Timeline 1190-1200 (Interference)

1191-1195
1190-1194

Northern Europe: Hermann, margrave of the Palatinate, inherits Thuringia from his elder brother, Ludwig V the Mild. Dietrich count of Groitzsch, a minor heir to the Wettin dynasty of Misnia/Meissen, which is a Bohemian vassal, begins claiming parts of Thuringia as a dowry, having married Jutta, Ludwig's only daughter. The issue ruins German-Bohemian relations and in the end causes the short Thuringian Dowry War, won by the Germans at the battle of Tannafeld, which marks the end of Bohemian supremacy in central Europe. The subsequent peace settlement sees both Meissen and Brandenburg return to the fold as German vassals. A final marriage between another Jutta:confused:, daughter of Hermann, and another Dietrich:confused: , the titular margrave of Misnia/Meissen and head of the Wettin house, settles the issue by marginally enlarging the Wettins' possessions with some Thuringian lands.

1191 Southern Europe: Savona rejects the Del Carretto feudal yoke and re-establishes herself as a free Comune. The Genoese build a fortress in Monaco (*Montecarlo), gainging confirmation of their possession from the dukes of Ventimiglia. Duke Berchtold II of Alamannia (Berchtold V von Zähringen) founds the city of Berne.

Byzantine Empire: The imperial army completes the expulsion of Lesser Norman forces from continental Greece and Albania; some of the vanquished invaders are integrated into the army as pronoiars (feudatories owing service to the basileus).

Middle East: Arab forces press into Lebanon, besieging and conquering some key Crusader fortresses, and unsuccesfully besieging Tyre.

India: Caliph Muhammad of Ghor, betrayed by some of his generals on orders from his brothers, is defeated and killed in the battle of Taraori/Tarain by the Chauhan Rajput ruler of Ajmer, Prithvi Raj III, and his vassal Govinda of Delhi. 1191-1194

Central-Eastern Europe, Southern Europe: The Cumans storm the Vlacho-Bulgarian empire and Hungary, extorting tributes from both.

1192

Middle East: Sultan Abdullah Saif ul-Islam leads his armies to the conquest of Aleppo from the Templars, then defeats the Antiochene Crusaders at Harim castle and puts Antioch itself under siege. Desperate calls from help result in Pope Leo IX (*OTL Celestine III) calling the Fourth Crusade against the powerful Arab ruler

Southern Europe: Greater and Lesser Norman, Burgundian and Lombard Crusaders, under the ultimate leadership of emperor Amaury I of Greater Normandy, are ferried from Provence, Lombardy and Italy to Jaffa and Acre, where they assemble to fight back the Arabs. The Byzantines stem a Serbian invasion along the Vardar. Ragusa/Dubrovnik makes a trade agreement with Serbia, becoming its commercial outlet on the Mediterranean.

Central-Eastern Europe: The death of margrave Ottokar/Odoacer IV extinguishes the dynasty of Styria. According to the last will of the duke, Styria is merged into personal union with Carinthia under Ulrich II von Sponheim. Central-Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Byzantine Empire: A powerful German-Luxemburgian army, led by Henry, first living son of king Frederick II (*OTL Barbarossa) of Germany, and Henry the Strong, heir to the Welf duchy of Bavaria, crosses Hungary and Serbia with no opposition, entering then Byzantine territory and wintering near Adrianople. Byzantine welcome is cold at best, but fortunately (for the Byzantines:D ) no major clashes happen.

Far East: Minamoto no Yoritomo is granted the title of Shogun (generalissimo), marking the rise of the first shogunate (military rule) in Japanese history. The emperors are by now reduced to mostly ceremonial role, if preserving great influence.

1193

Southern Europe: Venetian and German Crusaders are “hijacked” by Doge Enrico Dandolo, old and blind but still very shrewd and strong, to the conquest and sack of Hungarian-held Zara, before proceeding to Syria through Crete and Cyprus.

Byzantine Empire The Crusaders, with the Byzantine army cautiously on tow :p as a security guard, are ferried to Anatolia, where they retake Caesarea/Mazhak from the Ortoqids, clearing the way for Cilicia and the Levant.

Middle East: Antioch falls to the Arab siege a week before the Crusaders and their Cilician-Armenian allies can arrive, and is subjected to a ruthless massacre of all non-Muslim population:mad:, including prince Magnus of Châtillon-Antioch and his mother Theodora Sigurdopoula. When the Crusaders arrive and discover the carnage, they retake the city in a few weeks: no mercy is shown, with all captured Muslims put to death or mutilated with utmost cruelty :mad: :mad: :mad:. Antioch (or its surviving ruins) is then bestowed upon the Knights Templar, who'll turn it into a huge, outstanding fortress-town. Some German Crusaders, impressed by the example of fierce bravery and fanaticism given by the mostly Anglo-French and Luxemburgian Templars, establish the Teutonic Order as its German-speaking counterpart. The southern Crusader army, bolstered by Sicilian and North African reinforcements, moves instead from Palestine against the core territories of the Saifid sultanate (*Abdullah's empire), recapturing al-Kerak and Helim/Aqaba. An attempted advance towards Medina proves an utter disaster:( due to the harsh desert climate, and most of the Crusader army is decimated by thirst and Bedouin raids, with only the North African cavalry performing well and protecting the painful withdrawal to the Jordan. 1194

Southern Europe: The tiny sea-trading town of Noli (Liguria) gains independence from the Del Carretto margraves, becoming a free republic under Genoese protection. The Byzantine fleet retakes the Ionian islands (save Venetian Corfu) from the Italo-Norman Margaritone da Brindisi, who ruled there as an independent prince.

North Africa: Paul Iron Cross crushes the Spanish and Andalusian Crusaders in their strongholds at Sefta/Ceuta and Tangiers, ousting them from northern Mauretania (*OTL Morocco); he is thereafter hailed as prince of the Rawel (*OTL Rif) and king of the Maurians, his tolerance of Catharism healing past divisions.

Byzantine Empire: Basileus Alexius II Branas dies, leaving the empire to his son, Theodosius IV (*The ill-fated co-emperor murdered in 658 by his brother Belisarius II is counted as Theodosius III). Middle East: Mohammed Mansur Billah leads an Arab army in the invasion of Palestine, which is ravaged. After torching the Nativity Church in Bethlehem and killing all Christians on their way, the Arabs put Jerusalem under siege, but to no avail. A relief force led by emperor Amaury I of Greater Normandy, the nominal overlord of all Crusader states, breaks the siege and drives back the invaders beyond the Jordan. In Lebanon and Syria the Templars, the German Crusaders and the Cilician Armenians recapture various strongholds and castles, but are heavily defeated outside Hamah.

Central Asia: The last Greater Seljuk ruler, Tughril Beg III, falls in battle against Ala ud-Din Tukush Shah of Khorezm, who is able to enforce his rule over most of Persia/Iran up to the Zagros range.

Far East: In China the Huang He (Yellow River) changes it course, flowing into the more southerly Huai He, and provoking major floods and disasters; it will keep this course up to 1853, swamping vast swathes of otherwise good agricultural land. Emperor Guangzong of Song China is forced to abdicate in favor of his relative Ningzong.

1194-1195

Northern Europe: King Sverre of Norway is again challenged by the Øyskjegg rebellion under Hallkjell Jonsson, supported by the last Vikings from the Shetlands and Orkneys. The rebels are decisively trounced at the naval battle of Florvåg.

Southern Europe: Judge-king Guglielmo Salusco IV of Cagliari/Santa Igia, supported by Pisan and Lesser Norman forces, plunders the judicate of Torres, then invades and vassalizes Arborea by razing its capital, Oristano, and enforcing marriages between the Arborean heirs and his daughters. Genoese-Lombard control (*the king of Lombardy is titular king of Sardinia and theoretical overlord of Genoa) is put to an end, and Torres is given back to its old former ruler, Robert III, as a vassal of the Lesser Norman kingdom.

1194-1198

India: The Ghorid general Qutb ud-Din Aibak, a Turkic slave-soldier (Ghulam), seizes power in the Indus valley from the feuding Ghorid rulers, establishing his power base in Lahore and earning the nickname Ghazi (fighter for the faith) for his spirited defence against Rajput encroachments of Muslim-held territories.

1194-1199

Southern Europe: Genoa imposes its unrequested “protection” to the ports of the Eastern (Levante) Riviera

1195

Northern Europe: Henry the Lion, duke of Bavaria, dies. His second son, Lothar, succeeds him on the Bavarian throne, and when news arrive that his brother Henry has died in the Holy Land, gains confirmation from king Frederick II (*OTL Barbarossa) of the Compromise of Augsburg of 1169, which would make him the heir apparent to the German crown and has been preserving peace in Germany for decades. King Canute I of Sweden dies. Being his children still too young, the Swedish nobility hails as king the Danish-grown Sverker II, heir of the rival Sverkersson house.

Byzantine Empire: The Byzantines are ousted by Caesarea/Mazhak at the hands of Frederick the Asian von Babenberg, the young Crusading duke of Austria, which sets up again a Crusader state in Cappadocia and establishes the Akrite Order (from the [I]akritai[/I], the old Byzantine bordermen fighting Muslim invaders). Unusually, the Order will be open to both Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians, and accordingly divided into two sections, loyal to their appointed commanders and to the ultimate authority of duke Frederick.

Caucasus: David Soslan, consort king of Iberia/Georgia, trounces the Azeris at the battle of Shamkor.

Middle East: The Crusaders mount an unsuccessful expedition against Damascus, suffering a thorough defeat, then most of the armies head home in Europe. The Arab-Crusader conflict reduces to violent raids in Palestine and Jordan and cruel reprisals and manhunts agains the Bedouin tribes, the Jews and the unfortunate Muslim peasantry.

1196-1200
1196

British Isles: An Arnaldist revolt led by William FitzOsbern sets London ablaze, then is crushed by emperor Amaury I the Great in person, just back from the Holy Land; the leaders are hanged, drawn and quartered for treason. The Coghound Atlantic pirates from the Canaries stage their first attack on the British Isles by kidnapping from Truro Castle prince Alan the Red, heir to the Cornish throne. The prince is held prisoner in a castle in Ireland and freed only after a rich ransom is paid.

Southern Europe: Stefan Nemanja, by now an old man, abdicates the Serbian throne and retires as a monk together with one of his sons, Rastko (later known as St. Sava of the Serbs). His domains are divided between his two sons, with the first born, Vukan, receiving Zeta (later Melanoria, *OTL Montenegro) and the second son Stefan II Nemanja Serbia proper.

Byzantine Empire: The Iberians/Georgians of Queen Tamara and consort king David Soslan conquer Theodosiopolis (*OTL Erzurum) from the Danishmendids.

Caucasus: The Alans vainly besiege Derbent.

1196-1198

British Isles: With the kidnapping of Alan of Cornwall as a pretext, emperor Amaury I of Greater Normandy lands in Ireland with a 20,000-strong army, bolstered by Welsh and Northumbrian contingents, and methodically proceeds to reduce the Irish kingdoms and the rebellious clans, one by one. After having himself crowned High King of Ireland (the title was hotly contested between no less than three native claimants when he landed), Amaury leaves for England; some dozens of new feudatories remain (especially in the south-east) with their private armies to enforce Norman rule and exact tributes from the Irishmen. 1196-1199

Western Europe: The march of Namur is seized by king Henry V of Luxemburg-Brabant upon the death of margrave Henry I the Blind. 10 years-old Ermesinde, last heiress to Namur, is kidnapped by margrave Robert V of Flanders and Hainault, also coveting Namur and its important fortress. The following war marks the secession of Flanders-Hainault from Luxemburg-Brabant, as in the end Greater Norman intervention fosters the great victory of the Flemings and Normans at Genappe-la-Motte. The vanquished Henry V is forced to abdicate the Luxemburgian throne in favor of his son, Henry VI, who renews vassalage to the Greater Norman Empire.

1196-1202

Northern Europe: The Bagler party, made up of disgruntled nobles and landlords exiled in Denmark, invades southern Norway, and in time even manages to control Trøndelag, King Sverre's power base. The ruler and his loyal Birkebeiners take refuge in Bergen and resist a siege as the city is burnt to ashes. Then Sverre recovers Nidaros/Trondheim and soundly defeats the Baglers first by sea, then by land, before dying and leaving the throne to Haakon III, his only son.

1196-1215

India: The Ganga kingdom of Kalinga (Orissa, eastern India) invades and ravages northern Sri Lanka/Ceylon.

1197

Northern Europe: King Frederick II of Germany (*OTL Barbarossa) dies after 37 years of reign, hailed as a savior of the fatherland and a just ruler. The Electoral Diet convenes in Braunschweig/Brunswick, and, as from accords, elects as the new king of Germany the Welf duke of Bavaria, Lothar (Lothar II as king). The king and the electors take then a solemn oath to support as his successor Henry the Crusader of Saxony, Frederick's son, or another suitable Staufen heir should he die. Central-Eastern Europe: Otakar/Ottokar I seizes the throne of Bohemia, restoring the country's strength after a decade of dynastical strife. His deposed brother, Vladislav III, must content himself with holding Moravia.

North Africa: Young king William II of Lesser Normandy, after making a detour in Sardinia to bolster his ally Guglielmo Salusco IV of Cagliari/Santa Igia, invades Ifrigia (later Punia, OTL Tunisia) to re-install his brother-in-law, Florentius I, on the throne of Bardapolis (*OTL Tunis), whence he had been deposed by his step-brother Gregory Skyphion.

Byzantine Empire: Czar George I of the Vlacho-Bulgarians wages war on Byzantium to reinstall in Constantinople his father-in-law Basil I Vatatzes, exiled in Bulgaria. Skupiokastritsa (*OTL Skopje) falls to the Vlacho-Bulgarians; the Byzantines in turn ally with Hungary and the Cumans. Byzantine Empire, Middle East: The Danishmendids are defeated and vassalized by the Ortoqids, who wrest control over Melitene (*OTL Malatya) and most of the Euphrates valley from them.

Middle East: The Sultan of Arabia, Abdullah Saif-ul-Islam bin Yusuf an-Nafudi, is murdered by the Syrian Assassins in Damascus as he prepared an expedition to crush the Ortoqids; his favourite son, Musa al-Jawhar Ghazi, inherits his empire after a short, sharp succession struggle with his 23 (!) siblings.

Central Asia: Ala ud-Din Tukush Shah of Khorezm captures the Persian Nizari Assassin stronghold of Arslan-Gusha (northern Persia/Iran) but doesn't manage to bring down their organization.

India: Mahadharma I, a Buddhist general in the service of the Sena kingdom, revolts and sets up his capital in Pataliputra/Patna, laying the foundations of the splendid Dharma Empire. 1197-1207

Southern Europe: Genoese privateers hold Corfu island till they are ousted by the Venetian navy.

1198

Southern Europe: Pope Leo IX (*OTL Celestine III) dies. The Council of Cardinals elects as the new Pope and king of Italy/Spoleto the Archbishop of Constantina (Numidia, *OTL Algeria), Zachary of Igilgi (*OTL Jijel), who assumes the name of Paul II: he'll be called “the Saracen Pope” for his unique knowledge of the Arab language, learnt in childhood as a hostage among the Muslim Banu Hilal bedouins of Libya. Nice defeats a Genoese assault and asserts herself as another important sea-trading republic.

North Africa: The Pisans wrench Djirva (*OTL Djerba) from the Genoese

Central-Eastern Europe: Czar Volodar of Polotsk/Palteskei is murdered by his step-brother David, in turn eliminated by Skirmunt, the commander of the army and duke of Sudovia, who leads his Yotvingians to the conquest of the capital. Skirmunt then accepts baptism in the Orthodox Church as Iwan, Czar of Lithuania and Ruthenia.

Byzantine Empire: The Vlacho-Bulgarians route the imperial army at the battle of Triavna Pass. When Vardariote general Demetrios Tzoulas switches side with his tagma (corps, legion), marching along with the Vlacho-Bulgarians onto Constantinople to reinstall Basil Vatatzes, the latter is poisoned to death by a Byzantine agent and the invading army melts away, suffering a thorough defeat in the subsequent battle of Arcadiopolis, where Tzoulas commits suicide.

1198-1199

Southern Europe: King Anselm II of Canossa, Tuscany and Transbardonia (*an ATL medieval name for Emilia, of literary use) dies leaving no heir. His many nephews and cousins begin vying for the crown, allying themselves with Communal and feudal forces and basically sounding the death knell for the shaky, short-lived kingdom. When king Berengario II of Lombardy advances south with an army, he is quickly acknowledged as the legitimate ruler by most towns and feudatories. Though the Canossas refuse to accept this, they do not agree on who must be the senior (and thus the king) in the family, and their vast holdings remain divided in local shares, eclipsing the clan's importance.

1198-1200

North Africa: Sultan al-Adil Saphadin of Egypt gets rid of his rebellious nephews, al-Aziz and al-Afdal, sons of Salah ad-Din, by exploiting thir mutual rivalry to eliminate them one at a time.

1198-1201

Northern Europe: Foundation of the monastic military Order of the Swordbearers (or Sword Brethren) of Livonia by the Frisian Albert von Buxhoeveden, appointed by his uncle, archbishop Hartwig of Bremen and Hamburg, as bishop of Livonia, where he founds the town of Riga. The order's task is to enforce conversion to Christian Catholicism upon the native Livs, a Finnic people, and their Baltic neighbours, which they begin with the help of Caupo of Turaida, the Livonian ruler, already converted to Catholicism.

1199

Southern Europe: The citizens of Ferrara expel Ranieri the Mad, a Canossa scion who had seized the town, and invite the margrave of Este, Azzone VI, as podestà (chief magistrate). Being Azzone a feudatory of the German king, this starts a war as Berengario II of Lombardy now considers himself to be the sole overlord of the former Canossa kingdom.

India: Qutb-ud-Din Aibak Ghazi, sultan of Lahore, defeats Prithvi Raj III of Ajmer at the Sutlej river.

12th century

Southern Europe, Central-Eastern Europe: The semi-nomadic Vlach herdsmen swarm in the Sklaviniai (*OTL Balkans), from Transylvania and Bulgaria to Thessaly and Histria.

Caucasus, Byzantine Empire: Historical Armenia is deeply Turkicized by subsequent waves of Turkoman tribes from Iran/Persia. Most Armenians emigrate west into the Anatolian heartland, Cappadocia, the Euphrates valley and Cilicia (Armenia Minor). Also the Kurds are significantly Turkicized, though retaining a distinct identity.

India: The Buddhist Sinhalese of Sri Lanka/Ceylon begin to move south after the weakening of the Polonnaruwa kingdom and the Pandya, Chola and Ganga raids. In the north-eastern parts of the island the Hindu Tamils gain paramountry.

1200

Southern Europe: The Venetic League swears allegiance to Berengario II of Lombardy, overtly rejecting German authority. A strong German army marches through the Alps and plunders Verona along the way, but is thrashed by the united forces of the Lombard army and the Venetic towns at the battle of San Zenone, where king Lothar II himself is captured. Also the forces of the Aquileian Patriarchate, (a German Electoral principate) get a bloody nose at the battle of Oderzo as they try to subdue the rival Comune of Treviso. These battles mark the end of German Bernmark (Veneto) after 252 years; with the Peace of San Bonifacio and the contemporary fall of the Canossa kingdom, Lombardy's size increases dramatically, but at the price of a further fragmentation between the royal domains and a constellation of unruly Comuni and feudatories. In Ferrara Azzone VI of Este, the living cause of the Lombard-German war, remains as podestà, acknowledging Berengario II of Lombardy as his overlord also for his family holdings in Veneto. The dispossessed German margrave of Bernmark, Welf VII, is later compensated by his distant cousin, king Lothar II of Germany, with some estates in Bavaria and Franconia; his descendants will form the powerful von Frohnberg family. The Hungarians are heavily defeated at the Timok river by the Vlacho-Bulgarians, who conquer Belgrade.

ca. 1200

Southern Europe: The Walsers (a tiny group of Alamannic stock) begin their migration, populating the upper valleys of the Lombard side of the Pennine Alpes. The Pisan mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci, after his studies abroad in Bardapolis (*OTL Tunis) and Jaffa, introduces Arabic numerals and decimal notation into the Western world.

Central-Eastern Europe: The Selonians, settled in OTL eastern Latvia and Lithuania, convert to Orthodox Christianity after the efforts of the White Ruthenian Church of Polotsk/Palteskei; Czar Iwan Skirmunt of Lithuania and Ruthenia enforces conversion, and a close run for Christianization and conquest of the Baltic tribes begins between his empire and the encroaching German Crusaders (Swordbearers) from Livonia.

Black Africa: The powerful Chadian kingdom of Kanem conquers Darfur and converts it to Caliphist Islam; it also vassalizes the unruly Zaghawas of Tibesti, in the very heart of the Zenete Desert (*OTL Sahara). The tribal state of Zamfara is founded astride OTL's Niger-Nigeria border. The Akan peoples settle central-southern Gold Coast (*OTL Ghana).

Middle East: The Myriamite sect, a unique Marian cult synthesis of Islam, Judaism and Christianity, arises in Galilee through the preaching of Jacob from Tiberias, bastard son of a Lombard feudal baron and a Muwahid (*OTL Druze) woman. Immediate persecution follows, but the cult gains ground in Palestine and parts of Syria.

East Africa: The Coptic Zagwe dynasty reunifies the highland of Ethiopia under negus (emperor) Gebra Maskal Lalibela.

SE Asia: Apogee of the Khmer Empire under Jayavarman VII, who conquers Annam, bits of the Malay peninsula and reaches the boundaries of Burma. Northern Hesperia (*OTL America): The Rwadhan (*OTL Mandan) culture arises between OTL central Appalachians and OTL Mississippi river: the natives, after learning from Riryd's Welshmen metal-working and the use of the longbow, soon are able to dominate vast swathes of sparsely populated land. The Norsemen of Skraelingarland (*OTL Acadia), thanks to an otherwise unnoticed ship coming from Iceland, introduce the first horses in Hesperia (*OTL America), mostly to their very surprise since even they hadn't had any for some two centuries. Against the encroachments of the Norsemen, now organized into a vaguely theocratic league under a bishop and a Lawspeaker, with half-blood and natives as thralls (serfs), and their allied tribes the first strong Mikkmak kingdom arises, led by a succession of rulers known with the Norse name of Banskeknungar.

Central Hesperia (*OTL America): In central Mexico the last remains of the Toltec Empire wane.

Southern Hesperia (*OTL America): The Huari/Wari empire (located in OTL Peru) crumbles.