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.

Zahra

Life: 1887-present.
Position: Calipha of the Umayyad Caliphate in New Andalusia
Preceded by: [who?]

The electoral side of the UCNA's history is justifiably a sausage party: as of 1930, women's suffrage is still something that needs campaigning for. The monarchic side of the UCNA's political history is, at this point, a sausage party too, and it shouldn't be. Presumably the caliphs have no shortage of wives and daughters, but who are they? What are they doing?

As of tonight, I'm only really familiar with the current calipha of New Andalusia; I'm not even sure about her family name yet. What I know is that, in several spellings, her name is Zahra, devoted wife of Caliph Yusuf III. This is her story.

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.)

Hispano-Baltic Texas

At the start, the USA still existed; greatly reduced, but far more of it, and more recognizable, than it had any right to be. (It was my first alt history. Sue me.) As I wrote the world, it gave way to many countries in the continent called, very simply, "America." The UCNA, obviously, is the dominant one.

Due south of the UCNA lies the G.P. of Mexico, which is now a quirky miniboss antagonist - but used to be an existential threat. In between Mexico and the UCNA lies a swathe of land with at least one recognizable border, painted (on the B_Munro map) in what the Expanded Universal Colour Scheme would call the Lone Star Republic. I'm going to call it by its working name: Hispano-Baltic Texas.

Hispano-Baltic Texas 101

Why? Rule of Cool, of course; but more to it than that. Andalusada is a world that has not been good to the cause of republicanism; by establishing HBT as a republic, it offset the fact that a lot of (often dysfunctional) monarchies prevail in the timeline. (And it's still "Texan"; it has a very different attitude and style from the Atlantic confederacy that broke away from England-Scotland.)

• Who? Originally it was mostly Moorish mestizos; after about 1750, it was run by Prussians and Pomeranians. Since then it's attracted a few waves of refugees from these two old-stock ethnicities (originally Balts, more recently a lot of Mexicans), as well as a fair number of republican Moors from the UCNA.
• What? A quirky, plucky republic synthesizing Moorish dissent with Baltic republicanism, supported by the UCNA as a buffer state against Sansinger Mexico.
• Where? Corresponding with IRL Texas, with some parts of Oklahoma and Arizona included and the eastern borders a little pushed back. (The northwestern borders I'm not clear about, but the Rio Grande provides an obvious geographic boundary anyways.)
• When? It started becoming Baltic in the 1750s; it became formally independent in I think the late 1830s. From that point, it's continued to the present day.

The question, of course, is "how."

Cider and liquor in the continental UCNA

"In Brittany," says Wikipedia, "crêpes are traditionally served with cider." Which brings us to the other important thing about foodways: alcohol.

 Iberia is part of the wine belt of Europe, and always has been. That survived the Moorish conquest (Andalusis quickly developed a pan-Islamic reputation for being lush); it survives to the present day IRL. Presumably, given that Moorish civilization survives that long too, Moorish drinking tastes are going to favor wine; there are distinct beer regions in the New World, but the UCNA's not one of them because beer is more associated with its immigrant population. And since most of the New World is not historic wine country, and wasn't until very recently, that shortage of wine (along with the shortage of fresh olives) is going to be a big feature of the New World Moorish diet. Presumably Khalwati Sufis are going to rejoice in this, which will establish the archetype of "dry wineless al-Aqsain" even more firmly.

Caliph Yusuf I

Born: August 22, 1772.
Died: 1839.
Position: Caliph of the UCNA.
Preceded by: None (position created.)
Succeeded by: Ilyas [who?]

The fall of Umayyad Seville was a big moment in Andalusada, because it collapsed the Moorish world. The great Mohammedan threat to the West shattered into pieces, never to recover. Out of it rose a number of nations. Above them all, ultimately, rose the Umayyad Caliphate in New Andalusia.

The fact that the UCNA is recognized as the legitimate heir of Seville is due primarily to one man, Yusuf I. This is his story.

Music of the UCNA

What does music sound like within the UCNA? It depends a bit on who's there to compose it.

The Umayyad Caliphate of New Andalusia is not a nation-state. In terms of its self-identity, it falls somewhere between the USA and a very lucky Habsburg Empire. Rather than establishing a national folk music corpus to assert its nonexistent common roots, the UCNA's musical voice is going to evolve as organically as its identity.

And at heart, that identity is formed from the intersection of the following groups:

• The Biladi core: The arbiters of high culture aren't from the Moorish diaspora; they're former khassa families of Seville, the equivalent of White Russian émigrés. They're extremely conservative, and have the money and connections to establish themselves as the arbiters of haute couture; preserving the old ways just so is all-important to a lot of them. Nonetheless, that kind of traditionalism is going to be another big ingredient in what comes out.
• The Maghrebi periphery: Independent of the Andalusis, there's also a fair number of Maghrebis. At its height, imperial Seville did achieve its historic destiny, completely controlling the Strait of Gibraltar and building an empire in northwest Africa. It is NOT wealthy, and NOT the arbiter of culture, but it's still an influence. Perhaps more importantly, that influence is also going to extend to West Africa - and may include the blues scale.
• Former French America: In addition to the Louisiana Purchase, France also controlled more of what IRL was the Anglophone Deep South. I'm not sure what this is like culturally, because while some of this is Guisard* and quite conventionally French (if from different regions thereof), other parts could very well be Farrellite. And French Farrellitism brings with it many cultural details that are uniquely its own - including, quite possibly, polyphonic singing.
• The Moorish diaspora: With the 19th-century implosion of Seville's empire, the UCNA is continually reinforced by immigration from across its diaspora. Most of the Iberian New World, Portuguese or Sevillan, is unstable at best, and there's a steady flow of refugees and guest workers who are sending money home to form a melting pot.
• Aboriginal populations: The UCNA isn't founded with manifest destiny in mind; it's founded as an exercise in reactionary pique. As such, the idea of supplanting the aboriginal populations isn't really on their agenda, so much as neatly subordinating them into the tapestry of Andalusian society. (In the beginning, in particular, the UCNA is quite happy to support the aborigines, to keep the European subjects from dominating the political landscape. It's cheaper to pay off the Cherokees than the French.)
• European (and Europeanizing) neighboring states: The UCNA has a lot of borders. I have only the vaguest idea what it's been exposed to in the Caribbean. On its southern border, it has Axamalia, a Hispano-Baltic Texas (a lot of Güntherites flee there after the Baltic crises of the late 18th century; they're why the G.P. of Mexico arose at all, and a second wave after the "Burning Thirties" leads to a successful war of independence in the early 1840s.) In the northeast, there's a Dutch-Anglo-Scottish confederal republic (on the model of the United Provinces) that congealed out of earlier turbulence. Up north is the big worry in the form of Canada*, including New Ireland (the Saint Lawrence River Valley; as Gaelic here as it is Francophone IRL) - oddly enough, a likely place to produce something recognizably akin to modern country music, if considerably more Celtic. Simply by convergence, osmosis, and cross-border exchanges of ideas (and immigrant populations), this is going to be the random element in the recipe.

So what does this blend into?