[Mini-MOD] Jews and Crypto-Jews

[enderbr]

Jews and Crypto-jews
Jewish notable characters and events. Crypto-judaism and secrets.​

The goal of this mod is the inclusion of the jewish religion in the game. Jewish religion was a minority religion at the time of the game and indeed wasn't the main player in the religious crusades and jihads. Having a closer contact to Iberian history however, I feel they played a major part in many events. In Portugal alone the position of chief steward / treasurer of the realm was traditionally occupied by jews and the chief rabbi was appointed by the king, much as a cardinal would. Likewise, jews being a "people of the book" enjoyed relative religious freedom in muslim Iberia. Coexistence wasn't, however, always peaceful and many jews found themselves having to convert to christianism or islam, becoming second class citizens marked by their recent conversion (conversos in Spain, for instance). Others chose to keep practicing their ancestral religion in secret, becoming what has come to be known as crypto-jews.

I'm still laying out the groundwork for this mod. If you have any relevant ideas about events, important characters or history regarding judaism in the game's timeframe, please PM me.

Version 0.11

 

[enderbr]

I've been working on this for a while, even before I posted the thread, but I'm stumped. The game can't seem to find the localization strings for the religion name. It also doesn't find the icon I put in the end of the strip.
I've looked at other mods (PMM and Khazar Jewish mini-mod) that mess with religions and couldn't find a solution either.

Anyone has an insight?

 

[birdboy2000]

For localisation, are you remembering to edit your localisation files in Notepad or Notepad++ and not, say, Excel? The engine doesn't like Excel.

 

[enderbr]

Yup, Using Notepad++, I've uploaded it for debugging purposes and you can check it on the first post. Thanks for the interest.
Great mod btw =)

 

[birdboy2000]

Found it. Paradox uses British spelling of localisation - s instead of z. Your folder's spelled wrong.

 

[enderbr]

Ha! That's rich... Thanks a ton man! Still don't know what to do about the icon though.
Will keep looking. Then on to events and crypto jews.

 

[PyroAce2]

Ha! That's rich... Thanks a ton man! Still don't know what to do about the icon though.
Will keep looking. Then on to events and crypto jews.

You need to adjust the interface files so that the game knows to look for your newly added 10th frame. Open interface/generalstuff.gfx with your text editor and find the entries for GFX_religion_icon_strip and GFX_religion_icon_strip_small and adjust as so:

### icons
spriteType = {
name = "GFX_religion_icon_strip"
texturefile = "gfx\\interface\\religion_icon_strip.tga"
noOfFrames = 10
}
spriteType = {
name = "GFX_religion_icon_strip_small"
texturefile = "gfx\\interface\\religion_icon_strip_small.tga"
noOfFrames = 10
}

 

[enderbr]

Fantastic. I looked for it but apparently windows doesn't like searching within gfx files.
Going to upload the corrected files now and keep working on it.

 

[Mad King James]

There was another Jewish kingdom at this time, the Kingdom of Beta Israel in Ethiopia

 

[enderbr]

Great! I'm looking it up right now.

 

[enderbr]

Alright, I spent the day researching this and couldn't get very far historically. All I got is that aprox. 960 DC the Axunite Empire was wiped out by possibly Queen Judith (Gudit) of Semien (Beta Israel) (or of the pagan Awad people). It appears she proceeded to burn a lot of temples and cities for the next 40 years or so. The throne then supposedly passed on to her lineage and we only have somewhat reliable records again further down the line when the Semien kingdom was wiped out once again.

Anyone has any further info? Suggestions as to the provinces (apart from Gondar, which is pretty strongly attested with the Beta Israel people). Contemporary rulers in the timeline? suggested names for invented rulers?

There is a lot of davidic/solomonic dinasty history in the mix as well, so I was thinking about a coat of arms for the house. Do you think we should use the ethiopian noble family one or something else entirely. Maybe two of them, each with a version of the lion of judah perharps.

Anyway, I'm open to ideas on this topic and will now resume working on crypto-jew events.

 

[Neotribe]

Axum itself would be a province, no?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aksumite_Empire
The article says obelisks/stylae were of symbolic importance.
Laurels appear to feature in Axumite coinage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KingEndybisEthiopia227-235CE.jpg

A mix of those features with heraldry at least partially based on solomonic styles seems appropriate to me.

Maybe a lion rampant before an obelisk, or some such?

 

[enderbr]

There was another Jewish kingdom at this time, the Kingdom of Beta Israel in Ethiopia

Axum itself would be a province, no?

Yes, I decided to go with "Judith wiped Aksum out and left a very expanded and fragmented Kingdom of Semien behind"
So, I'm thinking assigning it Gondar (Their home province), Aksum, Akordat (The rest of the Semiens) and Kassala (Down the river). Atbara I think woud be unprobable even in this slightly ahistorical scenario so I'll probably give it to Nubia (maybe Abyssinia)
To represent fragmentation I'm thinking of giving every single province to a vassal and leaving the King of Semien only with Gondar.
Of course the Aksumite dynasty should be in Abyssinia with claims to all proper territories.

I'm definitely keeping The Kingdom of Semiens in a separate version of the mod and I think it has great story potential.

The article says obelisks/stylae were of symbolic importance.
Laurels appear to feature in Axumite coinage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KingEndybisEthiopia227-235CE.jpg

A mix of those features with heraldry at least partially based on solomonic styles seems appropriate to me.

Maybe a lion rampant before an obelisk, or some such?

I think that would be cool for a Solomonic line =) Israel CoA is the Lion rampant in front of the wall, Ethiopia is the lion passant with the flag so, yeah, definitely the lion of Judah and a stella or simply the lion would be great.

By the way I'm thinking of separating jewish characters in 3 cultures, quite diverse already at the time: Sephardics, Ashkenazi and Ethiopian. Also, the religion in three, the basic Rabbinic Jewish one and two "heresies": Pagan-Judaism, practiced by Ethiopian Jews at the time and Karaites in the Muslim world.
Thoughts? Ideas? Criticism? I'll work on it on the weekend.

 

[Koheleth]

If you are going to add Jews and Jewish characters to the Middle East, then they shouldn't be Sephardic. We only call Middle Eastern Jews "Sephardic" now because, after the Spanish expulsion, Sephardim settled in the Middle East and swamped the local communities. During the era of the game, Jews in Greece & Turkey should be Romaniote, while Jews in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, etc. should be Mizrahi. And the Khazars should just be Khazar or Turkic, not Sephardic. Hope you get the mod in working order!! Looking forward to playing it!!

 

[enderbr]

If you are going to add Jews and Jewish characters to the Middle East, then they shouldn't be Sephardic. We only call Middle Eastern Jews "Sephardic" now because, after the Spanish expulsion, Sephardim settled in the Middle East and swamped the local communities. During the era of the game, Jews in Greece & Turkey should be Romaniote, while Jews in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, etc. should be Mizrahi. And the Khazars should just be Khazar or Turkic, not Sephardic. Hope you get the mod in working order!! Looking forward to playing it!!

Thanks a million for setting it straight. But I was actually referring to Iberian Jews as Sephardic, the narrower interpretation of the word. From reading a few internet sources (I'm actually not jewish myself) I thought the word applied to the time frame. Does it not?

 

[Koheleth]

Thanks a million for setting it straight. But I was actually referring to Iberian Jews as Sephardic, the narrower interpretation of the word. From reading a few internet sources (I'm actually not jewish myself) I thought the word applied to the time frame. Does it not?

Yes, Iberian Jews were Sephardic during this time frame. In fact, "Sepharad" is just the Hebrew word for "Spain."

 

[James_Manring]

If you are doing some work to the Ethiopia region would you consider adding 2 or 3 more provinces towards the interior of Africa and adding some more manpower to the region as well? It makes little sense to me to do all of this work only to have the Shia Caliphate steamroll it.