Caliphal succession

al-Mujadid meant the Caliphate of Seville to be a hereditary monarchy, like contemporary France or England at the time. Because his designated son Ahmad went blasphemously insane, that didn't work out, and Umayyad Seville never did manage to sort out a succession system before al-Mahdi was forced into exile in 1792.

Caliph Yusuf I, significantly, didn't leave directions for the process himself, beyond specifying in no uncertain terms that there would never be a Caliph Sufyan. The original idea was probably that the Caliph of New Andalusia would appoint his successor (possibly naming him the Abdallah), who on his death or resignation would be acclaimed by the Maxaha and ascend to the throne accordingly. Once again, that didn't work out. Unlike Seville before it, though, the UCNA has evolved a formal (if mostly unwritten) policy for handling caliphal successions. This is how it works.

Yusuf III

Dates: January 20, 1891-present.

The Caliphate in New Andalusia is no stranger to unexpected successors; they're pretty much inevitable when congenital madness runs in the family, the (Jewish) maître d' has rights over each step of the acclamation process, and there are half a dozen collateral lines waiting in the wings. In the 19th century, those unexpected successors went down in history as "the six weak caliphs." In the 20th century, one of them turned out famously well. Only one of them, however, has been judged a bad caliph. His name is Yusuf III, and this is his story.

Yusuf II

Dates: 18??-1908.

Yusuf I leaves impossibly large shoes to fill on his death. For the next fifty years, those shoes aren't filled - at least not by anybody of the Umayyad line; the best claimant to that position would be Yusuf's former right-hand man, Don Musa Cordovero, who (along with his son, Don Ibrahim) oversees a succession of what's commonly called "the six weak caliphs" and steers the UCNA into being a more presidential monarchy.

After Don Musa's death, and the rise of Don Ibrahim, the UCNA encounters something it hasn't known since Yusuf I. For the first time in half a century, the Umayyad and the Cordovero at the top of the pecking order had a rapport - and ambition.

That Umayyad, not coincidentally, was named Yusuf II. This is his blog post.

Sufyan

Born: 1790s. [details?]
Died: 1850s. [details?]

Long ago, before I started this blog, I was writing Andalusada mostly on paper. At some point, I realized that I'd need to know something about the succession of the UCNA. So I drew up a very tenuous outline of the dynasty.

There are a few names that I haven't mentioned yet (Yusuf II and Yusuf III, and some others), but all the key names of the succession survive only in the four-word tag of the UCNA's brief history: "the six weak caliphs." All the names but one: Sufyan.

A few nights ago, after I got out my GURPS book again, I started writing him up, based on what I knew about backbiting and so forth.

Disadvantages: Lecherous [-15]; Sense of Duty (his father) [-2]; Sense of Duty (his children) [-5].
Quirks: Bad with names; Wears his heart on his sleeve; Prudish in public.

Quite a character, no? And this is his story.

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 Sufyanid families

Sufyan b. Yusuf was never going to be the heir of his father. He had some kind of mental illness, and while it was only very mild the medical science of the day left no good way to treat it except alcohol. He was a drunk, and often a brooding one. His politics perpetually clashed with his father's, by turns liberal and Mahdist, and he had neither his father's sharp mind nor his golden tongue. For a nascent state that wanted stability afterwards, Sufyan simply wasn't a good role model.

But the biggest reason Sufyan was never going to be Sufyan I was the succession crisis that would follow him, because Sufyan was a real sex machine. Over the course of his life, Sufyan had eight (or possibly nine) wives, four or five mistresses, a few assorted bastard children, and one pair of identical twins that he adopted simply because he wouldn't be surprised if he did father them before they were abandoned at his doorstep.

There is one thing that could be said in his defense, though: Sufyan ibn Yusuf took his duties seriously. Almost none of his children had much quality time with him, but he did make a point of arranging a proper education for them, and through some string-pulling saw most of them into service posts within midcentury New Andalusia. From this came the several families that bear his name.

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.