The Undying Empire: A Trebizond Timeline
- Thread starter Eparkhos
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And so the cycle of violence perpetuates; Constantinople is charred, the Turks of Thrace and north Anatolia are savaged, and the uneasy Albanian realm of Shkoze lies reeling. I'm suspicious the latter won't survive as a large power following Shkoze's death, given the existence of a hostile Bulgaria and Palaiologian realm on its eastern borders and the ruler's own failure to claim Constantinople. A reduced Albania surviving seems more in the books and still has interesting potential as an independent regional player, though with how utterly chaotic everything is in the Balkans following the Ottoman collapse I don't think anything is sure. Still interested to see who ends up as the king/tsar of Bulgaria, and how their place in the peninsula develops. Likewise, the Palaiologoi will be fascinating to watch; while they probably don't have the means to contest the Bosporus anytime soon, they still have the second city of the ERE under their belt and look positioned to expand at Albania's expense. Perhaps David's long-term marriage strategy will involve fusing his and their families into one to reunite the Empire? That may well end up precipitating the hinted decline of the Great Komnenoi from the emperorship, though frankly given their prestige and continuity I am unsure whether such an event would be permanent.
It's also going to be fascinating seeing how "Turkey" (i.e. the regions and polities inhabited by and ruled by Seljuq Turks) develops. I don't think that the Çandarid Caliphate will keep its position in Anatolia for terribly long, given that this is a Byzantine TL and the "phoenix rising" element is a focus of the new chapter, and unless the ERE's new antipathy towards its Turkish inhabitants subsides in the next few decades I reckon most of the region's Turks will end up being evacuated to Çandarid Syria and Egypt. The latter remaining Turkish in the long run is an uncertain prospect, but nonetheless I can see this leading to the status of Syria as the/a new homeland of the western Turks. On the topic of Anatolia's Turks, though, whatever happened to Kadir and the Karamanid/Rûmite realm? Either it's a lot smaller than I imagined and the Çandarids were able to bypass them in reaching Aegean Anatolia, or they have been subsumed by the caliphate with surprisingly little fanfare. I'm guessing the former given that Kadir was mentioned as successfully reforming Rûm into a functional polity, but this raises the question of what the Rûm/Çandarid border resembles. Does the House of Karaman still hold Konya? Moreover, what kind of reaction would Kadir have to the violence perpetuated on the Turks ruled by his nominal overlord?
I'd also be quite interested to hear about the status of Crimea. I would reckon the coastal cities and their populations would be booming in recent years with the Trapezuntine dominance in Black Sea trading, though with the peninsula being controlled by a vassal khan rather than direct rule from Trapezous I would guess the nomadic inhabitants of the interior aren't having a terrible time either. Depending on how well the relations between they and the state are, I could see Crimean Mongol/Tatar horsemen being recruited and leveraged towards eking out greater Roman control in the mainland Pontic Steppe (or this occurring under the auspices of Djoga the Grey to enlarge his own realm).
Eyes are peeled for future installments. I doubt the scars of the last chapters will heal for a long time, but from destruction springs renewal and new creation. Perhaps the Balkans will find peace, and the Hagia Sophia be rebuilt, someday.
It's also going to be fascinating seeing how "Turkey" (i.e. the regions and polities inhabited by and ruled by Seljuq Turks) develops. I don't think that the Çandarid Caliphate will keep its position in Anatolia for terribly long, given that this is a Byzantine TL and the "phoenix rising" element is a focus of the new chapter, and unless the ERE's new antipathy towards its Turkish inhabitants subsides in the next few decades I reckon most of the region's Turks will end up being evacuated to Çandarid Syria and Egypt. The latter remaining Turkish in the long run is an uncertain prospect, but nonetheless I can see this leading to the status of Syria as the/a new homeland of the western Turks. On the topic of Anatolia's Turks, though, whatever happened to Kadir and the Karamanid/Rûmite realm? Either it's a lot smaller than I imagined and the Çandarids were able to bypass them in reaching Aegean Anatolia, or they have been subsumed by the caliphate with surprisingly little fanfare. I'm guessing the former given that Kadir was mentioned as successfully reforming Rûm into a functional polity, but this raises the question of what the Rûm/Çandarid border resembles. Does the House of Karaman still hold Konya? Moreover, what kind of reaction would Kadir have to the violence perpetuated on the Turks ruled by his nominal overlord?
I'd also be quite interested to hear about the status of Crimea. I would reckon the coastal cities and their populations would be booming in recent years with the Trapezuntine dominance in Black Sea trading, though with the peninsula being controlled by a vassal khan rather than direct rule from Trapezous I would guess the nomadic inhabitants of the interior aren't having a terrible time either. Depending on how well the relations between they and the state are, I could see Crimean Mongol/Tatar horsemen being recruited and leveraged towards eking out greater Roman control in the mainland Pontic Steppe (or this occurring under the auspices of Djoga the Grey to enlarge his own realm).
Eyes are peeled for future installments. I doubt the scars of the last chapters will heal for a long time, but from destruction springs renewal and new creation. Perhaps the Balkans will find peace, and the Hagia Sophia be rebuilt, someday.
Map: Anatolia and the Surrounding Regions in 1541
Eparkhos
Banned
Map.
@Sphenodon: The Khandarhids didn't actually conquer much of Syria or Anatolia, they just have a rather strong navy.
Also, I completely forgot about the Knights of Rhodes, so just imagine that they fought alongside Shkoze.
@Sphenodon: The Khandarhids didn't actually conquer much of Syria or Anatolia, they just have a rather strong navy.
Also, I completely forgot about the Knights of Rhodes, so just imagine that they fought alongside Shkoze.
Honestly I can’t help but wonder whether the Constantinople disaster could be good for Trebizond, as it could mean they keep the administration; in Trebizond longer and keep a Anatolian/Black Sea focus, instead of trying to become a major actor in the Balkans and Aegean. Right now the Black Sea have become their sea, and it’s limited what other actors can do there or get access to it.
I think with David’s madness there‘s a solution which would be a good solution but be unacceptable to anyone other than a religious fanatic and a madman, let Trebizond keep overlordship of Constantinople and a garrison to protect it, but give the Patriarch the city. This would remove the need to give it a Balkan buffer, serve to make the other Orthodox states happy and enable Trebizond to keep control over the Black Sea. Yes in the long term it risk making the Patriarch into the Orthodox Pope, but in the short to medium term it could keep the peace between the different Orthodox states of the Balkans and Anatolia.
I think with David’s madness there‘s a solution which would be a good solution but be unacceptable to anyone other than a religious fanatic and a madman, let Trebizond keep overlordship of Constantinople and a garrison to protect it, but give the Patriarch the city. This would remove the need to give it a Balkan buffer, serve to make the other Orthodox states happy and enable Trebizond to keep control over the Black Sea. Yes in the long term it risk making the Patriarch into the Orthodox Pope, but in the short to medium term it could keep the peace between the different Orthodox states of the Balkans and Anatolia.
@Eparkhos
Few things keep bugging me, would appreciate if you or someone else clarified them-
I may have missed something in TTL, but wasn't Hagia Sophia a mosque after Ottoman conquest?? Wouldnt it be as huge a deal for Turks or the Muslim Greeks to blow it up?
Then there are the more practical issues- the structure had survived multiple devastating fires and earthquakes, with only one complete dome collapse that too very early in its history. Point being that the base construction was very strong to be completely annihilated accidentally through collateral damage from wood fires.
And if this was deliberate then that raises another set of questions. How did they have so much incendiaries to spare after what would have been a gruelling , resource-intensive siege? And why would they waste it on a structure which probably wouldn't have a large military presence? Coordinating an urban night time raid in the medieval era, would have been an extremely complex operation in itself without adding massive accurately-timed(!) blasts to the fray. And all this considering a Sultan who's basically been a doormat his whole life, and whose forces would probably have no incentive to carry on a suicidal fight given the terms of offered.
I mean I recognize that the situation is meant to be irrational, but to me it feels like the culmination of multiple irrational and unlikely situations and decisions stacked on top of each other, to the point where the whole thing goes to basically being downright improbable.
Please feel free to correct any incorrect assumptions I might be making.
Few things keep bugging me, would appreciate if you or someone else clarified them-
I may have missed something in TTL, but wasn't Hagia Sophia a mosque after Ottoman conquest?? Wouldnt it be as huge a deal for Turks or the Muslim Greeks to blow it up?
Then there are the more practical issues- the structure had survived multiple devastating fires and earthquakes, with only one complete dome collapse that too very early in its history. Point being that the base construction was very strong to be completely annihilated accidentally through collateral damage from wood fires.
And if this was deliberate then that raises another set of questions. How did they have so much incendiaries to spare after what would have been a gruelling , resource-intensive siege? And why would they waste it on a structure which probably wouldn't have a large military presence? Coordinating an urban night time raid in the medieval era, would have been an extremely complex operation in itself without adding massive accurately-timed(!) blasts to the fray. And all this considering a Sultan who's basically been a doormat his whole life, and whose forces would probably have no incentive to carry on a suicidal fight given the terms of offered.
I mean I recognize that the situation is meant to be irrational, but to me it feels like the culmination of multiple irrational and unlikely situations and decisions stacked on top of each other, to the point where the whole thing goes to basically being downright improbable.
Please feel free to correct any incorrect assumptions I might be making.
i also have to say whilst this is currently my favourite timeline i think that among the more recent chapters alot of.. mhhh id say improbable things have happened that seem a bit wierd to me. For example the large amount of assasinations of important figures which just comes off as to convinient and movie like as well as the recent Constantinople burning which i think is wierd for it to be that extraordinary especially when compared to the fallout of the sack by the crusaders, it reads like the complete city is rubble from accidental firestorms and skirmishes with irregulars. Sure there would be alot of damage but it reads to me like the city vanished from the face of the earth. Also how would they hide such a huge crowd of Osman soldiers in the city if the city was mainly inhabited by loyal people when the Trapezuntines entered ? Surely somebody whould have noticed the 100s (1000s i cant remeber if stated anywhere) man hiding in strategic locations and tipped him off ? And as pointed out above it is unlikely the Hagia Sophia would collapse to a point where nothing is left by a mere fire, even if the dome collapses it isnt such a huge deal to rebuild it with the technology of the time
I also want to point out that i dont mean this as some insult or anything like this, i enjoy the timeline alot but probably especially because of this i have to ask about these things.
I also want to point out that i dont mean this as some insult or anything like this, i enjoy the timeline alot but probably especially because of this i have to ask about these things.
Eparkhos
Banned
Well, there's a reason Book 3 isn't titled 'Dominion of the Black Sea', but dominance over the Black Sea will be a cornerstone of future Roman policy. Your idea for Constantinople is intriguing (and I'd lie if I said I hadn't thought of that myself), but there is the slight problem of the conflicting autocephalous regions within the Empire, an update which I really need to write soon. Thanks for commenting, btw.
What direction would you like to see the Moreotes go?
@NotAMyth
It was a mosque, but it had just been converted back into a church before it was destroyed. That mood whiplash, from 'Huzzah! The Great Cathedral has been reclaimed and restored!' to 'What. What. WHAT?!' is part of the reason for the violent backlash. As for the Turks/Greek Muslims blowing it up, well....
The HS caught fire and/or was struck by blasts from within or without several times during the siege, and it was a combination of this pre-existing damage and some explosives that were being rolled through en route to other positions which caused the dome to collapse. I'll admit, it was more something I did because I thought it was impactful rather than something really logical. Sorry, I hope it doesn't break your immersion too much.
@Paschalis
I think I responded to a problem like this before: Skaramagos didn't actually kill too many people in Tabriz. What happened was that all the feuding dynasts saw these bizzare anonymous killings with the assassin still at large and decided that it was time this mysterious assassin go after whoever they didn't like. By the time Alp Muhammed was shot in mid-April, Skaramagos was on a boat to India, and the lion's share of the killings were done by the copycats.
About a third of the city has been burned down, but unfortunately that includes a lot of the residential districts. The city had been under siege for several years and there had been frequent fires that had damaged parts of it already, and the fact that all the potential fire-fighters were murdering each other somewhat dampened the response.
Most of Constantinople's population were Muslim, and were those on the Golden Horn. I think I mentioned this in the update, but the reason why the Trapezuntines were greeted by happy crowds was because most of the friendly residents were clustered around the Mese, as opposed to sulking in the outer city or crowding onto the wharfs to try and escape. As for the soldiers, well, Constantinople is a very large city, and given its sizable system of tunnels and cisterns, as well as the large areas of abandoned or destroyed buildings, it was entirely possible.
Hypothetically, the HS could be repaired in a few months. Remember, though, the belief at the time was that Gabriel had revealed the design of the HS to (Saint) Justinian, and given David's rather eccentric beliefs about religion he thinks that if he doesn't restore it along the exact same plan then it won't count, per se. As such, he won't even try to rebuild until he's found schematics of the old church, which could take a while given all the fires.
Eparkhos
Banned
Don't sell yourself short. I'm bigger than a plastic jug, after all.i'm sure you're lying, my aim is a total shit.
Thanks.
The Moreote diplomatic goals have been focused around retaking Constantinople for a while, so this is definitely a sea-change. Their new long-term plans will probably focus around undermining the Albanians to expand their influence in Europe, and trying to get the Venetians out of the Aegean, which has been a sore spot for Mystras since around 1204. They would also want to pursue relations with the Three Sicilies, given their mutual distrust of the Venetians and shared problems with corsairs operating out of Libya.
Re: Whitewashing atrocities from David's reign
Yeah, the Roman policy towards their former warcrimes will basically be '...and? That was centuries ago. What do you want us to do, dig up their corpses and apologize?'
I've tried to outline the war, but it will be subject to change. With that caveat, I can safely say that the Trapezuntines will be aping Leonidas in the near future.Oh, now the Candarids are back in a very threatening way. Well not for now but in the medium term. They give an option to Kadir to play with them so he won't be under David but free. On the other hand this Persian invasion gives the Romans and the Egyptians a reason to ally against them and for the former to keep their independence , or maybe some border cities like Erzerum, and the latter to gain Upper Syria which is under Persian rule, I'm using persian cause their name is hard to remember and write
Too bad for all those innocents really , they could pay so many taxes and be productive in society maybe they would convert over time. Most of them two to three generations ago were Romans and Orthodox so it is a pity that they got killed/sold to slavery. Well I guess Osman did a big oof.
Yeah, in a lot of cases the Greek Muslims were just victims of their ancestor's mistake, which in many cases would have seemed a good idea at the time. It sucks, and in the long term it was quite stupid to do so, but alas people in the 16th century aren't quite humanists. They would've seen it as punishing traitors like we do spies, assuming they even trued to justify it all.
The Balkans will be an utter shitshow for the near future, so we haven't seen the last of Shkoze. The Bulgarians actually do have a monarch in Bogdan, but they have an elective monarchy similar to the OTL Commonwealth's, so that PU might not last. They could either use this to win foreign support for their wars against rivals, or turn into the Balkan PLC partition-wise. As for the Palaiologoi, well, it's 2500 km from Mystras to Trapezous. Any political agreement would have to be a sort of alliance/personal union/federation rather than direct incorporation, so David's marriage might be enough to pull him into a different orbit.
The Western Turkish homeland--which I think will eventually be called Rumistan, or Turkestan, maybe Rumey or Turkey to the Latins--will remain in Central Anatolia, simply because the terrain is too suited for them and too difficult for the Ponts to settle. The real question should be whether they remain Muslim, Orthodox or maybe flip to Catholic if the Knights or Venetians get insanely lucky. As for the Khandarhids in Egypt, I think they'll eventually wind up going native like the Qutlughids.
Crimea has a weird form of government: The Taman Peninsula west of the lagoons, Kerch, Feodosia, Sudak, Alushta and Yalta are all ruled as a sort of autonomy because legally speaking they're still subject to the old Genoese Law: The steppe up to the peninsulas connecting to the mainland is ruled by Djoga's Horde, Mangup, Cufut Qale and the Taman Peninsula from the lagoons to the Kuban and most of the hill country down to the border are all part of Gothia, while Alexandria/Sevastopol, Anapa, Suskho/Novorossiysk and Eleutheroupoli/Gelendzhik are all part of Trapezous. But yeah, it's all doing quite well overall, especially with the peace the end of the raids had brought.
I hope I can keep you entertained.
Eparkhos
Banned
Alright, a word of caution: I'll be busy for the next couple of days with a roadtrip and then orientation courses for school, so updates will unfortuantely be irregular. To try and keep this particular stretch up and running for as long as I can, I pieced this update together and will publish it now. Sorry that it's a bit truncated in form, I hope I can tide y'all over for a bit.
Part LXX2: The Lion in Summer (1541-1542)
Eparkhos
Banned
Part LXX2: The Lion in Summer (1541-1542)
The Qutlughid Empire had morphed out of the Qoyunlu Horde, but the two states shared a common foundation: an overwhelming monopoly on force. Arslan’s empire had been held together at first by his ability to utterly destroy anyone who tried to resist him, but as his reign lengthened he had shifted into institution building in hopes of making his conquests last. Now that the institutions which he had strove to build had been ripped apart by his unworthy successors, Persia was held together by fear and inertia once more. To keep his realm together, Siyavash would have to rebuild his father’s institutions, and in order to that he needed to strengthen his legitimacy. The best way to do this would be by crushing a rebellious vassal that had made use of the internal crisis to try and break away. Eyes of the east turned to west….
The Qutlughid Civil War raged from 1534 to 1541, seven long years that had torn Arslan’s empire asunder. The early phases of the war ought not to be repeated, but the latter parts were almost remarkably simple. Despite coming under attack from two flanks at once, Siyavash had managed to beat back Mohammed Khosrau and Alp Temur for long enough to build up his army into a semblance of Arslan’s old force, recruiting veterans and mercenaries alike to fill out the ranks of his armies. The Zagros formed a natural fortress girding the Iranian Plateau, and after years of banging his head against the stones of the narrow paths his cause had begun to flag. Correctly identifying him as the weaker enemy, Siyavash turned his atten eastward, where Alp Temur had also begun to flag because of infighting amongst the tribal chieftains that formed his base of support and attrition from constant attacks over the Hindu Kush by Rana Sanga. In 1537, he conquered the oasis cities of the Karakum Desert and Cisoxiana, cutting off the northern frontier of rebel lands, then swept south in two more campaigns, defeating Alp Temur in three battles at Herat, Gizab and finally Kandahar before finally trapping him in Kabul in 1539. The city turned against him and cast him out, and Siyavash hacked his head off and mounted it on the Gate of Herat. However, his puppet, Arslan the Younger--only fifteen--managed to crawl out of the city in a sewer drain and escaped into exile across the mountains. Siyavash decided this was an acceptable loss, and turned his attention westward. By now Mohammed Khosrau’s cause was disintegrating around him as repeated failure, tribal infighting and a blockade by the Antolekoi crippled both his army and the lands loyal to him. In 1540, Siyavash proclaimed that all Arabs who abandoned his brother would be spared, and Mohammed Khosrau’s cause finally collapsed. Siyavash and his host crossed the mountains that summer after a brief series of skirmishes against the mountain tribes, and at Kirkuk the remnants of the would-be caliph’s forces were destroyed. Without hope of support--the Rumites hated him, the Syrians hated him, the Khandarhids wouldn’t look kindly on his caliphal ambitions and the Antolekoi would torture him for longer than his brother--Mohammed Khosrau attempted to flee into the desert. However, as he crossed the Tigris near Tikrit, his horse stumbled and he was drowned. The civil war ended not with a bang but with a whimper, and Siyavash was secure upon his throne.
Siyavash had never been entirely comfortable with his father’s system of tributaries. They could be useful in some places, sure, like how the Lodis’ brief period as a client state had helped to hold off the Sisodis for a few years before their final collapse, or how the Antolekoi helped to funnel trade from India into Qutlughid coffers, but in his mind the proper thing to do was to outright crush a defeated enemy and incorporate them into the empire, rather than inflicting a painful but not fatal blow that would turn them against him forevermore and then give them time to recover before coming back for a second round. He had kept these thoughts to himself for the most part, but now that he was the unquestioned shahanshah he was in the position to enact them. It should also be noted that he was quite suspicious of Trapezous in particular, seeing as they had paid only lip service for so long, had never actually been defeated, and moreover had a friendly population on the other side of the empire but of great economic importance, the Antolekoi. Moreover, David’s actions during the civil war--dethroning Arslan’s chosen vassal Mamia in Kartvelia, establishing Kartvelia in a personal union without telling him or even seeking his permission, and then effectively subvassalizing Rum--looked like he was attempting to form his own power block in defiance of Tabriz, which was exactly what he was doing.
After the war had ended, Siyavash also had another problem. While Mohammed Khosrau and Alp Temur had both been killed, a number of their former supporters were still drifting around the Qutlughid Empire, something which the newly-legitimized shanashah could hardly permit. Selling them all into slavery was impractical and could very well cause the civil war to flare up again, killing them all would be impossible and trying to exile them all would just be giving veteran supporters to his realm’s many enemies, not least of them Arslan the Younger in Bukhara. However, if he ‘provided’ them with an opportunity to get back in his good graces by, say, occupying the front ranks of an army sent to crush a restive vassal, then that would solve his problems. They would have either proved themselves loyal or been killed, either of which was good for him. He began emptying out the prison camps established during the war in 1541, forming them up in several large units in Bitlis. The shahanshah, meanwhile, began planning.
The resources of the Qutlughid Empire were vast, and though Siyavash wouldn’t commit everything to what he hoped to be fairly minor campaign, all things considered, he could still raise a force of some 60,000 men against the Romans. Their quality varied quite severely, of course, between cannon fodder recruited from his defeated brothers’ armies to the 5,000-strong elite Tavrizi Guards[1] he had formed during the civil war. What little scouting he did informed him of the qizilibash and their settlements along the border, but he dismissed these as either overestimation or simply his advisors being unnecessarily cautious over some scattered Turkmen. Arslan had crushed such men time and time again, and as far as he was concerned he could do the same. The bandonoi, meanwhile, were a legitimate threat to any invasion force, especially given the dispersed nature of their settlement on both sides of the Pontic Mountains, which were themselves a major strategic problem given their tendency to freeze over and their long, narrow canyons. However, the nature of Kartvelia changed this situation to a degree, and this effected Siyavash’s ultimate plans. As orders were sent out in late spring 1542--the shahanshah had waited to begin the campaign rather late in the campaigning season, given the colder temperatures at altitude--the plan was as follows:
The smallest force would consist of only 10,000 men, mostly cavalry with no artillery whatsoever, under one his captains, Shirazi. Shirazi’s force would advance from Shirvan up along the Mtkvari and into Kartvelian territory in something broadly similar to the Latin chevauchee, intended to draw resources away from attacks on other fronts and most importantly distract forces in Kartvelia loyal to David--Siyavash was under the impression that there was still a good deal of opposition to the rule of the Megalokomnenoi. The second-largest force, another 15,000 but this time a mixture of footmen and horsemen under Ali Eshragi, would attack up the Euphrates from Malatya, hopefully distracting the Safaviyya, taking Erzincan and then threatening the Lykos Valley. Finally, the main force, led by the Shahanshah himself and numbering 30,000 with the bulk of the artillery, would hang back in Bitlis. If Eshragi was successful enough to draw off the defenders of the Pontic passes then the Persians would move on to the passes directly over the mountains; if not, as was likely, then they would attack north into Samtskhe, then force their way over or around the mountains to attack Trapezous from the east. Worse plans had been made, and it seemed entirely possible that Trapezous would be under siege by the end of 1542 as it was talked over in Bitlis.
However, no plan survives contact with the enemy, and Siyavash’s would-be masterstroke was no exception. The first problem occurred before the armies had even broken camp, in late May. Qizilbash ‘herders’, crossing the frontier on perfectly legitimate business, mind you, happened to get into a disagreement with a well-laden caravan on the Upper Aras within earshot of one of the forward camps. The Persians fired off several cannons to scare them off, which succeeded but caught their attention. They returned a few days later to investigate, saw the massive force camped out on the plains, and then rode like hell back to Erzincan to report this to Sheikh Ismail. Ismail realized this could only mean one thing, and shot off warnings to the various moirarkhs of the region, the regent back in Trapezous and even David himself, and then set about mobilizing the followers of Safaviyya. Siyavash would not be taking the enemy by surprise, but rather would be taken by surprise.
Of the three armies, Shirazi’s met unmitigated disaster, Eshraghi dropped the ball repeatedly, but Siyavash managed to make up for his mistakes, somewhat. Shirazi’s eastern offensive launched several days before the others to make up for his longer travel time and in hopes of keeping the element of surprise, but this had already been lost. Hatzimarkos, the eastern march-ward, had detected his approach even before Ismail’s men had, and even if he had not he had made a number of preparations for any invasion from the east. By the time Shirazi reached the frontier, every bridgehead across the Mtkvari above Qirmizisamukh had been blown, and every well on the northern bank stuffed with corpses. Hatzimarkos had used the south-bank tributaries of the Zayamchay and the Tovuzchay as the basis of a series of defensive lines, forcing any attacker to charge over a series of spike-covered berms in the face of point-blank cannon fire to even reach the bridges which would funnel them into the real kill-zones. He manned these defenses with 6,000 men; Shirazi decided a head-on assault was his best plan. After three weeks of fighting, nearly half of his army was dead, the rest threatening mutiny and he had failed to cross even the more southerly and less heavily defended Zayamchay. A night time raid on 9 July saw the Qutlughid powder reserves (and several hundred men) blown sky-high, and with the Mtkvari practically turned into a river of corpses Shirazi’s men finally snapped. The general ‘had a riding accident’, and a popular young captain named Khalid Beg was elected to retreat back to Shirvan.
In the west, meanwhile, Eshraghi was also having difficulty. While he had correctly deduced that any assault on the Ovacik Valley would be a pointless waste of resources, he had decided that the best way to circumvent it was not to go west, which would have completely bypassed all but a handful of decrepit fortresses and allowed him to attack Erzincan from behind, but instead to march straight up the Klamata (Purumur) Gorge. It took the Persians two weeks to cross the length of it, throughout which they were under near-constant assault by qizilbash from the heights above the river; only a miracle kept the roads from being washed out or blown. Despite, or maybe because of, the loss of a third of his army, Eshraghi reached the Erzincan Valley otherwise unopposed. His actions had been so incredibly stupid (it should be noted that his leadership experience to this point was fighting a mob of pro-Khosrau Arabs near Kirkuk) that Ismail had decided there was no way he could possibly reach the valley with anything even resembling an army, and had dispatched the bulk of his forces to defend Erzurum. Caught off-guard, Ismail fought a delaying action on the plain to buy time to evacuate civilians into the mountains, unknowingly nearly killing Eshraghi himself, before the more numerous Persians forced the qizilbash behind the city walls. A highly mobile style of warfare is good for many things, but not really defending cities, and despite his lack of siege train Eshraghi was a legitimate threat to the city.
This was especially true given Siyavash’s success. He had crossed the frontier in late June and had managed to reach Erzurum by mid-July, swatting aside the small forces of bandonoi and qizilbash that tried to slow him down. Once he had reached the city, he made good use of his siege train and began turning the city walls into finely ground rubble; if nothing else, he excelled at contemporary siege warfare, and after a few well-placed cannonballs cracked the city walls, it fell. The city was subject to a brutal sacking that does not bear repeating, and the relief force which Ismail had sent was turned away after a brief but bloody battle. Seizing his moment, Siyavash dispatched a small cavalry force under Sharaf al-Din to keep the Safaviyya at bay while he made for his real target, Trapezous. By late August, he had reached Bayburt, and though the city successfully resisted several days of intense assault, its garrison was too small to severely threaten him. Had he gone east and attacked Erzincan, he likely would have conquered all of Lykia, but he remained focused on Pontos. By mid-September, he had reached the passes, but the rapidly approaching end of the campaign season threatened to destroy his progress. Before that could happen, however, he ran into two problems. The first was an avalanche, likely triggered by the Ponts, which closed the pass for the better part of a month. The second was Siderokastron (Chamlica). The Alek’sandritskhe of the Pontic Mountains, it had been built by Alexandros II with the implicit intention of resisting a Persian invasion, and though its defenses were fare from top-notch, especially given recent developments in terms of cannonade, it was still a fairly capable fortress. For three weeks, Siyavash’s army threw itself at Siderokastron, but even as the walls were reduced to rubble the defenders fought on, reinforced by a steady stream of bandonoi coming down the pass. The shahanshah himself even attacked the walls, he and his guards hacking their way to within feet of victory before he was knocked unconscious by a mace; although the Tabrizi would carry him back to safety, by most accounts he would never be the same. The defense seemed a miracle--indeed, one of the chief commanders, Ioannes of Douphanos, would later claim to have seen angels on the walls--as time after time the Persians were forced back down the valley. Finally, with winter closing in, Siyavash gave the order to retreat.
The Persians would winter on the plains on the southern side of the mountains, the shahanshah still intending to press the attack the following spring. Once the passes had thawed, though, the foe of winter would be replaced with another: The combined might of Rome.
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[1] Supposedly, Tabriz’s named came from the Old Armenian term for ‘avenger’, so this is a play on that.
The Qutlughid Empire had morphed out of the Qoyunlu Horde, but the two states shared a common foundation: an overwhelming monopoly on force. Arslan’s empire had been held together at first by his ability to utterly destroy anyone who tried to resist him, but as his reign lengthened he had shifted into institution building in hopes of making his conquests last. Now that the institutions which he had strove to build had been ripped apart by his unworthy successors, Persia was held together by fear and inertia once more. To keep his realm together, Siyavash would have to rebuild his father’s institutions, and in order to that he needed to strengthen his legitimacy. The best way to do this would be by crushing a rebellious vassal that had made use of the internal crisis to try and break away. Eyes of the east turned to west….
The Qutlughid Civil War raged from 1534 to 1541, seven long years that had torn Arslan’s empire asunder. The early phases of the war ought not to be repeated, but the latter parts were almost remarkably simple. Despite coming under attack from two flanks at once, Siyavash had managed to beat back Mohammed Khosrau and Alp Temur for long enough to build up his army into a semblance of Arslan’s old force, recruiting veterans and mercenaries alike to fill out the ranks of his armies. The Zagros formed a natural fortress girding the Iranian Plateau, and after years of banging his head against the stones of the narrow paths his cause had begun to flag. Correctly identifying him as the weaker enemy, Siyavash turned his atten eastward, where Alp Temur had also begun to flag because of infighting amongst the tribal chieftains that formed his base of support and attrition from constant attacks over the Hindu Kush by Rana Sanga. In 1537, he conquered the oasis cities of the Karakum Desert and Cisoxiana, cutting off the northern frontier of rebel lands, then swept south in two more campaigns, defeating Alp Temur in three battles at Herat, Gizab and finally Kandahar before finally trapping him in Kabul in 1539. The city turned against him and cast him out, and Siyavash hacked his head off and mounted it on the Gate of Herat. However, his puppet, Arslan the Younger--only fifteen--managed to crawl out of the city in a sewer drain and escaped into exile across the mountains. Siyavash decided this was an acceptable loss, and turned his attention westward. By now Mohammed Khosrau’s cause was disintegrating around him as repeated failure, tribal infighting and a blockade by the Antolekoi crippled both his army and the lands loyal to him. In 1540, Siyavash proclaimed that all Arabs who abandoned his brother would be spared, and Mohammed Khosrau’s cause finally collapsed. Siyavash and his host crossed the mountains that summer after a brief series of skirmishes against the mountain tribes, and at Kirkuk the remnants of the would-be caliph’s forces were destroyed. Without hope of support--the Rumites hated him, the Syrians hated him, the Khandarhids wouldn’t look kindly on his caliphal ambitions and the Antolekoi would torture him for longer than his brother--Mohammed Khosrau attempted to flee into the desert. However, as he crossed the Tigris near Tikrit, his horse stumbled and he was drowned. The civil war ended not with a bang but with a whimper, and Siyavash was secure upon his throne.
Siyavash had never been entirely comfortable with his father’s system of tributaries. They could be useful in some places, sure, like how the Lodis’ brief period as a client state had helped to hold off the Sisodis for a few years before their final collapse, or how the Antolekoi helped to funnel trade from India into Qutlughid coffers, but in his mind the proper thing to do was to outright crush a defeated enemy and incorporate them into the empire, rather than inflicting a painful but not fatal blow that would turn them against him forevermore and then give them time to recover before coming back for a second round. He had kept these thoughts to himself for the most part, but now that he was the unquestioned shahanshah he was in the position to enact them. It should also be noted that he was quite suspicious of Trapezous in particular, seeing as they had paid only lip service for so long, had never actually been defeated, and moreover had a friendly population on the other side of the empire but of great economic importance, the Antolekoi. Moreover, David’s actions during the civil war--dethroning Arslan’s chosen vassal Mamia in Kartvelia, establishing Kartvelia in a personal union without telling him or even seeking his permission, and then effectively subvassalizing Rum--looked like he was attempting to form his own power block in defiance of Tabriz, which was exactly what he was doing.
After the war had ended, Siyavash also had another problem. While Mohammed Khosrau and Alp Temur had both been killed, a number of their former supporters were still drifting around the Qutlughid Empire, something which the newly-legitimized shanashah could hardly permit. Selling them all into slavery was impractical and could very well cause the civil war to flare up again, killing them all would be impossible and trying to exile them all would just be giving veteran supporters to his realm’s many enemies, not least of them Arslan the Younger in Bukhara. However, if he ‘provided’ them with an opportunity to get back in his good graces by, say, occupying the front ranks of an army sent to crush a restive vassal, then that would solve his problems. They would have either proved themselves loyal or been killed, either of which was good for him. He began emptying out the prison camps established during the war in 1541, forming them up in several large units in Bitlis. The shahanshah, meanwhile, began planning.
The resources of the Qutlughid Empire were vast, and though Siyavash wouldn’t commit everything to what he hoped to be fairly minor campaign, all things considered, he could still raise a force of some 60,000 men against the Romans. Their quality varied quite severely, of course, between cannon fodder recruited from his defeated brothers’ armies to the 5,000-strong elite Tavrizi Guards[1] he had formed during the civil war. What little scouting he did informed him of the qizilibash and their settlements along the border, but he dismissed these as either overestimation or simply his advisors being unnecessarily cautious over some scattered Turkmen. Arslan had crushed such men time and time again, and as far as he was concerned he could do the same. The bandonoi, meanwhile, were a legitimate threat to any invasion force, especially given the dispersed nature of their settlement on both sides of the Pontic Mountains, which were themselves a major strategic problem given their tendency to freeze over and their long, narrow canyons. However, the nature of Kartvelia changed this situation to a degree, and this effected Siyavash’s ultimate plans. As orders were sent out in late spring 1542--the shahanshah had waited to begin the campaign rather late in the campaigning season, given the colder temperatures at altitude--the plan was as follows:
The smallest force would consist of only 10,000 men, mostly cavalry with no artillery whatsoever, under one his captains, Shirazi. Shirazi’s force would advance from Shirvan up along the Mtkvari and into Kartvelian territory in something broadly similar to the Latin chevauchee, intended to draw resources away from attacks on other fronts and most importantly distract forces in Kartvelia loyal to David--Siyavash was under the impression that there was still a good deal of opposition to the rule of the Megalokomnenoi. The second-largest force, another 15,000 but this time a mixture of footmen and horsemen under Ali Eshragi, would attack up the Euphrates from Malatya, hopefully distracting the Safaviyya, taking Erzincan and then threatening the Lykos Valley. Finally, the main force, led by the Shahanshah himself and numbering 30,000 with the bulk of the artillery, would hang back in Bitlis. If Eshragi was successful enough to draw off the defenders of the Pontic passes then the Persians would move on to the passes directly over the mountains; if not, as was likely, then they would attack north into Samtskhe, then force their way over or around the mountains to attack Trapezous from the east. Worse plans had been made, and it seemed entirely possible that Trapezous would be under siege by the end of 1542 as it was talked over in Bitlis.
However, no plan survives contact with the enemy, and Siyavash’s would-be masterstroke was no exception. The first problem occurred before the armies had even broken camp, in late May. Qizilbash ‘herders’, crossing the frontier on perfectly legitimate business, mind you, happened to get into a disagreement with a well-laden caravan on the Upper Aras within earshot of one of the forward camps. The Persians fired off several cannons to scare them off, which succeeded but caught their attention. They returned a few days later to investigate, saw the massive force camped out on the plains, and then rode like hell back to Erzincan to report this to Sheikh Ismail. Ismail realized this could only mean one thing, and shot off warnings to the various moirarkhs of the region, the regent back in Trapezous and even David himself, and then set about mobilizing the followers of Safaviyya. Siyavash would not be taking the enemy by surprise, but rather would be taken by surprise.
Of the three armies, Shirazi’s met unmitigated disaster, Eshraghi dropped the ball repeatedly, but Siyavash managed to make up for his mistakes, somewhat. Shirazi’s eastern offensive launched several days before the others to make up for his longer travel time and in hopes of keeping the element of surprise, but this had already been lost. Hatzimarkos, the eastern march-ward, had detected his approach even before Ismail’s men had, and even if he had not he had made a number of preparations for any invasion from the east. By the time Shirazi reached the frontier, every bridgehead across the Mtkvari above Qirmizisamukh had been blown, and every well on the northern bank stuffed with corpses. Hatzimarkos had used the south-bank tributaries of the Zayamchay and the Tovuzchay as the basis of a series of defensive lines, forcing any attacker to charge over a series of spike-covered berms in the face of point-blank cannon fire to even reach the bridges which would funnel them into the real kill-zones. He manned these defenses with 6,000 men; Shirazi decided a head-on assault was his best plan. After three weeks of fighting, nearly half of his army was dead, the rest threatening mutiny and he had failed to cross even the more southerly and less heavily defended Zayamchay. A night time raid on 9 July saw the Qutlughid powder reserves (and several hundred men) blown sky-high, and with the Mtkvari practically turned into a river of corpses Shirazi’s men finally snapped. The general ‘had a riding accident’, and a popular young captain named Khalid Beg was elected to retreat back to Shirvan.
In the west, meanwhile, Eshraghi was also having difficulty. While he had correctly deduced that any assault on the Ovacik Valley would be a pointless waste of resources, he had decided that the best way to circumvent it was not to go west, which would have completely bypassed all but a handful of decrepit fortresses and allowed him to attack Erzincan from behind, but instead to march straight up the Klamata (Purumur) Gorge. It took the Persians two weeks to cross the length of it, throughout which they were under near-constant assault by qizilbash from the heights above the river; only a miracle kept the roads from being washed out or blown. Despite, or maybe because of, the loss of a third of his army, Eshraghi reached the Erzincan Valley otherwise unopposed. His actions had been so incredibly stupid (it should be noted that his leadership experience to this point was fighting a mob of pro-Khosrau Arabs near Kirkuk) that Ismail had decided there was no way he could possibly reach the valley with anything even resembling an army, and had dispatched the bulk of his forces to defend Erzurum. Caught off-guard, Ismail fought a delaying action on the plain to buy time to evacuate civilians into the mountains, unknowingly nearly killing Eshraghi himself, before the more numerous Persians forced the qizilbash behind the city walls. A highly mobile style of warfare is good for many things, but not really defending cities, and despite his lack of siege train Eshraghi was a legitimate threat to the city.
This was especially true given Siyavash’s success. He had crossed the frontier in late June and had managed to reach Erzurum by mid-July, swatting aside the small forces of bandonoi and qizilbash that tried to slow him down. Once he had reached the city, he made good use of his siege train and began turning the city walls into finely ground rubble; if nothing else, he excelled at contemporary siege warfare, and after a few well-placed cannonballs cracked the city walls, it fell. The city was subject to a brutal sacking that does not bear repeating, and the relief force which Ismail had sent was turned away after a brief but bloody battle. Seizing his moment, Siyavash dispatched a small cavalry force under Sharaf al-Din to keep the Safaviyya at bay while he made for his real target, Trapezous. By late August, he had reached Bayburt, and though the city successfully resisted several days of intense assault, its garrison was too small to severely threaten him. Had he gone east and attacked Erzincan, he likely would have conquered all of Lykia, but he remained focused on Pontos. By mid-September, he had reached the passes, but the rapidly approaching end of the campaign season threatened to destroy his progress. Before that could happen, however, he ran into two problems. The first was an avalanche, likely triggered by the Ponts, which closed the pass for the better part of a month. The second was Siderokastron (Chamlica). The Alek’sandritskhe of the Pontic Mountains, it had been built by Alexandros II with the implicit intention of resisting a Persian invasion, and though its defenses were fare from top-notch, especially given recent developments in terms of cannonade, it was still a fairly capable fortress. For three weeks, Siyavash’s army threw itself at Siderokastron, but even as the walls were reduced to rubble the defenders fought on, reinforced by a steady stream of bandonoi coming down the pass. The shahanshah himself even attacked the walls, he and his guards hacking their way to within feet of victory before he was knocked unconscious by a mace; although the Tabrizi would carry him back to safety, by most accounts he would never be the same. The defense seemed a miracle--indeed, one of the chief commanders, Ioannes of Douphanos, would later claim to have seen angels on the walls--as time after time the Persians were forced back down the valley. Finally, with winter closing in, Siyavash gave the order to retreat.
The Persians would winter on the plains on the southern side of the mountains, the shahanshah still intending to press the attack the following spring. Once the passes had thawed, though, the foe of winter would be replaced with another: The combined might of Rome.
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[1] Supposedly, Tabriz’s named came from the Old Armenian term for ‘avenger’, so this is a play on that.
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I'm wondering if the Greek Muslims will now get an alternate epithet TTL to be distinguished from Turks.
The Orthodox Christians will probably still call themselves Rhomanians (and similar).
The external nonorthodox Christians are probably calling them all Greeks but may reserve that for the Orthodox.
Hellenes? Anatolians? Thracians?
The Orthodox Christians will probably still call themselves Rhomanians (and similar).
The external nonorthodox Christians are probably calling them all Greeks but may reserve that for the Orthodox.
Hellenes? Anatolians? Thracians?
I'd think Hellenes would be a better name for the Moreote Greeks, and Trebizund Greeks would be called the Ponts, anatolians or romans. maybe other peoples would call them by different names as they'd be in different countries?
but if the Moreotes and Trebizuntines unite, they'd definitely call themselves romans, but different people may call them the Ponts or the hellenes.
I'd have no idea how would the Muslim Greeks call themselves. Rumites would be one of the ways they call themselves, and Arabized or turkisied names of 'hellene' would be appropriate.
Thing is, would they still survive after Anatolia falls to the Trebizuntines? I would like to see a remnant population of Muslim Greeks in Palestine, which would be very interesting.
ps: the Egyptians would definitely be colonized by the Trebizuntines. would they encourage the conversion to Orthodoxy or Coptic Christianity?
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I suspect a lot of them would conveniently pretend they were Christians all along. Most of them converted to Islam out of a desire for personal advancement instead of truly believing in it, so the reverse is also possible. Unless of course the Trepezuntines have the ability to disseminate the Muslims Greeks and Greek Christians and just adopt a policy of kill 'em all.
The problem is not Trepezuntines, but their Christian neighbors. So their survival will to large extent depend on the local relationships between Muslims and Christians. If the local Muslims have lorded it over the Christians and abused them it’s revenge time, if you have a lot cross-religious families, cordial relationships and a lot of crypto-Christian Muslims, most Muslim will likely just convert back to Christianity. Heterodox Muslim who have been persecuted by their fellow Muslims will also be in a better position to simply change side.
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