Baghdad in the Sky with Diamonds - A Jalayirid AAR

After Ahmad the Mongol’s unexpected death, Shah Walad moved quickly to gain the support of his father’s powerbase - the merchants and the royal household – by granting them further privileges and a greater say in government. With these grants - out of a need to ensure a smooth succession and prevent a relapse into the tribal feuds that Ahmad fought all his life against – we see that Ahmad’s strict autocracy[1] begins to erode and the bureaucracy – staffed with literati and loyal courtiers – which was used by Ahmad only as a means of enforcing his will effectively, begins to take a more defined shape – in no small part due to the new Caliph’s disinterest in administrative matters - and to direct in a more day-to-day manner most enterprises of the ship of state.

Shah Walad, however, while he had been given lessons on good governance and the subtle art of diplomacy, showed himself to be far more proficient in military matters, drilling the troops constantly and arranging for the supply of better quality equipment with the establishment of state-run foundries for this very purpose. He would soon find a way of proving the wisdom of these measures.


The collapse of the Timurid Empire’s holdings outside of Central Asia and its environs caused a power vacuum that wasn’t solely exploited by Ahmad in his Persian Campaigns. The Black Sheep Turkmen (Qara Qoyunlu) - who had been vassals of the Jalayirid tribes and had ruled over eastern parts of Persia many years before, prior to Timur’s conquests – based at Tabriz, immediately invaded the lands of Khorasan. This brought them into conflict with the Jalayirid Caliphate, both due to territorial ambitions and religious differences, since the Qara Qoyunlu were mostly Shi’ite. Sensing weakness in their rivals after Ahmad’s death, the Turkmen began to raid several outlying Jalayirid Persian provinces. When the raiding parties were not followed – by Shah Walad’s orders – into their territories, the Turkmen took this as proof of the Caliphate’s weakness and began to amass their armies on the border.

This proved to be a ploy by the Caliph, and the Qara Qoyunlu were ambushed at several points and defeated by Shah Walad’s troops. While they were to be a nuisance until their annihilation and forced settlement, the Turkmen, with many of their troops dead, were forced into an humiliating treaty, where they were forced to pay indemnities and allow free transit for Jalayirid merchants.

During the next 7 years, Shah Walad was able to again improve his troops’ quality, in expectation for the coming conflict, the 1st Schismatic War. Ever since Ahmad’s proclamation as Caliph, a rivalry had been brewing with the Egyptian Mamlukes, who held the Abbasid Caliphs in Cairo as a way of enforcing their authority further in the Middle East. The rise of a capable adversary in Mesopotamia, a challenger to the Mamlukes’ power, was received badly. While Ahmad had been wise enough to avoid direct confrontation, his son was eager to go to war. When the Caliphate’s ally, the Ottoman Devleti, clashed with the Egyptians on trading rights in the Eastern Mediterranean, Shah Walad sponsored the escalation of the conflict; soon enough, the Caliphate and the Ottomans were at war with the Mamlukes. A series of indecisive battles followed in Syria and Cappadocia. The borders ebbed and flowed, with the Mamlukes managing to capture Mosul once, and the Caliphate’s armies being stopped 7 kilometers short of Mecca due to harassment on its supply lines by Bedouins.


The only ‘decisive’ engagement occurred near Damascus a year into the war. A combined Ottoman-Jalayirid army of 20,000 led by Walad faced a Mamlukian one of 19,000, under Muhammad Burji. The armies met on an open plain with Mount Qasioun in the distance. The combined allied forces attempted to surround the Mamlukes; they were, however driven back by the threat of a rear charge of the Mamluke Sultan’s guard, numbering five hundred.

Then, Jalayirid light cavalry managed to lure the Mamluke cavalry away from the main force, pelting them with javelins and retreating subsequently, and then restarting. Meanwhile, the two armies attempted to outmaneuver each other, being driven off immediately from the other sides’s counter maneuvers. This continued until Walad gave the order for a full-on attack.

As the lines grew closer, the Jalayirid army grew wider, so as to box the Mamlukes. This they did to a certain degree, although the better armed pike-soldiers of the enemy soon managed to make breaks in the Jalayirid front, isolating them into smaller pockets. Desperate, Walad flanked the force and decided to strike at Burji, to entice the other army to rout. Luckily, one of his riders managed to land a blow directly in the enemy Sultan’s cuirass, felling him.

As the Mamluke army began to rout and Walad felt safe to press his advantage, a cloud of dust appeared in the horizon. The Mamluke cavalry had managed to destroy the exhausted skirmishers and was readying itself to pounce on the rear of the army allied. The Iraqis and Persians routed, along with the Turks. From the battle men fled in all directions, from both sides, amid the scorching heat and confusion.


The battle has been called a Pyrrhic victory for the Mamlukes, as it kept Syria from being overrun. However, this came at the cost of 27,000 men on both sides, and neither side managed to get much from the battle, other than the loss of many of their finest warriors.

In the weeks following the battle, negotiations began, despite the protests from the Jalayirid Caliph, who advocated that the allies should regroup and strike while the Egyptians were dealing with the troubled succession of their Sultan. The Turkish faction disagreed, and managed to conclude a peace deal that gave them free passage along all of the Eastern Mediterranean. With the prospect of standing alone in a major war against a richer and larger rival, with its manpower and treasury drained, the Caliphate had to agree to this inconclusive treaty.

As such, religious and geopolitical matters were left mostly unchanged at the end of this war, the major development being the growing distrust and competition between the Ottoman Devleti and the Caliphate for the henceforth declining Mamluke Sultanate, who did not manage to fully recuperate from the war due to the Succession Crisis it found itself in.

A follow-up war was inevitable.

As the Eastern Mediterranean and the Arabian Peninsula recovered from the carnage, however unwillingly, academic institutions flourished in Mesopotamia. The heavy debasement of sand currency allowed greater liquidity of states finances, and the leftovers were used for patronage of the scholars that attended the court and the aristocrats’ salons and parties. The former scientific and literary glory of Baghdad slowly trickled back, but paled in the face of the discoveries of the times of Sultan Harun al-Rashid, five hundred years before.


However, this patronage was only accomplished through the political maneuvering exercised by the few wealthy merchants that attended the court and had managed to pry open offices for themselves by taking part in the palace politics, siding with the harem eunuchs and concubines in the morning, the Dhummi faction* at tea-time and rounding out the others by the end of the day. Some have even proposed that the funding of the Academy and several madrasahs were simply money-laundering schemes, done under blackmail from Yusuf ibn Mahmet al-Khwarizmi, a famous robber baron at the time, who controlled trade on the Tigris at a critical juncture.

Sadly, the second wind given to the arts was relatively insignificant if compared to what the Caliph’s funds could’ve provided. Shah Walad and the upper crust of the court had not yet completely indigenized themselves. They were not the Mongols of ages past, but they weren’t accustomed to most of the day-to-day business of a large, sprawling state – hence the plutocratic literati in the administration. They were more or less in-between their forefathers and their urban subjects, more or less like Bedouins; some still clinged to a life on horseback – a drunk one, preferably. The process of acculturation would only be accomplished several decades later under Shah Walid’s nephew.


The volume of trade on the Tigris and Euphrates increased, mostly from Baghdad and the manufacturing center of Mosul. It is on this trade and on that of the port cities of Basra and Hormuz that the considerable status increase of the moneyed classes began, just as the rugged Mongol features of the state began to dissipate. Trade links with the Indian Subcontinent, East Africa, Malacca, and beyond were strengthened, and the money economy grew by leaps and bounds – though mostly in the areas directly adjacent to the cities; the strictly agricultural heartland of Mesopotamia was still rather underdeveloped until the prolonged settlement of soldier-farmers under Muhammad II, the Great.


Meanwhile, the submission of the Bedouins guaranteed the safety of the caravan routes towards Constantinople and Europe and to Oman and the Yemenite Sultanates, thus linking the Caliphate’s very core to all of the Old World. The exception to this was the Mamluk Sultanate and the African routes, carrying slaves, salt and gold, where both sides frequently raided each other’s merchants in small-scale border wars, similar to the ‘correrias’ during the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula made by the Christian states.


Great attention was given to the army, as it was the Caliph’s wish to wage war on his Mamlukian rivals, who still held the cities of Mecca and Medina and the support of half the Muslim world.

And thus several factors – military, political and economical $ - favored the resuming of hostilities between the Caliphate and Egypt in the year 1447 of the Christian calendar.


*one which stressed the need for internal consolidation and peace. This faction only received extensive support several decades later, with the demise of all Mongolian culture among the elites.

$ There was one unified desire among the increasingly powerful merchants: that of securing trade with the African interior and control over the taxation of the pilgrim traffic heading to Islam’s holy sites.


I tried to give it a more 'history book' feeling, from a few books I've been reading. What do you think? Does it make a good history book, AAR or otherwise?

BootOnFace said:

I like history book AARs. And I like this AAR, even though it had no screenies.

Click to expand...

The screenies all died in a fire. Literally.
All I have of this game is a save and an uninstalled EU3
Thanks both for your opinions! Update today or tomorrow if work doesn't pile up.

Beautiful jasmines hung from the palace gardens, as the small lakes were lit up with the summer sun. Busy officials, slaves and courtesans dressed in fine Indian cotton strolled hurriedly through the scene, the heavens themselves seeming to be held above only by the effort of the great fruit trees surrounding the central courtyard.

But despite the sweet smell of summer flowers, there was only one word on everyone’s lips - war.

Men from both sides had grown, married, prospered. Fathers and sons, brothers and husbands; they were little more than body-bags on the battlefield, amidst the thunder and fire of the most destructive of war engines.

The Middle East had prospered in those 14-odd years. But all the joys and sorrows of men, rich and poor alike, were for naught. Their efforts in peace were only to leed to one of the most destructive wars of the century.

Shah Walad smiled. The Red army stood before him, with their weapons held firmly and the battle standards waving in the warm wind, as the pearl-white moon lit the landscape. Under his command, they would begin to march at dawn, towards Syria, while the Blue army would begin operations at once on the Red Sea Coast. If all went well, they would meet near Jerusalem, and from there, strike at Al-Qahira itself.


This optimism was quickly shattered. The bulk of the Mamluke forces were expected to be in Cyrenaica and in Alexandria, attempting to crush resistance to the new Sultan’s rule. These notices came from a few bribed merchants who had been plying their trade there. In reality, these uprisings had been dealt with months ago, and the Blue Army, having force-marched through unfriendly terrain, was ill-prepared to fight a much more logistically and numerically superior army. The army barely fought before breaking off in a rout. The only thing that prevented Mesopotamia from being overrun was a scorched earth policy - which reduced parts of the countryside around Mosul to incredible poverty - beside the skillful use of mercenary companies, whose services were fundamental in the harassment of the Mamlukes’ supply lines.


Meanwhile, the Blue army fared better. With the main enemy armies tied up elsewhere, the taking of the cities around the coast were easy, safe few incidents with the quartering of troops in the holy cities.

The Ottoman allies had not been idle either. They bypassed the carnage that was taking place around Mosul, taking many key cities and fortresses across the Levant.


The Ottoman campaign was cut short by the taking of Jerusalem by the Blue Army, which set up a great rivalry between the two main armies of the Caliphate, one which would have important ramifications further afield, in the infamous palace power-plays of the 16th century. Its success, wealth and prestige far superseded that of the Red Army, and these, above than all else, generate envy in lesser men.

Thus it was a war decided by land-grab rather than decisive battles, very much unlike the war that preceded it. The worn down Mamluke armies in the north posed little threat, and the armies conquered as far as they could with their limited supplies, as the military's granaries near Mosul were laid to dust, and the government had to requisition grain from peasants, causing famine throughout the Caliphate.

While Shah Walad was by no accounts am administrative genius, he knew that the breaking point had been reached, and that peace was, by now, not desired but needed. The Levant was carved up between the two allies, as Egypt flared up again in bloody civil war. The holy cities of Islam were finally in the true Caliph's hands, and the final destruction of the Abbasid puppet would take a single sword stroke.


Well that was pretty depressing . This sort of was to indicate how wars can be costly and that naive optimism is fatal... As you may have guessed this didn't lend itself all that much to comedy.

Thanks for the replies! I had already written the text back on Thursday but was too lazy to make and find the images.

The Middle East - at least the part under Jalayirid and Ottoman control - seemed like it would now enjoy a respite of peace, since the immediate threat of Mamluke supremacy was gone. Governors tended to their new provinces, aristocrats exploited their servants and life seemed more or less to return to normal for all.


The year of 1445 started with great news for the Sultan. One of his relatives had inherited the throne of Yemen, thanks to the family's nigh-on hapsburgian marriage policy. Qasim being the peaceful sort common in the family, upon enthronement he decided to invade Africa. All of it. Royal geographers had calculated that the Queen of Sheba's gold mines assuredly stood deep in the Ethiopian Highland. Why the Ethiopians didn't have the habit of selling this gold was a question of no importance.


Facing the entire Ethiopian Kingdom, Sultan Qasim was to show remarkable brilliance, and managed to submit the entire region over the course of a few years. The result of this lust for gold was the emergence of the Yemenite (note that it is a distinct political entity from the Kingdom of Yemen) Kingdom, with the adoption of the Bedoon language - a creole of local languages and Arabic, written in Arabic script*.

However, soon enough things started looking grim for the Ottomans. Their sultan died under 'mysterious circumstances', according to Shah Walad. How the Caliph could have knowledge of this the day before, so as to make this remark to one of his dinner guests, is still very much debated.

Anyway, with the Sultan dead and childless, the throne was to be left to his eldest daughter, who, being married with Qasim Jalayirid's first-born son, would lead to the crown being passed to the stewardship of the future Sultan of Yemen. This situation was opposed by his two brothers, and soon civil war flared in all of Turkey. The southern Beydoms of Karaman and Dulkadir revolted, and Ottoman Syria seceded to the Mamluke state once more, n a move by the local sheiks to legitimize their rule. Armenia also left the apparently crumbling state, although its liberty was short-lived due to the ravaging hordes that would beset her from the north, having already consumed Georgia.

Shah Walad lost his support in the Ottoman Empire when he supported his 2nd degree cousin to the throne; success in this venture would yield an almost fully Jalayirid Middle East. But alas it failed, and after a drawn-out 10 year war, Mehmet II emerged victorious. The Ottoman Empire would not fully recover its strength for a decade and a half.

Shah Walad died shortly afterwards. He was succeeded by his cousin Hasan (the II). His inheritance was seen as usurpation by many nobles, and many rose in revolt. This was short however, as Hasan II, as Ahmad before him, relied on the wealthy merchants and, having access to their wealth to raise armies and buy armament, proceeded to put down these revolts against his rule. As soon as he had enough control of the country, he sought to remove the only obstacle to his power as Caliph: Mamluke Egypt, or its remains.


The war was, like the 3rd Punic War had been before, a short and not at all glorious affair. Egypt battered as it was, a shadow of its former glory, beset on 2 sides - Yemenite Ethiopia and Jalayirid Judea - was easily conquered: it had gone from a hegemon in the Middle East, the sole opponent to the Jalayirid Empire, to a non-threat, easily brushed aside.


The high Mamluke military aristocracy and the Abbasid caliph were killed or exiled and civil government was reinstated in Egypt. Hasan, 5 years into his reign, had accomplished his predecessor's ambitions. He was the sole Muslim Caliph, as recognized by Sunnis. What would his next move be?


*Nationalist pressure at the turn of the 20th Century lead to the adoption of a modified form of the Amharic alphabet, since enmity with Arab states to the North had led the Bedooni to see themselves as the heirs of the cultures of the Ethiopian Highlands, not as a people equally descended from local and Arab roots.