The Song of Roland
- Thread starter Scarecrow
- Start date
- Status
Things are about to get interesting, in the Chinese sense of the word.
But the Byzantines did not pay the Weregild, so the WRE was within its rights to attack the ERE, and the response by the ERE is illegal, at least under German Law.
Thanks. The Byzantines happen to have an army and navy that is designed for aggresive campagins at a distance. Sort of a pre-Komnenian army.
Soon, soon.
Ah maybe so, but there are other ways to get your cash. For example a special tax on Byzantine merchants in the WRE until said weregild has been collected or the Byzantine treasury pays up. A war of aggression in this case (Especially one with an empire that can attack your own territory too!) will likely end up costing more than the weregild was worth. That and there is a good chance they'll loose making whatever type of honor they were trying to save pointless in the face of gross territorial loss.
Like I said Emperor Harald is not one destined long for his throne with these kind of actions going on.
Indeed. Harald miscalculated and will pay for it. Such a man would have been better as a King rather then Emperor.
Coming up next, the Babylonian Captivity.
I do so hope he'll pay for it.
Ooo sounds ominous.
But not in the way you think.
Venice completely destroyed? No!
That is definitely going to have repercussions down the line.
I was tempted to have an admiral named Alexius Ducas leading the destruction, but that would have been a bit to much.
The main economic repercussion is the formation of the Septupolis, which will be detailed much later on.
Go Byzantium!!!!!
Bah, bah I say. But after all the fuss they have been through so far, so I thought I would be good to them for a little bit. But only for a little bit.
Improper form, surely.
1) if purely Greek, should be Heptapolis or something close.
2) if Latin/Italian, shouldn't be "polis". Septurbes, or something.
3) even if mixed, "u" would be the wrong vowel. I think you could make a case for "a", but "o" would be more likely, no?
But not in the way you think.
Well I was hoping he'd pay by being hung by some irate Italian peasantry...but to each his own.
I was tempted to have an admiral named Alexius Ducas leading the destruction, but that would have been a bit to much.
Now granted what you did had some very nice poetic justice but you are right that would have been going too far.
Bah, bah I say. But after all the fuss they have been through so far, so I thought I would be good to them for a little bit. But only for a little bit.
Now Scarecrow there is plenty of room for lots of empires...well okay maybe a few...it worked well for Europe in the early 20th, didn't it?
Thankee Dathi I am in your debt. Septurbes it is! Sounds much better.
I'm still not sure how the Dane will die, but that is an option.
Now granted what you did had some very nice poetic justice but you are right that would have been going too far.Now Scarecrow there is plenty of room for lots of empires...well okay maybe a few...it worked well for Europe in the early 20th, didn't it?
There can only be three Empires! Rome, Persia and China! It works for TTL and it almost works for OTL as well.
There will be other powerful states, several of which will emerge from the WRE. Which ones they are, now that would be telling.
An ignoble death for an incompetent emperor.
There can only be three Empires! Rome, Persia and China! It works for TTL and it almost works for OTL as well.
There will be other powerful states, several of which will emerge from the WRE. Which ones they are, now that would be telling.
Intriguing, can't wait to see it.
An ignoble death for an incompetent emperor.
Indeed...
Intriguing, can't wait to see it.
Me neither...
Verse XLV: The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Verse XLV: The falcon cannot hear the falconer
- - -
“Ever since I have arrived in Ispania five years ago I pray to God every day. I ask you God, what have I so done to offend you so? What possible sin could I have committed that would cause the Master of the Palace [1] to condemn me to serve Duke John, Supreme Duke of Ispania?
Never in my years of service to the Imperial throne have I ever encountered such disregard for the law and arrogance. Amongst the silver mines of Bohemia I curbed the power of the Zlican Kings through Roman Law and the establishment of several Advocatus and a new judicial establishment hand picked by myself, and I never faced such a man as him.
In the Breton marshes, when I studied under the great Ezzo of Frankfurt I stared down big hairy Franciscans in the courts. I fought on behalf of the Breton peasants whose land and flocks were being sequestered by the local Franciscans, and the Axemen had more respect for the law then this man.
This Duke is no more then a Dux Bellorum, a Lord of war, for this is his answer to every possible problem. He is the paragon of the old German, save the fact that he was born four hundred years too late.
I just thank the Good Lord that he has not been placed anywhere important. Now if I could be sent somewhere important, then all would be well.”
- - -
Taken from:
“The sons of St Charles: the policies and practices of the early Restored Western Empire.”
By Stephen of Bloise, 1413
The battle of Rome in 971 was one of the great axis upon which history turns. If it fell to Emperor Nikolaos then Harald, Emperor of the West was doomed. Legitimacy of the Emperors in the East lay in gaining the support of the Army, the Senate, and the people of the city of Constantinople. Compared with their brother Emperors in the west those in Constantinople had it easy. For an Emperor of the West to gain legitimacy he had to have the support of all the tribes of the Empire, or at least a majority. To do this he would need to defend the Empire from all threats, both internal and external. He would also have to hold three cities: Rome, Karlsburg [Paderborn], and Aachen. Both Karlsburg and Aachen were at the centre of the Germanic core of the Empire, in Francia and Saxony respectively, whist Rome was in Italy, on the other side of the Alps. As such the WREmperors were forced to divide their attention between two masters. Often this could be accomplished by installing a friendly Pope in Rome, and garrisoning Italy. But Italy, like Ispania were separated by two mountain ranges, the Alps and Pyrenees. Almost everywhere else in the Empire, from Brittany in the west to Polania in the east, from the northern tip of Juteland to the southern sandy beaches of Provence there were few natural boundaries that presented a great physical challenge to the Emperors agents and armies. [2]
In Italy and Ispania two different general policies were put in place. As Ispania was originally marchland between the Empire and the Emirate of Cordoba, and it was not until 947, when Emperor Rudolph the Great conquered Cordoba, and subdued the Moors [3] that the nature of Ispania changed.
The Cordoban Emir was restricted to a small domain and three Imperial provinces (Toledo, Valencia and Badajoz) were created to guard against further aggression by the Moors. In each an Imperial Legion was stationed, and migration by knights and freemen from the northern Kingdoms was encouraged.
A supreme Duke was placed in charge of the Ispanian provinces, the last of which was Duke John of Echternach. Duke John ruled the Ispanian provinces during the 960’s, taking over from Duke George of Oxenfurt [Oxford]. During his reign as Supreme Duke John crushed several revolts by the Moors and the raiders from the Kingdom of Compostella. Despite his brilliant military mind Duke John was frustrated with the complexities of civilian rule.
He disliked the Mozarabs, which was unfortunate, as they made up much of the Christian population in Ispania. He dismissed the Primate of Ispania for not doing enough to combat the spread of vernacular prayers and scriptures, but as the Patriarch was the cousin of King Charles V of Aquitaine, the pressure from Charles forced Duke John to reinstate the Primate.
He was untrusting of the Imperial Palatines and the missus dominicus [4], ignoring many demands of the Emperor. If effect, he ruled Ispania as almost his own private fief.
In Italy the situation was more complex, and almost every Emperor since St Charles the Great had to either bribe or fight the King and Dukes of Italy into submission to secure Rome and his legitimacy as Emperor. With the War of the Second Sicilian Crisis Italy was the focus of the military of the WRE, and Duke John was ordered into Italy with his legions. Spain was left under garrisoned…
- - -
Taken from:
“The legacy of Moorish Spain.”
By the Abbot Thomas of Gorze, 1235
Chapter 2: Agriculture and Hydrology
When the first wave of settlers from the lands north of the Pyrenees arrived in Ispania in the first half of the 10th Century they encountered a land far richer then that that they had left behind. The Moorish settlers had in the 8th Century built upon the pre-existing channels used by the First Roman Empire, expanding the network of irrigation by using techniques they had learned in the Maghreb or in Syria and the Yemen. It is important to note that the Moors did not bring canals, dams, qanats or norias with them. Instead they brought ideas. For example, in the huerta of Valencia the Moorish population was more Berber then Saracen, and the presence of just a single lone Saracen with knowledge of the Syrian system of irrigation was enough to introduce it.
The Moors did not only introduce new ways of irrigating the huerta, but also new crops to grow in the farmland. The majority of these crops were filaha hindiyya, and thus grew in a very different climate to that of the Middle Sea. Fruits such as oranges and other citruses, bananas, various melons arrived in Ispania in the 8th Century, along with crops such as rice and sugar cane, and palm trees. As the Hindu crops came from a climate of monsoons they required large amounts of water, which was provided by the systems imported by the Moors.
A single village may be irrigated by one or two springs with hydrolic technology such as terraced fields, cisterns, shadufs, norias, along with measurement by clepsydra. Water would be stored in cisterns and distributed to fields on a weekly basis. A typical example of this is at the land of Chovar, in Valencia.
We know a lot about Chovar as the lands were granted to the a minor nobleman recorded as John the Brave. John hailed from Troyes, part of the local ruling Conradine dynasty.
The Conradine dynasty are a perfect example of the Francian noble Diaspora of the 10th Century. From their base in Troyes the Conradine dynasty sent sons south into Ispania to find land and glory. The main lands that the Conradine dynasty settled in where Valencia and the island of Mallorca.
John arrived in Ispania in 945 as part of the Imperial invasion, as part of the Imperial Knights under the command of the Emperor himself. As reward for his service to the Emperor, John was rewarded with Chovar as his own fief. From 945 he owed allegiance to the King of Valencia, but when the Kingdom was dissolved fifteen years later he owed allegiance directly to the Emperor via the Imperial Vicecomes whom had been sent to Valencia to govern it directly for the Emperor. He was given the title of Lord of Chovar.
Like all of the new rulers of Ispania during the halcyon days when it was part of the (Restored) Western Roman Empire, Lord John implored his men to leave the farmland ‘as it was during the time of the Moors.’ He imported a palatine from Barcelona and conducted a survey of his lands.
The irrigation system at Chovar consisted of a spring and two cisterns and canals that irrigated some nine hectares. A second system irrigates five hectares with spring water stored within a storage dam and distributed by time units measured with a clepsydra. This second system lifted water to terraced farmland, and this was done through a shaduf and a noria. Animal driven waterwheels were in presence, and Chovar is a perfect example of the combination of Saracen technique and the engineering prowess of the ancient Roman Empire. There was a Moorish official at Chovar who was responsible for the distribution of water to the districts farms, as there was across Ispania. Lord John and the other German settlers were able to simply import their own peasants to work the farms, but German peasants lacked the learning to work the irrigation system, and so the Germans offered large incentives to the Moorish water officials to stay on their lands.
On a larger scale is that on the island of Mallorca off the coast of Ispania, which also came under the control of a member of the Conradine dynasty, Charles the Brave, brother of Lord John. There at the town of Banyalbufar an area of 60 hectares where irrigated by water in a qanat, which was distributed into uncovered (sahrij) and covered (jubb) cisterns. Again, the pattern of terraced farmland was put in place. These two examples show that the Saracen agriculture was widespread across Ispania.
Whilst the Conradine dynasty (along with many other nobles) stayed in Ispania to live on the conquered estates of the Moors, others took the examples of Moorish farmland back north with them. Saracen agriculture was known in Gothica (including Septimania), parts of Provence and Italy, but it was the Conquest of Ispania that spread the Muslim ideas and technology further north. But this was hardly new, for in the late 8th Century the Emperor St Charles the Great had imported Moorish architects and engineers to Saxony to turn Paderborn into Karlsburg, the Imperial Capital.
Karlsburg was built like a Moorish city. At its centre was the Imperial Palace Complex, which included large gardens and orchids, and the personal chapel of the Emperors, along with the offices of the Master of the Palace. Around that was the merchant district, within which was the Fortress of St Michael, where the huscarls [5] of the Emperors, later Imperial Army garrisons would stay to keep the peace in Karlsburg. At night the district was shut off from the rest of the city. Extending north from the Palace Complex was the great Spine road, which owed more to Constantinople then to the Moors and Saracens. At the end of the Spine was the Imperial Cathedral of Saint Charles, its spire made from Marble from the Bohemian March (as it was at that time).
The Moors instructed the Germans on how to build aqueducts in the early 9th Century, and two were built, along with reservoirs and other hydraulic technology, around Karlsburg when St Charles the Great named it his capital. There was a brief period of canal and aqueduct building during the time of Emperor Charles II, but after that, as darkness descended over the Western Roman Empire there was a decline in public works on such a scale.
After the conquest of Ispania Moorish engineers travelled into the WRE, lured by the Emperor and Kings, especially the King of Francia. Starting in 962 and taking over forty years to complete the Kings of Francia constructed large scale canals and dams along the Rhine to prevent its flooding. This work was overseen by Moorish engineers. The engineers also taught the skills to the Germans in such schools as the University of Karlsburg, or wrote books in Latin about hydrological engineering.
The spread of horizontal mills (or Norse mills as they are sometimes known, especially in Saxony) was undertaken by the same Moors, and one Moor, Mohammad ibn Ahmad invented the flywheel in 989 whilst in the service of the King of Francia. This device helped to steady the spinning wheel of a mill as it stores excess momentum, releasing it in the form of a spinning wheel.
- - -
It was on the outskirts of Huelba that they first met.
The first was a King in exile,
Transformed into a warlord by the treachery of a man
Whose greed for power knew no bounds.
Into the Ispanic lands he found opportunity.
The second was an educated man, and honourable.
But he was a Moor. And the Moors are foxes with their cunning.
He stood up against the Maghrebi heretics.
For he was a follower of the school of Maliki, and disgraced in Cordoba.
And so he turned to a life of villainy.
Both were scorned by their betters.
They both fought the Emperors forces and his vassals.
Both gathered warriors around them
And were beloved by their own peoples.
The two heroes had heard of each other
But at Huelba they met for the first time.
Christian and Moor they set aside their differences
And fought to destroy those who opposed them.
Sancho of Navarre and Muhammad son of Abi Aamir.[6]
The Exile and the Fox.
When these two men work together Ispania will quake.
- - -
Taken From:
“A new history of the Kingdom of Ispania.”
By Alphonse of Barcelona, 1434
When we consider the great Ispanic Revolt we must consider the careers of two men. Three Christian and one Moor. These men are: Sancho of Navarre (or alternately the Exile), claimant of the Kingdom of Gothica, and Muhammad Ibn Abi Aamir.
Muhammad Ibn Abi Aamir was born in 938 into a noble family from the region of Algeciras. His family could trace its roots back to Arabs whom had come to Ispania as part of Tarik’s army, and had maintained its station as nobility of the gown, not of the sword. He had the mind of a fox. He had single-mindedness to an extraordinary level. His family survived the civil war and the Roman Invasion that followed it. They managed to maintain their riches, and could afford for Ibn Abi Aamir and his seven siblings to be tutored. Throughout his education Ibn Abi Aamir embraced the classics with a fondness for stories about poor outcasts who rose to great positions of power, and so in 958 he journeyed to first Seville and then Cordoba in hope of gaining great power in the much reduced Cordoba Emirate.
However Ibn Abi Aamir faced a great hurdle in his desire for power. The significant power figures in the Cordoba Emirate were of rather recent Berber origin, the grandsons of the soldiers brought from the Maghrib by Emir Riddan at the end of the 9th Century.
As such they were followers of Ibadi school of Muhammad worship, whilst the Moors were mainly followers of the school of Maliki. Ibn Abi Aamir was a Malikite, and although he hid this well in his brief career in Cordoba until a rival revealed Ibn Abi Aamir’s faith, and he was cast out from the Court of the Emir Riddan II.
Bitter and twisted Ibn Abi Aamir returned to his family home in Algeciras, only to find that it had been burned down by the forces of the Emir Riddan II. [7] Ibn Abi Aamir was now a broken man, and he wandered the Algeciras countryside aimlessly. One day he came across a group of barbarous Berbers who wore the badge of Cordoba. The Berbers were attacking a group of peasants who had not paid the great tax levied upon them by the Emir.
With a murderous rage Ibn Abi Aamir attacked the Berbers. With his fathers sword he attacked them one by one, killing the tax collector last. The fearful peasants gathered around him, and Ibn Abi Aamir begun his campaign as a warlord. He would gather Moors around him young men, Moors who were angry at the Berber overlords and their puppet masters the Christians in the north. He became known as the Fox by his enemies, for his cunning and guile.
Sancho was a man who represented the disenfranchised Christians of Ispania. The Kings of Toledo and Valencia were dismissed and the lands placed under Imperial control. Lacking representation in the Imperial Diet or the protection provided by a King chosen by the nobles. Sancho, as exile from Gothica. Born in 935, Sancho had been chosen as King by the Comes and Grafs of Gothica after his father died in 962, but the King of Aquitaine, Charles V had bought the alliance of many of the lords, and invaded Gothica to secure the throne for his son Paschal.
Like Ibn Abi Aamir he began a period of warlordism. He directed his violence against the Supreme Duke of Ispania and the Imperial Vicecomes, against the system the denied the Ispanic people a King of their own. Amongst the Christians of Ispania there was a sharp divide between the recent Frankish arrivals. It is true that Germans had been settling in Ispania since the time of St Charles the Great, both peasants and noble classes, but those who arrived after Emperor Rudolph the Great were in a different to those who came before. The warriors who settled after 947 were typical of Franks, Saxons, Burgundians and all other nobles west of the Elbe. They fought on horseback with underarm couched lances, wore heavy armour mail and on occasion iron plate. They rarely fought on foot, and the owning and fighting from one of these horses became a symbol of class.
In Ispania these sorts of knights were rare before 947. Instead, due to the nature of the long warfare of Ispania, during which time land would change hands repeatedly, the light horseman was a preferred. The exception of this was in Gothica, where Frankish influence and settlers was a permanent facet since the late 8th Century. The Jennets, light horsemen archers or javelins were the dominant form of warrior in Ispania. They were recruited from across all levels of Ispanic Christian society, and there was no difference between the armour or weapons that a noble or freemen would wield during war.
However with the arrival of the Imperial Legions along with the heavy knights caused some alarm amongst native Ispanic horsemen, Jennets and the like. Rather then being loyal to the local lords these new settlers and the Imperial Legions were loyal only to the Emperor and his appointed Vicecmes and Supreme Duke.
In Valencia another problem reared its head. Valencia had been handed back and forth between the WRE and the Moors for over a century. After 947 Valencia was regained by the WRE, and its lands appointed to new northern masters. However decedents of men who had owned those lands before the Moors took back Valencia protested, claiming ownership of the lands. Most Moors had fled from Valencia to Cordoba, but some had stayed and protested the confiscation of their lands. At this time there was a saying in Ispania. “If you want to learn law, go to Italy. But if you wish to practice it, go to Valencia.”
They were two of many warlords in Ispania during the pre-Revolt period, but their powers grew so much that both Sancho and Ibn Abi Aamir were pursued by the forces of Duke John for much of the 960’s, pushing the bandits steadily westward into Badajoz. They met at the port of Huelba in 970, and rather then fight each other Sancho and Ibn Abi Aamir agreed to join forces and attack the now weakened Ispanic states. After they had won the hearts of their peoples and driven out the invaders, both Frank and Berber, the two men would divide Ispania between them. Sancho would not manoeuvre south of the Guadiana and Segura Rivers, and Ibn Abi Aamir agreed not to do so to the north of that border. It was a promise that both men would find hard to keep.
Their arsenals were increased greatly when they were approached by agents from the Eastern Emperor, who gave them both generous sums of gold to aid their rebellion against the WRE. As the mercenary army of Sancho and Ibn Abi Aamir dodged the army of the new Supreme Duke of Ispania, Charles the Lazy in the spring of 971 they received word from Valencia. The Viceccomes of Valencia, James of Aachen had been killed, attacked by an angry mob who stormed his manor outside of Valencia. Civil order had broken down in Valencia, and the violence was spreading. Some of the rebel leaders were calling for Sancho the Exile to lead them. The Great Ispanic Revolt had begun.
- - -
[1] The Master of the Palace is the chief bureaucrat in the Imperial Palatine administrative structure.
[2] Apart from islands and West Saxony.
[3] The use of Moor here means Spanish Muslims, Saracens for those of the East, and Berbers for those of North Africa.
[4] Although this is not a trait solely possessed by Duke John.
[5] The use of the term huscarls is a bit of an anacrotism here, as nobles such as Kings, Emperors etc began to really refer to their bodyguards and personal troops as huscarls in the 11th Century.
[6] The author would like to point out at this stage that these two men share the names of two rather influential men in Spanish History during the OTL 10th Century.
[7] The author would also like to point out to his dear readers that any resemblance between his work and that of T.Anderson of Doncaster is purely coincidental.
Verse XLV: The falcon cannot hear the falconer
- - -
“Ever since I have arrived in Ispania five years ago I pray to God every day. I ask you God, what have I so done to offend you so? What possible sin could I have committed that would cause the Master of the Palace [1] to condemn me to serve Duke John, Supreme Duke of Ispania?
Never in my years of service to the Imperial throne have I ever encountered such disregard for the law and arrogance. Amongst the silver mines of Bohemia I curbed the power of the Zlican Kings through Roman Law and the establishment of several Advocatus and a new judicial establishment hand picked by myself, and I never faced such a man as him.
In the Breton marshes, when I studied under the great Ezzo of Frankfurt I stared down big hairy Franciscans in the courts. I fought on behalf of the Breton peasants whose land and flocks were being sequestered by the local Franciscans, and the Axemen had more respect for the law then this man.
This Duke is no more then a Dux Bellorum, a Lord of war, for this is his answer to every possible problem. He is the paragon of the old German, save the fact that he was born four hundred years too late.
I just thank the Good Lord that he has not been placed anywhere important. Now if I could be sent somewhere important, then all would be well.”
- An extract from the journal of the Palatine James of Mainland, c. 967. James served as Chief Palatine to Supreme Duke John of Echternach for seven years in Ispania and Italy.
- - -
Taken from:
“The sons of St Charles: the policies and practices of the early Restored Western Empire.”
By Stephen of Bloise, 1413
The battle of Rome in 971 was one of the great axis upon which history turns. If it fell to Emperor Nikolaos then Harald, Emperor of the West was doomed. Legitimacy of the Emperors in the East lay in gaining the support of the Army, the Senate, and the people of the city of Constantinople. Compared with their brother Emperors in the west those in Constantinople had it easy. For an Emperor of the West to gain legitimacy he had to have the support of all the tribes of the Empire, or at least a majority. To do this he would need to defend the Empire from all threats, both internal and external. He would also have to hold three cities: Rome, Karlsburg [Paderborn], and Aachen. Both Karlsburg and Aachen were at the centre of the Germanic core of the Empire, in Francia and Saxony respectively, whist Rome was in Italy, on the other side of the Alps. As such the WREmperors were forced to divide their attention between two masters. Often this could be accomplished by installing a friendly Pope in Rome, and garrisoning Italy. But Italy, like Ispania were separated by two mountain ranges, the Alps and Pyrenees. Almost everywhere else in the Empire, from Brittany in the west to Polania in the east, from the northern tip of Juteland to the southern sandy beaches of Provence there were few natural boundaries that presented a great physical challenge to the Emperors agents and armies. [2]
In Italy and Ispania two different general policies were put in place. As Ispania was originally marchland between the Empire and the Emirate of Cordoba, and it was not until 947, when Emperor Rudolph the Great conquered Cordoba, and subdued the Moors [3] that the nature of Ispania changed.
The Cordoban Emir was restricted to a small domain and three Imperial provinces (Toledo, Valencia and Badajoz) were created to guard against further aggression by the Moors. In each an Imperial Legion was stationed, and migration by knights and freemen from the northern Kingdoms was encouraged.
A supreme Duke was placed in charge of the Ispanian provinces, the last of which was Duke John of Echternach. Duke John ruled the Ispanian provinces during the 960’s, taking over from Duke George of Oxenfurt [Oxford]. During his reign as Supreme Duke John crushed several revolts by the Moors and the raiders from the Kingdom of Compostella. Despite his brilliant military mind Duke John was frustrated with the complexities of civilian rule.
He disliked the Mozarabs, which was unfortunate, as they made up much of the Christian population in Ispania. He dismissed the Primate of Ispania for not doing enough to combat the spread of vernacular prayers and scriptures, but as the Patriarch was the cousin of King Charles V of Aquitaine, the pressure from Charles forced Duke John to reinstate the Primate.
He was untrusting of the Imperial Palatines and the missus dominicus [4], ignoring many demands of the Emperor. If effect, he ruled Ispania as almost his own private fief.
In Italy the situation was more complex, and almost every Emperor since St Charles the Great had to either bribe or fight the King and Dukes of Italy into submission to secure Rome and his legitimacy as Emperor. With the War of the Second Sicilian Crisis Italy was the focus of the military of the WRE, and Duke John was ordered into Italy with his legions. Spain was left under garrisoned…
- - -
Taken from:
“The legacy of Moorish Spain.”
By the Abbot Thomas of Gorze, 1235
Chapter 2: Agriculture and Hydrology
When the first wave of settlers from the lands north of the Pyrenees arrived in Ispania in the first half of the 10th Century they encountered a land far richer then that that they had left behind. The Moorish settlers had in the 8th Century built upon the pre-existing channels used by the First Roman Empire, expanding the network of irrigation by using techniques they had learned in the Maghreb or in Syria and the Yemen. It is important to note that the Moors did not bring canals, dams, qanats or norias with them. Instead they brought ideas. For example, in the huerta of Valencia the Moorish population was more Berber then Saracen, and the presence of just a single lone Saracen with knowledge of the Syrian system of irrigation was enough to introduce it.
The Moors did not only introduce new ways of irrigating the huerta, but also new crops to grow in the farmland. The majority of these crops were filaha hindiyya, and thus grew in a very different climate to that of the Middle Sea. Fruits such as oranges and other citruses, bananas, various melons arrived in Ispania in the 8th Century, along with crops such as rice and sugar cane, and palm trees. As the Hindu crops came from a climate of monsoons they required large amounts of water, which was provided by the systems imported by the Moors.
A single village may be irrigated by one or two springs with hydrolic technology such as terraced fields, cisterns, shadufs, norias, along with measurement by clepsydra. Water would be stored in cisterns and distributed to fields on a weekly basis. A typical example of this is at the land of Chovar, in Valencia.
We know a lot about Chovar as the lands were granted to the a minor nobleman recorded as John the Brave. John hailed from Troyes, part of the local ruling Conradine dynasty.
The Conradine dynasty are a perfect example of the Francian noble Diaspora of the 10th Century. From their base in Troyes the Conradine dynasty sent sons south into Ispania to find land and glory. The main lands that the Conradine dynasty settled in where Valencia and the island of Mallorca.
John arrived in Ispania in 945 as part of the Imperial invasion, as part of the Imperial Knights under the command of the Emperor himself. As reward for his service to the Emperor, John was rewarded with Chovar as his own fief. From 945 he owed allegiance to the King of Valencia, but when the Kingdom was dissolved fifteen years later he owed allegiance directly to the Emperor via the Imperial Vicecomes whom had been sent to Valencia to govern it directly for the Emperor. He was given the title of Lord of Chovar.
Like all of the new rulers of Ispania during the halcyon days when it was part of the (Restored) Western Roman Empire, Lord John implored his men to leave the farmland ‘as it was during the time of the Moors.’ He imported a palatine from Barcelona and conducted a survey of his lands.
The irrigation system at Chovar consisted of a spring and two cisterns and canals that irrigated some nine hectares. A second system irrigates five hectares with spring water stored within a storage dam and distributed by time units measured with a clepsydra. This second system lifted water to terraced farmland, and this was done through a shaduf and a noria. Animal driven waterwheels were in presence, and Chovar is a perfect example of the combination of Saracen technique and the engineering prowess of the ancient Roman Empire. There was a Moorish official at Chovar who was responsible for the distribution of water to the districts farms, as there was across Ispania. Lord John and the other German settlers were able to simply import their own peasants to work the farms, but German peasants lacked the learning to work the irrigation system, and so the Germans offered large incentives to the Moorish water officials to stay on their lands.
On a larger scale is that on the island of Mallorca off the coast of Ispania, which also came under the control of a member of the Conradine dynasty, Charles the Brave, brother of Lord John. There at the town of Banyalbufar an area of 60 hectares where irrigated by water in a qanat, which was distributed into uncovered (sahrij) and covered (jubb) cisterns. Again, the pattern of terraced farmland was put in place. These two examples show that the Saracen agriculture was widespread across Ispania.
Whilst the Conradine dynasty (along with many other nobles) stayed in Ispania to live on the conquered estates of the Moors, others took the examples of Moorish farmland back north with them. Saracen agriculture was known in Gothica (including Septimania), parts of Provence and Italy, but it was the Conquest of Ispania that spread the Muslim ideas and technology further north. But this was hardly new, for in the late 8th Century the Emperor St Charles the Great had imported Moorish architects and engineers to Saxony to turn Paderborn into Karlsburg, the Imperial Capital.
Karlsburg was built like a Moorish city. At its centre was the Imperial Palace Complex, which included large gardens and orchids, and the personal chapel of the Emperors, along with the offices of the Master of the Palace. Around that was the merchant district, within which was the Fortress of St Michael, where the huscarls [5] of the Emperors, later Imperial Army garrisons would stay to keep the peace in Karlsburg. At night the district was shut off from the rest of the city. Extending north from the Palace Complex was the great Spine road, which owed more to Constantinople then to the Moors and Saracens. At the end of the Spine was the Imperial Cathedral of Saint Charles, its spire made from Marble from the Bohemian March (as it was at that time).
The Moors instructed the Germans on how to build aqueducts in the early 9th Century, and two were built, along with reservoirs and other hydraulic technology, around Karlsburg when St Charles the Great named it his capital. There was a brief period of canal and aqueduct building during the time of Emperor Charles II, but after that, as darkness descended over the Western Roman Empire there was a decline in public works on such a scale.
After the conquest of Ispania Moorish engineers travelled into the WRE, lured by the Emperor and Kings, especially the King of Francia. Starting in 962 and taking over forty years to complete the Kings of Francia constructed large scale canals and dams along the Rhine to prevent its flooding. This work was overseen by Moorish engineers. The engineers also taught the skills to the Germans in such schools as the University of Karlsburg, or wrote books in Latin about hydrological engineering.
The spread of horizontal mills (or Norse mills as they are sometimes known, especially in Saxony) was undertaken by the same Moors, and one Moor, Mohammad ibn Ahmad invented the flywheel in 989 whilst in the service of the King of Francia. This device helped to steady the spinning wheel of a mill as it stores excess momentum, releasing it in the form of a spinning wheel.
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It was on the outskirts of Huelba that they first met.
The first was a King in exile,
Transformed into a warlord by the treachery of a man
Whose greed for power knew no bounds.
Into the Ispanic lands he found opportunity.
The second was an educated man, and honourable.
But he was a Moor. And the Moors are foxes with their cunning.
He stood up against the Maghrebi heretics.
For he was a follower of the school of Maliki, and disgraced in Cordoba.
And so he turned to a life of villainy.
Both were scorned by their betters.
They both fought the Emperors forces and his vassals.
Both gathered warriors around them
And were beloved by their own peoples.
The two heroes had heard of each other
But at Huelba they met for the first time.
Christian and Moor they set aside their differences
And fought to destroy those who opposed them.
Sancho of Navarre and Muhammad son of Abi Aamir.[6]
The Exile and the Fox.
When these two men work together Ispania will quake.
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Taken From:
“A new history of the Kingdom of Ispania.”
By Alphonse of Barcelona, 1434
When we consider the great Ispanic Revolt we must consider the careers of two men. Three Christian and one Moor. These men are: Sancho of Navarre (or alternately the Exile), claimant of the Kingdom of Gothica, and Muhammad Ibn Abi Aamir.
Muhammad Ibn Abi Aamir was born in 938 into a noble family from the region of Algeciras. His family could trace its roots back to Arabs whom had come to Ispania as part of Tarik’s army, and had maintained its station as nobility of the gown, not of the sword. He had the mind of a fox. He had single-mindedness to an extraordinary level. His family survived the civil war and the Roman Invasion that followed it. They managed to maintain their riches, and could afford for Ibn Abi Aamir and his seven siblings to be tutored. Throughout his education Ibn Abi Aamir embraced the classics with a fondness for stories about poor outcasts who rose to great positions of power, and so in 958 he journeyed to first Seville and then Cordoba in hope of gaining great power in the much reduced Cordoba Emirate.
However Ibn Abi Aamir faced a great hurdle in his desire for power. The significant power figures in the Cordoba Emirate were of rather recent Berber origin, the grandsons of the soldiers brought from the Maghrib by Emir Riddan at the end of the 9th Century.
As such they were followers of Ibadi school of Muhammad worship, whilst the Moors were mainly followers of the school of Maliki. Ibn Abi Aamir was a Malikite, and although he hid this well in his brief career in Cordoba until a rival revealed Ibn Abi Aamir’s faith, and he was cast out from the Court of the Emir Riddan II.
Bitter and twisted Ibn Abi Aamir returned to his family home in Algeciras, only to find that it had been burned down by the forces of the Emir Riddan II. [7] Ibn Abi Aamir was now a broken man, and he wandered the Algeciras countryside aimlessly. One day he came across a group of barbarous Berbers who wore the badge of Cordoba. The Berbers were attacking a group of peasants who had not paid the great tax levied upon them by the Emir.
With a murderous rage Ibn Abi Aamir attacked the Berbers. With his fathers sword he attacked them one by one, killing the tax collector last. The fearful peasants gathered around him, and Ibn Abi Aamir begun his campaign as a warlord. He would gather Moors around him young men, Moors who were angry at the Berber overlords and their puppet masters the Christians in the north. He became known as the Fox by his enemies, for his cunning and guile.
Sancho was a man who represented the disenfranchised Christians of Ispania. The Kings of Toledo and Valencia were dismissed and the lands placed under Imperial control. Lacking representation in the Imperial Diet or the protection provided by a King chosen by the nobles. Sancho, as exile from Gothica. Born in 935, Sancho had been chosen as King by the Comes and Grafs of Gothica after his father died in 962, but the King of Aquitaine, Charles V had bought the alliance of many of the lords, and invaded Gothica to secure the throne for his son Paschal.
Like Ibn Abi Aamir he began a period of warlordism. He directed his violence against the Supreme Duke of Ispania and the Imperial Vicecomes, against the system the denied the Ispanic people a King of their own. Amongst the Christians of Ispania there was a sharp divide between the recent Frankish arrivals. It is true that Germans had been settling in Ispania since the time of St Charles the Great, both peasants and noble classes, but those who arrived after Emperor Rudolph the Great were in a different to those who came before. The warriors who settled after 947 were typical of Franks, Saxons, Burgundians and all other nobles west of the Elbe. They fought on horseback with underarm couched lances, wore heavy armour mail and on occasion iron plate. They rarely fought on foot, and the owning and fighting from one of these horses became a symbol of class.
In Ispania these sorts of knights were rare before 947. Instead, due to the nature of the long warfare of Ispania, during which time land would change hands repeatedly, the light horseman was a preferred. The exception of this was in Gothica, where Frankish influence and settlers was a permanent facet since the late 8th Century. The Jennets, light horsemen archers or javelins were the dominant form of warrior in Ispania. They were recruited from across all levels of Ispanic Christian society, and there was no difference between the armour or weapons that a noble or freemen would wield during war.
However with the arrival of the Imperial Legions along with the heavy knights caused some alarm amongst native Ispanic horsemen, Jennets and the like. Rather then being loyal to the local lords these new settlers and the Imperial Legions were loyal only to the Emperor and his appointed Vicecmes and Supreme Duke.
In Valencia another problem reared its head. Valencia had been handed back and forth between the WRE and the Moors for over a century. After 947 Valencia was regained by the WRE, and its lands appointed to new northern masters. However decedents of men who had owned those lands before the Moors took back Valencia protested, claiming ownership of the lands. Most Moors had fled from Valencia to Cordoba, but some had stayed and protested the confiscation of their lands. At this time there was a saying in Ispania. “If you want to learn law, go to Italy. But if you wish to practice it, go to Valencia.”
They were two of many warlords in Ispania during the pre-Revolt period, but their powers grew so much that both Sancho and Ibn Abi Aamir were pursued by the forces of Duke John for much of the 960’s, pushing the bandits steadily westward into Badajoz. They met at the port of Huelba in 970, and rather then fight each other Sancho and Ibn Abi Aamir agreed to join forces and attack the now weakened Ispanic states. After they had won the hearts of their peoples and driven out the invaders, both Frank and Berber, the two men would divide Ispania between them. Sancho would not manoeuvre south of the Guadiana and Segura Rivers, and Ibn Abi Aamir agreed not to do so to the north of that border. It was a promise that both men would find hard to keep.
Their arsenals were increased greatly when they were approached by agents from the Eastern Emperor, who gave them both generous sums of gold to aid their rebellion against the WRE. As the mercenary army of Sancho and Ibn Abi Aamir dodged the army of the new Supreme Duke of Ispania, Charles the Lazy in the spring of 971 they received word from Valencia. The Viceccomes of Valencia, James of Aachen had been killed, attacked by an angry mob who stormed his manor outside of Valencia. Civil order had broken down in Valencia, and the violence was spreading. Some of the rebel leaders were calling for Sancho the Exile to lead them. The Great Ispanic Revolt had begun.
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[1] The Master of the Palace is the chief bureaucrat in the Imperial Palatine administrative structure.
[2] Apart from islands and West Saxony.
[3] The use of Moor here means Spanish Muslims, Saracens for those of the East, and Berbers for those of North Africa.
[4] Although this is not a trait solely possessed by Duke John.
[5] The use of the term huscarls is a bit of an anacrotism here, as nobles such as Kings, Emperors etc began to really refer to their bodyguards and personal troops as huscarls in the 11th Century.
[6] The author would like to point out at this stage that these two men share the names of two rather influential men in Spanish History during the OTL 10th Century.
[7] The author would also like to point out to his dear readers that any resemblance between his work and that of T.Anderson of Doncaster is purely coincidental.
It is a very interesting piece to read. I do like that little poem that is inserted in between the first bit and the latter portion. It seems that in restoring the Roman Empire that vast control does not always equal to total control, especially with two larger entities contesting for territory in a different area.
It was only a matter of time before something like this happened, its just a question of when.
O Crap!
Please give Ispania back to the WRE.
I'd rather not.
This is getting most interesting (in a Chinese way)...
Quite. Ispania is going to be very interesting for quite some time.
Since the WRE will lose land here, and since Sancho of Navarra is the claimant to the Kingdom of Gothica, the borders may at least end up in the Pyrenees, if not including Septimania.
For much I like the WRE, it is always good to see independent nations here.
How will Sancho and Muhammad Ibn Abi Aamir interact with the Kingdom of Compostella?
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