Hwaet, the Ring-Breaking Danes: Angland and Skotland
Of the British Isles, Angland in particular enjoyed a sort of golden age under the Danish yoke. Firstly, it helped that said Danish yoke was exceedingly light, and that the Danes were cheerfully willing to intermarry and live beside their Saxon and Briton subjects. Secondly, when the heirs of Harthacnute united Angland they brought with them a time of peace and prosperity. Many of the battles on the Welsh frontier were little more than glorified cattle raids and were treated with little more than derision by the court in Winchester. The crowns of Angland and Skotland intermarried, frequently as well, and in general territorial expansion came second to foreign raiding and mercenary work.
Those who returned from such adventuring brought back foreign wealth, styles, and ideas to enrich the beer halls of their new Kingdom. Winchester’s great Assembly Hall itself was decorated with jewels and gold from as far away as Carthage and Konstantikert.
Besides general calm, the rise of the South in prominence was the other major trend of the two centuries in which Angland came to be supreme on the British Isles. It was perhaps inevitable – a matter of geography. The south was richer, more populous, and more connected to the beating heart of the European world. From southern Angland sailed the mercenaries who would return battle-hardened with new knowledge and tales of the lands beyond the channel. Leicester and Jorvik could make no such claims, and thus were subordinated to Winchester under King Sweyn Thunderer – who even before their conquest had been calling himself King of Angland.
The Anglo-Dansk and their northern counterparts on Skotland and the Isles maintained the seafaring traditions of their illustrious ancestors. They set sail on the Whale-Road, becoming mariners and traders par excellence. Indeed, Anglo-Dansk ships had more contact with the peoples of West Africa than the Franks in the early era of contact between Africa and Europe. Despite their susceptibility to disease and the perils involved, many risked the journey, knowing that there was much gold and salt to be found. Many more, especially more established communities of adventurers, preferred to seek out safer adventures close to home. Wars in Anatolia and the Polish frontier attracted many warriors “going Viking.”
The Khardi Empire in the West
The devastation of Egypt in the early eleventh century should not be underestimated. By all contemporary accounts, the damage done was severe: both in terms of human lives and the enormous damage done to the canals and irrigation networks which sustained the bounty of the Nile. Berxwedan, the Satrap of Egypt, was both brother and friend to Artaxser, and as a member of the royal family he could do no wrong even after his elder brother’s passing. He ruled as a despotic King, and his ordinances were brutal and designed to break the will of a proud, independent people with a long history. Huge numbers of rebels were executed, their families and villages sold into slavery and made to undergo forced marched through the Gaza desert which only a fraction survived. The wealth of merchants and nobles was universally confiscated to pay soldiers.
Berxwedan’ short sighted policies would have long-term ramifications. While Mesopotamia blossomed under the enthusiastic stewardship of small Khardi landholders and local farms, Egypt suffered horribly. The country was divided into vast estates run by people without even basic knowledge of farming – nomadic mercenaries who were acutely aware of how outnumbered they were by their subjects. And yet more important, perhaps, than this devastation was the economic toll that the capture of Egypt would have on Europe. The grain shipments of Egypt, which were crucial to the substantial urban societies of Italy and Anatolia, were cut off for perhaps five years. When they resumed, they were intermittent and far fewer than before – revolts and chaos in the interior prevented substantial trade, and the merchant houses and guilds of Egypt were largely destroyed. New relations had to be cultivated with Khardi interlopers seeking to make quick profits off of their conquest.
Furthermore, for the first time since the Roman Empire, the Eastern Mediterranean lay in the hands of a single unified power. There was no longer even a heretical Christian state with which to trade if one wanted the luxuries of the orient – the Khardi were the only option, and clever administrators back in Susa, well aware of this fact, raised significant tariffs on these goods. Almost overnight, Mediterranean trade contracted and the economic certainties which had allowed the flourishing of interconnected urban societies across Spain, Italy, Africa and Asia alike collapsed. Many urban centers stopped growing or, in the case of Asia, contracted significantly.
Fear and uncertainty for this new era gripped Europe. Pilgrimage too was as difficult as it had been in the early days of the Eftal. The weak grip of the Khardi on Palestine meant that travelers either had to pay exorbitant fees or risk banditry if they wished to visit Jerusalem. While the loss of Jerusalem to heathens had happened before, it had not occurred in recent memory – and thus the shock was to many a fresh blow. A new generation grew up believing that once again the end times were upon them. The Khardi seemed an imminent threat to the very safety of Europe. Merchants brought back exaggerated tales of atrocities and the conversion of Jerusalem’s churches to pagan temples. While there is no evidence that the latter occurred, atrocities were commonplace. The Khardi armies were by no means exhausted either – Mesopotamia and Syria provided a substantial well of manpower and incursions into Asiana increased as the century wore on.
If the Khardi were in reality very far from Europe, they were much closer to the Asian leagues. Ghorshid, the Satrap of Kilikia, attacked Ikonion several times between 1020 and 1030, each time only barely being repulsed. Ironically, the Ikonian army was primarily Christianized Eftal, and thus while the conflict was often called the “War of the Asian Votives” in practice it resembled an inter-tribal conflict – raid and counter raid with few significant engagements or sieges.
Ghorshid himself was an interesting figure about whom there are many conflicting stories. According to the Greek historians of the time, he had been born in Kappadocia, and taken as a slave during the siege of Nyssa. (His birth name is sometimes given as Isaac) From there he impressed his captors with his literacy and noble bearing, and was adopted into an Eftal family. Some sources call him a Christian Eftal from beyond the Kilikian Gates, others say that he repudiated Christ after being enslaved or was born a pagan. Whatever the case, through capable leadership he managed to become the bitterest enemy of the Hypatate of Ikonion.
When Artaxser I died in 1033, his son Mitradarma II took power. An energetic and enthusiastic young man, Mitradarma felt the need to assert his strong leadership in the face of an increasingly powerful bureaucracy with ties to many important landholding tribes in Mesopotamia. Almost immediately after being crowned, Mitradarma determined to invade Anatolia, and Ghorshid was assigned to lead the vanguard of this invasion force up through Kappadocia and into Asia proper.
Although he was ambitious and proud, Mitradarma did not have the force of will to unite the powerful Satraps and tribal potentates of his country the way his father did. The lofty grandeur which Artaxser had surrounded himself with actually worked to Mitradarma’s disadvantage – he was unable to form personal relationships with the men under his authority. Powerful figures such as Seneqerim Artsruni, the Satrap of Armenia, and Surxab Haraviya, Satrap of Syria, had little regard for Mitradarma. Both of them could claim ancient and prestigious ancestry – in the case of the Artsruni, back to the Assyrian Empire. They saw through the façade of grandeur which Artaxser had carefully constructed around his dynasty and knew them for the upjumped clansmen and mercenaries they had been in the era before the conquests of Mitradarma’s grandfather and namesake.
Accordingly, the invasion, launched in 1035, was a debacle. Seneqerim arrived late, with a mere fraction of the soldiers he had been requested to bring. Most of those who he did bring were Bajinak mercenaries who barely followed orders and frequently rode off to loot. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, he left the army a mere three months into the campaign ostensibly to comfort a concubine unexpectedly taken ill. Once he arrived at home, he began gathering a proper army of Ifthal veterans and Armenian hillmen to his ranks – perhaps expecting to have to fight the Khardi in due time. The Syrian Ifthal, meanwhile, angered at Seneqerim’s abandonment, began to feel that the Khardi distrusted them as well. Accordingly, Surxab Haraviya did not commit them fully when a battle was fought at Mokissos – hanging back until the fight was almost decided and causing heavy casualties among the Khardi foot which could have easily been prevented. Enraged, Mitradarma confronted him and stripped him of his rank – something which would see mass desertions among the Syrian Ifthal.
In spite of these troubles, the Khardi juggernaut was simply too powerful to be defeated. Their army was huge, and composed of some of the finest light cavalry in the world, backed by massive numbers of archers. In a triumph for Iranian military engineering, primitive cannons even saw use at the siege of Ikonion, and when the city fell, few were surprised. Mitradarma, however, did not get to bask in his victory. He unexpectedly fell ill and died a mere week after his twentieth birthday, several months after his conquest of Ikonion. Serfarrokh, his younger brother by five years, was the only obvious candidate to succeed him. He took the throne in 1036, and though he ruled without a regent, important families (including the Haraviya) would dominate his reign.
In the interim, on his deathbed Mitradarma received word that Nikaia and the League of Samos had put aside their differences, and formed an alliance with Galatia and Pontos. The League of Asiana was thus born, and the Nikaian leader was named Protohypatos, or first of the Consuls. It was an alliance of fear and necessity, an alliance only possible because of the sudden decline of Asiana. Furthermore, the Protohypatos, Niketas Pegarios, had been given broad authority to levy taxes and raise men under the new treaty – authority which most wise men of the alliance realized would quickly become monarchical.
Niketas wasted no time. He raised what forces he could, augmenting them with Anglo-Dansk and Frankish mercenaries. Like Ikonion, he declared that his battle against the Khardi would be a Votive War. Unlike the Eftal of Ikonion, it seems that he actually meant it.
Trade and Technology – the “Indian Revolution” continues
From the perspective of outsiders, particularly those in Arabia and West Africa, the period beginning in the eleventh century is often considered one of Bharukacchi, and thus by extension, Chandratreyan, hegemony. However, this is not entirely accurate. On the subcontinent itself, there were a large number of notable ports. Even locally, Bharukaccha had two major rivals, Suryapura and Khambhayat. The latter of these was an ancient city, dating back to the time of the Ptolemies. However, Khambhayat had the misfortune of not being well-situated to take advantage of the profitable Deccan overland and riverine trade, but rather being best situated to export bulk quantities of wheat, iron, horses, and other less valuable commodities from the dry uplands in which it was situated. While this was undoubtedly valuable, it bought Khambhayat a reputation as a poor and less prestigious city which the metropolis would struggle to shake for several centuries, until its harbor would silt up and the city would be largely abandoned.
Bharukaccha, by contrast, had major overseas connections. Its guilds excelled at using the implicit threat of the City’s naval dominance to extort, bully, and cajole others into partnerships, and despite largely being an entrepot with relatively little production of its own (Suryapura was a major textile site, for example) it gradually evolved into a key financial center. “Bharuch, where only ships and gold are made” wrote one Gurjar lord, upon seeing the city’s marketplaces.
To those in India, however, Bharukaccha was very much the second city of Indian commerce. The island of Sri Lanka held its greatest rival, Mahatittha. Ruled by the Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka was one of the greatest mercantile centers in the world, producing all manner of luxury goods and serving as a vital entrepot and financial hub.
Where north India had brought the world the concepts of the Equal-Kingdom and the Ayat after the fall of the Maukhani, it was south India that turned the guilds from simple alliances, social clubs, and trading partnerships into a financial system that would revolutionize the modern world. Guilds which existed purely as moneylending and banking institutions became more prevalent and more prestigious throughout the eleventh century. Adesha, or “papers of credit” – marked with special seals to prove their authenticity, were used to safely carry vast sums of money between various institutions with nothing more than a sheet of carefully printed paper sealed by wax.
Finance changed mercantile trade across India. One Sri Lankan banking family in particular, the Kashyapani, became exceedingly wealthy. While nominally subjects (and financiers) of the ruling Anuradhapuran monarchy, they negotiated private treaties with guilds and nations, establishing their operation across the coastal subcontinent. Wherever Indian merchant craft went, the Kashyapani operated – as far afield as China and the Watya cape. While certain mercantile groups, such as the Nestorian Christians of Koilon, refused to engage with this new system, usury in Hindu and Buddhist religious practice had long been a relative matter, and was frequently only prohibited to certain high caste individuals who refused to engage with commerce in any sense. Substantial economic opportunities abounded for those who were able to pool money for loans or insurance societies.
However, the march of progress was not even or absolute. The Indo-Gangetic plain in particular saw a regression towards monarchy and autocracy with the rise of the Uparika Anapota Durjaya, a leader whose policies would significantly curtail the autonomy of the once great Pancharajyan guilds and lead to a brief period of imperial resurgence.
[And that’s a story for another post.
Apologies for leaving a lot of stuff hanging in this post - the Khardi-Asiana wars and the general collapse of Mediterranean trade, as I've hinted, is setting up how Frankish and Anglish navigators will take matters into their own hands and start exploring. I just ran out of time to explore the rest of the Indian subcontinent.]
