1580 – Taqi al-Din Arrives in Marrakesh

After decades of a life dedicated to science, Taqi al-Din found his career derailed by politics. He had studied endlessly in Syria and Egypt, collecting friendships with others who were interested in natural philosophy. These relationships gave him access to some of the leading private libraries in the world as scholars shared with one another and brought Taqi al-Din into a rapport of the governor of Egypt Samiz al Pasha, whose clock collection was a marvel of advanced mechanics. In 1570, 44-year-old Taqi al-Din arrived in Istanbul with enough clout that, following death of the head Ottoman astronomer the next year, Taqi al-Din became the empire’s official timekeeper and recorder of astronomical observations.

Taqi al-Din dedicated his work to improving observations he had made in Egypt and drafting new records using the towers of Istanbul. The physical limitations prompted him to appeal to the court for a new observatory. It was completed in 1579 and became the greatest center for astronomical research in the world, but imperial edict ordered it demolished just a few months later in 1580. Historians disagree on the reason with some pointing to Taqi al-Din falling out of favor after stating that the Comet of 1577 was to be a sign of great success for the empire when the year proved one of bitter plague. Others suggested the tower was seen as a decadent waste while military spending needed to be kept high. Still others say that religious leaders pressured the sultan to put Taqi al-Din on trial for heresy and cutting back the astronomer’s efforts was a way to spare his life.

Whatever the reason, Taqi al-Din felt that his life in Istanbul had ended and sought a new life at another court: that of Ahmad al-Mansur in Morocco. Ahmad al-Mansur had traveled a good deal as a young man avoiding his older brother to ensure he could not be seen as a threat to be removed. While in the protective Ottoman Empire, Ahmad al-Mansur studied voraciously, consuming every subject scholars could teach him. In 1578, Ahmad al-Mansur’s brother died while defeating the Portuguese at the Battle of Alacer Quibir. Ahmad al-Mansur arrived as the new sultan and established himself by taking an aggressive stance against Portugal on ransoms for prisoners from their defeat. Flush with gold, Ahmad al-Mansur began construction projects such as the El Badi Palace and deepened a military alliance with England, exchanging valuable saltpeter for naval-grade timber.

Ahmad al-Mansur welcomed Taqi al-Din, although he was slow to set him to astronomical work that might be seen as thieving from the Ottomans. The Saadi dynasty in the west had maintained independence by careful diplomacy, and Morocco was hardly in a military position to face invaders from the east with Spain and Portugal just on the north side of Gibraltar. Instead, Ahmad al-Mansur turned Taqi al-Din to some of his earlier work with mechanics, specifically the movement of water for irrigation in the dry nation. Soon Moroccans began drilling wells and raising water from unheard of depths, expanding farmland and flocks to great wealth.

Taqi al-Din also furthered his research on self-moving machines. In Egypt in 1551, he had designed a spit that rotated itself using steam from the fire below. After further years of studying steam pressure, he created a specialized solar-driven furnace that could turn seawater into steam to push a ship in the notoriously windless doldrums and horse latitudes. Ahmad al-Mansur kept the device a military secret, and Moroccan ships became feared for their uncanny speed. They outpaced the Portuguese merchants so regularly that rumors began to spread of captured djinn being somehow driving the ships. Superstition and sheer velocity devastated the Portuguese trade with India, which ultimately became a monopoly for Morocco and its allies in England.

With his country’s wealth blossoming, Ahmad al-Mansur worked to expand his rule. In 1590, his forces marched into the divided Songhai Empire south of the Sahara, seizing powerful centers of trade like Timbuktu and Gao. The enormous distance across difficult terrain caused new problems for Saadi rule, and Ahmad al-Mansur set Taqi al-Din to task resolving it. His solution was to construct and maintain a smooth roadway that could support wheeled vehicles rather than the journey being limited to camel caravans. The work fascinated him with self-propelled vehicles, drawing him back to steam-driven engines powered by water pulled from deeply drilled wells. Many of his designs would be put into action after his death in 1601.

Ahmad al-Mansur sought new mechanically-minded individuals for his court, famously bribing Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont to leave Spain after being granted a patent by the crown for his steam-powered water pumps in 1606. The Spaniard applied his steam-powered water pumps to work in the burgeoning iron and coal mines in Morocco and the expanded gold mines along the Niger River. Shortly before Ahmad al-Mansur’s passing in 1616, Italian Giovanni Branca arrived with a notebook of potential mechanical devices automating numerous tasks and was awarded a role that would lead to Morocco’s position as the leader of manufacturing in the world.

By the middle of the seventeenth century, Morocco would be one of the leading powers of the world. Ahmad al-Mansur’s descendants made real his dream of Muslim colonies in the Americas by seizing Brazil and much of South America east of the Andes from Portugal and, later, Spain. Moroccan trade eastward blocked the efforts of Christian settlements in Africa and India, both of which adopted Islam in urban centers. The Moroccan-English Alliance supported the growth of Islam in England, leading to the chaos of the Religious Wars well into the eighteenth century. Although its empire has broken into more of an economic commonwealth today, Morocco continues to serve as the technological research center of the world, dispatching aid to less advanced northerly nations.

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In reality, Taqi al-Din continued life in Istanbul, where he passed away in 1585. Ahmad al-Mansur died in 1603 from plague, and the kingdom fell into two decades of civil war among his sons.

Guest Post: 8 February, 1943 - Madame Kollontai recalled to Moscow

This story originally appeared on Today in Alternate History.

"The fear that Moscow and Berlin might again come to terms preoccupied American and British statesman long after Hitler had forced the unwilling Stalin to join the Allied coalition." ~ Stalin and the Prospects of a Separate Peace in World War II by Vojtech Mastny (1972)



In 1930, the aristocratic daughter of a Tsarist general, Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai, had been an unusual choice to head the Soviet legation to Sweden. Nevertheless, over the following thirteen turbulent years, she had achieved much to ensure Swedish neutrality and was even considered for promotion to ambassador. However, at seventy years of age, her health was rapidly failing, and she was forced to check into a sanatorium. She then returned to Moscow during late February 1943. Her remarkable contribution to the Revolution was praised by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov.

Socialist Convention, 1910

Mikhailovna had been a long-term compatriot of Rosa Luxemberg, a leading Polish-born communist who was brutally murdered by German right-wing elements during the Spartacist uprising twenty-five years earlier. Given the circumstances of this atrocity, she nurtured a deep-seated hatred of the Nazis that made her totally the wrong person to open peace feelers.

But with her colourful presence suddenly removed from the scene, Hans Thomsen, the German diplomat in Stockholm, sensed a stronger appetite for compromise in the new Soviet legation. With the annihilation of German forces at Stalingrad, the power between the two belligerents had temporarily reached a moment of balance. None of these developments would have changed calculations in Berlin because of the planned offensive to launch Operation Citadel. However, the prospect of peace certainly did appear to change the assessment of officers in the Army Group Centre on the Eastern Front. Consequently from Thomsen's reported encouragement, Hitler (and also Himmler to avoid a civil war breaking out between the Wehrmacht and the SS) were assassinated on the orders of Major Georg von Boeselager during a visit to the headquarters in Smolensk on 13 March.

The new Fuhrer Hermann Göring, having been a member of the Nazi Party since 1922, was no more likely to be accepted by the Allies than Hitler's former deputy Rudolf Hess. However, there were valid reasons for Stalin to show a great deal more trust in Göring than Hitler. A veteran World War I fighter pilot ace, Göring was a recipient of the "The Blue Max" and also the last commander of Jagdgeschwader 1, the fighter wing once led by Manfred von Richthofen. In short, his military judgement was far more sound, and Stalin did not so much as trust Göring on a personal level rather to be convinced that he and the Germany military leadership were committed to peace given their action in assassinating Hitler. Ultimately, Stalin believed that Göring, had he been in charge of the Third Reich two years earlier, would not have launched Operation Barbarossa and was, after all, willing to cancel Operation Citadel. Göring and Stalin were able to negotiate a separate peace. Göring, privately, realised that the German army was lacking experienced soldiers and, even equipped with the new models of tanks, were unlikely to triumph, which contributed to his friendliness with a strong enemy.
 
Operation Citadel was cancelled, but so too was the flow of Allied supplies to the Soviet Union as the separate peace deal caused an anti-red backlash in the West. With a presidential election looming in the United States, and Franklin D. Roosevelt himself in declining health, time was of the essence as far as the Western Allies were concerned. As a demagogue playing the long-game, Stalin might have been prepared to cede territory, at least for the time being, but the elected democracies in the West were never going to agree to anything short of unconditional surrender. Instead, the Western Allies remained stubborn even though the end of hostilities on the Eastern Front enabled Göring to reinforce the Atlantic defences

The Wehrmacht gained a full year equipping troops with brand new equipment that had time to fully work out the bugs from the Panzer and Tiger tanks and the new semi-automatic carbines. They also gained the resources necessary to improve their surface-to-air missile program that used homing missiles against bomber formations. Nevertheless, within twelve months, Allied forces had landed in Normandy and the Third Reich was doomed by the overwhelming military power of the West. It was now Stalin's turn to abrogate a peace deal, but his Red Army was equipped with American vehicles and no spare parts.

It was re-election year in the United States, and with the strong possibility of a Republican isolationist being voted into office, there was hesitation to restart the Lend-Lease programme. Stalin watched in powerless horror as a tank carrying General Patton entered Berlin in triumph.

Author's Note:

In reality, Madame Kollontai remained in Stockholm and her diplomatic initiatives with Thomsen are disputed. Mastny later blamed Kollontai for the failure of the talks. Provine's Addendum:FDR narrowly won his fourth term in office through vigorous campaigning that seemed designed to show he was in full health. Most of his energy was devoted to distancing himself from Stalin, while the Republicans lambasted his previous outreach to the Soviet Union. Despite the show, or perhaps because of it, Roosevelt was exhausted and passed away in April of 1945, never seeing the end of the wars he worked to win. Truman received the mantle and continued the fight with Allied soldiers slogging away both in Europe and the Pacific. Germany was the foremost opponent, whom Allies attacked through Churchill's preferred "soft underbelly of Europe," encouraging local resistance to frustrate German defenses as much as possible on the long road to liberation. Berlin finally fell in winter of 1945 with another coup fueled by starving civilians breaking the Nazi grip. In 1946, Japan fell after the fourth use of atomic weapons when a counter-coup wrested control from the Kyujo militarists who had seized what was left of the government after the destruction of Tokyo to drive the islands to fight to the last man.The war ended, but occupation and rebuilding was a long process. War-weary citizens voted out Churchill and Truman, but the driving anti-red sentiments continued conflicts to stamp out their influence, such as American aid in Kai-shek's elimination of Mao in China. The Soviet Union became isolated, and efforts to push for an expansion of influence in Eastern Europe ended with severe crackdowns by allies of the new North Atlantic Treaty Organization. As communist ideals crept up in revolutionaries in South America and Africa, NATO extended its reach to become the World Treaty Organization. Driven by trade agreements and international military action to keep friendly governments in power, many see the WTO as a biblical new world order holding egregious power with little concern for means of maintaining that power. Not that anyone would dare say such a thing too loudly.

1009 – Nor’easter Drives Karlsefni Expedition South

With more than 100 in its crew, the settlement fleet led by Thorfinn Karlsefni came under a powerful storm from the northeast. It bore the Norse ships far south of the winter settlement Thorfinn’s brother-in-law Leif Eriksson had set up ten years before. Leif himself had followed directions from Bjarni Herjolfsson, who had been blown off course and discovered a land west of Greenland while rescuing others lost in that storm. These same seemingly ill winds proved lucky as they took Thorfinn miles beyond lands where scuffles with locals before had ended in numerous deaths on both sides.

The wayward Norse finally found land, though it would take months more of exploration to determine where they were. First they established a base and made contact with locals who were happy to trade furs for Norse cloth and fresh milk from the cows they had brought. Eventually expeditions found that they were on the southern side of a great bay and, three hundred miles west, a large freshwater river that promised even more possibilities inland. The colony prospered, though Thorfinn had little choice: many settlers agreed they had gone too far south to effectively evacuate the colony in case of trouble.

Instead, trouble struck at home as Norse growing seasons turned shorter. Thorfinnsland proved to be a welcome new home, bringing thousands of settlers who established trading posts along the great river and the coast. Settlers marked their names with runes as they went and even built a great tower for defense on the islands of another bay southward that they called Newport. Traders explored even farther south, coming upon warm waters from a muddy river far bigger than the one in the north. There they met wealthy new trade partners who themselves had canoes rivaling Norse longboats. Peoples along this Misi zipi River built pyramid mounds in grand cities with tens of thousands of people fed by expansive maize fields. Their pottery and copperwork made valuable good that the Norse merchants traded for iron tools to enormous profit.

Disease among the traders plagued them, and ultimately both the Norse settlers and the Mississippians declined. North Atlantic trade did continue, although it paled in comparison to European expeditions to the gold-rich south and around Africa to the Far East. Hungry for more iron than what merchants could bring, deposits discovered north of the Great Lakes became valuable mining territory. Wars broke out over the iron pits until the coming of Deganawida, the Great Peacemaker. He built a confederacy that ended ritual cannibalism and organized a balance of local rule by chiefs to a national council that governed the whole. Five nations joined together to form what was known as the Haudenosaunee, though European traders called it the “Iroquois Confederacy” since all of the member tribes spoke related languages.

The Iroquois expanded rapidly across the Ohio Valley thanks to their power in numbers, the iron supply, and firearms supplied by European traders in exchange for valuable beaver pelts. Leaders agreed that, just as they controlled ironworks, they must come to control guns as well. Expeditions of young men were sent to Europe to determine its secrets. In addition to industrial espionage on gunpowder, the spies came to study with early chemists at universities in Spain, France, and England, bringing back cutting edge theory on gas law and metallurgy. After seeing the patents of Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont for steam-powered water pumps that could drain flooded mines, the Iroquois began creating and implementing their own engines.

It was not long before these engines were put to work doing other tasks like weaving cloth and milling timber. Mobile engines could not only move themselves but also haul goods across long distances to drastically cut travel time and cost. Soon the Iroquois found themselves attracting attention from Europeans eager to copy their successes. They invested their wealth in maintaining their borders, such as river fleets protecting their rights to what the French traders called the St. Lawrence and Mississippi. The confederationo welcomed more tribes into the fold to promote a wide frontier that would keep their homelands safe.

Balancing British, French, and Spanish empires against one another, the Iroquois laid claim to all lands west of French Thorfinnsland and the Appalachians above the 37 degrees north latitude. Louisiana would fall into British hands as European wars weakened French colonialism, causing strife with the Iroquois over river rights. Ultimately, the British would capitulate when the Shawnee General Tecumseh led Iroquois forces to seize New Orleans, granting Louisiana independence. Another war in the West over gold deposits in California with Mexico would affirm Iroquois rule to the Pacific.

Today the Iroquois Confederacy serves as the foremost economy in the world, rivaled by the German-led European Union and Japanese Empire. Each depends on one another for trade, although they readily, and often correctly, accuse one another of ongoing industrial espionage.

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In reality, according to the sagas, Thorfinn’s colony ended after his bull frightened the locals and sparked a battle that prompted the Norse to flee back to Greenland.

Guest Post from Chris Oakley: October 7, 1978--Idi Amin Assassinated

On October 7, 1978, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin paid a fatal price for his brutality and arrogance
when he was stabbed to death while taking part in an orgy at the Ugandan presidential palace in the heart of Kampala. News of his death plunged Uganda into political chaos as Amin supporters fought with rival factions seeking to restore democratic rule in the country; by the time of Amin’s funeral only four days after his assassination, Uganda was on the verge of civil war. Concerned that the violence might spill over into their own nations, Uganda’s neighbors formed a coalition under the leadership of then-Tanzanian president Julius Nyrere and deployed a peacekeeping contingent to Uganda to restore order. The regular Ugandan army offered only token resistance to the peacekeepers and the pro-Amin uprising collapsed when its leaders were arrested.

With the uprising ended, former Ugandan president Milton Obote, who’d been forced into exile when Amin overthrew him in 1971, was able to return home and resume his post; he led a caretaker administration until March of 1979, when elections were held to form a new full-time government. By the spring of 1981 the Uganda National Police would assume the peacekeepers’ role in maintaining law and order in Uganda’s cities. The Ugandan army underwent a top-to-bottom reorganization as part of a larger overall effort to de-politicize the Ugandan military and purge the last traces of Amin’s extremist ideology from its ranks.

The success of the Nyrere-led coalition’s intervention in Uganda planted the seeds for a broader
regional alliance, the African Union. The AU was established in 1991 at a twenty-two nation summit in Nairobi and would grow to thirty members when the Mandela government of South Africa ratified the AU charter in 1994. Among the organization’s most notable successes during its first decade were the deployment of peacekeepers to halt the Rwandan genocide and its victorious campaign against Somali warlord Mohammed Aidid. By 2007 the African Union’s membership had expanded to include nearly sixty countries and the organization was a major trading partner of the United States and the European Union.

By 2015, the AU would be a key player in international efforts to end the civil war in Syria and address global climate change. As of 2018 the AU was the world’s third-largest trading bloc and a major rival to China for the number two spot in the ranks of global economic powers; nearly one-quarter of the world’s known billionaires would call Africa home and the once strife-torn Kampala was nicknamed “Africa’s Silicon Valley” by virtue of the dozens of home-grown tech companies centered in the Ugandan capital.

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In reality, Idi Amin continued to rule Uganda until the spring of 1979, when he was forced to flee
the country after his regime’s defeat in its border war with Tanzania. He fled to Saudi Arabia, where he stayed till his death in 2003. The African Union was formally established in 2001 as a successor to the Organization of African Unity. As of the time this article is being posted, the AU’s membership total stands at 55 countries; in 2016 the organization introduced continent-wide passports intended to make travel easier for AU citizens. Much of the AU’s defense resources are devoted to fighting the al Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab jihadist organization in Somalia. The AU also maintains the AIDS Watch Africa program to combat the spread of HIV in sub-Saharan countries.

1433 - Zheng He arrives in Great Zimbabwe

In the early fifteenth century, Admiral Zheng He commanded the greatest expeditionary fleets the world had ever known. The Ming Dynasty invested heavily in expanding Chinese influence, especially its third emperor, Yongle, who outfitted a fleet to be commanded by his longtime supporter, Zhenge He. Born Ma Ho during the turbulent western wars between the Mongols and the Mings, he had been captured at ten and forced into the Ming army commanded by young Yongle. Ma Ho proved successful at all he did, and he was selected to become head eunuch with a new name, Zheng He.

In 1404, Zheng He was placed in command of the fleet dispatched to bring in the nations to the south as tributaries under the emperor’s influence. Among the 317 ships in the fleet were 62 “treasure ships,” said to be over 180 feet long and loaded with gifts of tea, silk, porcelain, and manufactured goods. In addition to the thousands of sailors, crews also included scholars and cutting-edge technology such as gunpowder rockets and cannons as well as magnetically-driven compasses for navigation. For the next 30 years, Zheng He would command seven expeditions through Indonesia, India, Arabia, and the east coast of Africa.

While pushing southward on the African coast past Mogadishu to Malindi and Zanzibar, Zheng He heard the traders’ discussion of an inland empire so rich with gold that it rivaled the legendary wealth of Mali. Messengers back to China had brought further news of the Xuande emperor’s disinclination toward these expeditions, and Zheng He feared this might be his last. Deciding to go for broke, Zheng He led an excursion inland to contact this empire while the main fleet explored the coast, mapping much of Madagascar. It was very different to take up an expedition on land, but Zheng He had already defeated the Kingdom of Kotte inland on Sri Lanka.

Zheng He and his smaller boats followed rivers to the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, a term referring to the stone fortresses built at defensive positions throughout the plateau. Zheng He trekked to its greatest city with towering stone walls over 30 feet tall. Though impressive even by the standards of China, the kingdom in the south was clearly in a state of decline. The land was turning arid, and much of the gold in the rivers had given out, prompting one prince, Nyatsimba Mutota, to move northward in conquest for new resources, especially valuable salt.

The kingdom struck Zheng He as an enormous new partner with its control of the gold and ivory of the entire region. He won favor with Mutota with gifts and dispatched scholars and craftsmen to show irrigation techniques for improved crop yields as well as methods for upgrading mines. Mutota was so impressed that he began collecting engineers, bringing them from China, Arabia, and later Europe. The most important exchange was with China for gunpowder and cannons, which furthered the Mutapa people’s position as the military superpower of the region.

Through the years, invention solved problems as they arose. As the miners needed to dig deeper into the earth for gold, iron, and copper, engineers developed pumps to use suction to clear the shafts of water. With the struggle for food for a large population, labor-saving devices were of the utmost importance, pushing the development of engines. Factories sprang up around the rivers driven by waterwheels. Threats of deforestation were overcome by the discovery of massive coal reserves to the west; coal in turn proved to burn more efficiently than wood and allow for leaps forward with metallurgy.

By 1700, the Zambezi River was the industrial center of the world. Steam-driven ships brought in textiles and other raw materials, then exported manufactured goods back to ports as far away as China and the Americas. The expansive Mutapa Empire dominated Africa south of the equator, serving as a balance between European influence in the northwest and Muslim influence in the northeast. Mutapan trade colonies would become thriving cosmopolitan centers for centuries to come all along the southern Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

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In reality, Zheng He died in 1433 in Calicut, India. By then, expeditions had started to go out of fashion with the emperor as policies turned back toward isolationist Confucian ideals. Soon the size of ships was legally restricted to prevent reckless gambling on oversea ventures.

Sources on Zheng Ha