OMG Khazars Part 3

What Up, Nerds?

So we had the Khazar Khaganate. It was a Jewish feudal state that dominated the pontic steppe of south Russia for maybe a hundred to a hundred and fifty years. And for that century and a half, there was peace. But like all things, that would eventually come to an end.

The Khazar peace was built on the same principle that most national stability is based on: overwhelming power. The Khazars could whip any of the other steppe tribes who tried to cause trouble. And to protect their trading wealth, the Khazars did whoop anybody who seemed like they were going to disturb the peace. So nobody in south Russia was willing to make trouble, and things were tranquil.

The Khazar Khaganate at around 850 AD is at the top.
To the south are surrounding Empires, and around Khazaria are the tribes who the Khazars dominated.

And then in the late 800's,there was a revolt among some of the Khazars. The revolt was put down, but the Khazar war drove the Pecheneg tribe off their traditional land in the Khazar orbit. The homeless Pechenegs in turn drove out the Magyars. The Magyars wandered around eastern Europe and stirred up trouble until they eventually settled in modern Hungary and became today's Hungarians.

Still, the first dominos had fallen, and the vassal tribes had begun to slide towards turmoil. More and more tribes were buffeted and forced to move around. The peace and the stability of Khazaria began to break apart. As certainty fell away, the people began to think that the Khazars might not stay in charge forever. And people started to think they could take the Khazars' power for themselves.

Then the Eastern Romans decided to go after the Khazars too. They might as well seize what they could since the Khazars were getting weak. After a war, subterfuge, and a sponsored rebellion the Eastern Roman Empire walked away with the Crimean peninsula.

But the final destruction of the Khazars was coming from another direction.





We start in the late 700's and 800's AD. The Viking age was already in full swing in western Europe. Danish and Norwegian bands were ravaging and settling Ireland, Great Britain, and the Carolingian empire. But the Vikings on the Baltic shore of Scandinavia decided to go the opposite direction. These were the inhabitants of modern Sweden, the Swedes, the Goths, and other less well-known tribes. While the western Scandinavians became famous for pillaging the west, the eastern Scandinavians decided to trade to the east.

The viking way of trade was not what you might call peaceful.

Scandinavian settlers sailed up and down the river systems of Eastern Europe. They searched out good places to both settle and to trade.

Who were they trading with? With the great Eastern Roman Empire and Islamic Caliphate to the south. Then they went back out the Baltic rivers and traded with other Scandinavians as far away as Ireland and Britain. On top of all this, they could extract valued trade goods like amber and furs from the natives of the east European forests.

When they found a good place to build one of their trading towns they would construct well defended commercial forts like Novgorod and Beloozero. Then they struck out from these forts with fire and swords. They subjugated the native peoples and exploited them as best they could to turn an even larger profit. They didn't just take amber and fur, they also took food and slaves.

Rough extent of Scandinavian settlement at the time of initial Rus' colonization.

The Eastern Romans called these trading Vikings the Varangians. But the more famous name of their tribe is the Rus.

This Russian civilization started out relatively weak. We think the early Rus lacked a real central authority, and that as a consequence they were a fairly weak group. The Khazars may have ultimately been the ones who imparted a stable government to them. In any case, a Rus Khaganate eventually arose.

The new Russian Khagans lead several attacks south across the black sea against the Eastern Roman Empire. The Romans were busy fighting off the sudden rise of Islam at the time. So the Russian Vikings got as far as Constantinople without a fight. They took a look at the city's impressive Theodosian Walls, pillaged the suburbs and then headed back to Russia. So Russia became something of an international power. Briefly. 

Well, visiting Constantinople's been nice but I think it's about time we go home.

The Russian ascendancy was short because a rebellion of the native Slavic people took down the Rus Khaganate and drove them back to Sweden in AD 862. The trading forts and viking towns were gone. Russia was almost a very short story.



According to the Russian records, a power vacuum followed the Russian retreat back to the Rus homeland in Sweden. Many Slavic, Baltic, and Finno-Ugric tribes immediately launched wars against and amongst each other. And in the ensuing chaos, a few of the tribes began to wish the old Russian overlords would come back and put things back to the way they used to be. So some of them went to Sweden and asked.

Of course the Rus were invited into Russia.

There were more then a few Rus who were happy to oblige. The possibly mythological viking leader Rurik (this is all still according to those Russian records) assembled a force of fighting traders and settlers and sailed a Russian invasion right back up the rivers into Slavland. When Rurik's troops landed they whooped the fractured native tribes, and they reestablished some of the old Rus cities. The great hub at Novgorod was rebuilt and was made the new Russian capital.

The Russians traded out around the north and west of the Khazar Khaganate, going right back to their old commercial ways, but this time they were less eager to sack and ravage the empires than to trade with them. Arab and Roman traders noted the return of their old trading-partners, and wrote about them. The Arabs particularly called the Rus "smelly and unwashed". But they also thought the Russian men were built spectacularly strong and tall. They had ruddy faces and striking blonde hair. They were, in short, stereotypical vikings.

Plus, like most vikings, they shared a particular sense of style. In western Europe they were considered to be dandies and fops. They combed their hair regularly and bathed significantly more often then the few times a year that the English, French, Spanish, or Italians did. So they didn't seem as barbarous as they might have, and the rival imperials were still happy to trade with them in any case.

Hägar the Hawtness

Around AD 880 prince Oleg of Novgorod succeeded to Rurik's old position as Prince of Russia. He was eager to extend the borders of his domain, so he led his warriors on a campaign south from Novgorod. They conquered native cities like Smolensk, subjected native tribes, and made their way down the Dneiper River. City after city fell, until in 882 he conquered the great city of Kiev and made it his new capital.

After taking Kiev he spent a few years completing the conquest of all the tribes around his new capital and between it and the old capital at Novgorod. Then he led a war against the Eastern Romans with eighty thousand warriors and two thousand ships. There was no conquest, but he managed to impose a tribute upon the Romans, as well as a commercial treaty, before he eventually died in 912.

Prince Oleg's campaign to conquer Kiev.
The view is facing towards western Europe from central Russia.

Oleg's new Kievan Russia would survive his death and even thrive on the land's rich resources and trade. These Russians even began to assimilate to Slavic Culture.

Then Sviatoslav the Brave rose to the throne of Kiev.

Prince Oleg had undoubtedly encroached on Khazaria. Kiev used to be well within the Khazar sphere of influence, and was just across the river from the Khazar Khaganate proper when Khazaria was at its height. But Khazaria had been weakening and retreating, leaving Kiev fairly open to Oleg's conquest. And now the new king Svitoslav had designs on the rest of the country.

Sviatoslav's ultimate objectives were the rich trade routes all the way down the Volga. If the Khazar capital happened to sit on the Volga, that was just too bad.

As his name suggests, Sviatoslav was a Slavicized ruler of Russia, possibly the very first one. He used this identity to his advantage. His first step in taking on Khazaria was to bring all the Khazars' subject Slavs to his banner. He sent out the call and received the backing of the Slavic tribes with only a little bit of difficulty.

He next aimed his warriors at Volga Bulgaria, which was the Bulgarian Kingdom dominating the upper Volga River above Khazaria. The Volga Bulgars had been vassals of the Khazars, but were not overly attached to their masters. After all the Khazars had destroyed their former kingdom of Old Great Bulgaria. Nevertheless, they fought alongside the Khazars. Then when the Khazar-Bulgar coalition lost they began to send Sviatoslav tribute. The Russians had conquered the Upper Volga, and they were ready to head downriver.

The extent of Kievan Russia when Sviatoslav came to the throne is in dark green.
Sviatoslav's campaign to crush the Khazars is marked by the arrows.

But first Sviatoslav made a short detour across Khazaria to the Don river. Here he laid siege to the Khazar Fortress of Sarkel, which lay at the heart of the former great Kingdom of Khazaria. He destroyed old Sarkel but left behind Russian Settlers to establish a new fort, which he called Belaya Vyezha. In the Khazar language, "Sarkel" had meant "White Tower," and Belaya Vyezha was the Slavic translation. Sviatoslav intended to re-settle and remake the pontic steppe to his benefit.

Only one target remained for Prince Sviatoslav.

By the time the Russian army reached the Khazar capital at Itil, the Khazar Army was totally beaten. The Russians attacked the city, and they destroyed it. A visitor to the site a short while later said that after the Russians attacked there was no grape or raisin or leaf on a branch remaining in the city. The capital of the Khazars—the heart of the Khazar Khaganate—was dead.

Sviatoslav had secured the Volga River for Russia, and he headed home after the destruction of Itil. He made a stop to conquer the Ossetians on his way home, but he declined to mop up and occupy every corner of Khazaria. Subsequently small Khazar kingdoms would pull themselves and putter along for a few more years, but would eventually fall prey to Pecheneg and Cuman conquerors.

The Khazars had been great rulers and traders at the height of their power barely a century before. But they had been shaken by war and broken by the Viking Russians in quick succession. And so the story of the second Jewish nation in history came to an end.

Of course, the history of the Russian nation had only just begun.






Sources:
Britannica Online Encyclopedia
Khazaria.com
Larry Gonick's  Cartoon History Series
JewishEncyclopedia.com
JewishVirtualLibrary.com
and of course, Wikipedia


Fun fact: If you google "Rus," you will find a million links to "Toys R' Us." Dammit.

OMG the Storm (N.C.4)

What Up, Nerds?

1768. Eight years before the penning of the Declaration of Independence. Seven years before the beginning of the American Revolutionary War at Lexington and Concord.


Last time we left North Carolina on the brink of a major upheaval. The whole north part of the state was chafing under the British government's partition of it into the separate Granville District. The whole western part of the state was likewise groaning under the weight of corrupt government officials, courts, and lawyers from Britain and from the east. And in the east Governor William Tryon was building himself an ostentatious opulent mansion. Carolina had suffered like this for years.

And now was the time to do something about it.



They met in the seat of the corrupt North Carolina colonial court system. This was the town of Hillsborough which lay in both the west of the state and in the Granville district, so it was especially badly hit by corruption.


 Sometimes what follows is portrayed as a dry-run for the American Revolution. But it wasn't really. The angry Carolinians who met weren't riled up for the principles of self-government. They weren't interested in the constitutional theories behind the link from taxation to representation. They were just angry about the men who had installed themselves as masters of backwater North Carolina. These men were corrupt and greedy and terrible administrators. Many of the Regulators wouldn't have gave a rat's ass about whether the administrators, were British, American, elected, or appointed. Just as long as they did their jobs correctly.


The anti corruption movement did not precede the revolution in creating an executive council, structured army, and high minded declaration of grievances. If they had written a declaration like that, it would have been pretty short. It would be something like "Fire officials who are corrupt, and don't tax us for the mansion Governor Tryon is building himself." They liked to say they just wanted some modest regulations put on the corrupt government. So they got themselves called the Regulators.


Instead of a Continental Congress the Regulators decided that they'd rather just meet as a colonial mob. No formal structure, no formal leaders. Just a community mob that would meet to f*ck sh*t up. Perhaps the best comparison you could make would be the mobs of the wild west in the 1800's who would meet and dish out cowboy vigilante justice.


So they met in Hillsborough, stormed the court, and carried off the corrupt officials. Next they tried to force the Judge to try and condemn these officials, but he managed to delay for a day and then slip away in the night. They captured the chief corrupt lawyer who was named Edmund Fanning and beat him nearly to death before burning down his house. Next they vandalized the courtroom, pooped in the judge's seat, and sat up the decomposing corpse of an enslaved man at the lawyer's bar. 


For several years the regulators held this kind of sway in the west. There was periodic violence. Petitions were circulated. But the question never really moved towards a solution. In 1770 much of the Granville district also rose up for similar purposes, but Governor Tryon obliterated that uprising with the eastern Militia.


The important thing to understand right now is the Regulator's image problem. In the west of North Carolina it was largely understood that these were just good, reasonable, simple backwoods poor folk who had been exploited by corrupt officials and lawyers. That much was actually pretty true. But in the east the officials weren't corrupt, and they didn't imagine the west was either. The Regulators just looked like wild self-entitled cowboy vigilantes. They were a literal mob of roughnecks who wouldn't accept their government, burned down the house of a "leading" citizen, and pooped in the Judge's seat.






In 1771 Governor Tryon decided enough was enough. He called together a thousand eastern militiamen and organized them into fighting order. And then he set out with his own private army to destroy the Regulators.


The Regulators decided that this would be their chance to teach those easterners that they couldn't just mess with the west. About two thousand of them gathered with guns to whoop Tryon's ass. When the sides met the Regulators showed up in an enormous armed mob of vigilantes with groups of soldiers milling around loosely appointed captains. Tryon's men were arranged in lines of battle, with cannons for support.


Both sides sent demands and conditions for peace. But the Regulators sent over petitions and emissaries without organization or collaboration. Tryon sent over demands, but these were unmet, soon the two armies faced each other over a very short distance.


It was then that the de facto leader of the Regulators left the battlefield. Why? He was a Quaker, a sect of Christianity that involves a strict pacifism. So staring battle in the face the Regulators not had no leadership.


Two Regulators had crossed the lines to try to negotiate peace, but were unsuccessful. Sensing danger, these two had tried to flee. One of them had escaped the easterners' line. The other had been captured by Tryon. And then in a fit of rage at the Regulators Tryon pulled his pistol and executed the captured peacemaker. When Tryon cooled down enough to recognize the implications of what he had done he tried to send over an emissary to cool things down. Enraged about the summary execution of their peace emissary, the Regulators opened fire when they saw one of Tryon's men approaching.


The Battle of Alamance erupted.


At first the Regulators did well. A man named Montgomery had risen up as a temporary battle leader since the Quaker leader had left. And the rebels were able to hide behind trees in the woods and fire at the easterners from there. They even managed to capture one of the governor's three cannon, though they had no ammunition. 


Governor Tryon began to see which way the battle was going and sent another emissary to offer a ceasefire. The Regulators, unfortunately, shot him. At the same time the temporary Regulator battle-leader Montgomery was shot dead. Tryon was enraged by the shooting of his peace emissary and reordered his troops to attack again.


The Regulators were trying to hold out for two hundred more reinforcements that were on on their way. But as Tryon attacked again they began to run out of ammunition. Most of them fled when they ran out of bullets, but a few stayed to fight on. Tryon had the woods they were fighting from lit on fire, and the last of the Regulators fled before their reinforcements could arrive.


In the end the battle had a surprisingly low toll. Out of a thousand easterners and two-thousand regulators, only between twenty four and thirty six people were killed. Nine of the dead were Regulators and between fifteen and twenty seven were easterners. Because he had taken the field Tryon was able to capture thirteen Regulator prisoners and he executed seven of them. Despite a good early performance, the Regulators had left the field and the spoils to Tryon. That was a significant defeat for them and Regulator military power was broken up.


Tryon roved around the captured Regulator territory with his army, burning down regulator homes and exacting even more and higher taxes to pay for his army's supplies from the battle. In the east and in the other colonies people called Governor Tryon a hero, and saw him as the fearless crusher of a bunch of lawless amoral greedy vigilantes. Social order is indeed a very difficult thing to maintain. It is perhaps one of the great underappreciated challenges in social history. And Tryon did enforce order on a fairly unordered place. But whether he was in the right to do is still a question with an ambiguous answer at best.


Many of the defeated Regulators fled further west, into the mountains in present day northeast Tennessee. There they governed themselves and in 1772 created the Republic of Watauga, which operated separately from any British or Colonial government. This republic eventually served as the nucleus for the Free Republic of Franklin after the American Revolution. Franklin applied to join the United States under the Articles of Confederation in 1785 as the first new state to be added, but lost the confirmation vote by two votes in the Continental Congress.


Eventually, Franklin became the nucleus for the State of Tenessee. But it's lost some of it's Regulator ethos since then.

OMG Kublai Khan

What Up, Nerds?


Mongols. Mongols are up.






China was in disarray. The native Song dynasty had been forced out of north China by barbarians advancing past the border. The Manchurian Jin Dynasty seized the central north while the western north was ruled by the non-Chinese Xia. And then from out of the empty wilderness came the Mongols.


Genghis Khan led the Mongol tide of death and destruction as it engulfed northern China. The Great Khan's personal ethos brought war to everything that lay before him.


At first the Mongols only devastated the countryside, because they could not get into China's great walled cities.  But before long they captured local siege engineers and forced them to build siege machines to take the cities with. With this weaponry the Mongols conquered the north-central Jin dynasty. After beating the Jin, Genghis Khan turned west and conquered the Xia in a series of several military campaigns. This included one where Genghis tried to divert the flow of a river straight through the Xia capital, buthe  accidentally flooded his own camp instead. In the end he persevered with his conquest and he still conquered Xia.


After seizing the whole north, the decision about what to do with all these conquered Chinese people faced him. At first Genghis considered butchering them. After some dissuasion he heeded the advice of some of his more recently acquired foreign advisers. He did not butcher the people, destroy their homes, and graze his horses on the grass where cities had once stood. He just taxed them heavily instead.


By the end of his life the Khan had exacted a vast human toll that made him seem something like a Medieval Mongolian Hitler.






At first the Song dynasty, which still held power in the south, cooperated with the Mongols. They had been forced out of the north by the expansionist Jin, and were eager to retake their former northern Capitals at Luoyang, Chang'an, and Kaifeng. Once the Jin had been defeated, the Song attacked and captured their old capital city. Unfortunately when they took it they killed a Mongol diplomat. The Mongols treated this as a grave insult and for that insult they declared war on the Song. They attacked and conquered everything north of the Yangtze river in what was nearly a medieval Blitzkrieg. But once they hit the River things got a little more complicated.

The Yangtze is the big river through the middle of the Song. In case you
didn't know.
(Pic from Wiki)

The Song dynasty started to use every technological invention they could come across that might help. This included gunpowder, guns, and paddle-boats. These cutting edge technologies shut down the Mongol advance. But they weren't enough to overcome the Mongols either. The Mongols weren't about to give up on attacking, and the war got bogged down into a stalemate. 








After they started to grow tired of this ineffective and expensive slug-fest, the Mongols started to think about other ways they might speed up the war. So the successor to Genghis Khan, Mongke, sent out one of Genghis' grandsons to conquer the kingdom at Dali to the west of Song, outflanking the dynasty.


The grandson had been raised fully knowing he was the descendant of the most powerful man in the world. Young Kublai had been given ten thousand Chinese households to rule over when he was sixteen. At first he had ruled as badly as you'd expect a sixteen year old to do. But he improved with experience, and he learned who he could and who he could not trust.


Back when the Mongols had first conquered all of north China Kublai had got himself named as Mongke's vice-Khan for China, and he ruled the country. He pushed Mongol expansion to the south while he mediated and settled religious disputes within his kingdom. Where his grandfather Genghis had held contempt for Chinese civilization, Kublai actually liked China.  Grandpa might have criticized the boy for living too soft and Chinese, but for Kublai, softness was just a more comfortable lifestyle.


Kublai moved at lightning speed and conquered the westerners at Dali, but this did not bring the war any closer to an end. In response, the Great Khan Mongke decided to lead the Mongol army to attack the Song himself. He left on the expedition, but he quickly died of Cholera, and for the time being the Mongol war with the Song was back on the fritz.

OMG Japan Before the Emperors

What Up, Nerds?


It's goddamn history time. This here post is a prequel to the last one. Wanna find out where pre-imperial Japan came from? Wanna know more about what it looked like? Keep reading.






From some of the earliest days, Japan was inhabited by some folks closely related to today's Ainu people, who used to live all over north Japan, although today they're only really in Hokkaido. They were also pretty closely related to some folks in eastern Siberia, And coincidentally are also the same group of people that migrated across the Bering Strait and became the majority of American Indians.


These proto-Ainu folks were hunter gatherers. They'd eat a lot of nuts and they'd fish and hunt deer. They were not really nomads--they didn't keep herds and they didn't need to. Their lives were just too nice to bother with that hard work. They were so nice that they had the free time to do some things like invent pottery styles that would spread across the entire old world. This awesome and free and easy state of affairs was dominant until about 300 BC. Yep, 300 BC. That, my friends, is all of the recent. An entire cycle of world civilization had risen, lived it's life, and fallen by 1000 BC. 300 BC is historically not too far off from just last week. 


When 300 BC rolled around there wasn't some big event that changed things. It is just about the time when a new culture became more-or-less dominant. This culture is much closer to what you might think of as Japanese. Lots of historians have described it as a migration into the westernmost Japanese islands by a Korean culture that displaced the Ainu. But that isn't accurate. This new more "Japanese" culture arose in both Korea and in southwest Japan.


If you go back more then ten thousand years you'll see significantly lower sea levels, and consequentially the Japanese and Korean shores were much much closer to each other. The Japanese and Korean peoples archaeologically emerged at the same time and they were the exact same people. This shows in the record of the appearance of certain types of pottery. And it shows up in the fact that despite past confusion about the subject, the language that is most related to Japanese is Korean. These Japano-Korean people can be traced genetically, and shown to arise on the shores of the sea between Japan and Korea and subsequently to move east from there. 

See? They were pretty dang close together indeed.
(Pic from Wiki)

Well for a long time these people kept in good contact in both the Japanese and Korean halves of their territory. When rice agriculture started to seep into Korea from further west in mainland Asia, rice agriculture also started to appear in Japan too. Metalwork also came to these Japano-Koreans in a similar manner.


And at about 300 BC these more "Japanese" people became the dominant group in Japan. Their productivity exploded as they finally finished transitioning from hunting and gathering to settled agriculture. They started to produce complex goods and their society grew a divide between rich and poor.


At about 50 AD Chinese Imperial records start to attest to the emergence of a state in Japan. Based on Kyushu Island, the state of Wa is the earliest known country to emerge in the archipelago. It was described as being largely fractured into many small and scattered tribes. What's more, it wasn't organized into a system of taxation and relied on the occasional extraction of tribute. And then the whole country wasn't even independent, it paid tribute to a much greater Chinese state.


Another important state that emerged a few hundred years later in Japan was called Yamataikoku. The Chinese first described it as a kingdom in Wa, which is somewhat confusing until you realize the Chinese had come to call all the whole archipelago "Wa" after that first state they had dealt with. Yamataikoku had relations with China and was attested to have been ruled by a Queen named Himiko. This country probably existed on a different part of Kyushu, although the later Imperial Yamato rulers and tradition would assert that it was actually in the Yamato valley in central Japan. 


Over time the rulers of the state in Yamato started to expand their power. In a series of diplomatic, religious, and military conflicts they forced other countries to pay them occasional tribute. And they fought with an eye to establishing superiority over all of Kyushu and west Honshu. By the 300's AD they were in contact with China, and by the 500's they had established a lip-service superiority over all the other south Japanese states. Of course, they were constantly having to fight wars to retain their nominal superiority.


Another way that Yamato created a kind of superiority was by assembling the Shinto religion. As they warred with and gradually got the upper hand on each rivaling county they would merge the pantheons of the two countries. Although they were always willing to add another god into the pantheon, the Yamato rulers established their traditional god as the chief god. As the Yamato chieftains started to claim descendancy from their god, their chief position on earth became legitimated by their god's chief status in heaven.

Like a motherf*ckin' boss!
(Pic from Wiki)

The chiefs of Yamato not only controlled the other tribes, they may have controlled some of their very old relatives in Korea, in the Gaya Confederacy. It is more likely that Yamato and Gaya just still had very close tribal relations, but there were definitely common ties between the two. And of course the overarching common tie across the region was subservience to the Chinese Emperor, and paying him tribute.


In the 500's AD the chiefs of Yamato supported the introduction of Buddhism in their and in all the other subservient Japanese countries. After this, they started implementing reforms that gradually moved towards consolidating all the separate countries into one. This consolidation was never really effective until the reign of the first Emperor, Tenmu. But Tenmu would manage to break the power of the clans and to unify all of south Japan into the Japanese Empire.


Of course since you already read the previous post you already know all about that.

OMG One-Story-Houses

What Up, Nerds?


OMG Hussites Part 2 is in production! In the mean time, my ever-lovely girlfriend has now made it to Marrakech, Morocco, which just happens to be one of the seats of one of my favorite western Islamic Empires ever.

Because everyone has a list of their favorite Western Islamic Empires, right?




In the early 1040's, at about the same time Robert "the Weasel" Guiscard was getting off the boat to be a mercenary in south Italy, there lived a Muslim west-African chief named Yahya. Yahya was a pretty good Muslim. And as such, he was returning home from his Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. While traveling along the coast of the southern Mediterranean he met a religious scholar from Morocco.

The two men hit it off, and Yahya got to complaining about how his people were such bad Muslims and how he didn't think there was anything he could do about it. The scholar told Yahya about a school where he could find someone who could reform his people. Yahya was ecstatic to discover this and so he stopped at the school on his way home. The man the school sent with him was named Abdallah.

Yahya happily came home with his brand new proselytizing Abdallah. When they arrived Abdallah proscribed the tribe rigid orthodoxy, strict adherence to Islamic law, even stricter punishments for breaking the law, and practically puritanical zeal. Abdallah was a provocative firebrand. Yahya's people did not like Abdallah one bit. So as soon as Yahya died a few years later, Abdallah was told in no uncertain terms to f*ck right off.

At this point Abdallah was all the screwed. Or he would have been, except for some reason the leaders of the tribe right next to Yahya's decided to adopt him into their tribe. They kept him on a tight leash though. So Abdallah was no true provocateur, but he did preach for Islamic law and also for some reason against multi-story houses. But when Abdallah's new tribe really got excited about Islam was when Abdallah started emphasizing one particular religious calling: conquering the enemies of Islam.

OH JESUS two stories is bad enough!

In this case the enemies of Islam were the wishy-washy sorta-Muslims from Yahya's old tribe.

So Abdallah's people got excited, conquered their neighboring tribes, and started knocking down all the second floors off of their multi-story houses. Clearly because they had been able to conquer the other tribes they had a good thing going on. They named themselves el-MuraabeTuun, or the Almoravids, and set off to conquer them an empire!

They began with a smart first move, the quick seizure of the town Sijilmasa--which was THE trading hub and gold hub of the region. With this economic backing they moved on to attack both north and the south. They met some immediate success and managed to knock the second floors off of several houses. Unfortunately both the chief of the tribe and Abdallah were killed in battles pretty quick. But replacement leaders were found and the Almoravids continued to conquer more and more lands--especially to the north.

In 1062 the Almoravid leader Abu Bakr ibn Umar decided the old seat of his court was too busy and crowded. So he decided to lay out a new one-floor-high capital in modern Morocco. He chose a site in the middle of a plain that was neutral territory between two squabbling tribes, and up sprung the city of Marrakech.

Not long after that, Abu Bakr decided that ruling the Almoravids just wasn't his thing. So decided to give both control of Morocco--and for some inexplicable reason also his favorite wife--over to his cousin. Abu Bakr headed back down to the Almoravid homeland and spent the rest of his days suppressing revolts until he was killed by a poison arrow.

In 1075 the Almoravids decided to knock the second floors off the houses to their east, so they invaded the great Ghana Empire. By 1100 the Ghana empire collapsed and the Almoravids took some of it while other parts of rebounded and founded the Mali Empire.

In 1086 the princes of Islamic Spain begged the Almoravids to come help them turn back the advancing tide of the Christian Reconquista. The Almoravids stopped the Christian reconquest, but were so disgusted by the behavior of the Spanish princes that they came back four years later to conquer all of Islamic Spain. At that point that meant the south half of the Iberian peninsula. But as he fought onward,  the Almoravid king also managed to take the towns of Valencia and Zaragosa. This was basically the high water mark for the Almoravids, who owned a ridiculous amount of western Africa and Europe.

That right there is like seven countries all in one Empire. Hell yeah, son.
(Pic from Wiki)

Almost immediately afterwards the Almoravid Empire took a turn for the worse. They started losing ground to the Spanish Christian kings and were troubled by the disturbances of the Alomohad agitators in the Almoravid base of power at Morocco. In 1147 the Alamohads conquered Marrakech, and that was the end of the Almoravids. Oh well, at least it would take a while before everybody could rebuild the second floors of their houses.

OMG That Weasel

What Up, Nerds?


OMG Hussites Part 2 is in filming! In the meantime I simply did not do Robert "the Weasel" Guiscard justice with my treatment of the Norman conquest of the Kingdom of Sicily. Lets fix that.








The Weasel was not born at the very top of the ladder. He wasn't just some peasant, and certainly that was an important advantage he was born with. But he was just a sixth-born son and he sure didn't start as no king. So as a young man he set off to make his fortune with just five horsemen and thirty foot soldiers in his pocket.


In 1047 he got off the boat in south Italy. He wasn't particularly physically intimidating. He was tall, but he had a ruddy face and kind of nondescript blondish hair. And here he was an a strange land with 35 soldiers he had to take care of and get fed. He didn't really know where to start.


So he gave a metaphorical shout out to his Viking heritage and lead his men into becoming freelance roving robbers.


And like any talented leader of a band of robber-vikings he quickly got noticed by the local lords who were at war with each other. He was hired and officially in business.


The Weasel performed admirably, and gained a bit of a reputation. But when his master refused to pay him the castle  he'd been promised for his services, the Weasel up and quit. He took his services to the lord next door. Here he got a castle, but he decided he didn't really like that castle. So he just went out and took himself a different one.


The Weasel was just real real good in battle. He'd make himself terrifying, and he had a natural grip on the usually slippery world of battle tactics that confounded most folks. That gave him more and more of a reputation. Soon enough the Normans' allies betrayed them and allied with the Pope to crush them. The Weasel got command of the left flank and charged into the Pope's force at the precise right moment. He led in the battle personally, and the Normans scored a huge victory.


So when the old Norman lord died the Weasel got the spot this was in 1057, just ten years after he had arrived in Italy with nothing but a handful of men. The Pope was a little terrified of the Weasel and so he decided to buy him over by officially promoting him to the rank of Duke. Naturally the Weasel accepted, and things started to be friendlier between the Normans and the Pope.


At this point the Weasel just went crazy. He attacked anyone and everyone he could find in south Italy. Sometimes it took a while but in the end he always won.


He started getting bored, and so he decided to do what nobody had successfully been able to do, well, ever. He launched an invasion of the Emirate of Sicily. At first he allied against one feuding Emir against another. He took almost the entire island, but when one fort refused to surrender he got frustrated and went home.


 He came back a few years later and almost conquered the whole island again. This time he didn't turn around because of impatience, he turned around because Giant F*cking Tarantulas swarmed his whole goddamn camp. So it took him until his next invasion a few years after that to actually conquer all the important cities.

I don't f*cking blame him for turning around.
(Pic from Wiki)

So he once again found himself with nothing much to do but occasionally put down rebellions. These rebellions were all basically sponsored by the Roman Empire (whose land in south Italy he'd already conquered). So he decided that he might as well just invade the goddamn Roman Empire.


So he did. The Weasel landed in Greece with plans to go straight for the capital. He met the famous Roman Emperor and whooped his ass in one big battle. The Weasel had a straight road to Constantinople at this point and he kicked around the idea of just taking over the whole empire. But then he was attacked in the back by the Venetians who burned his fleet without warning. Simultaneously Pope Greg Seven called the Weasel back to Italy to save him from the approaching German Emperor Henry Four.


So the Weasel had to abandon his army in Greece, sail back to Italy on his own, and save the Pope. When he did and the Romans thanked him for it by rising up and attacking the Normans the Weasel decided to just let his soldiers ransack the city for three days.


Once that fiasco was taken care of he set his sights back on taking over the Roman Empire.


Unfortunately his son had already lost control of the Norman conquests in Greece, so the Weasel had to launch another attack. He crossed over to Greece in his fleet of 150 ships and retook a good chunk of what he'd conquered last time.


And then all of a sudden he got sick and died. He and 500 other Norman knights died on or around the 17th of July, 1085. Just like that the Norman conquest of the Roman Empire was over. It had really all depended on that one single man.

OMG Gibraltar

What Up, Nerds?


So far I been trying to keep all my posts at least tangentially relevant to the first half of the OMG Hussites video (second half coming soon!). But today my wonderful brilliant beautiful fabulous girlfriend is in a pretty awesome place called Gibraltar. Gibraltar is the site of a story too fun not to tell, even if we're not 100% about all the details.






Everything in this story began with two very powerless people. One of those was the daughter of a Nobleman of Visigothic Spain. Her father was named Julian, count of Ceuta. The county that he ruled was the farthest flung part of Visigothic Spain. In fact the county was so far out there that it was actually in North Africa. Since Julian was so far from the rest of the nation he decided to send his rather powerless daughter from his backwater little county to the court of Visigothic Spanish King Roderic so that she'd get an education. 


The other powerless person was a slave of mysterious origin. Some people thought he was Persian. Some people called him an Arab. Still others thought he must be a Berber. His name was Taareq ibn Zeeeaad. And he was enslaved in the house of Muusa bin NuSaeer, who was the second ever Islamic governor of North Africa in the brand new Muslim State.


Taareq did his job diligently and well. He rose in his master's household and in his master's regard. He rose so far that one day Muusa decided to free him. So the slave was freed, and he was made a general in the North African army. He did this job well. So Muusa appointed him the Governor of Tangier. So Taareq worked his way up to become the ruler of Tangier.


One day old count Julian of Ceuta came to Taareq. This was strange, since Muslim power had just exploded and christian kingdoms were not on talking terms with Muslims. But nevertheless Julian came. And he told Taareq that he had sent his daughter to King Roderic in Toledo, and she had come back pregnant.


Clearly, Roderic had raped his daughter. Now Julian wanted vengeance. Julian made a deal with Taareq so that if Julian would ferry Taareq's army across the straight to Spain then Taareq would help Julian topple the evil Visigothic King Roderic and replace him with a much better candidate, who was named Womba. Spain would have a better king, Taareq would have a king who owed him a favor, and everybody would come out better for it. Well, except for Roderic.


Taareq was intrigued.


But that wasn't the whole and real situation. You see King Roderic had not been born to be king. In fact he wasn't even in line to be king in any way at all. The old King had been a man named Wittiza. Wittiza had died unexpectedly, and people suspected Roderic. Many thought Wittiza's heir Womba should become king. But Roderic usurped the royal senate and was crowned instead. Those who thought Womba oughtta be king--the Wombatists--took over northeast Spain while Roderic owned the center and southwest.


Well Julian was supposed to have sent his daughter to Roderic's court in a show of trust. A show of trust that was necessary because he actually preferred Womba. Be he had to live under King Roderic because he was surrounded by Roderic country. It turns out we don't even know if he sent a daughter at all. Julian might have just been the mouthpiece for the Wombatists who wanted Taareq's help to clear out King Roderic and make room for Womba. And the daughter seemed like a plausible and sympathetic excuse.


Whatever Julian's motivation, the new governor of Tangier accepted his proposition.


And so in 711 AD Julian the Wombatist ferried Taareq's army into Spain in old trading ships. The army assembled at a coastal mountain they named the Taareq's Mountain, and then headed north to find Roderic. In 712 Taareq found King Roderic at the head of a united Spanish army at Guadalete. At the crucial moment the Wombatists all deserted Roderic and Roderic's army was eviscerated. Roderic was killed.


Well the Wombatists were very happy. Roderic was dead and gone and now Womba could be king. Except for one problem. The Muslims decided they liked Spain. So they kept it. 


And so Spain became a part of the Umayyad Caliphate. Muslim states would dominate the peninsula until 1236. The last Muslim state will remain on the peninsula until 1492.






Oh, and remember that mountain called Taareq's Mountain? In Arabic it's pronounced Jebbel el-Taareq. That's sort of a mouthful, so the Spanish shortened the name into "Gibraltar."


So that is how Gibraltar got its name. Have a lovely time at Jebbel el-Taareq, wonderful lady!