Isaac's Empire 2.0
- Thread starter Basileus Giorgios
- Start date
Gruekiller is correct here: the Jurchens are going to be the foe coming west, thanks to some great ideas by FDW. Gruekiller, please PM me with the details of a character you'd like to see appear in the TL!
I technically said I was going to change the name of the dynasty descended from George. Make of that what you will!
MarshalBraginsky
Banned
The Jurchens are way too far though. Not unless Temujin's family are forcibly integrated into the Jurchen Horde and are making their way into the Rus', Central Asia, Persia and even Byzantium.
You're incorrectly assuming that there have been no butterflies east of Iran, I think: the Jurchens in IE aren't in the same place that they are on that map. Temujin has been butterflied entirely, too.
Damn it! I was late to the contest!
Hey, there may be more in future!
Yes, I think that's a logical thing to happen. Really, FDW is advising me on all of this as I'm such a n00b at the history of anywhere beyond Iran. So, once he replies to my PMs, I'll be able to properly get to work on the Jurchen update (currently I've done about 1/4) and hopefully publish it soonish.
Chapter Sixteen: The Khan and the Queen
Chapter Sixteen: The Khan and the Queen
"In ten years, Allah utterly brought low the land of the Iranians, and we wept bitter tears, for the rule of the savage heathens had come"
"In ten years, Allah utterly brought low the land of the Iranians, and we wept bitter tears, for the rule of the savage heathens had come"
Kadi Fuzuli, Iranian poet of the 1250s: Iranshahr
The precise circumstances that brought the Jušen from the icy wastes of north-eastern China to the burning plains of the Iranian plateau need not concern us here.[1] Suffice it to say that, following a brief period of hegemony on the steppes to the north of a rapidly disintegrating Chinese Empire in the middle of the eleventh century, they suffered a number of defeats and by the 1190s the shattered remnants of their empire were led west by a visionary leader named Ātái Khan. In 1213 they wrested Chachqand, on the frontier of Saljūq Iran, from its local governor, but they suffered a heavy defeat in 1215 at the hands of the Sultan Kayqubād when they attempted to march further to Samarqand, thus preventing a generalised loss of Sogdiana.[2] There, the broken heirs of Ātái sat and brooded. Hopes of a return to the sun for the Jušen people appeared to be utterly in vain.
Yet events to the south would soon allow the Jušen journey to resume. In 1217, Kayqubād died at the age of just forty six, and his legacy was immediately contested by three squabbling sons. The youngest of these sons, Mehmed, seized Mesopotamia and with it the support of the 'Abbasid Caliph, while the middle son, Kayqubād’s favoured heir and namesake opted to consolidate Iran proper. It seemed as though the eldest son, Baqtash, a man with a formidable temper and little support within the Empire, was doomed to be excluded from power altogether. Baqtash, though, would not give up so easily, and an offer from Kayqubād II to join forces was scornfully dismissed. Instead, Baqtash had chosen a very different ally: one whose support would put him on an Iranian throne built of Muslim blood and bones.
In 1219, Mehmed and his 'Abbasid backers shattered Kayqubād’s army at the Battle of Arraĵān in western Persia[3], and the twenty one year old was quickly acknowledged as Sultan, with ambassadors from Constantinople and Cairo hastening to Baghdad to offer their congratulations. Mehmed largely ignored his surviving brother, who had holed himself up in Samarqand surrounded by a small group of close friends and advisers. Several insulting messages were sent to Baqtash, insisting that he came to heel, but Baqtash dug in his heels and ignored them. It was only early in 1222, when a messenger from Baghdad arrived carrying a letter that called Baqtash “Swineherd”, that the Sultan’s brother snapped. He marched out from Samarqand soon afterward, at the head of an army of (reputedly) ninety thousand Jušen.[4]Initially, Mehmed dismissed the threat, preferring to busy himself with a dashing little war against the rebellious ātābeg of Ardabil. He would soon have cause to learn his mistake. In the terrifying campaign of summer 1222, Baqtash and his Jušen warriors seized and sacked city after city in Iran: Isfahan, Qumm, Hamadan and Rayy all fell. Belatedly, Baghdad woke up to the scale of the problem, but by this time it was too late. In 1223, Baqtash triumphantly led his men into Mesopotamia, where Baghdad surrendered without a fight. Mehmed scrambled for safety as a refugee in the court of the Emir of Aleppo[5], but his backer the Caliph was not so lucky: Baqtash had the unfortunate Commander of the Faithful drowned before selecting his own candidate.
So far, so unexceptional: the Saljūq Sultanate had come through similar bouts of violence a century before, and there can have been little reason for the inhabitants of Iran and Mesopotamia to do much more than breathe a sigh of relief that the violence this time had only gone on for a few years, rather than the decades of the first half of the twelfth century. Unfortunately, however, this would be more than just a conventional civil war. Only a few days after the entry of Baqtash into Baghdad, a disagreement had broken out between the new Sultan and the leader of his Jušen warriors. The disagreement did not end well for Baqtash: after just six weeks as Sultan he experienced the same fate as the Caliph. His murderer was perhaps the most extraordinary figure of the thirteenth century: Šurhaci Khan.
Šurhaci was just twenty four years old at the time of the murder of Baqtash. He had used the opportunity of the Saljūq civil war to defeat his father and brothers for the leadership of the Jušen inherited from his grandfather Ātái, who had died in 1218. A ferocious individual by temper, Šurhaci physically towered above his squat countrymen, and claimed descent from the ancient Han Emperors of China. It was a penetrating intelligence and willingness to act decisively that had won him the leadership of the Jušen, however, not any regal descent. Šurhaci had furthermore succeeded where his predecessors had failed; for the first time in generations, the Jušen controlled a mighty empire reaching from the mudflats of Mesopotamia deep into the steppes of the north.
For the Iranians themselves, the Jušen occupation was hardly a disaster once the initial violence of conquest was over. After all, Greeks and Arabs had long since been absorbed by the great mass of the Iranian people, and the Saljūqs were well on their way towards it before their abrupt demise: there was no reason why the Jušen should be any different: so, at least, must have been the thoughts of Iranian nobles trying to comfort themselves at the imposition of a regime ruled by barbarian pagans. Šurhaci Khan, a cultured man, was well aware of this, and opted to play along with Iranian and Islamic sensibilities. Though he himself haughtily refused to convert away from his own shamanistic beliefs in the “Heavenly Mother” Abka Hehe, the incoming Jušen administration refrained from harassing Muslims or the significant Zoroastrian minority.[6]A new Caliph was duly appointed as a loyal ally of Šurhaci, and the Khan took pains to patronise the religious leadership of all his peoples, building several new fire temples in the course of his reign.[7] There were limits to tolerance, of course, thanks to Šurhaci’s personality: a Nestorian bishop suffered the indignity of being trampled to death by horses in 1226 after attempting to stir rebellion against the Khan.[8] But, by and large, the residents of the old Saljūq Empire eventually adapted reasonably well to their alien rulers. With his new homeland secured, Šurhaci could look further afield.
His target was an obvious one. In 1224, the Armenian King of Kings Roupen II had died in mysterious circumstances, causing his eldest daughter Alinakh and her children to flee to the court of the ātābeg of Ardabil Mu'ayyad, who had survived his war against the Saljūq Mehmed to become a loyal client of Šurhaci. Alinakh had made an ill-advised play for power in the Armenian court at Yerevan, which ended with the death of her husband David and the imprisonment of dozens of her friends and allies by her teenage brother Ashot, who duly took the Armenian throne.[9] Alinakh, however, was not willing to peacefully allow her little brother the right to reign, and so appeals were sent to Šurhaci, offering him the wealth of Armenia in exchange for placing Alinakh on the throne as Queen of Kings.
It was an offer the Jušen Khan seized eagerly, although Alinakh would have to wait for matters in Iran to calm down before Šurhaci was willing to properly begin an invasion. For several years, she and her children became regular fixtures at the Khan’s mobile court, leading to scurrilous tales by Muslim writers that the “Christian witch” had seduced their ruler who, as rumour had it, was on the verge of converting to Islam.[10] Finally, in the spring of 1227, the invasion of Armenia began.
The Jušen, as nomads from the steppes, might have been expected to struggle with the mountainous terrain of Armenia, and indeed those loyal to Ashot scored a handful of victories against horse archers. Šurhaci, though, was a seasoned warrior, and after the setbacks of 1227 reassessed his strategy, standing down the majority of his own Jušen warriors and instead relying upon native Iranian troops to form the bulk of his army, alongside the native Armenian nobles, the Nakharars, who had flocked to Alinakh’s cause. It did not help matters that King Ashot, a vainglorious seventeen year old, possessed all of the courage of his grandfather Smbat but only a fraction of the talent. Ashot’s armies were destroyed at the Battle of Nakhichevan to the south of his capital in June 1228, with the young King of Kings himself being cut down in battle by a humble Azeri spearman.[11] In less than two years, Šurhaci had managed to do what generations of Roman commanders had failed to, and subdued Armenia. Alinakh duly took the throne as merely Queen of Syunik, accepting the Jušen Khan as her overlord.
There remained, though, a loose end. Shortly before the fall of Yerevan, it had been the turn of Ashot’s wife Miriam and their baby son to flee. In a mirror of the flight of Alinakh, Miriam quickly travelled west, accompanied by a small guard of loyalist Nakharars. At Theodosiopolis, they threw themselves upon the mercy of the Imperial governor Leo Nafpliotis, who promised them the protection of Constantinople, and furthermore recognised the infant, named Smbat, as rightful heir to Armenia.[12] Šurhaci, notionally speaking on behalf of his vassal, ordered the surrender of the baby boy, but met with a point blank refusal from Nafpliotis, whom the young Miriam seems to have seduced (following once again the example of her successful sister-in-law).
The news, when it reached Constantinople, was greeted with horror by the Emperor George, who had been watching the developments in Iran with increasing unease. For the past decade, the Emperor had spent his time in domestic administration and attempting to build a successful balance of power in the western Mediterranean.[13]Now, though, the long awaited crisis was at hand. In March 1229, the long line of beacons that dotted Anatolia began to blaze in alarm, Šurhaci Khan and his undefeated armies had begun the long march west with one objective: Constantinople.
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[1] I’m deliberately not using the term “Manchuria” here, as it would probably not emerge in the IE universe. That’s the Jušenhomeland, though. And yes, the Jušen are the people known to OTL as the Jurchens.
[2] Chachqand is OTL’s Tashkent in Uzbekistan. Sogdiana is a culturally Iranian region of south-central Asia, to the north-east of Iran proper.
[3] Arraĵān is modern Behbahan in Khuzestan. The original city, a Sasanian foundation, went into decline IOTL in the fourteenth century, with Behbahan emerging as its successor.
[4] The figure is probably inflated, but there can be no doubt that Baqtash’s new allies were a truly formidable army, even if much depleted from their glory days eighty years earlier. Why exactly the Jušen decided to commit in such number to the cause of Baqtash remains uncertain, although omens may have played a part.
[5] The Emir is, of course, a vassal of Constantinople.
[6] A note on religion. Abka Hehe is the primordial Manchurian goddess, the epitome of goodness and mother of humanity. Regarding Iranian religions, at this point Sunnis probably made up a majority of the population, although the Zoroastrians probably still made up more than a fifth. There were also minorities of Shiites, Jews, and various Christian sects of whom the Nestorians were by far the most important.
[7] Jušen occupation does much to help the Zoroastrians of Iran, by putting them on a level pedestal officially with Muslims. Iranian Zoroastrianism therefore remains a much more significant minority in IE than in OTL, more comparable to the Egyptian Copts than the OTL tiny rump of Iranian Zoroastrians.
[8] As suggested by 037771, this is of course a famously favoured method of execution amongst steppe peoples.
[9] Although his father Smbat had preferred Ani for his last decade in power, Roupen II established his court at the more centrally located Yerevan, fearing Ani’s location right on the Roman border could spell its downfall.
[10] This is wishful thinking on the part of the Muslims: Šurhaci showed very little interest in converting to either Christianity or Islam at any point.
[11] Nakhichevan is the OTL Azeri enclave of Nakhchivan. Ashot’s killer was richly rewarded by Alinakh, with the revenues of the town of Nakhichevan donated to him and his family in perpetuity.
[12] This is Leo Nafpliotis “the Youngest”, now head of the much diminished family following his father Joseph’s death three years earlier.
[13] George is, as a Genoan, considerably more interested in the politics of Francia and Iberia than any of his predecessors, and adopts a policy throughout the 1210s and 1220s of intervening diplomatically in the region.
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Wow great update.Please don't tell me that there will be a long wait for the next part.Because this battle will be epic.
FDW
Banned
Wait....JURCHEN HORDE!?!
I was the one that gave him the idea, as a way of shaking things up.
Huehuecoyotl
Monthly Donor
Great update, BG. Can't wait to see how the Jusen will go about their attack on the Queen of Cities.