Glad I caught up with this one when it's nearly started. I love the Arabian Nights, I remember a beautifully illustrated copy my father had, now sadly lost... Good look holding onto Constantinople!
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A Modern Update - 1592
In the year 1000 after the Hegira of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be on him, and the Christian year 1592, Padishah Onur Isa the Victorious issued the following proclamation to the people of the Empire.
*****
Let me introduce myself. My name is Cem al-Ghazi. As you can tell from my name, I am one in a long line of warriors from the shahdom of Aydin. However, unlike some of my ancestors who fought for Allah and Shah with the sword, I fight with knowledge and the pen. I am the first in my family to pursue a career in Science and Letters. I entered and studied at the great University of Smyrna, and even studied with some of the best minds of our century at the famous Islamic University of Parma.
When I traveled home to attend the coronation of Onur Isa the Victorious, my mother placed a book in my hands. It was written by a long-dead ancestor - one of the ghazis of Aydin. In it he tried to tell the story of Aydin in a story-telling style. But it is told as the simple-minded people of the ancient past would tell it - tales full of Djinns, devils, amulets, curses and mystery - all the things that consumed the minds of people in those ancient days.
I am a story-teller, too. But a story-teller committed to finding and telling the truth, using the latest scientific methods. I promised my mother that for the honor of the family (and perhaps for my fame, too) I would pick up the telling of the tales of Aydin. I warned her that I would tell the truth, that I would hide behind no magic and no mystery - all things are explainable and understandable to the rational mind. We are living in modern times, and the spirit of these modern times require that we apply ourselves with cleverness and eagerness to finding the truth of all things.
I am working on many projects at this time, so my updates to this book will be slow. But they will commence. I will try to reconstruct the history of the Aydin while paying attention to the current glorious days in which we live.
Padishah Onur Isa the Victorious, may Allah bless and keep him, sits at the pinnacle of world power and wealth, and having overcome the opposition of tens of thousands over thousands of days, who can say what he can accomplish now, with the power of Allah behind him, and the people and the wealth of the land his to use for good.
As my professors have said again and again, "Understanding the present and how it leads us to the future is important, understanding the past and how it brought us to our current place is also important; only with the two can we truly understand Allah's will for us in this time and place."
In the year 1000 after the Hegira of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be on him, and the Christian year 1592, Padishah Onur Isa the Victorious issued the following proclamation to the people of the Empire.
“Allah’s peace and blessings on all of the people of my kingdoms.
Eleven years ago, gracious and protective Allah welcomed our beloved uncle, Shah Murad Halis into the Paradise of the Blessed. In that year two earth-shaking things happened - I ascended to the throne of Aydin, and through my father’s blood, the throne of my other powerful and ancient kingdom. Allah is truly great!
But Allah also tries our patience, and refines us through trials and tribulations to see if we are made of gold, or of baser materials, fated to crumble to dust as the years advance. For me, my people and my kingdom, the challenges lasted eleven long and hard years. Noble families who owed allegiance to me rose up throughout the kingdom again and again, each challenging me for the thrones given to by Allah. Self-styled liberators rose across the conquered lands, bribed to do so by discontented neighbors and the kingdoms of the Christians that border us on all sides. Again and again, as soon as the ghazis of Aydin left, rebellious subjects and cities rose against us, cutting us off from our lands, our people and our revenues. Even those of our brothers newly converted to the House of Peace were tempted by devils and djinns to rise against us. And to add to our misery, our noble brother, the Sultan of Granada was deposed by the vile Christian kings of Spain and his lands and wealth seized. On many occasions, it truly seemed that all was lost.
But Allah’s name be praised as most powerful and holy!
After warfare that ranged across the land and sea, the last bastions of the rebellious nobles have surrendered to me, the Chosen Padishah of Allah. In our person we have united vast lands, innumerable people and uncountable wealth - all given to us for our care by the kind and loving hand of Allah. I declare that peace has come to the land, and that under my firm but kind hand, as from the hand of a father, we will advance in peace, prosperity and contentment.
All people are called to attend my imperial coronation in this, the 1000th year since the Hegira of the Prophet of God, to witness the rebirth and restoration of our greatness.”
Eleven years ago, gracious and protective Allah welcomed our beloved uncle, Shah Murad Halis into the Paradise of the Blessed. In that year two earth-shaking things happened - I ascended to the throne of Aydin, and through my father’s blood, the throne of my other powerful and ancient kingdom. Allah is truly great!
But Allah also tries our patience, and refines us through trials and tribulations to see if we are made of gold, or of baser materials, fated to crumble to dust as the years advance. For me, my people and my kingdom, the challenges lasted eleven long and hard years. Noble families who owed allegiance to me rose up throughout the kingdom again and again, each challenging me for the thrones given to by Allah. Self-styled liberators rose across the conquered lands, bribed to do so by discontented neighbors and the kingdoms of the Christians that border us on all sides. Again and again, as soon as the ghazis of Aydin left, rebellious subjects and cities rose against us, cutting us off from our lands, our people and our revenues. Even those of our brothers newly converted to the House of Peace were tempted by devils and djinns to rise against us. And to add to our misery, our noble brother, the Sultan of Granada was deposed by the vile Christian kings of Spain and his lands and wealth seized. On many occasions, it truly seemed that all was lost.
But Allah’s name be praised as most powerful and holy!
After warfare that ranged across the land and sea, the last bastions of the rebellious nobles have surrendered to me, the Chosen Padishah of Allah. In our person we have united vast lands, innumerable people and uncountable wealth - all given to us for our care by the kind and loving hand of Allah. I declare that peace has come to the land, and that under my firm but kind hand, as from the hand of a father, we will advance in peace, prosperity and contentment.
All people are called to attend my imperial coronation in this, the 1000th year since the Hegira of the Prophet of God, to witness the rebirth and restoration of our greatness.”
*****
Let me introduce myself. My name is Cem al-Ghazi. As you can tell from my name, I am one in a long line of warriors from the shahdom of Aydin. However, unlike some of my ancestors who fought for Allah and Shah with the sword, I fight with knowledge and the pen. I am the first in my family to pursue a career in Science and Letters. I entered and studied at the great University of Smyrna, and even studied with some of the best minds of our century at the famous Islamic University of Parma.
When I traveled home to attend the coronation of Onur Isa the Victorious, my mother placed a book in my hands. It was written by a long-dead ancestor - one of the ghazis of Aydin. In it he tried to tell the story of Aydin in a story-telling style. But it is told as the simple-minded people of the ancient past would tell it - tales full of Djinns, devils, amulets, curses and mystery - all the things that consumed the minds of people in those ancient days.
I am a story-teller, too. But a story-teller committed to finding and telling the truth, using the latest scientific methods. I promised my mother that for the honor of the family (and perhaps for my fame, too) I would pick up the telling of the tales of Aydin. I warned her that I would tell the truth, that I would hide behind no magic and no mystery - all things are explainable and understandable to the rational mind. We are living in modern times, and the spirit of these modern times require that we apply ourselves with cleverness and eagerness to finding the truth of all things.
I am working on many projects at this time, so my updates to this book will be slow. But they will commence. I will try to reconstruct the history of the Aydin while paying attention to the current glorious days in which we live.
Padishah Onur Isa the Victorious, may Allah bless and keep him, sits at the pinnacle of world power and wealth, and having overcome the opposition of tens of thousands over thousands of days, who can say what he can accomplish now, with the power of Allah behind him, and the people and the wealth of the land his to use for good.
As my professors have said again and again, "Understanding the present and how it leads us to the future is important, understanding the past and how it brought us to our current place is also important; only with the two can we truly understand Allah's will for us in this time and place."
You seem to have a bit of a problem with inflation there 
But otherwise it's very nicely done so far!!! OPM's are alot of fun to play, if you don't get wiped out in the first war
But otherwise it's very nicely done so far!!! OPM's are alot of fun to play, if you don't get wiped out in the first war 
Wonderful to see this returning. I can understand that you are moving away from quite the narrative style of past updates, they must have been very time consuming, although they were fantastic to read. I do not doubt this change in style though will not diminish from this AAR at all and I greatly look forward to following Aydin's journey once more.
Thanks for coming back! I played a bit, and suddenly got the urge to write some more. Perhaps my new narrator will get more into the Tales style as he ages - he's a young, university educated modern man now!
I had to go back and reread the posts so I could remember where I was, too! I hope you enjoy the catching up, and we'll see what happens once that's done!Sorry, I do not remember anything!
Thanks for dropping by! Yes, I do. I'll have to do something about that before too long. And I had a really good Master of the Mint for many many years - so just imagine! But France's inflation is worse, so that makes me happy!You seem to have a bit of a problem with inflation there
The Long Century: 1424 - 1552 The Triumph of Islamic Arms
My ancestor’s book abruptly ends in 1424. This was the year that Isa II the Conqueror sailed to assault the small Duchy of the Morea with his army of Ghazi warriors. These men had beaten the Pope and seized Romagna, they had beaten the wily Venetians and claimed Athens and Crete, and had ended the Empire of Rum by cutting down the last Emperor outside the great city of Constantinople and then seizing the city for Aydin, Allah and Islam. They expected no difficulties with a minor duke and a sparsely populated series of hills and headlands. But those hills were strategically critical for the protection of Athens from the west, and as a link from the friendly waters of the Ege (or Aegean as they say in the West) and the outpost in Ravenna.
And so it was that fate, or destiny, or Allah Himself brought Bey Isa low, with a bolt from the defenders of the duke’s small castle. Some said, at the time, that Isa Bey’s second mother, Arsinoe, smarting over the death of her own son and resentful of the destruction of Constantinople and the capture of Athen gave Isa a talisman to wear for the assault on Morea. She told him, it is said, that it was blessed by Allah and the djinns with great powers of protection; it was later said by those who came form the battlefield to Smyrna to find Arsinoe that if must surely have been cursed by an evil magic, as it attracted rather than repelled the arrows of the enemy.
From our modern times we can say that this is of course ridiculous! But for the time and place of Isa Bey’s death, it can surely be understood that some magical and darkly powerful thing must have been acting against such a powerful and famous conqueror, for him to die before such a humble dwelling after having conquered the great cities and rulers of his day.
Shah Ibrahim I 1424 - 1453
Isa Bey’s son rose to the throne as Shah Ibrahim I. He was the first ruler of Aydin to assume the title of Shah. His predecessors on the throne of Aydin ruled over a small, precarious city-state perched on the edge of the Aegean, slowly surrounded by the power of the Osmanli dynasty as it spread over Asia Minor and the Balkans. But Ibrahim, upon assuming the throne, declared the following:
In truth, although Ibrahim reigned for almost 30 years, very little is known of him today. In the disturbances that accompanied the rise of Onur Isa to the Imperial Throne, noble families even here, in Smyrna rose up in rebellion against him several times. the ancient capital of Aydin was devastated each of those time in different ways; during one of the disturbances the palace library was destroyed. Many memories were destroyed in this way across the entire Empire - but the rebellions and destruction of so much that pertained to the history of Aydin was particularly painful. May Allah be roasting those evil men and women in the deepest and most painful part of hell while djinns feat upon their flesh!
What is known of Ibrahim is sadly known only from a memorial carved in rock in what are now tombs outside Smyrna. As captured there, we know that Ibrahim continued the war with the duke of Morea, and in recompense for the death of his father, he annexed the territory, sold the citizens as slaves to the Ottomans, and send the duke’s wife and daughters to the harems of the wealthy merchants of Aydin.
He fought 8 other wars in his reign of 20 years.
Shah Ibrahim’s initial successes in Italy were likewise the result of almost 50 years of non-stop warfare up and down the peninsula. Venice was defeated and thrown back to her island because her fleet had been destroyed in warfare with Naples, Genoa and other Italian states. While contemporary students of power politics and strategy have a difficult time understanding why the city states dukedoms and kingdoms of the Italian peninsula were so unable to combine their power to resist and external danger, if we think about the time and place, and the expectations of warfare, it isn’t that hard to understand.
Since the fall of the First Roman Empire, Italy had been torn between an ever-rising, ever-falling series of states. Each one, as it grew to a certain point, fell. At the moment of Isa Bey’s arrival, Naples and Milan were seeming to coalesce into the peninsular powers. Their demise was expected, and the small states of Italy looked at Aydin as just another player who would enter the fray, disrupt the emerging power structures, look the wealthy cities, and retire across the sea while the Italians got on with their petty squabbles and joustings for power. They could not have known that the animating spirit of Aydin was Islam, Allah, and the desire to expand forever the House of Peace.
When Ibrahim returned he found a peninsula even more exhausted and even more ripe for the taking. And he found a people desperate for any savior - for the people in the fields and the towns bear the brunt of any warfare, and they will look to any source for comfort and respite. Many documents have been found, and form the core of the libraries at the Islamic University of Parma, that attest to the happiness of the common man, merchants and laborers when the glory of Allah arrived and brought the people and the land into the House of Peace. It is a fact that even during the disturbances throughout the Empire at the accession of Padishah Onur Isa, the core lands of the Italian peninsula never rose even once against the true Emperor.
Most importantly, however, Shah Ibrahim I began the massive missionary efforts that characterize the Empire even to this day. Under his guidance, missionaries were sent to Constantinople and its surrounding towns and hamlets, and the Palermo on the island of Sicily. Both efforts met with mixed success, but the seeds of the current flowering of Islam across many parts of Europe were planted by Ibrahim I, thusly called the Righteous.
Shah Junayd I 1453 - 1466
Upon the death of Shah Ibrahim, his son, Junayd rose to the throne.
The rulers of Aydin had, over the previous half century, been able to gain a foothold on the Italian peninsula because of the chaotic nature of politics, allegiances and rivalries that existed there from the time of the collapse of the first Roman Empire. When Isa II defeated the Holy Father of Rome, it was due to the dual reason that his ghazi warriors were advanced compared to the soldiers of the west at the time, and that the Holy Father was unable to bring any other Christian power to his aid. In fact, after the humbling of the Holy Father, many Italian states sent warm words to the Bey of Audin, thanking him for putting the war-mongering solider-priest in his place. They hardly had reason to fear a poor state on the far end of the Mediterranean.
Junayd, desiring the surpass his father and his grandfather if possible, decided upon a course of action that would eventually prove to be the undoing of much of the Christian world. Shortly after ascending the throne he sent word to the Holy Father that he would be coming with the sword of Allah and as many ghazi warriors as could be found throughout the domains of Aydin. He would accept the surrender of the Old Rome as a gift to Allah and the House of Peace, or just as his grandfather had done to the New Rome, he would seize it from the hands of its current ruler.
The Holy Father failed to agree to this demand. Shah Junayd brought his thousands of ghazi warriors to the gates of Rome, and seized the city just as he had threatened.
The Holy Father’s two allies, the bishoprics of Gorz and Aquileia each surrendered half their territories and became vassal states of Aydin - the first such vassals ever held by Aydin.
Shah Junayd also continued the missionary policies of his father, and the people of Palermo continued to move toward the full embracing of Islam.
Shah Umur II, the Glorious 1466 - 1516
The acquisition of Lienz (the mineral-rich provinces in the Alps), Istria and the populous city of Rome had pushed the administrative skills of the the Shahdom to their limit, and beyond. In fact, the declining years of Shah Junayd put even more pressure on the ability of the government to keep territories so widely spread across the Mediterranean basin linked under any sort of governing structure that the government itself came close to losing control. Fortunately, at this time Umur, the son of Junayd rose to the throne. He was as diplomatically able as his father, but where his father excelled in the arts of the battle field, Umur excelled in the rule of the divan, the treasury and governmental details. Thanks to his powerful capabilities and advisors, the government was brought back from the brink of chaos and the state was saved.
Shah Umur also established a body that exists to this day in the Empire - the House of Highlords. Then as now, this body functioned as a forum for the Shah’s vassals to believe they influenced the government, even though in fact they exerted (and exert) no real influence on the state and it’s actions. One only has to look at the records to see that every decision made out of this house has uniformly been designed to benefit the Shahdom at the expense of the vassals, and the few times that the vassals attempted to exert themselves the record clearly shows that their ideas were vetoed by the Shah and sent back for reconsideration.
That being said, Aydin has certainly gained massive benefits in the century since the establishment of the House of the Highlords by Shah Umur II the Glorious. One of the most immediate benefits was the commencement of Western Arms Trade - the vassalization of Gorz, Aquiliea and Sardinia, along with the establishing of borders with many Italian city states, opened up this trade to the great benefit of the Shah and Aydin.
Shah Umur II also launched what was to become a hallmark of Aydin’s involvement with the West, particularly the states of the Holy Roman Empire when he launched a war on the city state of Venice that drew in many Italian States and German principalities, including the Republic of PIsa, the Duchy of Milan and the Elector Palatine. In sharp contrast the strategies of his fathers who were in search of land and the safety that cities and fortresses bring a dynasty, Umur was in search of wealth to adorn his cities, fortify his walls, and raise troops to defend his lands as well as the effort to extend the House of Peace ever further into Europe.
The seige of Venice lasted 3.5 years, but since Umur allowed the Venetians to continue to trade while the seige lasted (all ships were searched for weapons, and only those were confiscated) the coffers of Venice were full when the city finally fell.
The Republic of Pisa was quickly defeated an put under siege. But the powerful armies of the Duchy of Milan inflicted several significant initial defeats on the warriors of Aydin.
However, Pisa eventually fell, and Shah Umur was able to bring new forces and commanders north to meet the Milanese threat. When a massive rebel force besieging Milan and Parma having fallen, the once-victorious forces of Milan were harried back and forth across the plains of the Po until the were destroyed beneath the walls of Brescia.
Milan surrendered two of her three provinces as the ghazi warriors were tightening the noose around the city of Milan, and the Republic of Florence surrendered to the Shah and was annexed for its university and merchant knowledge.
In slightly less than 10 years, Shah Umur has redrawn the map of the Italian Peninsula.
For the next decade, Shah Umur consolidated his gains, lavished the ransom of Venice on projects throughout the kingdom, and worked relentlessly with his super diplomatic corps to calm the rattled nerves of Italy and Europe. Then in 1487, the rapidly growing Kingdom of Savoy declared war on the Kingdom of Sardinia, a vassal of Aydin. Shah Umur took up the challenge and entered the war to defend the honor of Aydin.
The Duchy of Milan, trusting in the power of the armies of the King of Savoy, entered the war on the side of her Italian neighbor, hoping to reclaim some of the territories lost to Aydin. However, the armies of Aydin met those of Savoy on the plains before the ancient city of Parma (the seat of my university) and defeated the Savoyards.
The Savoyards retreated to their mountains and valley, and Milan was brought under siege. After almost two years, the city fell and was annexed by Shah Umur.
Shah Umur was given the accolade “The Glorious” for the length of his reign, his superb Administrative skills, the wealth he gathered from victories, and most important his victories over the major Italian cities, republics and kingdoms. He expanded the power of Aydin in a way never seen, and certainly not imaginable even during the reign of his father. It is true that he was able to take advantage of the near collapse of the governing structures in Italy, and the Holy Roman Empire was unable to come to the aid of her Italian members due to the massive collapse of power due to the onslaught on the Germanic people by the Slavs. During this period the Duchy of Austria was completely absorbed by the Kingdom of Poland, and Bohemia was assaulted by the Poles, Lithuania, the French, and many of the smaller German tribes.
But having an opportunity and being able to seize it are two different things. A less persuasive ruler with a less persuasive diplomatic corps would have been unable to withstand the suspicions and anger of Europe. A less capable administrator would have been unable to keep the government of such a far flung kingdom running smoothly. A less confident monarch would have been unwilling to entrust military power in the hands of such capable commanders out of fear and envy. But in fact Shah Umur was all of these things.
And in one other thing Shah Umur surpassed all his ancestors, and in fact all his descendants down to this day. As accomplished as he was, he raised a son who was in fact even more accomplished. Ali, the son of Umur ascended the throne in 1516 on the death of his father, and inaugurated an even more brilliant episode in the evolution of Aydin from Beydom to Empire.
My ancestor’s book abruptly ends in 1424. This was the year that Isa II the Conqueror sailed to assault the small Duchy of the Morea with his army of Ghazi warriors. These men had beaten the Pope and seized Romagna, they had beaten the wily Venetians and claimed Athens and Crete, and had ended the Empire of Rum by cutting down the last Emperor outside the great city of Constantinople and then seizing the city for Aydin, Allah and Islam. They expected no difficulties with a minor duke and a sparsely populated series of hills and headlands. But those hills were strategically critical for the protection of Athens from the west, and as a link from the friendly waters of the Ege (or Aegean as they say in the West) and the outpost in Ravenna.
And so it was that fate, or destiny, or Allah Himself brought Bey Isa low, with a bolt from the defenders of the duke’s small castle. Some said, at the time, that Isa Bey’s second mother, Arsinoe, smarting over the death of her own son and resentful of the destruction of Constantinople and the capture of Athen gave Isa a talisman to wear for the assault on Morea. She told him, it is said, that it was blessed by Allah and the djinns with great powers of protection; it was later said by those who came form the battlefield to Smyrna to find Arsinoe that if must surely have been cursed by an evil magic, as it attracted rather than repelled the arrows of the enemy.
From our modern times we can say that this is of course ridiculous! But for the time and place of Isa Bey’s death, it can surely be understood that some magical and darkly powerful thing must have been acting against such a powerful and famous conqueror, for him to die before such a humble dwelling after having conquered the great cities and rulers of his day.
Shah Ibrahim I 1424 - 1453
Isa Bey’s son rose to the throne as Shah Ibrahim I. He was the first ruler of Aydin to assume the title of Shah. His predecessors on the throne of Aydin ruled over a small, precarious city-state perched on the edge of the Aegean, slowly surrounded by the power of the Osmanli dynasty as it spread over Asia Minor and the Balkans. But Ibrahim, upon assuming the throne, declared the following:
“My father, my uncle, and my father’s father were true Ghazi warriors - men who took up the sword in the defense of Allah and who toiled all their lives to bring the House of Peace to the unbeliever. Their hard labor, and Allah’s blessings have brought us to a place of unprecedented prosperity and prestige. Their memories demand that we call ourselves something more exalted than “Bey”, and so from the day of my coronation we shall take up the title of Shah, as our brother Timur has so nobly done.”
In truth, although Ibrahim reigned for almost 30 years, very little is known of him today. In the disturbances that accompanied the rise of Onur Isa to the Imperial Throne, noble families even here, in Smyrna rose up in rebellion against him several times. the ancient capital of Aydin was devastated each of those time in different ways; during one of the disturbances the palace library was destroyed. Many memories were destroyed in this way across the entire Empire - but the rebellions and destruction of so much that pertained to the history of Aydin was particularly painful. May Allah be roasting those evil men and women in the deepest and most painful part of hell while djinns feat upon their flesh!
What is known of Ibrahim is sadly known only from a memorial carved in rock in what are now tombs outside Smyrna. As captured there, we know that Ibrahim continued the war with the duke of Morea, and in recompense for the death of his father, he annexed the territory, sold the citizens as slaves to the Ottomans, and send the duke’s wife and daughters to the harems of the wealthy merchants of Aydin.
He fought 8 other wars in his reign of 20 years.
- He completely cast the Venetians out of the Ege and Hellas by defeating them, stripping their city of the last bits of wealth, and annexing the islands of Corfu and Euboea.
- He took the mighty warriors of Allah back to Italy and captured the ancient cities of the Verona plain from the king who styled himself Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, although this Empire had nothing to do with either Ancient or New Rome.
- He took his battle to the King of Sicily, and in two wars cast him completely from the island, reclaiming that for the House of Peace and Allah.
- He pushed the Genovese from their Black Sea trading post in Kaffa.
- Most unusually for a ruler of Aydin, he also brought his sword against a Muslim power, but only in defense of another - the Shah of Nogai who was a long-standing ally.
Shah Ibrahim’s initial successes in Italy were likewise the result of almost 50 years of non-stop warfare up and down the peninsula. Venice was defeated and thrown back to her island because her fleet had been destroyed in warfare with Naples, Genoa and other Italian states. While contemporary students of power politics and strategy have a difficult time understanding why the city states dukedoms and kingdoms of the Italian peninsula were so unable to combine their power to resist and external danger, if we think about the time and place, and the expectations of warfare, it isn’t that hard to understand.
Since the fall of the First Roman Empire, Italy had been torn between an ever-rising, ever-falling series of states. Each one, as it grew to a certain point, fell. At the moment of Isa Bey’s arrival, Naples and Milan were seeming to coalesce into the peninsular powers. Their demise was expected, and the small states of Italy looked at Aydin as just another player who would enter the fray, disrupt the emerging power structures, look the wealthy cities, and retire across the sea while the Italians got on with their petty squabbles and joustings for power. They could not have known that the animating spirit of Aydin was Islam, Allah, and the desire to expand forever the House of Peace.
When Ibrahim returned he found a peninsula even more exhausted and even more ripe for the taking. And he found a people desperate for any savior - for the people in the fields and the towns bear the brunt of any warfare, and they will look to any source for comfort and respite. Many documents have been found, and form the core of the libraries at the Islamic University of Parma, that attest to the happiness of the common man, merchants and laborers when the glory of Allah arrived and brought the people and the land into the House of Peace. It is a fact that even during the disturbances throughout the Empire at the accession of Padishah Onur Isa, the core lands of the Italian peninsula never rose even once against the true Emperor.
Most importantly, however, Shah Ibrahim I began the massive missionary efforts that characterize the Empire even to this day. Under his guidance, missionaries were sent to Constantinople and its surrounding towns and hamlets, and the Palermo on the island of Sicily. Both efforts met with mixed success, but the seeds of the current flowering of Islam across many parts of Europe were planted by Ibrahim I, thusly called the Righteous.
Shah Junayd I 1453 - 1466
Upon the death of Shah Ibrahim, his son, Junayd rose to the throne.
The rulers of Aydin had, over the previous half century, been able to gain a foothold on the Italian peninsula because of the chaotic nature of politics, allegiances and rivalries that existed there from the time of the collapse of the first Roman Empire. When Isa II defeated the Holy Father of Rome, it was due to the dual reason that his ghazi warriors were advanced compared to the soldiers of the west at the time, and that the Holy Father was unable to bring any other Christian power to his aid. In fact, after the humbling of the Holy Father, many Italian states sent warm words to the Bey of Audin, thanking him for putting the war-mongering solider-priest in his place. They hardly had reason to fear a poor state on the far end of the Mediterranean.
Junayd, desiring the surpass his father and his grandfather if possible, decided upon a course of action that would eventually prove to be the undoing of much of the Christian world. Shortly after ascending the throne he sent word to the Holy Father that he would be coming with the sword of Allah and as many ghazi warriors as could be found throughout the domains of Aydin. He would accept the surrender of the Old Rome as a gift to Allah and the House of Peace, or just as his grandfather had done to the New Rome, he would seize it from the hands of its current ruler.
The Holy Father failed to agree to this demand. Shah Junayd brought his thousands of ghazi warriors to the gates of Rome, and seized the city just as he had threatened.
The Holy Father’s two allies, the bishoprics of Gorz and Aquileia each surrendered half their territories and became vassal states of Aydin - the first such vassals ever held by Aydin.
Shah Junayd also continued the missionary policies of his father, and the people of Palermo continued to move toward the full embracing of Islam.
Shah Umur II, the Glorious 1466 - 1516
The acquisition of Lienz (the mineral-rich provinces in the Alps), Istria and the populous city of Rome had pushed the administrative skills of the the Shahdom to their limit, and beyond. In fact, the declining years of Shah Junayd put even more pressure on the ability of the government to keep territories so widely spread across the Mediterranean basin linked under any sort of governing structure that the government itself came close to losing control. Fortunately, at this time Umur, the son of Junayd rose to the throne. He was as diplomatically able as his father, but where his father excelled in the arts of the battle field, Umur excelled in the rule of the divan, the treasury and governmental details. Thanks to his powerful capabilities and advisors, the government was brought back from the brink of chaos and the state was saved.
Shah Umur also established a body that exists to this day in the Empire - the House of Highlords. Then as now, this body functioned as a forum for the Shah’s vassals to believe they influenced the government, even though in fact they exerted (and exert) no real influence on the state and it’s actions. One only has to look at the records to see that every decision made out of this house has uniformly been designed to benefit the Shahdom at the expense of the vassals, and the few times that the vassals attempted to exert themselves the record clearly shows that their ideas were vetoed by the Shah and sent back for reconsideration.
That being said, Aydin has certainly gained massive benefits in the century since the establishment of the House of the Highlords by Shah Umur II the Glorious. One of the most immediate benefits was the commencement of Western Arms Trade - the vassalization of Gorz, Aquiliea and Sardinia, along with the establishing of borders with many Italian city states, opened up this trade to the great benefit of the Shah and Aydin.
Shah Umur II also launched what was to become a hallmark of Aydin’s involvement with the West, particularly the states of the Holy Roman Empire when he launched a war on the city state of Venice that drew in many Italian States and German principalities, including the Republic of PIsa, the Duchy of Milan and the Elector Palatine. In sharp contrast the strategies of his fathers who were in search of land and the safety that cities and fortresses bring a dynasty, Umur was in search of wealth to adorn his cities, fortify his walls, and raise troops to defend his lands as well as the effort to extend the House of Peace ever further into Europe.
The seige of Venice lasted 3.5 years, but since Umur allowed the Venetians to continue to trade while the seige lasted (all ships were searched for weapons, and only those were confiscated) the coffers of Venice were full when the city finally fell.
The Republic of Pisa was quickly defeated an put under siege. But the powerful armies of the Duchy of Milan inflicted several significant initial defeats on the warriors of Aydin.
However, Pisa eventually fell, and Shah Umur was able to bring new forces and commanders north to meet the Milanese threat. When a massive rebel force besieging Milan and Parma having fallen, the once-victorious forces of Milan were harried back and forth across the plains of the Po until the were destroyed beneath the walls of Brescia.
Milan surrendered two of her three provinces as the ghazi warriors were tightening the noose around the city of Milan, and the Republic of Florence surrendered to the Shah and was annexed for its university and merchant knowledge.
In slightly less than 10 years, Shah Umur has redrawn the map of the Italian Peninsula.
- The Holy Father had been banished north of the Alps and the ancient City of Rome was in the hands of Aydin.
- The once-powerful Duchy of Milan was reduced to the Plain of Lombardy and the surrounding regions.
- The ancient Republic of Florence was no more.
- The even more ancient Republic of Pisa, only recently independent was absorbed into the peninsular possessions of Aydin.
- The Kingdom of Sicily was gone
- The powerful trading Republic of Venice had been initially reduced to its island heartland and then captured and annexed by the Kingdom of Naples.
For the next decade, Shah Umur consolidated his gains, lavished the ransom of Venice on projects throughout the kingdom, and worked relentlessly with his super diplomatic corps to calm the rattled nerves of Italy and Europe. Then in 1487, the rapidly growing Kingdom of Savoy declared war on the Kingdom of Sardinia, a vassal of Aydin. Shah Umur took up the challenge and entered the war to defend the honor of Aydin.
The Duchy of Milan, trusting in the power of the armies of the King of Savoy, entered the war on the side of her Italian neighbor, hoping to reclaim some of the territories lost to Aydin. However, the armies of Aydin met those of Savoy on the plains before the ancient city of Parma (the seat of my university) and defeated the Savoyards.
The Savoyards retreated to their mountains and valley, and Milan was brought under siege. After almost two years, the city fell and was annexed by Shah Umur.
Shah Umur was given the accolade “The Glorious” for the length of his reign, his superb Administrative skills, the wealth he gathered from victories, and most important his victories over the major Italian cities, republics and kingdoms. He expanded the power of Aydin in a way never seen, and certainly not imaginable even during the reign of his father. It is true that he was able to take advantage of the near collapse of the governing structures in Italy, and the Holy Roman Empire was unable to come to the aid of her Italian members due to the massive collapse of power due to the onslaught on the Germanic people by the Slavs. During this period the Duchy of Austria was completely absorbed by the Kingdom of Poland, and Bohemia was assaulted by the Poles, Lithuania, the French, and many of the smaller German tribes.
But having an opportunity and being able to seize it are two different things. A less persuasive ruler with a less persuasive diplomatic corps would have been unable to withstand the suspicions and anger of Europe. A less capable administrator would have been unable to keep the government of such a far flung kingdom running smoothly. A less confident monarch would have been unwilling to entrust military power in the hands of such capable commanders out of fear and envy. But in fact Shah Umur was all of these things.
And in one other thing Shah Umur surpassed all his ancestors, and in fact all his descendants down to this day. As accomplished as he was, he raised a son who was in fact even more accomplished. Ali, the son of Umur ascended the throne in 1516 on the death of his father, and inaugurated an even more brilliant episode in the evolution of Aydin from Beydom to Empire.
Very engrossing stuff. I really do enjoy the use of a style more akin to your excellent Granada AAR, although the narrative approach at the beginning of this AAR was brilliant as well. Excellent gains for Aydin, Italian provinces are rich and thus always very desirable but you are nearing ever close to large and powerful European nations who could prove troublesome opponents.
Both Shah Ibrahim and Umur deserve their accolades, they have proven accomplished and competent rulers, I would assume Aydin is now of a comparable power to most states in the region. All the better for Aydin then that you allude to Umur's son Ali's reign proving even better than his predecessors. Verily Ali must have been a great ruler to esclipe both men, and as such I greatly look forward to reading of his reign next!
Both Shah Ibrahim and Umur deserve their accolades, they have proven accomplished and competent rulers, I would assume Aydin is now of a comparable power to most states in the region. All the better for Aydin then that you allude to Umur's son Ali's reign proving even better than his predecessors. Verily Ali must have been a great ruler to esclipe both men, and as such I greatly look forward to reading of his reign next!