Today’s video is a special dedicated to the upcoming release of a new title in one
of our favorite gaming franchises – Crusader Kings 3.
The game will have 2 starting dates – 867 and 1066 and our friends at Paradox asked
us to show how their gaming world looked during these dates.
We think that Paradox did a great job choosing these 2 dates, as they were pivotal all across
Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
Crusader Kings is such a massive game!
You play as a ruler and your goal is to raise your dynasty above every other.
This is done through war, diplomacy, intrigue, religious and legal machinations, and each
of these aspects is extremely deep.
The third game only improved on that successful formula with refined mechanics, gorgeous map,
beautiful graphics, and even more historical accuracy.
Welcome to our broad overview of Afro-Eurasia during the year 867, as well as the kingdoms,
their rulers, conflicts, faiths, and rivalries which defined the age, shaping the coming
Medieval world from Britain to Baghdad.
By the middle of the ninth century, a diverse array of religions existed throughout the
entire world, but two in particular held sway over much of the world.
Christianity and Islam divided most of Europe from most of the near east, with notable exceptions
in Spain, where the Umayyad remnant governed most of the peninsula, and Anatolia, where
the Eastern Roman Empire still tenaciously held onto their lands.
However, this dichotomy of two unified faiths in diametric opposition to one another paints
a picture which is both overly simplistic and hugely inaccurate.
867 was, both politically and religiously, an era of fragmentation, warfare, and political
intrigue between and within larger factions.
We shall begin examining this higher level of complexity by zooming in on the westernmost
of territories to hold the Roman ‘Catholic’ faith - Britain.
Decades of continuous raiding at the hands of Norse chieftains and sea kings culminated
in the arrival of the so-called Great Heathen Army under Ragnar Lothbrok’s Viking sons
in 865, an attack which changed the situation for the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms entirely.
Northumbria, divided by dynastic strife, had already fallen to the invaders, while East
Anglia and Mercia were too weak to resist.
Only the strongest of the kingdoms - Wessex - ruled by Æthelred I and his able brother
Alfred, was ready to resist the northern pagans.
To the north, Britons and Picts divided modern Scotland, with the former dominating the southwest
portion.
Many petty kings ruled the area, kingdoms of Strathclyde and Alba most prominent among
them, while Orkney, the Shetlands, and the Hebrides were already under control of the
Norwegian Vikings.
Despite the Anglo-Saxon onslaught of the previous centuries, the Britons still held on in Wales
and Cornwall.
The region was divided into at least 10 kingdoms, most notably Powys and Gwynedd.
Similar to Wales and Scotland, Ireland had a number of petty kings.
Norwegian Vikings were able to get a foothold on the island by forming a kingdom in Dublin.
Across the channel, Middle Francia - a successor kingdom of Charlemagne’s previously unified
empire - fractured for a second time following the death of his grandson Lothar I in 855.
The imperial crown and lands in Northern Italy were inherited by Lothar’s eldest son Louis
II, while the remainder - known as Lotharingia - became the domain of Lothar II.
In the west, a West Francian realm that would eventually mature into the Kingdom of France
was ruled by Charles the Bald from Paris, a great city which only two decades earlier
had suffered its own major viking raid.
If the Norse problem wasn’t bad enough, independent lords in Brittany and Aquitaine
were slicing away pieces of Gaul for their own domains…
Another of Charlemagne’s grandsons - Louis ‘the German’, took East Francia as his
own domain - the future Holy Roman Empire.
On Christendom’s eastern flank, the Orthodox Byzantine Empire had managed to consolidate
in Anatolia and the Balkans after the Islamic Conquests centuries before, despite constant
bouts of dynastic strife which repeatedly deposed old imperial lines of succession and
installed new ones.
867 saw the beginning of the famous Macedonian Dynasty, which would rule in Constantinople
for the next 250 years.
Byzantium’s troublesome neighbors, the formerly nomadic Bulgars, had been the subject of a
religious struggle between the rival Churches of Rome and Constantinople for decades.
Both factions desired to bring the powerful empire of Boris I into their sphere of influence,
and in 864 the outcome of that contest was decided when Boris converted to Orthodoxy.
It was also the era when the Slavic peoples started to coalesce into states.
In central Europe, Bohemian tribes were on the verge of creating their Duchy, while the
Moravians already had established their entity, called Great Moravia in the sources, and were
fighting for their independence from the Franks.
Further northeast, the Polans started conquering other Western Slavic tribes that would form
the Polish nation alongside them.
Still Pagan, these tribes were a century away from forming the Kingdom of Poland.
Even further to the northeast, the Baltic tribes were fighting off Finno Ugric, Norse,
and Slavic onslaughts, but weren’t a single polity.
Although the Great Heathen Army was ravaging Albion, the land it came from was in disunity.
The Danish kingdom under Horik II was previously considered one of the stable states in the
region, but was now showing the signs of breaking up, and after his death would enter the period
of internal fighting.
Norway was divided into dozens of petty kingdoms, but in 866 Harald Fairhair started his conquest
of these states, and by 872 became the king of a united Norway.
Swedish history of the era is even more difficult to pin down, as it is shrouded in mystery,
but chronicles claim that the land was ruled by minor kings, among them the legendary Ragnar
Lodbrok and Björn Ironside, who founded the house of Munsö [-eh], which is considered
the first historical Swedish dynasty.
The Swedes were slowly encroaching on the Finno Ugric, Slavic, and Baltic territories.
Christianization of Scandinavia began some time ago, but the majority was still pagan.
The Finns were already in the region, but lived in tribes.
In the Balkans, the Byzantine empire was still strong, but was starting to lose territory
to the Slavs.
Mostly allied with the Byzantines, the principality of Serbia started to gain prominence in this
period, defeating the Bulgars on occasions and adopting Orthodox Christianity under Mutimir.
It was bordering a number of other minor South Slavic states to the southwest.
Another major South Slavic state, the duchy of Croatia, was in a constant war with the
Venetians to the West.
Their brethren to the north ruled the duchy of Pannonia, which was under the vassalage
of the East Franks.
To the north of the Balkans, the nomadic pagan Magyars were slowly pushed west by the Turkic
tribes and, in centuries to come, would thrust into Europe and found the Kingdom of Hungary.
Even further east than that, on the vast Pontic-Caspian Steppe, an array of plains horselords raided
one another back and forth for loot, slaves, and to settle clan feuds, living much as their
Scythian ancestors had millennia before.
The largest and most distinctive of these nomadic nations in the mid eighth century
were the Khazars, a western remnant of the former Gokturk Khaganate which had broken
away and grew to dominate much of modern-day Southern Russia.
Known primarily for their conversion to Judaism, the Khazars also dominated trade along the
great Dnieper, Volga and Don Rivers for centuries, exporting luxuries from across the world into
Europe when the Islamic world had previously cut their supply.
This continued until pressure from Rus’ warlords and the knife edge of Byzantine diplomacy
began to fragment their authority.
Travelling across the high Caucasus Mountains, which repeatedly served as a nigh-unbreakable
obstacle protecting the nomads’ steppe realm from the Islamic tide, stood what at first
glance was the largest state in the world by 867 - the Abbasid Caliphate.
Stretching from Africa to Central Asia, the third united Muslim state held vast amounts
of influence, a flourishing culture, and advanced science for the age.
As the ninth century progressed however, any true authority that the caliph in Baghdad
possessed gradually degraded until the nominally unified Muslim world was, in reality, just
as divided as the faltering Carolingian Empire in Europe.
As rival Abbasid rulers struggled for the throne aided by various military power brokers,
peripheral regions of the Islamic Empire broke away from the centre.
A key example of this trend of regionalism occured in the Abbasid far east, where several
Iranian dynasties such as the Samanids, Saffarids, Tahirids and Afrighids still paid lip service
to the caliph in Baghdad, but governed their own domains.
Similarly in Egypt, a mamluk governor of Turkic origin known as Ahmad ibn Tulun ruled Egypt
as a quasi-independent Emir.
West of the Tulunids, a series of small Muslim princedoms dotted the Northern coast of Africa.
The further away from Baghdad a traveller of the age went, the more independent states
he would observe.
For instance, the powerful Aghlabid Dynasty occupying modern Tunisia and Sicily still
recognised its subordinate status to the Abbasids, but was autonomous in all but name.
Interestingly, one of the many reasons for the prodigious wealth and power of the Aghlabids
can be attributed to Ancient Rome.
During the ninth century, agricultural fertility in Africa remained prosperous, in part because
of the Roman irrigation system established there centuries earlier.
In contrast, its frequent military opponent in modern Algeria - the Persian Rustamids
- barely acknowledged the caliph’s authority at all, primarily due to the sheer distance
between themselves and the capital.
Ruled from Tiaret by a line of Ibadi Imams, this theocracy remained a key nexus in trade
between Subsaharan Africa and the Middle East for generations.
Beyond Rustamid territory, the fortunes of the first true Moroccan kingdom - founded
by a grandson of the Shia’s second Imam Ali in 788 - were in a deep decline.
The realm had been decentralised following the death of one ruler and by 867 was poised
to be attacked by many surrounding Berber tribes.
Turning south and riding a camel down the West African seaboard before turning inland,
an aspiring adventurer or merchant would eventually reach the fabled Ghana Empire.
This dominion had ascended to incredible richness due to a thriving Trans-Saharan trade in salt
and gold, facilitating the development of substantial urban centres.
Such routes of commerce also brought Islamic merchants and their powerful religion deep
into Africa and, although it is unknown just how much the Ghana Empire embraced Islam,
it had some influence alongside ancient African faiths and gods which had existed for hundreds
or even thousands of years beforehand.
On the opposite edge of the continent, a series of small, Arabia-facing statelets on the Somalian
coast engaged in continuous seaborne [trade?] on the Indian Ocean, with most eventually
converting to Islam.
Inland, however, the story was quite different, where Nubian kingdoms, including those of
Alodia and Makuria, retained their Roman-influenced Christianity.
Trading vessels departing the eastern shores of Africa might eventually land in one of
the fabled lands of wealth and plenty, India, ready to business and make profit.
However, during the mid ninth century, the entities with which they dealt might change
on a yearly basis, depending on the political situation at the time.
In 867, the Indian subcontinent was in the midst of its so-called ‘Middle Kingdoms’
period, a somewhat confusing era of constant warfare and change which historian Upinder
Singh described well: “The contours of the kingdoms of early medieval India were fluid
and difficult to define.”
Because of this, a frozen-in-time snapshot of the region taken in one specific year does
not correctly portray the dynamic nature of the period.
Several larger and more established kingdoms did indeed exist during the Indian medieval
period, including those of the Rashtrakuta, Chola and Pratihara dynasties, which held
sway over vast areas of the subcontinent.
However, their presence is only part of the story.
Interspersed between and sometimes within India’s great powers were smaller political
entities which had to exert diplomatic, financial, and economic influence in order to survive
in such a harsh age.
An alternative strategy was to be subjugated, voluntarily or otherwise, to a larger power.
This would begin a feudal-like relationship in which subordinate kings were obliged to
grant their overlords allegiance and military aid when required.
Inscriptions refer to greater suzerains by three primary terms: maharajadhiraja, parameshvara
and parama-bhattaraka, who held authority over those referred to as maharaja, samanta,
mahasamata or ranaka.
Almost all elites of the kingdoms enclosed within the geopolitical ecosystem of India
adhered to the ancient Brahmanic Hindu faith, but there was also much Jain and Buddhist
influence melded into the subcontinent’s cultural pot.
Islam was beginning to exert itself also, especially on the western coast, but early
invasions of India by the Caliphate had been emphatically repelled.
In addition to these primary regions and powers, several other individual states scattered
across the 867 world deserve mention because of what they would soon blossom into, despite
their seemingly innocuous extent and relatively unknown status in the western world.
Dangerously sandwiched between the Abbasids’ Persian splinter feudatories and Hindu Shahi
territories were the Ghurids.
Initially a Buddhist clan ruling only a small area of Central Asia, the Ghurids would, over
the course of several centuries, convert to Islam and take everything in their way until
they controlled an empire stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Bay of Bengal.
Straddling the northeastern coast of the Caspian Sea was a small nomadic khanate of Islamised
Turkic peoples known to history as the Oghuz Yabghu State.
Having migrated from the Mongolian Plateau following a period of strife on the steppe,
they were notable for what they would spawn in the future.
In the eleventh century, when the movement of Turkic peoples into Central Asia reached
its zenith, a small band of disaffected nomads led by a man called Seljuk travelled into
the Islamic world and began gradually gaining power.
After gaining considerable strength, the burgeoning Seljuk Empire, led by Tughril, would essentially
overlap the Abbasids, becoming their nominal protectors.
Warfare between the Great Seljuks, future Fatimid Caliphate, and Byzantine Empire also
disrupted the balance of power near Jerusalem, and initiated a series of events leading to
the Crusades.
The later ninth century was, throughout most of the world, the very beginnings of a new
age.
Alfred the Great’s successful defence of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms against Norse conquerors
eventually gave birth to a unified Kingdom of England.
At the same time, increasing Carolingian division on the continent foreshadowed almost a millennium
of internecine warfare between Europe’s later Medieval realms.
In the next video in this miniseries sponsored by Paradox Interactive and Crusader Kings
III, we will talk about the year 1066, so make sure you are subscribed to our channel
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