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.

Service-based suffrage

One of the oldest notes on steampunk social science was written on my Samsung. It was last edited some time ago, but I'm fairly certain it dates back to December last year, before the Andalusada Scrapbook came into being.

Insert quotation here.

On the blog itself, I first mentioned it when I introduced Poland-Ruthenia, or if not then when I expanded it to its current form: "Following the Baltic republican lead, Poland-Ruthenia has been experimenting with service-based suffrage." - whence the name of this concept.

Republican political titles

In republican politics, "President" is a very important term IRL, so much so that it's a normative one: the opposite of a parliamentary system is, for instance, a presidential system. And yet it's enormously contingent on the rise of the United States, and even more specifically on the Constitutional Convention of 1787 - which, just over 700 years after Andalusada's history is cut adrift from the anchor of IRL, is guaranteed not to happen. (And even that, according to Wikipedia, derives from the Commonwealth of England - which is pretty much guaranteed not to play out the same way either.)

This wouldn't be so much of an issue, except that a learnéd friend of mine, after reading about Cabralia's Three Wise Men last night, asked me a question about how republican governments work in Andalusada - and I didn't have a ready answer. After much derping, he pronounced my thoughts "a bit much to keep track of," which was my cue to blog about it today.