Al Tlalitac Empire
(An idea I had at work the other day... The POD here goes back to a failure of reconquista and a divided Iberia. There is still a Grenada, and there are still barbarians from the North occasionally invading the Iberia. So Europe did not "discover" the New World; instead, mariners from the Maghreb did.)
The Al Tlalitac Empire was founded in the year 1607. Its beginnings go back a century before. Sailors from the Old World traded with the Indian nations along the Gulf Coast dating back to the 1550s, when Moorish sailors first crossed the ocean and discovered a New World. The Maghrebi extend in North America was small, much like the Vikings in Greenland and Vinland.
Nations on the Gulf Coast were trapped between the sea and the brutal Aztecs further inland. Many of the nations were vassals, and more fell to the Aztecs during their coastal expansions of the 1560s. Moors established trading posts at Maghrebad, Mohammedia and Tejabad, selling their wares for Mexican gold. Among the items traded were a few firearms, but more importantly the art of metalsmithy.
With an influx of Indians into the Maghrebi trading posts, true towns began to develop. Moors intermarried with Indians, and many of the natives who had business dealings with the Moors converted to Islam, as well as learned to speak and read Arabic. Arabic served as an alternative common langauge among the various tribes.
By 1601, the Aztec Emperor saw the Maghrebi as a threat, and launched campaigns against them. Maghrebad was sacked and most of its inhabitants marched back to the city of Mexico, where they were sacraficed to the Aztec's gods. One of the Indians to escape the Aztecs was a man named Tlalitac. Upon learning his brother's fate on the alter of the Sun God, Tlalitac swore vengance and declared a Jihad against the Aztecs.
With the support of Moorish colonists further north, Tlalitac rallied various subject tribes of the Aztecs. With superior iron armor and spears, the Jihad easily defeated Aztec outposts in the year 1604 along the Gulf Coast, which in turn caused the defection of more of the Aztec's vassals and even allies. For two years, the Jihad battled the Aztecs in Eastern Mexico, until finally pushing them back to the Valley of Mexico. Aztec rule was so brutal that it lasted only until a powerful man united the oppressed against their tormentor.
Along with steel weapons, Tlalitac's Moorish allies brought along cannon, to lay siege to Mexico. The siege lasted for seven months, and did not come to an end until the Moors dismantled their ships, and shipped them up to the great lake surrounding Mexico, and rebuilt them. This allowed for an amphibious assualt against the weakened and famished Aztec Capital. The Capital fell after five days of bloodletting, during which virtually the entire population was wiped out.
Captives and survivors were given the choice to convert or die. The Priests did not even have this choice, as they were summarily beheaded before the ruins of their temples. After the fall, Tlalitac ordered the city razed to the ground, and not to leave two stones atop each other, that every Idol in the city be melted down or shattered. The great lake was filled in by the rubble. Gold from the city was divided among the allied conquerors.
Atop the ruins of Mexico, Tlalitac declared himself Emperor of an Islamic Empire, and that all under his rule will worship Allah and not the Gods of old. The new Empire will rule under the Sharia, and no more would subject tribes be held in bondage or under the Aztec tyranny. Over the course of his life, Tlalitac expanded his Empire to the Pacific Coast, as well as north to the Al Misippi River. The Empire was nearly destroyed after his death in 1621, when his sons fought a bitter civil war for control of the Empire.
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