CK2 Dev Diary #67: Revisiting the Middle East

[mshoari14]

Except assyria is named for the city of assur which is not in any geographical definition of Syria. Al jazira may be etymologically unrelated to Assyria. But Assyria and Syria are diffrent places.

Actually they r not. You are refering to the city of Assur, which is located near modern day Karbala, Iraq. Syria can also refer to an area, since modern day Syria fell under the Assyrian Empires zone of control. The name likely stayed because of popularity of the Syriac language.

Furthermore, names of areas can be transferred to entirely different regions, they originated from. For example Rum in south of the modern day Turkey refers to Rome.

 

[Thure]

Furthermore, names of areas can be transferred to entirely different regions, they originated from. For example Rum in south of the modern day Turkey refers to Rome.

Or modern Germany Saxony which isn't even in the territory of medieval Saxony.

 

[yapxingguan]

awesome!

 

[Planet of Hats]

Lurker reporting!

So this looks awesome. Daylam should probably have some cultural names, though - it was known pretty widely as Hyrcania, Gurgan to the Persians, and was called such since the classical period. Christians were calling it that centuries after the region became more locally known as Tabaristan (after the Arab conquests). The Daylamites were only one part of the broader region.

Honestly I think Gurgan is the better name for it.

 

[Masoud22volk]

Great changes!

 

[TheDungen]

Actually they r not. You are refering to the city of Assur, which is located near modern day Karbala, Iraq. Syria can also refer to an area, since modern day Syria fell under the Assyrian Empires zone of control. The name likely stayed because of popularity of the Syriac language.

Furthermore, names of areas can be transferred to entirely different regions, they originated from. For example Rum in south of the modern day Turkey refers to Rome.

Syria derives from Assyria but the Assyrian heartlands were and still are in northern modern Iraq. The exact area called so jazira in the game. You may be right there is no etymological connection but it is very much the assyrian heartland. Assyria is eastern Aramaic. Syria is western aramaic also much of nothern Syria was part of Armenia back then.

 

[Federalist girl]

Except assyria is named for the city of assur which is not in any geographical definition of Syria. Al jazira may be etymologically unrelated to Assyria. But Assyria and Syria are diffrent places.

Assyria and Syria are in different places because of the Romans. The Seleucid Empire ruled over that whole area after Alexander, from Asia Minor to India. But by the time the Romans went a-conquering under Lucullus and Pompey, the Seleucids were basically left with a rump state around Antioch.

The Seleucids did once rule Assyria, but the rump state didn't contain Assyria--which was more properly located in Adiabene, which was variously a satrapy or client kingdom under the Parthians.

But as Syriac was the lingua Franca in the Seleucid heartlands (being the descendant of the language spoken under the Neo-Assyrians), the Romans called the Seleucids the Syrian kings. And so, their rump state -- despite not being in Assyria -- becane Syria.

And then the name Syria stuck for good after Pompey incorporated the Seleucid remnant into the Roman province of Syria, which became the most important eastern Roman province along with Egypt during the entirety of the imperial period.

So Syria is Syria even if it doesn't have anything to do with Assyria. Blame the Romans.

 

[TheDungen]

Assyria and Syria are in different places because of the Romans. The Seleucid Empire ruled over that whole area after Alexander, from Asia Minor to India. But by the time the Romans went a-conquering under Lucullus and Pompey, the Seleucids were basically left with a rump state around Antioch.

The Seleucids did once rule Assyria, but the rump state didn't contain Assyria--which was more properly located in Adiabene, which was variously a satrapy or client kingdom under the Parthians.

But as Syriac was the lingua Franca in the Seleucid heartlands (being the descendant of the language spoken under the Neo-Assyrians), the Romans called the Seleucids the Syrian kings. And so, their rump state -- despite not being in Assyria -- becane Syria.

And then the name Syria stuck for good after Pompey incorporated the Seleucid remnant into the Roman province of Syria, which became the most important eastern Roman province along with Egypt during the entirety of the imperial period.

So Syria is Syria even if it doesn't have anything to do with Assyria. Blame the Romans.

Syria is Syria it is however not Assyria. And wasn't Antioch in the Armenian culture sphere more than the Syrian one? Syria was the area around Damascus and palmyra not Antioch as I recall. I am also reminded of TE Lawrence who claimed Syria was a term only used by people outside Syria. They themselves considered themselves Damascian or edessan or Palmyran. Even a thousand years later there was no real concept of Syria. Meanwhile the is and has always been peel who consider themselves Assyrian. Even if the memory of the ancient empire faded.

 

[Ekscalybur]

They are probably going to make next expansion about Africa, another sign that Paradox has abandoned Europe and are never going to improve crusades.

After the thread on this very subject and it's extremely thorough debunking, I have to ask, what color is the sky in your world?

 

[AjayAlcos]

After the thread on this very subject and it's extremely thorough debunking, I have to ask, what color is the sky in your world?

Depends. In some places its blue, in others its poo.

 

[viola]

After the thread on this very subject and it's extremely thorough debunking, I have to ask, what color is the sky in your world?

Purple, of course.

 

[Enriador]

So the Duchy of Arabia is only three provinces now?

I hope they rename it. A Duchy of Arabia makes as much sense as a Duchy of France!

 

[Manchu Arab]

maybe a south arabia kingdom with oman？

Oman was never historically a part of Yemen, nor was it ever occupied by them, so that won't make sense. Yemen on its own historically probably had more population than all of the rest of Arabia.

 

[Federalist girl]

Syria is Syria it is however not Assyria. And wasn't Antioch in the Armenian culture sphere more than the Syrian one? Syria was the area around Damascus and palmyra not Antioch as I recall. I am also reminded of TE Lawrence who claimed Syria was a term only used by people outside Syria. They themselves considered themselves Damascian or edessan or Palmyran. Even a thousand years later there was no real concept of Syria. Meanwhile the is and has always been peel who consider themselves Assyrian. Even if the memory of the ancient empire faded.

Antiocheia-on-the-Orodes was a Seleucid city, named after Antiochus (the second Seleucid king). Antioch was founded as a Hellenistic city, and it later became the capital (moved from Seluceia-on-the-Tigris) of the Seleucid Empire. By the time of the Roman conquest, it was probably the third most populated city in the Mediterranean (though that's debatable -- Mesopotamian Seleuceia still had a massive population well into the Parthian era, until its depopulation).

Anyway, the Armenian king Tigranes did conquer the Syrian heartlands of the Seleucid Empire (he was the one who Lucullus and Tigranes were fighting), but Armenian culture sphere? No -- though the neighboring kingdoms of Commagene was very much Armenian. Samosata, the capital of Commagene, used to be known as Antiocheia, and I wonder if that's where some of the confusion lies.

In any event, the Roman province of Syria was the key eastern province and stayed that way thru to the Arab conquests. Antiocheia was its capital except for brief periods where, usually to punish Antiocheia for its loyalties in civil wars, Damascus was occasionally made the capital.

Edessa was a much smaller and less important city, though it exercised religious importance and obviously grew in stature during the Severan period due to Julia Domna and her family.

I can't speak to TE Lawrence nor the state of play during the early 20th century, although I note that Antioch had LONG since declined by then while Damascus continued to be an important city. But as for cultural identity, Syria was an administrative unit -- a Roman province. That is where the name for the region came from, but it does not have anything to do with the Assyrian heartlands except for the etymological root of the name. There was no "Syrian culture" -- there was the Syriac language, which was much spread much broader than the Roman province of Syria and had to do with an Aramaic language that had spread through the region during the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Syriac speakers once extended throughout the Middle East, from the Assyrian heartlands to the entire Levant, including the area covered by the Syrian province (and the modern country of Syria).

Today, Syriac speakers only really live in the Assyrian heartlands but they used to be spread much further. The distinction is captured broadly in the Syriac Church (representing the western Aramaic Syriac speakers) and the Assyrian Church (representing the descendants of the Assyrian populations of Assur and Adiabene, etc.). The name of the Syrian province comes from them and their language, via the Romans and Greeks. So we have the Syrian Roman province also being the capital of a strongly Hellenistic culture, with a name derived from a much older Akkadian civilization. The whole area was very very culturally diverse, with newer Roman and Hellenistic influences next to very ancient Aramaic and Akkadian cultures.

 

[schizotek]

Isn't turkestan already Persian? I thought the -stan suffix was persian?
As for turan isn't that name older than the Turkish presence in the region? I think you should think more along the lines of the Turks having been named for turan rather than the other way around.

Turks have been called Turks since before the Oghuz were driven into Transoxiana. They aren't etymologically linked words at all.

 

[Planet of Hats]

Isn't turkestan already Persian? I thought the -stan suffix was persian?
As for turan isn't that name older than the Turkish presence in the region? I think you should think more along the lines of the Turks having been named for turan rather than the other way around.

Nah, "Turk" probably comes from the word türük in Old Turkic, which meant something like born or strong.

 

[Thure]

I hope they rename it. A Duchy of Arabia makes as much sense as a Duchy of France!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_the_Franks#Dux_Franciae

 

[alssindi123]

IMHO I think people should chill about Duchy/Kingdom/Empire titles. They'll never be a name that makes everyone happy. In many cases, the names are bound to be anachronistic or inaccurate but CK2 has to settle for one in the end.

Fun fact: the Arabs have no single name for "Arabia," it's simply called 'The Peninsula' or 'The Peninsula of the Arabs.' For the purposes of this game the former is rather too vague and the latter would be kind of hard to fit on the map.

Also can we please have the choice to colour in wastelands if surrounded by one country like in EU4?

 

[Caeserion]

Do people not simply rename stuff to whatever they consider the 'proper' names?

And given that you're looking at the middle-east would it be possible to rework the 'Form Israel' decision so that it holds all the lands in k_jerusalem dejure. Its pretty annoying tbh considering that dejure means by law/right and you'd think that atleast the jews would consider those lands rightfully theirs. Or do something like the West-Francia -> France change and allow jews to to hold k_jerusalem.

 

[LeSingeAffame]

Do people not simply rename stuff to whatever they consider the 'proper' names?

You need the Customization pack for that, so not everyone can do it