seeking shelter from religious tension in Europe, or Greek Orthodox diaspora from Greece or Albania, the Orthodox Christians largely not being the preferred people of faith to represent Venice in Mother Europe.
And though closing the Straights of Gibraltr to European merchants would be a sure way to attract war, the powers that be in Morocco and Cordoba would not care for the spread of European interests in the New World they have ventured to. In the interests of making it harder for the Venetians – as well as the Genoans – the Caliph of Andalusia and Sultan of Morroco have both engaged in encouraging piracy on Republican vessels.
Originating from the dysfunctional Emirate of Tunisia, Barbary pirates have been raiding Venetian and Genoan ships since they first planted their colonies. Often acting on bounties placed on the European vessels there were initial violent attacks of supply ships or colonial adventures that passed too close to the North African shore.
This act has lead captains of Venetian and Genoan ships as being masters of some of the better armed vessels of the sea to make harder targets for enterprising and scheming pirate lords. To protect their supplies and their crews from slavery.
REPUBLIC OF GENOA
As a power, Genoa was second to Venice as one of the Italian Merchant Republics. Often, the time states feuded violently with each other over trade rights and supremacy. Situated on the other-side of the Italian boot, near to the border with the Kingdom of France and its Occitanian territories of the south, Genoa wishes to – like Venice – expand and replace its lost trade rights when Byzantium fell.
Its arrival to the Americas came second to Venice, which came third in its own way to the Muslims. Finding landing on the empty, abandoned island of Montserrat – or San Maria – they made some moves to spread outward, but largely coming into conflict with the Moors who all to often chose to take their crews as slaves sold in Q'ba.
A secondary colony was established on the coast of what is today Venezuela, naming it Serraria, for the merchant family for whom the captain – Simone Serra – was a son of.
And though closing the Straights of Gibraltr to European merchants would be a sure way to attract war, the powers that be in Morocco and Cordoba would not care for the spread of European interests in the New World they have ventured to. In the interests of making it harder for the Venetians – as well as the Genoans – the Caliph of Andalusia and Sultan of Morroco have both engaged in encouraging piracy on Republican vessels.
Originating from the dysfunctional Emirate of Tunisia, Barbary pirates have been raiding Venetian and Genoan ships since they first planted their colonies. Often acting on bounties placed on the European vessels there were initial violent attacks of supply ships or colonial adventures that passed too close to the North African shore.
This act has lead captains of Venetian and Genoan ships as being masters of some of the better armed vessels of the sea to make harder targets for enterprising and scheming pirate lords. To protect their supplies and their crews from slavery.
HANSEATIC LEAGUE
Formed in the 13th century along the German and Baltic north coast, the Hanseatic League operated as a merchant guild working to protect the economic and defensive interests of its member state's merchant guilds. Membership included the German city states of Bremen, Munster, Holstein- Lubeck, Colberg, Danzig and Gotland. Issuing banknotes for trade, the Hansa became a major economic power in the Baltic and North Sea and a major economic party in the politics of the Holy Roman Empire. The Hansa operated trade posts and ports from London to Novogorod.
The Baltic Sea had long been void of an organized trading organization has existed in the Mediterranean (Venice, Genoa, Pisa). The region had long been defined by inland Viking raids up until the the Christianization of the Scandinavians in the 10th/11th centuries. But in the century between there was very little organization except outside of the Republic of Gotland.
Within German politics the Hanseatic League would rise and then fall in importance. But the centralization of the crown of the Holy Roman Empire in the Hapsburg dynasty shaken with shattering defeats at the hand of the Ottoman Dynasty in Bulgaria and Hungary the shape of the Holy Roman Empire is shaken. With Hapsburg prestige and hegemony damaged as they lose their power-base the Empire of the Germans has regressed to a state before the reforms of the Hohenstaufen. With the Hapsburgs and the college of Prince-electors becoming what they were before Frederick Barbarosa reeled in the Empire: a coalition of feuding princely states.
Matters within Germany are only made more exaggerated by the rise of the heretical church view of Protestantism. Already the faith has become popular in many German prince-states and only instigates further conflict within the Empire.
The hostile atmosphere and the shared collective economy and defense provided by the Hanseatic League was able to produce a feeling of coalition between the member states. Though many members dropped out as many of the nobles of the Hansa converted to Protestantism the Hansa is still the premier economic power of the North Sea.
In the heat of Martin Luther's Reformation and the internal hostilities within the Empire the members of the Hanseatic League entered into a personal union with one another to create a centralized state to safe guard the individual interests of the Hansa. Operating as a Republic now within the elective government of the HRE the Hanseatic League was more capable of centralizing its wealth and resources and between the states of Holstein-Lubeck, Bremen, the Dutch, and Pomerania became a principality large enough to be an elector in its own right.
The discovery of the New World was a avenue they felt inspire to pursue to further define their identity in German politics as a successful and rising Elector State. Through their wide-ranging resources on the North Sea and into Russia they mustered their first expedition under Hans Kollen von Hamburg and set sail for the west from the London Steelyard, landing off the coarse of modern-day Manhatten and establishing the colony of Neu Holstein. Further colonies up and down the coast were established: Hellstadt (south of Boston) and Kollenlond (Rhode Island).
The political dynamic within Germany has created an atmosphere of prejudice against Protestants. The Hansa offers a promise of new life for their Protestant brothers and cousin faiths in the New World. They as well often take on persecuted men of faith from Britain and Scandinavia who want to pursue their promise.
WHY NOT ANYONE ELSE?
As it stands the other powers in Europe commonly associated with New World colonization either don't exist, or the alteration in the time-line has left them otherwise distracted. Most major of all is the non-existence of Spain as unified by the Kingdom of Castille. The only faction related to them is the Kingdom of Hispania which sits precariously in the mountainous north of Spain and precariously nuzzled between the Muslims and the Kingdom of France. This region hasn't been beneficial to the Kings of Hispania as they sit atop their mountains, though the mountains have brought out the rise of many castles, most of which may help the many minor lord-lings defend their claims but does little for New World ambitions. Very often those adventurers and exiles who end up in the New World from Hispania end up doing so under the banner of Genoa or Venice, or very rarely on Moorish expeditions.
Like-wise, the British and French are currently incapable or care for the New World. The non-threat of a Spanish Armada have left the British Navy small and incapable of long-distance campaign and the focus of the British crown being focused on subjugation of their own islands, and in the continued quest to obtain the French throne (and the French in defending their crown from the British) in a prolonged war of succession and claim.
Coupled in this is the social complexity brought on by the reformation which is permeating European society – in some areas more successfully than others. The rest of the Germans are fighting themselves, or fighting the Ottomans. And the Russians – who would never sail to America anyways – are still fractured principalities with what little concept of Third Rome they got when the Byzantine Empire collapsed.
And for the Ottomans, they already have the Silk Road. If there was any desire for foreign and exotic expansion than there is always the slave markets of Africa.
Just lemme drop this here.
______
In the name of God, merciful and great!
This work is written by William ibn Pepin Al-Okatania and professed to his disciple as a summarization on the Grace of God on our people for his study. For praise be to God and the philosopher who would take up the art of studying his name and his people. Of on the year 132 the house of Utman did retire by God's grace, ensuring the roots of Cordoba's growth, if God wills it.
Of whom on the Death of Marwan, Omar ibn Sulayaman took disposition to the new Caliphs and became his own Emir. He who embattled with the Sons of Agila to find peace with the Dhimmi of northern Isbānīya. Who's graces founded a Sultanate to rival Egypt, and the Byzantines, if God wills it.
Upon looking upon the great city of Cordoba take a moment to realize the fortune bestowed upon it that it would be a jewel on the western edge of the sea, nestled as the precipice of the worlds. Though we are not the center of the world – as this is in Mecca – we are aligned with the dignity of faith and reason. So take from your teacher the wisdom well learned that aligned to this moment.
When you travel the country roads of Andalusia, and come to a village of peaceful Christians: note if they are sons to Agila, the last enclaves of his legacy. For though of the Christian Aryan faith sought not to endanger his throne in prosecution to the Catholics to now rule the rugged north of Isbānīya, where they build their fortresses. For in his faith and recognition of humility in the prophet Īsā kept a unified kingdom.
Though do not examine this period as a defeat to the Mujahedin as they came with the Holy Word. For though the fighting was honorable and hard, what it thrust upon us I would dare to say – if God wills it – that it kept us from the eyes of the Kafirs in Rome as they turned on to Sicily or to the Holy Lands.
For thank the old Emir Omar for seeking their peace. To grant upon the pilgrims their continued safe journey to the holy sites and whose passage has only made Cordoba greater, if God wills it. And whose traveling monks have only helped to build a second Bayt al-Hikma, a new House of Wisdom.
Weep for the fated original House, which met with fire by the Kafirs from beyond Ṣin, who burned the library, before declaring themselves Munafiq. And upon them in Persia conducted their hypocrisy as Shia. And so too the House of Osman, who would shame us by denying from us the roads to Ṣin. Though we may sit upon the tables with the old Roman books saved from their Istanbul we can not trade further.
And God praise to Caliph Muhhamad ibn Hisham, his benevolent leadership who doth in seeking circumnavigation of the Turks and Persians sought a new road to Ṣin and Hindustan. Commissioning the spirit of the Barbary sailor Hammud al-Tunes who set out to settle the challenges of the courts in the width of the world. And on his return brought back not silks and spices from the far east but returning with birds as if plucked from paradise, and foreign women. Telling stories of a land not Hindustan or Ṣin, but of Q'ba,
Upon his return the Caliph named Hammud emir this strange land. Charging on him the great task of overlooking it. To spread the Word of God. And to see what wealth it may have.
But the greed of man pursues our mission. As do the Kafirs.
God is Great!
***
The year is 1535, in a world where through a few rolls of the dice has become different from our own. What has happened instead is a political landscape in which the Muslim powers of the Iberian Peninsula remained, extending Moorish dominance far beyond what it was in our time line. Dominating southern Spain with the Hispanic Christian Kingdom now occupying the rugged mountainous span of Northern Spain, hugged against the Pyrenees. In the hills and mountains, these new Spanish are not renowned for the naval voyages they commissioned, but as a side-effect of the events some many centuries, and far beyond the memories of any man there have become more renowned for their castles than their ships, or anything.
For over Spain does rule the Caliphate in Cordoba, with its Sultans and Emirs.
To best understand this world, you should know how it ruled in ours, parallel to the events that have changed. To understand this we must go to the 6th century.
Since the fall of Rome the Iberian peninsula came to be ruled over the Germanic tribe of the Visigoths. With the advent of Christianity this Gothic kingdom of Spain aligned itself to the Pope in Rome, or to the Christian philosophy known as Arianism, a humbler less decadent vision of Christianity that focused itself on the Humanity of Jesus Christ as attributed to the Libyan Theologian Arius. During the 6th century the king Agila ruled over the Visigoths of Spain.
Agila was a devout Arian, who often times condemned the Catholic populations of Spain. His aggressive outlook on the Catholics and the civil strife that had rocked Hispania prior to his ascension – and as a mechanization of his ascension – marked a undoubtedly disputed rule. His rule was marked with civil war. Facing defeat and contest from his brethren as the countryside of Hispania burned in war, the Byzantines arrived.
Summoned by Agilla's rivals and due in part to the Emperor Justinian's lust for a restored Rome the Greek Armies of Byzantium landed on the Spanish Peninsula and quickly partook in the fray. Breaking Agila I and occupying much of Spain.
Byzantine rule over Iberia would come to an end as Justinian's Empire collapsed and the Muslims of the Ummayad Dynasty arrived. Having swept across Northern Africa they went on a grand conquest of the the Iberian Peninsula, breaching the Pyrenees mountains before being defeated and sent into retreat at Tours at the hands of Charles Martel and the founder of the House of Karling.
After which in Spain progressed a slow Reconquista.
Despite this, the Arab world flourished through much of the 7th to 13th centuries in a golden age of reason and thought characterized by a school of Islamic academic thought: Mu'tazila. The Mu'tazila school of Islam characterized an academic and analytical study of the Koran and the Hadiths much akin to Greek analytical thought, as well as an absorption of Divine Justice. In fact, the Mu'tazila school was strengthened by the vast compendium of translated Greek Work housed in their great library in Bahgdad. They were a catalyst to the advancements in Medicine, politics, and their own theology (affecting such things as Islamic Cosmology) during a period of considerable tolerance (if relative to Europe at the time).
This golden age though wouldn't last, as Crusades called from Europe in the 12th century stressed the Arab caliphate and fractured its politics, marking the beginning of a steady decline to be finished by the Mongol sacking of Bahgdad in the 13th century, followed up by subsequent invasions from Mongol successor states such as the Timurids.
Islam's relevance in history though was not lost. By the fall of Constantinople to the Turks and the closing of the Silk Road to European merchants the Spanish Reconquista had come to a close. At this point we reach a stage where it's all grade-school history. The Spanish crown commissions Christopher Columbus and in 1492 he discovers the Americas on a quest to prove the width of the world and the practicality of straight-up sailing to Asia.
As well, throughout the centuries Spanish threats of a naval invasion of Britain spurred the British to construct a lasting naval tradition which lasted clear to the 19th or 20th century, and acted as the means for it to throw itself into colonialism.
And now let us turn back the clock to the 6th century again. What would happen if Hispania saw unity at the rise of Agila I?
With the cessation of hostilities among the Gothic kingdoms of Spain Agila rules in a fair amount of peace over Hispania. Applying Arainism in a less dogmatic approach he lives his ruling years in tolerance of the Catholics and musters enough allies to quash what rivals he had, thus prevent Byzantine conquest of Iberia by not giving Justinian the ticket to enter the Gothic wars.
By the arrival of the Ummayads, the Arabs and their Moorish subjects find instead a unified Gothic state in Spain. Though still with the backing of Northern Africa and the Arab world and Persia behind it the Ummayads mash the number game through Spain's southern half before stalling itself as they reach the rocky north of the Penninsula. At the foot hills of the Pyrenees they stall and their conquest ceases in the face of stalwart Christian defenders. Hostilities briefly cease.
At the closure of the Ummayad dynasty the local Emirs in Spain move for independence naming one of their own – Omar ibn Ali – as the Sultan of an independent Moorish kingdom in Spain. Omar, an old man and a pacifist by nature senses the potential hostilities from the Christian north. On advise from Christian courtiers who point out the Christian shrines and holy sites in Iberia, Omar moves for peace with the Christians, promising guarded passage for pilgrims by Christians in his demesne.
This move lessens the relevance of Iberia on the Papacy's radar and a papal supported campaign to push out the Moors from Spain is never called, fancying more to reclaim the Holy Land in the 12th century.
As it happened, the Mongols burn Bahgdad and destroying the House of Wisdom, scattering Muslim scholars. Though, with their beacon darkened in the east there was one which glowed distantly in the west.
Without the military stresses of a Reconquista to contend with, the Moors of Spain have evolved a rich society. The typical levels of tolerance leveed on Christian and Jewish communities has permitted the growth of a vibrant intellectual and legal network in their kingdom based in the common execution of Gothic and Sharia law to some level. Cordoba – the seat of Muslim power and academia and the name-sake of the local Caliphate – rises above the kingdom as a crowning jewell of success and academic study.
Monks from the north on pilgrimage to the holy sites in the south often bring with them a vast amount of intellectual knowledge that the Mu'tazilah of Cordoba are all too eager to hear and adapt in accordance to the Hadiths. It is said that Cordoba was a vast rival to Constantinople herself, and it still holds that title.
The richness of the local libraries of Cordoba is enhanced at the arrival of refugee scholars from the west seeking a new home after Mongols burned their library, marking a shift in importance from the East to the West.
In the Mongolian wake the importance of the Mu'tazilah school wanes and dies, but lingers and plants a second house on the soil of Andalusia. The Ashari school rises to dominate the Sunni world in the east, and in some way Taqleeq – imitation – becomes a norm in Academia from Damascus to Cairo.
Cordoba, as a mixing pool of thought ascends by the 15th century as a center of Humanism. Islamic Humanism.
Cordoba had little interest in European affairs, and as such never made continuous threats to dispatch an Armada north. The Christian kingdom of Hispania provided a stalwart defense on land, built of stone and rimmed in steal. And for all intents and purpose the practicality for Cordoba to march north was close to nill, and there was much greater interest in asserting its power over local Arab kingdoms, such as Tunis.
Meanwhile in the east, the Ottoman family arose from what was left of the Mongol khanates. Founded by Osman in the late 13th century the House of Osman held numerous titles from Sultan to Khan. With connections to the Mongols the Ottoman house somewhere down the line converted to Shia Islam, alienating themselves with the more popular Sunni Islam. But it did not make them all the less powerful as they absorbed the last vestiges of Genghis Khan's vast Empire to push west and to take Constantinople.
Declaring themselves the new Rome they initiated a campaign into Europe and locked out the Sunnis as well as the Europeans from trade with Asia, seizing all product along the Silk Road as their own. Angered by such a disaster Cordoba commissioned for exploration west-ward to arrive into the east.
And well, it can all be gleamed from the above.
So, without further ado it's owed to the RP that the relevant factions your character(s) will be serving under is introduced:
CALIPHATE OF CORDOBA (Khilāfat Qurṭuba)
The Moorish kingdom in Spain was founded after the disintergration of the Ummayad dynasty, after which Omar ibn Ali claimed the local throne of Andalusia. It was named Sultan of the Moors in the west, though quickly over time he named himself Caliph in a bid to compete with prestige with his neighboring Muslim kingdoms.
Peace had also been secured with the Christian kingdoms of Hispania, which spans Iberian Galacia to the Catalonian pyrennes. Creating the standing promise to keep safe the pilgrims of Europe as they journey to the numerous odd Christian holy sites in the Muslim controlled Spanish Kingdom the two have lived in a state of peace with one another. With the Christians in too defensible of terrain and in too high a number to take on, and the Muslims posing no tangible threat to Christian lives not even the clergy could muster the support to make holy war.
As a whole the Cordoban Caliphate exercises a large degree of tolerance to the non-Arab groups and faiths in their kingdom. In either case, the Cordoban Caliphate has a wide range of diversity with local Jews and Christians, often deviant from what the northern Catholics would prefer. Several old schools of Christianity branded as heresy in the Catholic world have found a home in Muslim lands, if in secluded and distance enclaves. Such schools as Catharism and Arianism.
Cordoba's prestige is only doubled given the contact it has with European pilgrims traveling into or through Spain. Though initially cold, as the existence of the Moorish kingdom became more common-place the exchange of ideology became more common place and the wealth of view-points available to the dissection of reason from the Mu'tazilah.
With the raise of the Shia Turkish Empire in the East and the effective closure of the Silk Road through Anatolia and Persia – itself a Shia kingdom all the same – there came a desperate feeling in the kingdom that something had to be done to reproduce the Silk Road and initiate the flow of thread. On Greek knowledge from Bahgdad's former House of Wisdom and some Greek Refugees from what was once Constantinople the question of the Earth's size was again revived. A number of theories were postulated on the theories of the Pythagorean school, or Plato and Aristotle as to the circumference of Earth. The question was only made more complicated with the number of local measures that had made their way to Cordoba's court that made a calculation all the more difficult.
In time it was settled the only way to settle the dispute was to sail to Asia themselves and prove a sea route is possible. Conscripting the Berber sailor Hammud the caliphate sent west an expedition to seek Asia, and instead found the New World, establishing initial trading posts and then a full colony on the island of Cuba, adapted from local language to Arabic as Q'ba.
Cordoban colonies dot the Caribbean but they have yet to flirt with the mainland, with much wealth for their use thus far on the islands. Products such a sugar cane becoming big in the Andalusian courts at home.
Upon being named Emir of Q'ba, Hammud took the name Hammud Al-Q'bahi.
MORROCAN SULTANATE
Though sharing relation to Cordoba in the north through marriage between the dynasties of the lesser and greater nobles of either state, it does not mean the Moroccans were willing to sit idly by. Though coming in second place – in not only colonization but politics as well - they've had the financial misfortune to come far behind their northern neighbors in exploring the new world.
Morocco attempts to maintain through direct crown control small colonies along the coast of what is in our time-line Brazil, though adapting into Arabic the name of the region by the Guarani people to be: Pindrami.
Recent renewed attempts at seeking a work-around by the Morrocans to Asia have instead treated them to the coast of Maine. Though the troubled colonies talk much about abandoning their cold settlements to defect to live in Q'ba or to simply bolster down in Pindrami.
Of interest in the Morrocan politics is a lighter tolerance to Shia than their neighbors in the north. Though intolerance to the branch doesn't manifest in active violence, the Sunni crown of Andalusia has often chosen to actively alienate Shia fortune seekers. Many of whom travel to – or were forced by merchant lords – Pindrami to assist in working on small farms growing palm farms, or assisting in administrating Banana plantations, largely operated by natives captured as slaves in raids into the inland.
THE SERENE REPUBLIC OF VENICE
Of the European powers most at risk from the closure of Byzantine docks and the severing of the Silk Road to Europe is the Republic of Venice. With dominance over the Greek peninsula and Croatian coast since the years of the Crusades Venice has long been the dominant power over the Mediteranean. However, this power is beginning to be challenged with the marked rise of an Mahometan power, and the shattering of the Greek state. And with their trade with Asia closed and their sphere destabilized the patricians of the mighty Republic.
At home, Venice subsisted with an industry built on the mining of salt, which was a high-priced commodity across Europe. Its swampy island city befitted greatly from the income, and just as well the taxes it held on its main-land territories (themselves little more than a buffer against Italian powers and the Germans) and their Croatian and Greek colonies. They only had more power when they were allowed exclusive access to the Byzantine docks at Constantinople affording them immense prestige and economic benefits for sitting in the front row of Constantinople's economic concert.
But, as a Venetian poet once wrote in the days after Constantinople's fall, and the loss of their exclusive rights: “Even the plunderers of Byzantium must face God's punishment.”
On a thin ledge they stood as the Turks waged war into Bulgaria and against the Hapsburgs. On the arriving news of the discovery of a new world the Patricians and the Doge saw an effort at carving out a new source of wealth for Venice. Setting sail out through the Straights of Gibraltr they sailed for the New World.
Hoping to find a river that cut the New World in two in which they might sail through to the other-side, the Venetian expedition instead landed on the coast of what is today's Georgia, opting to name the land they found Agostinea instead, after the Doge of Venice Agostino Balatia.
Planting the Venetian standard they declared the land in the name of the Serene Republic, before establishing a number of small colonial holdings in our world's Puerto Rico, Florida, and Nicaraqua (respectively declared: Borincana, Tequestana, and Ludivaca).
As a whole, Venice is one of two powers in Italy attempting to make a desperate bid for the New World to rebalance its position of power. As with their counter-part their colonists mostly involve Catholics seeking shelter from religious tension in Europe, or Greek Orthodox diaspora from Greece or Albania, the Orthodox Christians largely not being the preferred people of faith to represent Venice in Mother Europe.
And though closing the Straights of Gibraltr to European merchants would be a sure way to attract war, the powers that be in Morocco and Cordoba would not care for the spread of European interests in the New World they have ventured to. In the interests of making it harder for the Venetians – as well as the Genoans – the Caliph of Andalusia and Sultan of Morroco have both engaged in encouraging piracy on Republican vessels.
Originating from the dysfunctional Emirate of Tunisia, Barbary pirates have been raiding Venetian and Genoan ships since they first planted their colonies. Often acting on bounties placed on the European vessels there were initial violent attacks of supply ships or colonial adventures that passed too close to the North African shore.
This act has lead captains of Venetian and Genoan ships as being masters of some of the better armed vessels of the sea to make harder targets for enterprising and scheming pirate lords. To protect their supplies and their crews from slavery.
REPUBLIC OF GENOA
As a power, Genoa was second to Venice as one of the Italian Merchant Republics. Often, the time states feuded violently with each other over trade rights and supremacy. Situated on the other-side of the Italian boot, near to the border with the Kingdom of France and its Occitanian territories of the south, Genoa wishes to – like Venice – expand and replace its lost trade rights when Byzantium fell.
Its arrival to the Americas came second to Venice, which came third in its own way to the Muslims. Finding landing on the empty, abandoned island of Montserrat – or San Maria – they made some moves to spread outward, but largely coming into conflict with the Moors who all to often chose to take their crews as slaves sold in Q'ba.
A secondary colony was established on the coast of what is today Venezuela, naming it Serraria, for the merchant family for whom the captain – Simone Serra – was a son of.
And though closing the Straights of Gibraltr to European merchants would be a sure way to attract war, the powers that be in Morocco and Cordoba would not care for the spread of European interests in the New World they have ventured to. In the interests of making it harder for the Venetians – as well as the Genoans – the Caliph of Andalusia and Sultan of Morroco have both engaged in encouraging piracy on Republican vessels.
Originating from the dysfunctional Emirate of Tunisia, Barbary pirates have been raiding Venetian and Genoan ships since they first planted their colonies. Often acting on bounties placed on the European vessels there were initial violent attacks of supply ships or colonial adventures that passed too close to the North African shore.
This act has lead captains of Venetian and Genoan ships as being masters of some of the better armed vessels of the sea to make harder targets for enterprising and scheming pirate lords. To protect their supplies and their crews from slavery.
HANSEATIC LEAGUE
Formed in the 13th century along the German and Baltic north coast, the Hanseatic League operated as a merchant guild working to protect the economic and defensive interests of its member state's merchant guilds. Membership included the German city states of Bremen, Munster, Holstein- Lubeck, Colberg, Danzig and Gotland. Issuing banknotes for trade, the Hansa became a major economic power in the Baltic and North Sea and a major economic party in the politics of the Holy Roman Empire. The Hansa operated trade posts and ports from London to Novogorod.
The Baltic Sea had long been void of an organized trading organization has existed in the Mediterranean (Venice, Genoa, Pisa). The region had long been defined by inland Viking raids up until the the Christianization of the Scandinavians in the 10th/11th centuries. But in the century between there was very little organization except outside of the Republic of Gotland.
Within German politics the Hanseatic League would rise and then fall in importance. But the centralization of the crown of the Holy Roman Empire in the Hapsburg dynasty shaken with shattering defeats at the hand of the Ottoman Dynasty in Bulgaria and Hungary the shape of the Holy Roman Empire is shaken. With Hapsburg prestige and hegemony damaged as they lose their power-base the Empire of the Germans has regressed to a state before the reforms of the Hohenstaufen. With the Hapsburgs and the college of Prince-electors becoming what they were before Frederick Barbarosa reeled in the Empire: a coalition of feuding princely states.
Matters within Germany are only made more exaggerated by the rise of the heretical church view of Protestantism. Already the faith has become popular in many German prince-states and only instigates further conflict within the Empire.
The hostile atmosphere and the shared collective economy and defense provided by the Hanseatic League was able to produce a feeling of coalition between the member states. Though many members dropped out as many of the nobles of the Hansa converted to Protestantism the Hansa is still the premier economic power of the North Sea.
In the heat of Martin Luther's Reformation and the internal hostilities within the Empire the members of the Hanseatic League entered into a personal union with one another to create a centralized state to safe guard the individual interests of the Hansa. Operating as a Republic now within the elective government of the HRE the Hanseatic League was more capable of centralizing its wealth and resources and between the states of Holstein-Lubeck, Bremen, the Dutch, and Pomerania became a principality large enough to be an elector in its own right.
The discovery of the New World was a avenue they felt inspire to pursue to further define their identity in German politics as a successful and rising Elector State. Through their wide-ranging resources on the North Sea and into Russia they mustered their first expedition under Hans Kollen von Hamburg and set sail for the west from the London Steelyard, landing off the coarse of modern-day Manhatten and establishing the colony of Neu Holstein. Further colonies up and down the coast were established: Hellstadt (south of Boston) and Kollenlond (Rhode Island).
The political dynamic within Germany has created an atmosphere of prejudice against Protestants. The Hansa offers a promise of new life for their Protestant brothers and cousin faiths in the New World. They as well often take on persecuted men of faith from Britain and Scandinavia who want to pursue their promise.
WHY NOT ANYONE ELSE?
As it stands the other powers in Europe commonly associated with New World colonization either don't exist, or the alteration in the time-line has left them otherwise distracted. Most major of all is the non-existence of Spain as unified by the Kingdom of Castille. The only faction related to them is the Kingdom of Hispania which sits precariously in the mountainous north of Spain and precariously nuzzled between the Muslims and the Kingdom of France. This region hasn't been beneficial to the Kings of Hispania as they sit atop their mountains, though the mountains have brought out the rise of many castles, most of which may help the many minor lord-lings defend their claims but does little for New World ambitions. Very often those adventurers and exiles who end up in the New World from Hispania end up doing so under the banner of Genoa or Venice, or very rarely on Moorish expeditions.
Like-wise, the British and French are currently incapable or care for the New World. The non-threat of a Spanish Armada have left the British Navy small and incapable of long-distance campaign and the focus of the British crown being focused on subjugation of their own islands, and in the continued quest to obtain the French throne (and the French in defending their crown from the British) in a prolonged war of succession and claim.
Coupled in this is the social complexity brought on by the reformation which is permeating European society – in some areas more successfully than others. The rest of the Germans are fighting themselves, or fighting the Ottomans. And the Russians – who would never sail to America anyways – are still fractured principalities with what little concept of Third Rome they got when the Byzantine Empire collapsed.
And for the Ottomans, they already have the Silk Road. If there was any desire for foreign and exotic expansion than there is always the slave markets of Africa.
