For centuries the western frontier of the Abbasids,
Egypt would be conquered by Italian Crusaders in the 12th century. Ruling at first from Alexandria, the Catholic rulers by the sheer necessity of ruling a predominantly Muslim and Coptic populace had to adopt some measures of tolerance, laying the groundwork for the pluralistic and multicultural Egypt of today. Following a brief century-long interregnum in the 15th century when this original Kingdom of Egypt collapsed, a Greco-Italian conqueror named entered the region from the north. Starting from Alexandria, using a combination of military force and local alliances, he reunited Egypt. He would establish his capital at Fustat, beginning the process of transforming it from a dusty old town which had seen better days into the great metropolis it is today.
Egypt would centralise, and its rulers would gradually Arabise, marrying local nobles. By the end of the 16th century it began to expand its influence abroad, turning it into the power it is today. Religiously, at first, Egypt operated under an independent "Church of Alexandria" independent from the main organisation then in Rome, but even this was abandoned by the mid-17th century in emulation of the Persian experiment. Recently, Egypt has began looking abroad, too, becoming a naval power as well; the Egyptians have sought to enter the Indian Ocean trade zone with force, establishing their rule over Yemen as well as gaining the Indian port city of Surat.
The emirs of
Damascus were at first Neo-Abbasid governors of Syria, before they asserted their independence in the early 17th century as the Neo-Abbasids crumbled. Having successfully fended off the Armenian menace, the Damascene emirs soon entered the Egyptian sphere of influence, accepting status as a de facto Egyptian protectorate. Damascus is wealthy and prosperous under the Egyptian umbrella, and thus far, everyone involved much prefers to keep it that way.
When the Armenians invaded Northern Iraq a century ago, they killed the Neo-Abbasid governor in Mosul and, in his stead, installed the patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church. What resulted was the creation of an independent
Assyria, dominated by Assyrian Christians who had been second-class citizens in the Muslim world for centuries. This state has, somewhat miraculously, continued to survive since then, if currently under the aegis of the Egyptian sphere of influence to combat the rising power of Persia. But the Assyrians have great hopes for the future, and the fact that they were the world's greatest empire two and a half millennia ago has not been lost on them.
We come to the
Abbasid Caliphate, or as some prefer to distinguish this incarnation from the last, the Neo-Abbasid Caliphate. After a chaotic 13th century amidst the peak of the Crusades, when Baghdad had fallen under the rule of ghuliman slave warriors who had - thus largely ending that practise in the Islamic world - a descendant of the original Abbasid line led a revolt that re-established the Caliphate. For a time, this Neo-Abbasid Caliphate was strong; but the rise of Armenia and then Persia in the 17th century brought the Caliphs to their knees. A polity that can seriously claim to have once dominated the Islamic world, ruling from the Maghrib to India, is now reduced to Lower Iraq under the Persian shadow in a Middle East where secularism and pluralism have become vogue, where Sunni orthodoxy is crumbling in the face of scores of new and esoteric movements, and Baghdad has long ago been eclipsed by half a dozen other cities as a centre of learning.
In the Islamic holy land, the sharifs of
Hijaz continue their long rule, with little responsibility and power other than to protect and watch over the pilgrims. Recently, however, with the perceived decline in religiousness across the Muslim world and especially in Egypt and Persia, the Hijazi sharifs have begun to flirt with an increasingly fundamentalist, purist school of Sunni Islam. While all is still peaceful, the rifts between here and the rest of the Muslim world are becoming increasingly apparent, and the future is looking increasingly uncertain.
The predominantly Ibadi sultanate of
Oman is a minor naval and trade power along the Indian Ocean shores. Oman is relatively out of the way as far the Middle East goes, at times - such as now - having fallen under some degree of Persian influence. Today, Oman is seeking to expand its influence into the Indian Ocean, having successfully established control over Mogadishu on the Somali coast.
Persia by all rights should have been majority Muslim centuries ago. But what threw a wrench into that was the rise of a general named
Mardavij in the 10th century, who was successful in his dream of recreating a Zoroastrian state over much of the region, though not in his dreams of reconquering Mesopotamia and Ctesiphon and recreating the old Sassanid realm. Over the next seven centuries, Persia would alternate between periods of unity and disunity, between Muslim and Zoroastrian dynasties, interrupted only briefly by the outside Kara-Khanids in the late 11th century. All this culminated in a period of extremely bloody religiously-motivated warfare in the late 16th century, killing off nearly a third of Persia's population in the process.
When the dust settled, the new rulers of Persia decided that this was not a tenable situation any longer. They detached themselves from public religion entirely, thus creating one of the core tenets of the present Persian state. And they focused on rebuilding, such that the country had recovered in less than a half-century. From there, Isfahan could look outwards again, and Persia has begun clashing in influence with Egypt over the petty states of the Mashriq.
Ferghana is a Persianate emirate that was established in the 15th century, initially by a Muslim Uyghur who conquered the Ferghana valley and declared himself Emir of Andijan. After some time, Andijan became predominant in Central Asia. But now, it lies firmly in the Persian sphere of influence, and the emirs increasingly fear that Persia might just finish the task and incorporate the whole thing. Ferghana is nonetheless wealthy and militarily powerful enough that it can fend off Persian incursion.
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Alright, as far as I can tell that's all the backgrounds! I'll assign polities for certain sometime in the next few days.
