Moorish phratries

When Abu Talha Rais first sighted the northern coast of Cabralia in 1484, he had no illusions that he'd reached India. (He did, however, name Hispaniola al-Waqwaq, whence its current name "Guaquaquite.") Instead, he categorically named everything on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean the Bilad al-Aqsa: "the Farthest Land." Later maps would declare the continents to be "America" and "Cabralia," and the water between them and Florida Algeciras to be "Caribby," but in Arabic none of that mattered. For the Moorish world, the New World was always al-Aqsa.

For most of the Five Families era, the Arabs weren't terribly interested in colonizing it. It was simpler to let the Isidorans ease their demographic pressures by moving abroad, converting the New World to (Isidoran) Catholicism and making them administrators of the dhimma. Come 1700, though, Umayyad Seville changed that forever. And when in 1792 al-Mahdi was driven into Maghrebi exile, things changed forever again.

Esbat

Esbat, n. Moorish. A straight sword.

The iconic Arab sword is the scimitar: long, single-edged, and backswept - and not an Arab sword. IRL, it was first adopted in Khorasan, the far side of the umma from al-Andalus; it was brought west in the Turkic migrations, where the Seljuks (and the Byzantines, who'd already adopted the single-edge as a cavalry weapon) first wielded it against the Crusaders. Progressive Turkish immigration Arabized and assimilated, and the single-edged sword displaced the straight-bladed weapons that had come before.

Everywhere, that is, except in Seville. al-Andalus was in a lot of ways a living fossil of Islamic culture; if Osprey is any indicator, that extended to sword architecture too. In Andalusada, where the Moorish world is happily spared the waves of Turkish immigration, the double-edged sword is not replaced. As time goes on, and Seville's economy shifts progressively into the western Mediterranean, the non-Arabic influence on sword design in Toledo (and, thus, the Moorish world) come from the Aragonese Empire, Sicily, and the various Italies.

What this evolves into is the iconic sword of the Moorish world: the esbat.

The Moorish language

In the beginning, the Iberian languages were all pretty close together. They probably had distinct dialectal names for each other, but it wasn't that hard for any one person to write anyone else (assuming they could write in the vernacular at all, that is, although interestingly Rodrigo Diaz was literate in Latin.)

But the world doesn't stay at the beginning forever, and as time progresses and things evolve (for instance, Aragon becoming much more important much earlier), those languages start to speciate and distinguish themselves fairly quickly - especially between the dialects spoken in al-Andalus and ash-Shamal.

Now that it's been dead 700 years IRL, we call the southern dialect continuum Mozarabic. This is a nice, distinctive term to describe what wasn't a terribly distinct dialect family at the time - but it has one problem: "Mozarabic" identifies itself not as "Mozarabic" but latino/us, vernacular Latin. (For that matter, most Romance languages of the period did that as well.)

The House of Umayya

Let's start with the short version of the story:

The Banu Umayya is very, very old. Their family goes back to Umayya ibn Abd-Shams, great-grandfather of Mu'awiya I, the fifth true Caliph of Islam. Under the rule of the Banu Umayya, Islam went from being the dominant religion of Arabia to being the dominant religion of the entire Western world. Constantinople, which had reconquered the entirety of the former Roman Empire, lost all but Anatolia, and their end in 1476 began eight centuries earlier under Yazid I. The march of Islam was only halted by treachery most foul - and before the dust had settled, the last survivors of the Banu Umayya fled to the western most reaches of their former empire, and built it again, better than the first time. Under their rule, al-Andalus displaced even great Damascus as the jewel of civilization: in 1000, Qurtuba was the largest city in the Western Hemisphere, bar none.

It didn't last forever, of course; treachery most foul, once again, and when the Berber fitna was finally over and al-Andalus was reconsolidated, it was under the Abbadids in Seville. The Abbadids gave way to a short period of Berber interlopers, who gave way to the Abbadids, who eventually gave way to the Five Families. But it's a testimony to the Banu Umayya that the civilization they began in that backwater peninsula was never overshadowed by the rest of the Umma.

And when the Five Families had been broken, and the bitch had been beaten, the Umayyads rose from the ashes and restored themselves. And when (not for the first time) they were laid low by treachery most foul, the survivors (again, not for the first time) fled to the westernmost reaches of their former empire, and built it again, better than before.

That's the short version of the story. It's not entirely true, but it's true enough. And even if some of it is lies, and some of it can't be called either way, that doesn't make it any less impressive. Going into that part, though, does make it a bit more complex.

Umayyad Seville

When I started writing "nations," I originally focused on writing nations that are still alive as of the present day; it's only been in the last month or so that I started writing important dead states. Only tonight has it really struck me that I've been having world ADD, writing about other countries first. I said it right up front, in Andalusada's very first post:

[I]t is the story of how, by doing this, they accidentally created one of the most impressive nations the world will ever see. (Even if most of the local cretins still believe sacred monarchy is a good idea.)

This is going to be a long story. Let's take it from the top.

I'm not taking it from the top, obviously. I'm working in spirals and constellations - a bit from the beginning, a bit from the end, the dots that connected inward - because I know less about how that story goes than where it begins and where it ends. But as of when the story ends, Moorish civilization survives first and foremost in the Umayyad Caliphate in New Andalusia.

This is about what came before. This is about what the UCNA wants to claim itself as the continuation of, and what Mahdists the world around want to restore. This is about what came before there was a Moorish diaspora; the greatest moment that Moorish civilization had ever known.

Umayyad Seville 101

Every nation gets a 101 section, and traditionally that starts with the simple question: why? For most nations, this is about what made me interpret the nation this way rather than another. For dead states, though, why? asks something different: why it's important to write about this. In Umayyad Seville's case, it's because it was the pinnacle of Moorish civilization in the Old World - a civilization that's now as fallen as Constantinople, and will never be restored to quite its former glory.

• Who? The only new people in Umayyad Seville were the members of the House of Umayya (who reshuffled the pecking order of the Five Families.)
• What? The most centralized state the Moorish Empire ever managed to achieve; and it was trying to be more centralized, even up to the very end.
• Where? Most of Iberia, the northernmost fixed point being Toledo (beyond which lay ash-Shamal), extending south to the Straits of Gibraltar and crossing it southwest into the Maghrib (at the very least most of Morocco and some of Libya.) From there, stretching across the Atlantic Ocean to include varying swathes of the Caribbean, a fair chunk of the Andes, and most of what we'd call Mexico - and, from 1750 onwards, most of France-Outremer as well. All of it, of course, centered on the eternal metropolis of Seville.
• When? Umayyad Seville only lasted for about a century: 1688 (when Umayya al-Mujadid deposed the Miramoline) to, traditionally, 1786, its final year of stability under Hisham V. When exactly it ended remains hotly disputed, but it's definitely dead by the time the Yusufids secure their succession in the UCNA.

The UCNA

A lot of my posts have horrible, wordy introductions. A lot of it's because I'm a horrible, wordy writer. A lot more is because most of my posts are spontaneous, arbitrary, and completely unforeshadowed, so I have to assume that nobody else knows what I'm talking about. We'll have none of that today. This is the Umayyad Caliphate in New Andalusia. It shouldn't need any more introduction than that.

But for you, dear readers, who haven't been with me from the beginning, I'm going to spell this out anyways.

The UCNA 101

Why? Because this is the point. GURPS Infinite Worlds specified that in the Andalus timeline, Moorish Spain threw off the Reconquista and discovered the New World in 1484, building an empire that today (ca. 1930) competes against Saxony, Russia, and Japan. The timeline needed a Moorish great power; ladies and gentlemen, this is that great power.

• Who? EVERYONE. A scattering of aborigines in ash-Shamal. Moorish-speaking Muslims from everywhere that Moorish is spoken. A lot of French Farrellites living on its old frontiers, and a lot of French Catholics living all over the place. Lots of West Africans bought as slaves for the frontier plantations. Andalusi Arabs, Maghribi Arabs, Aqsi Arabs. A dynasty of Sephardi Jews who run half the show behind the scenes. This is a mosaic society the likes of which we haven't seen since the Ottoman Empire. Güntherites from down south, and Gaels from up north. And, above it all, a caliph from the House of Umayya - the first, last, and best leaders the House of Islam will ever know.
• And two Jews.
• What? An Islamic Empire of Brazil (my first and biggest inspiration for it.)
• Where? The continental French New World, and most of the Moorish New World as well (although ironically almost none of the Sevillan New World.) Cuba, through some tangled marital politics, and a scattering of islands in the Caribbean (though not the bigger ones.) What was once France-Outremer, north to the Great Lakes and beyond (not too much north, though, and the northern border with England-Scotland is actually a bit lower than the USA's because it's more prone to following the curves of rivers.) The UCNA also owns some land in Cabralia too, specifically enough to prop up the Transcabralia Canal.
• When? The actual groundwork is at least 15 years older - but it all starts on April 5.

Mahdism

Talking about Andalusada can be hard. On good days, the problem is that nobody has any idea what the hell I'm going on about, because I can't just link them to the blog and say, "Read all of it." On bad days, though, it's because it involves Islam, and Islam makes people stop thinking.

Well-meaning but clueless people hear that North America is a Spanish-speaking Muslim country, and that's all they hear. Without a chance to get into how it evolves, or what politics can be like in a world with steampunk social science, they immediately conclude that the UCNA is a superpower Islamic Republic of Iran; it's only because I live in a decent part of the country that I haven't heard the word "Islamofascist" used yet.

Which is a shame, because there's a joke that I could make, and nobody who used "Islamofascist" would get it: This is Islamic Spain I'm talking about. They have Islamo-Carlism instead.

Mahdism 101 ("Onward to the twelfth century!")

Mahdism's goal can be summarized with a single four-digit number: "1200." That's 1200 AH for all you dhimmis out there - 1786, the last stable year in the history of Umayyad Seville. Logically or semi-logically, that goal entails the following things:

• Andalusi independence: Mahdism is nationalist, not regionalist. While most of them would be quite happy to give the Crown of All Spains a taste of its own medicine by taking over Castilla as well, the key goal isn't retribution; it's the restoration of Seville as a state in its own right.
• ...as a caliphate: Mahdism isn't exactly "Islamist" in our sense, but it's certainly Muslim; what was once a metropolis and cultural capital has been turned into an emigration society, and the emigrants are overwhelmingly Moors who are disadvantaged under the new state Catholicism that (incidentally) doesn't benefit the Mozarabs that much either.
• Because Seville's common law was abolished after the First Mahdist War, "restoring the caliphate" implicitly also means "restoring the prewar legal codes," which would restore a lot of the old Moorish khassa to prominence again. (It would also mean that a lot of poor Moors would suddenly own small amounts of Old World land.)
• ...ruled by the House of Umayya. Originally, this was the legitimist claim of al-Mahdi. In the wake of his death, that cult of personality has diffused into a cult of dynasty. Although any serious Mahdist pretender will have a cult of personality, Mahdism as a whole is devoted less to the individual than to the continuing succession of the first, greatest, and only true rulers of the Islamic world.
• Specifically, this means "under an Umayyad descended from al-Mahdi." There's a fair number of them at this point. Pretenders are always styled Mahdi, and their mothers "Umm Mahdi" as an honorific.

Or at least that's how it's supposed to work.

April 5th

Everywhere that Persian language and culture have ever been hegemonic, Muslims still celebrate the distinctly Persian holiday of Nawruz (however so spelled.) About a thousand years ago, al-Andalus had a holiday of its own: al-khamsa al-Abril, "April 5th."

There was no religious significance to the day - it was simply created as an excuse for Muslims to get drunk with Christian neighbors on Easter. (Doubtless there were April 5th jokes in all the years when it came later than that.) We know it existed for the very simple reason that the ulama felt a recurring need to remind everybody that it was a reprehensible bid'a and was never observed in the time of the righteous ancestors.

al-Andalus collapsed, obviously, and that collapse is a big part of why April 5th is no longer celebrated like that today. In Andalusada, just as obviously, it didn't collapse, and that holiday continued to be celebrated, for long enough that it wound up becoming a distinctive of Moorish civ, just as much as Nawruz is for the Persianate world.

The Manazil and Moorish popular Islam

Historically, the Arabic-language printing is complicated by the fact that it's a cursive-only script, which requires a larger range of letters because there needs to be initial, medial, final, and isolated versions of almost all. IRL, this was only made harder by the fact that in the Ottoman Empire the printing presses were run by Christians (and often Catholic foreigners rather than the domestic Greeks), who adopted as their standard typeface a script of Arabic that Muslims generally didn't use.

(This Catholic influence, incidentally, was also part of the crisis that gave rise to the Uniate church; the early Ottoman printing industry was Jesuit, and for a solid century after the fall of Constantinople the autonomous churches under it had basically no printed literature at a time when their Catholic neighbors had tons of it. The Russians responded, at least in part, by transferring the seat of the church from Kiev to Muscovy, and eventually pressuring the Ecumenical Patriarch to grant them autocephaly; the same events gave rise, in lands under the Polish-Lithuanian orbit, to the church transferring its loyalties from the Patriarch to the Pope in the interest of securing equal status with their Roman hegemons.)

The biggest issue was that the publication of the Qur'an was frowned on very, very hard. In Western Europe, the publication of the Bible (even outside the vernacular) was enormously financially successful in early modernity, which basically doomed the age of manuscript and the assumptions of manuscript culture.
But what's true of the Ottoman Empire (or whatever the Turks are in Andalusada, because the Ottomans are not foreordained) isn't necessarily true of the Moors, who after all develop their own civilization by the time they start establishing trans-Atlantic colonies.

So how does the printed Qur'an work? I have some tentative thoughts.

The Black Codices

After the discovery of the New World in 1484, there's every reason to think that Seville, in the name of having money to spend after such a long and marginal existence, does what Spain did IRL: spends so much New World gold that it collapses economies worldwide, causing a global shift toward the silver standard.

At the lowest point of the gold crash, somebody in the Five Families had an inspired idea: if gold is so cheap, why not make a show of it? Thus was born the Black Codices.

The Miramoline

The has the name Wendy, which went from being an American-only outlier (on par with inflicting your child with a variant spelling of a name) to an internationally recognized one because of some Scotsman writing some book. (The Slavic world has an equivalent in the form of Svetlana.)

Andalusada almost certainly doesn't have Wendy, and it probably doesn't have Svetlana either. But it does have a female name of its own. That name, in the original French spelling, is Miramoline. Within a century the interconsonantal /a/ had been lost, giving rise to Mirmeauline, and (in English) the same thing, with various renderings of the vowels and duplicate letters: Mermelline, Myrmeline, etc. The name caught on.

This entry is about person who made it stick. The first woman to ever sign her name as la Miramoline.

The Palaces of Granada

The most important thing about Granada is that it's out of the way and very hard to access. The city is hemmed in by mountains, with a single route in that's extraordinarily secure. This is why the Nasrid Emirate, the puny final holdout of Moorish Spain, was able to resist the Reconquista for long enough to build Hispano-Arabic architecture's crown jewel: the Alhambra.

Andalusada has no final Islamic holdout in Granada. It has no Nasrids. Instead of the beauty of the Alhambra, the city of Granada becomes legendary for the palace that rises there instead.

Moorish scientific Hermeticism

One night, in the plausibly near future of the verse, an Andalusian observatory will discover the planet that we know by the name of Pluto.

A few nights later, a bunch of astronomers will gather in their jamia, bringing with them an enormous set of odd paraphernalia. They will bring with them bottles of wine, and bottles of cider, and bottles of other liquors, and plenty of water for tea and chocolate. They will bring whatever it is that they smoke, and whatever it is that they need to smoke it with. They will bring stacks of books - maps of the night sky, and biographies, mostly.

They will sit down and plot out, over glasses of drinks, important questions, like "What was Pluto doing when all these people were born? What college was it in? What was it occluding? Where was it relatively to all else?" And they will work this out, and account for this in the horoscopes of the great men of history. (And some great women too.)

And when they have established this, they will then ask the ensuing question: "What are the differences between what the original uncorrected horoscope would suggest, and what actually happened?" And they will observe this, and record it for the record.

And over the course of many such questions, they will ask a third question: "All of these horoscopes, across centuries and continents - what trends do we observe about the ways the horoscopes failed to account for the lives that fell under them? What is constant when Pluto is on the cusp of this, or occluding that?"

Bit by bit, scouring the archives of the world, they will theorize the astrological significance of Pluto to a very high standard of rigor. And if you tell them that what they're doing isn't science at all, they'll stare blankly.

And then put their cigars out in your eye.