Prologue
There is a Spanish saying, amongst the Moors, that goes “The honest (woman) affirms the beetle.” The history of this saying lays at the very heart of the Moorish people, for it addresses their near extinction, their miraculous salvation, and, perhaps, the altering of the history of mankind.
The year 1492 not only marks the early modern era of western civilisation due to the Columbian discovery of the New World, but also that of the defeat of Granada, the last of the Mohammedan kingdoms in Iberia, which would set in place a chain of events no less miraculous and awe-inspiring than the founding of Rome or the spread of Islam.
It is said that, upon boarding the ships to sail for exile in the dominions of the Moroccan sultan, the last Moorish king of Granada, Mohammed XII, popularly known as Boabdil, turned one last time to survey his former kingdom, and began to weep.
Disgusted with his cowardly surrender and behavior, his mother, the formidable sultana Aixa, legend has it, spat at him, despairingly, declaring:
Curiously nicknamed La Honesta, the Moorish saying, ‘la honesta affirms the beetle,’ is a retake on the Moorish proverb “even a beetle, in his mother’s eyes, is a gazelle.”
Yaqwan, Kingdom of Khaqwan
Winter, 898/1492
Since the Pharaoh had returned beyond the seas, nearly half of the 39 men left behind, all Israelites (as they thought of themselves) had abandoned the fortress, and began their trek through the interior. Yusuf Levi, the interpreter, had mastered far more than the others the tongue of the people of this land, and had managed to learn of the route to the court of the great khaness herself. This empress, who’s brother and husband respectively ruled two large kingdoms, was said to command fear and awe amongst the peoples of Bohio. Her kingdoms had both rebuked the infidels’ expedition, the locals had informed them, and fiercely resisted the Pharaoh’s advances. Unlike the king of Maryan, they empress's domains had resisted the idolatry that the Pharaoh's expedition had brought.
After weeks of travel through the arid and dry domains of the converted prince of Maryan, the Israelites were greeted at the natural border which demarked Maryan from the domains of the great empress’s brother, the powerful prince Bokheshio. Welcomed by his emissaries and ambassadors, the Israelites continued in safe passage to his capital at Yaquan, where a feast was prepared for them.
Like the Israelites, of both persuasions, these men observed days of fast as well as ritual purification by bathing; they refrained from touching the dead as well as from tasting blood. Having observed the armies of the great khaness pillage those of Maryan during their journey, the Israelites had even observed the empress’s armies carrying a holy ark with them into battle. For the Israelites, there was no question: the 10 lost tribes had been found. Was this empress a descendant of the infamous Balqis herself? Three moons had passed before they arrived in this land. Could it be Sheba?
Tears of bliss and joy ran down Yusuf Levi’s face as he and his companions sat in the manner of the courtiers of the empress and her brother and husband, and ate the feast prepared for them. Today too, the Court had observed a fast, and the feelings of respect and admiration of both groups for one another ran deep. The Pharaoh’s men had attempted to pillage both kingdoms, however the empress’s brother and husband, and their armies, had resisted.
When many of the empress’s men had fallen ill, two of the Israelites - Bernal, a medicinist, and Saqobi, a surgeon - had treated them, and maintained a quarantine to stop the spread. Spreading this practice amongst the medicine men of the two kingdoms, the spread of the disease and plague amongst the other kingdoms of the land had a much smaller effect on the subjects of the two kingdoms. While gratitude and pleasantries were expressed initially, as the feast ended and the dried leaves were brought out, lit with fire and inhaled, matters of histories, introductions, politics and strategy were discussed.
The Pharaoh was sure to return, and his men and his overlords were ferocious and vicious in their desire to rid the whole world over of those who did not worship their idols. As the night turned to morning, the majority of the Israelites, save for six of them (including Yusuf, Saqobi, and Bernal) excused themselves from the audience, purified themselves with the water from the river nearby, and prostrated towards the daybreak. They would then return, and with their six companions who did not prostrate towards daybreak as they did, be shown to the dwellings set-aside for them.
Throughout that winter and the following spring and summer, preparations were made, and emissaries sent to the farthest kingdom in Bohio that enjoyed close relations with the khaness’s domains, the eastern empire of the Maquan king Quarion. Many of the Israelites, all men, took wives from amongst the women of the kingdoms. New weapons and tactics of battle were adopted. Structures, walls, towers and fortresses erected throughout the interior of the kingdoms, guaranteeing safe passage between the allied kingdoms, and isolating the kingdoms which had embraced the Pharaoh’s men, where disease and dissent spread.
Beyond the dominions of her brother, husband and ally, the khaness’s armies and their medicine men sought out any remaining member of the Pharaoh’s men who had stayed behind the year before. The following harvest season, the remaining of the Pharaoh’s men had been found alive, and were decapitated; their corpses laid on the beach near their original fortress above the tide, as a warning to the Pharaoh upon his return. His constructed tower, fortress and cellar were destroyed, and similar ones constructed in the empress’s domains, as well as in those of the eastern king. The Pharaoh would return, it was sure. His return was an existential threat to both the Israelites and the people of the lands. The Israelites, and the Bohioans, would be prepared.
Tenrif Regency
Late Summer, 907/1501
The son of the late mencey addressed his liberated people, to the whistles and cheers of the island’s population celebrating the moon peoples’ capture, defeat and imprisonment of the Spanish contingents present on the island after a decade of conquest, and a century of hostilities and conquest amongst their kinsmen on the other isles. A Berber sailor from the port of Algiers roughly translated for the Turkish admiral and his nephew.
A seaman, the admiral was hesitant towards his nephew’s grandiose plans. Capturing the island already had not been planned. Tenrif was neither Granada, nor were there Muslims present amongst the island’s people. But it could be a haven for them, given significant defenses, and further more, it could be a pawn against the infidel king and his queen.
Power is an opiate, a responsibility, a danger, and glory. As the Imam Tirmizi reported, the Prophet himself stated "Whoever comes to the gate of the power and authority will face by being corrupted." Witnessing both the zeal of the Granadans and of the former Spanish prisoners on the battlefield, resulting in his lofty praise and assumption of power, the admiral began to ponder the potential of his nephew’s daring ideas. Perhaps, had the admiral not tasted power on land, he would have never considered his nephew's ideas. He had sought to disrupt the Spaniards’ navy and destroy enough ships and pillage enough ports to force the Spanish king and queen to negotiate a continued existence of Granada, which would, naturally, fall under the suzerainty of the Sublime Porte, giving the empire a foothold in western Europe and guaranteeing eventual Muslim mastery of the Mediterranean.
Yet, if the liberated prisoners were to be believed, the feather headdresses belonged to men, enslaved by the Spanish and captured from a powerful empire beyond the Ethiopian Seas, where the fight between the Cross and the Crescent had continued, as Colombo’s men were encircling and fighting an empire that had taken in several Moors and continued the holy struggle of the People of the Book against the followers of the Pauline heresy. The map the prisoners had provided did not help his case to be cautious or ignore their tales, as his cartographer and navigator of a nephew had already taken to, in consultations with other Arabic, European and Turkish sources present in his study aboard the fleet, constructing a map of the islands and coastline beyond the sunset.
The Ethiopian Sea was the edge of the known world, unless the prisoners aboard the Spanish ships the Ottoman fleet had captured were to believed. Having left Asia Minor with only three galleys and 16 smaller ships, the admiral’s grand fleet had nearly doubled, with the addition of several Genoese warships and the additional seven Spanish ones. Such a bounty would reap not only hefty rewards, but also rank, and glory in Constantinople. Even with such a fleet, it would be impossible to do more damage than pillage and plunder the Spanish navy and ports. Yet, if the tales were to be believed, this island empire, their great empress, and her Moorish advisors could indeed be aided to victory with the admiral’s great fleet.
The former prisoners described the voyage to this Candace’s islands as nearly three months at sea. Supplies could be gathered from what was present at Tenrif. The harvest was at hand, and the locals were grateful, and the captured Spaniard’s arms could be of use. The admiral went to sleep late that night after the festivities. After enjoying the company of young native woman of rare beauty, the Turk prayed. He stayed in the position of prostration for hours meditating on his decision at hand.
“O God,” he supplicated, “Behold I ask Thee the good through Thy knowledge, and ability through Thy Power and beg Thy favor out of Thy infinite Bounty. For surely Thou hast Power and I have none. Thou knowst all and I know not. Thou art the Great Knower of all things.” Raising his hands in supplication, the admiral covered his face in a purifying motion, thrice, and slept peacefully.
A fortnight later, the fleet of Kemal Reis set sail from Tenrif, to aid and liberate the Moors and their allies in the islands beyond the sunset.
There is a Spanish saying, amongst the Moors, that goes “The honest (woman) affirms the beetle.” The history of this saying lays at the very heart of the Moorish people, for it addresses their near extinction, their miraculous salvation, and, perhaps, the altering of the history of mankind.
The year 1492 not only marks the early modern era of western civilisation due to the Columbian discovery of the New World, but also that of the defeat of Granada, the last of the Mohammedan kingdoms in Iberia, which would set in place a chain of events no less miraculous and awe-inspiring than the founding of Rome or the spread of Islam.
It is said that, upon boarding the ships to sail for exile in the dominions of the Moroccan sultan, the last Moorish king of Granada, Mohammed XII, popularly known as Boabdil, turned one last time to survey his former kingdom, and began to weep.
Disgusted with his cowardly surrender and behavior, his mother, the formidable sultana Aixa, legend has it, spat at him, despairingly, declaring:
“You cry today as a woman, for what you could not defend as a man.”
Curiously nicknamed La Honesta, the Moorish saying, ‘la honesta affirms the beetle,’ is a retake on the Moorish proverb “even a beetle, in his mother’s eyes, is a gazelle.”
***
Yaqwan, Kingdom of Khaqwan
Winter, 898/1492
Since the Pharaoh had returned beyond the seas, nearly half of the 39 men left behind, all Israelites (as they thought of themselves) had abandoned the fortress, and began their trek through the interior. Yusuf Levi, the interpreter, had mastered far more than the others the tongue of the people of this land, and had managed to learn of the route to the court of the great khaness herself. This empress, who’s brother and husband respectively ruled two large kingdoms, was said to command fear and awe amongst the peoples of Bohio. Her kingdoms had both rebuked the infidels’ expedition, the locals had informed them, and fiercely resisted the Pharaoh’s advances. Unlike the king of Maryan, they empress's domains had resisted the idolatry that the Pharaoh's expedition had brought.
After weeks of travel through the arid and dry domains of the converted prince of Maryan, the Israelites were greeted at the natural border which demarked Maryan from the domains of the great empress’s brother, the powerful prince Bokheshio. Welcomed by his emissaries and ambassadors, the Israelites continued in safe passage to his capital at Yaquan, where a feast was prepared for them.
Like the Israelites, of both persuasions, these men observed days of fast as well as ritual purification by bathing; they refrained from touching the dead as well as from tasting blood. Having observed the armies of the great khaness pillage those of Maryan during their journey, the Israelites had even observed the empress’s armies carrying a holy ark with them into battle. For the Israelites, there was no question: the 10 lost tribes had been found. Was this empress a descendant of the infamous Balqis herself? Three moons had passed before they arrived in this land. Could it be Sheba?
Tears of bliss and joy ran down Yusuf Levi’s face as he and his companions sat in the manner of the courtiers of the empress and her brother and husband, and ate the feast prepared for them. Today too, the Court had observed a fast, and the feelings of respect and admiration of both groups for one another ran deep. The Pharaoh’s men had attempted to pillage both kingdoms, however the empress’s brother and husband, and their armies, had resisted.
When many of the empress’s men had fallen ill, two of the Israelites - Bernal, a medicinist, and Saqobi, a surgeon - had treated them, and maintained a quarantine to stop the spread. Spreading this practice amongst the medicine men of the two kingdoms, the spread of the disease and plague amongst the other kingdoms of the land had a much smaller effect on the subjects of the two kingdoms. While gratitude and pleasantries were expressed initially, as the feast ended and the dried leaves were brought out, lit with fire and inhaled, matters of histories, introductions, politics and strategy were discussed.
The Pharaoh was sure to return, and his men and his overlords were ferocious and vicious in their desire to rid the whole world over of those who did not worship their idols. As the night turned to morning, the majority of the Israelites, save for six of them (including Yusuf, Saqobi, and Bernal) excused themselves from the audience, purified themselves with the water from the river nearby, and prostrated towards the daybreak. They would then return, and with their six companions who did not prostrate towards daybreak as they did, be shown to the dwellings set-aside for them.
Throughout that winter and the following spring and summer, preparations were made, and emissaries sent to the farthest kingdom in Bohio that enjoyed close relations with the khaness’s domains, the eastern empire of the Maquan king Quarion. Many of the Israelites, all men, took wives from amongst the women of the kingdoms. New weapons and tactics of battle were adopted. Structures, walls, towers and fortresses erected throughout the interior of the kingdoms, guaranteeing safe passage between the allied kingdoms, and isolating the kingdoms which had embraced the Pharaoh’s men, where disease and dissent spread.
Beyond the dominions of her brother, husband and ally, the khaness’s armies and their medicine men sought out any remaining member of the Pharaoh’s men who had stayed behind the year before. The following harvest season, the remaining of the Pharaoh’s men had been found alive, and were decapitated; their corpses laid on the beach near their original fortress above the tide, as a warning to the Pharaoh upon his return. His constructed tower, fortress and cellar were destroyed, and similar ones constructed in the empress’s domains, as well as in those of the eastern king. The Pharaoh would return, it was sure. His return was an existential threat to both the Israelites and the people of the lands. The Israelites, and the Bohioans, would be prepared.
***
Tenrif Regency
Late Summer, 907/1501
The son of the late mencey addressed his liberated people, to the whistles and cheers of the island’s population celebrating the moon peoples’ capture, defeat and imprisonment of the Spanish contingents present on the island after a decade of conquest, and a century of hostilities and conquest amongst their kinsmen on the other isles. A Berber sailor from the port of Algiers roughly translated for the Turkish admiral and his nephew.
A seaman, the admiral was hesitant towards his nephew’s grandiose plans. Capturing the island already had not been planned. Tenrif was neither Granada, nor were there Muslims present amongst the island’s people. But it could be a haven for them, given significant defenses, and further more, it could be a pawn against the infidel king and his queen.
Power is an opiate, a responsibility, a danger, and glory. As the Imam Tirmizi reported, the Prophet himself stated "Whoever comes to the gate of the power and authority will face by being corrupted." Witnessing both the zeal of the Granadans and of the former Spanish prisoners on the battlefield, resulting in his lofty praise and assumption of power, the admiral began to ponder the potential of his nephew’s daring ideas. Perhaps, had the admiral not tasted power on land, he would have never considered his nephew's ideas. He had sought to disrupt the Spaniards’ navy and destroy enough ships and pillage enough ports to force the Spanish king and queen to negotiate a continued existence of Granada, which would, naturally, fall under the suzerainty of the Sublime Porte, giving the empire a foothold in western Europe and guaranteeing eventual Muslim mastery of the Mediterranean.
Yet, if the liberated prisoners were to be believed, the feather headdresses belonged to men, enslaved by the Spanish and captured from a powerful empire beyond the Ethiopian Seas, where the fight between the Cross and the Crescent had continued, as Colombo’s men were encircling and fighting an empire that had taken in several Moors and continued the holy struggle of the People of the Book against the followers of the Pauline heresy. The map the prisoners had provided did not help his case to be cautious or ignore their tales, as his cartographer and navigator of a nephew had already taken to, in consultations with other Arabic, European and Turkish sources present in his study aboard the fleet, constructing a map of the islands and coastline beyond the sunset.
The Ethiopian Sea was the edge of the known world, unless the prisoners aboard the Spanish ships the Ottoman fleet had captured were to believed. Having left Asia Minor with only three galleys and 16 smaller ships, the admiral’s grand fleet had nearly doubled, with the addition of several Genoese warships and the additional seven Spanish ones. Such a bounty would reap not only hefty rewards, but also rank, and glory in Constantinople. Even with such a fleet, it would be impossible to do more damage than pillage and plunder the Spanish navy and ports. Yet, if the tales were to be believed, this island empire, their great empress, and her Moorish advisors could indeed be aided to victory with the admiral’s great fleet.
The former prisoners described the voyage to this Candace’s islands as nearly three months at sea. Supplies could be gathered from what was present at Tenrif. The harvest was at hand, and the locals were grateful, and the captured Spaniard’s arms could be of use. The admiral went to sleep late that night after the festivities. After enjoying the company of young native woman of rare beauty, the Turk prayed. He stayed in the position of prostration for hours meditating on his decision at hand.
“O God,” he supplicated, “Behold I ask Thee the good through Thy knowledge, and ability through Thy Power and beg Thy favor out of Thy infinite Bounty. For surely Thou hast Power and I have none. Thou knowst all and I know not. Thou art the Great Knower of all things.” Raising his hands in supplication, the admiral covered his face in a purifying motion, thrice, and slept peacefully.
A fortnight later, the fleet of Kemal Reis set sail from Tenrif, to aid and liberate the Moors and their allies in the islands beyond the sunset.
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