Very interesting stuff. I do like that a naval defeat for the caliphate can be glossed over, so strong now is the nation. The description of Portuguese exploration continues to be not only plausible sounding but also brilliantly detailed. A Catholic Japan then, once again I get the feeling the Jalayirids will be rather unamused at this. Portugal had better hope that the ships newly built by the Jalayirids are not soon sailing towards Lisbon.
Well, those thin supplies of wood in the Mediterranean aren't there for nothing! More wood! More ships! Have we cleared out Lebanon's forests yet?
There is however, a slim chance that these new ships may indeed attack Lisbon soon enough
Congratulations mayorqw, you've been nominated as the WritAAR of the week! Take a bow and accept your award, you've earned it.
Thank you yet again.
This really does just keep getting better and better (no pressure). I really loved the entries on Portugal. A lovely fusion of Portugal and the Netherlands from our timeline. Also great imagery of Catholic Japan and great description of the spread of Christianity to the outcasts in eastern society.
I'll keep updating on the Japanese and the southern Indians' Christian misadventures as time goes on. Let us hope they live in interesting times... Oh I know they will
Oh, and sorry for the lack of last week's update, even if only to comemorate the WritAAR of the Week award. This update has been basically finished since Tuesday, but damn exams
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Chapter 18
The Reconquest of Al-Andalus
Caliph Isma'il I.
Ten years passed, and Caliph Muhammad’s reign of peace had brought great wealth to the land. With no need to finance a large army, taxes were lowered and commerce blossomed, despite the increased competition from the Lisboetas. New canals were established along the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates, and retired career soldiers given plots of land in the newly irrigated lands. The bureaucracy’s excesses were kept in check through Muhammad’s keen eye, and lavish bathhouses, fountains and palaces were built throughout the empire.
However, Muhammad II – his grizzly beard and hair giving away his 25 year long rule - died in 1541, after a 24 year long reign. His successor, Isma’il I, was different in many aspects from his father. Having been sent at an early age to the governorship of Morocco as a fosterling, so as to familiarize himself with the hardships of keeping the distant provinces – whose governors treated as quasi-independent states, so far were they from the center of power – the future caliph was, to his father’s displeasure, very keen on imitating the values and styles of the nomadic Berbers. Such were their influence in him that he lived in a nearly ascetic state, content with little more than a regular tent, and always mistrusting of the luxurious palace life and its revelers. A warrior – and poet – at heart, he left much of the day to day business of the state – starting an unfortunate trend – to trusted viziers, even though Isma’il’s few interventions in legislation prove that he had great skill at it - despite his distaste for such matters, he thoroughly realized their importance in managing a sprawling empire such as the Jalayirids’.
His reign also begins a period of favor for more bellicose actions, and one of disfavor for the Dhimmi Party, after the undying support given to it by Muhammad II.
Old Muslim Iberia at its near maximum extent.
Even so, there was great surprise when the Caliph announced the enterprise that would define his tenure: the (re)conquest of Al-Andalus, from where the Muslims had been expelled 130 years before. A monumental enterprise – unlike the overwhelming majority of the Caliphate’s conquests, Iberia was a large and decidedly anti-Islamic region – the two wars fought to further it would, despite its surprising initial success, be discarded after Isma’il’s early death, the hostile and rebellious populace doing much to increase the difficulty of administrating a territory so far from home and discourage anyone from attempting further conquest in the Peninsula; at least until the regency for Isma’il’s son ended.
The Muslim troops quickly disembarked in Lagos, in southern Portugal. Taking advantage of the fragmented Portuguese cities and the lack of a ‘national’ defense plan, they quickly advanced northward, defeating the Republic’s combined – for lack of a better term, since the other cities were extremely reluctant[1] to unite under Lisbon in a last-ditch effort to stop the ‘Moors’ - forces at the Battle of Setubal, 1545. Defenseless, Lisbon was taken and to the relief of its inhabitants, left untouched for the most part, since Isma’il found looting abhorrent.~
A ‘treaty’ was signed by a humiliated Aedile, where Lisbon forfeited her rights to any territory south of the Tagus River. Both this apparent abandonment of her Sister Republics and their jealousy at Lisbon having kept the Far Eastern trade for herself, would lead to the secession of the Oporto Republic – which had grown moderately wealthy trading with northern Europe, as opposed to Lisbon’s focus in the Far East - which sought to overshadow Lisbon, as well as the ‘Liga Beirã’, the name given to an extremely loose confederation, in Central Portugal, a league of the states which saw both Lisbon and Oporto as oppressive masters.
More than its conquest at the hands of the Muslims, Lisbon was weakened by these territorial losses, as its pool of available soldiers diminished considerably, and it was to suffer intense competition – peaceful or otherwise - from the northern Oporto Republic, though, curiously, most sieges resulted in either a stalemate or minor concessions[2]. The Lisboetas now found themselves in a far more precarious position in the Far East as well as home, as the men of Oporto sought to establish themselves in both. Ultimately, the Portuguese Oriental Empires (both of Lisbon and the ‘newcomer’ Oporto) would fall, as the wars grew more vicious at home, and less and less resources were devoted to their oriental possessions’ upkeep - who on their shoe-string budget could barely keep functioning – and were slowly absorbed by the neighboring powers – as was the case of the fortresses on Taiwan, which were repurposed as Wokou pirate bases – or taken over by the local elites – Cochin, Calicut, Makassar. Among them, the Cidade do Cabo (Cape Town) would be the only one to truly survive past its Motherland’s destruction or neglect.
Cidade do Cabo, at its early stage.
After minor skirmishes with Spanish forces, the armies entered Badajoz and repelled several attacks by the enemy. A few battles were then fought, and the Spanish soon withdrew from the territory. Seville and Cordoba were soon liberated, opening the way for supply ships to begin unloading their goods at Seville’s harbor. Soon the Muslim armies were pursuing the retreating Spanish, though, due to the haste, inadequate defenses were set up to protect their newly gained territories, as well as troops to fight off the fanatic partisans which had arisen throughout the land, to fight against the heathen Mahometans. Pursuing the retreating Spanish armies to the North and West, the Muslims left a gap in their ‘line’, which was mercilessly exploited by the Spanish general Tomas de Ripperdá. Punching through the nearly nonexistent defenses n the way to Cordoba, he recaptured the city, as well as Seville and Cadiz, in mid 1546, cutting the Muslims’ territory in two and blockading their supply lines.
Isma’il’s hungry forces then made an unwilling – if shorter - re-enactment of Xenophon’s Long March[3], marching from Toledo, across hundreds of kilometers of hostile enemies and dry land, in the scorching summer sun. Despite his plan seemingly collapsing around him, Isma’il, after losing a third of his army to hunger, pestilence and Spanish raids – he refused any form of pitched battle with Tomas de Ripperdá - eventually reached the coast – as the other Spanish forces were distracted by a surprise attack on Valencia by the Army of Sicily.
The dry, hot climate of southern Spain, combined with a total lack of supplies, led to high casualties in Isma'il's army.
Resting his battered army and awaiting reinforcements at the mouth of the Guadiana river, Isma’il was to again conquer Seville the year after, this time leaving an adequate force to guard the city and the surrounding region – having realized the paramount importance of good supply lines in such hostile lands. General de Ripperdá’s army met Isma’il on the outskirts of Cordoba. This battle, in March 1547, was to showcase to Europe the deadly power of Isma’il’s reorganized musket formations. Though an adept of Bedouin-like ethics, the Caliph was well aware of the realities of managing an army far larger than a tribal host, and in a flurry of creativity – which some actually attribute to his chief general, Abu Hasan Muhammad – he developed a rather efficient way to organize musket men, arranging them in formations that were three lines deep, in which one line would fire, retreat to the back, reload, and await to fire again, providing a steady stream of fire; this is now known as the ‘Andalusian Formation’, given its first serious application in warfare.
The Spanish king and his entourage surrender themselves to the advancing Muslim forces and agree to the negotiations.
The Spanish army was annihilated, and Cordoba again occupied and set up as the seat of the governor of Al-Andalus, a post the Caliph was to occupy until the end of his life, since he would spend nearly the entirety of his reign in Iberia. Then, the Muslims pushed north, capturing King Garcia I in Madrid, and forcing him to sign the Treaty of Toledo, in which roughly all territories south of the Tagus and west from Granada were added to the Caliphate.
The old Great Mosque of Cordoba. which had been converted into a church in 1236, was once again made Muslim, and important new additions were made to it.
While the Caliph was later to continue his conquest of Iberia, he now spent his days organizing the province of Al-Andalus, and ordering craftsmen, and artists from all over the Caliphate to initiate the building (and renovation) of elegant mosques - palaces, sewers and so on, as well as intrepid missionaries, so as to convert at least part of the populace to Islam, since, even if for practical reasons, the territory was extremely hard to rule over without at least a small base of support. To this end, soldiers were also given land, and Arab families brought over to colonize the province. While the cultural absorption and conversion of the local populace had initially lackluster results, they soon grew better – due in no small part to the desire to escape the Jizya tax, which was levied on non-Muslims – and would lead, eventually, to the modern Muslim states of Iberia.
The splendour of the court of Al-Andalus rivaled even that of Baghdad, as the local governors were eager to make Cordoba the cultural and scientific capital of Islam once more.
Isma’il’s conquests, besides forever altering the cultural and political landscape of Iberia, had the effect of giving yet another push for Spain’s colonization of the New World[4] – as well as causing large-scale emigration to South Africa, which expanded considerably during this time - as Christians fled Muslim Al-Andalus to find better fortunes elsewhere. The Spanish, having been pushed off North Africa 40 years before, had taken great swathes of land, primarily in the Caribbean, the so-called ‘Spanish Main’, and had been steadily colonizing them, with even timid contacts made with the Mesoamerican states. Much like South Africa would serve as a haven for the displaced Portuguese, Spain’s colonies in the Americas would more or less serve as the Spanish people’s home, far away from a Muslim-dominated Iberia. Indeed, these lands would soon be the only acceptable choices for emigration, as the Protestant Reformation and its aftershocks began to be truly felt in France and Germany, as small religious conflicts boiled into full-scale wars, preludes of times to come. The European Wars of Religion, sometimes called collectively ‘The Forty Years’ War’, would , in fifty years, terrorize Northern and Central Europe, amid the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire.
Iberia after Isma'il's first war. Note Oporto and the Liga's secession from the Republic of Lisbon, as well as the new, yet short-lived Kingdom of Aragón, which was again annexed by Spain after a short civil war, in which several other states also sought independence.
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[1]Oporto itself refused to send troops to defended its rival, and it was these troops that allowed Oporto’s initial edge over Lisbon, taking over large parts of the coast and integrating its cities into itself, dropping Lisbon’s pretention of ‘primus inter pares’.
[2] Lisbon’s short-lived conquest of Oporto was for naught, as the city rebelled yet again and drove its troops from the city. Otherwise, the powers were at rather equal odds, and it is thought that neither had the strength to keep the other in check for too long. There were also small periods of peace, usually lasting a year or two, and again interrupted by some petty dispute that sent the two cities bickering yet again.
[3] A perilous journey undertaken during Antiquity, in which Xenophon, a Greek mercenary, and his companions, which had been hired by a Persian prince which sought the throne, attempted to return to their homeland after their expedition’s (and the prince’s bid for the throne’s) failure. They travelled from Mesopotamia all the way to the Black Sea, in a great journey in which they braved deserts, disease, attacks from Persians and Armenians, and constant hunger in a fight for survival.
[4]The reason this continent’s discovery by the Europeans has not been described on this work is due to the sporadic nature of expeditions to it, which intensified in the 1510’s, and which will be spoken of later, when New Spain is established as an independent organized entity, with its capital in Havana, acting as a sort of exiled government.