Saracens
From Age of Empires
The Saracens, or Arabs, were the people who expanded out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 630s and onwards aroused by the new religion of Islam. Within a few decades the Saracens had conquered most of the modern Middle East (including Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and the vast Persian Empire) and part of North Africa (Egypt and Libya). During the next century the rest of North Africa as well as parts of Eastern Africa, modern Pakistan and the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain) also fell to the Arab invaders. The Saracens held an empire from the Atlantic coast of Morocco in the west to the Indian Ocean coasts of Oman and Pakistan in the east. There were several different dynasties who ruled the Arab empire, and some were more concentrated in Persia or were dominated by Kurds and later on Turks. Arabic language did nevertheless hold the ground in North Africa and the old Levant, Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula. The Arabs attempted many invasions of Europe, including the legendary assaults on Constantinople where the Byzantines developed "Greek fire" to withstand the Saracens. Most of the Mediterranean islands as well as parts of Italy and France were also conquered temporarily by the Arabs. Areas even as far north as Iceland were attacked and raided by Arab slavetraders. The Arab world got more and more fragmentized by the late 900s and the Byzantines and Western Europeans were able to close the gap of power and technology. The first real reaction to the 500 years long Arab expansion came with the crusades from 1099 and onwards until the late 1200s. By the time of the first crusade Western Europe was equal to the Arab world in strenght, and during the next few centuries the balance would shift ever in favor of the Europeans. The Spanish and Portuguese who lost their lands to the Arabs in 711-14 started their 700 years long "reconquista" around 800, but it was not until the mid 1000s that any real success was had. After the violent incursion of orthodox Islamic groups in the 11th and 12th centuries, Arab-occupied Spain began falling to the Christian resistance movements. By the mid 1200s all of Iberia had been liberated save the southern tip, Granada, where the famous Moorish Al Hambra would soon be constructed. The Turks had dominated the Middle East during the Crusades, and the Mamlukes reigned in Egypt. Indeed, the time of Saracen rule in Arab lands ended in the Middle Ages, as the Ottomans would be the primary Muslim power from the 1300s until modern times.
[edit] Age of Empires II
In Age of Empires II, the Saracens are a civilization that focuses on Cavalry.
[edit] The Saracens (613 On)
The name Saracen applied originally to nomadic desert peoples from the area stretching from modern Syria to Saudi Arabia. In broader usage the name applied to all Arabs of the Middle Ages. These desert nomads erupted suddenly in the seventh century and established a far-reaching empire within a century and a half. Their conquest was fueled by faith and high morale. Following the teachings of the prophet Mohammed, their intent was to change the religious and political landscape of the entire planet.
By 613 the prophet Mohammed was preaching a new religion he called Islam. Largely ignored in his home city of Mecca, he withdrew to Medina, built up a strong following there, and returned to attack and capture Mecca. Following his death in 632, his teachings were collected to form the Koran, the Islamic holy book. In 634 his followers began their jihad, or holy war. Within five years they had overrun Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. Their tolerance of Jews and Christians eased their conquest because these people had been suffering some persecution under the Byzantines.
In the next 60 years, both North Africa to the west and Persia to the east fell to Islam. In the early eighth century, Saracens from Tangiers invaded the Iberian Peninsula and conquered the Visigoth kingdom established there after the fall of Rome. In Asia they took Asia Minor from the Byzantines and attempted to capture Constantinople with a combined attack from land and sea. The great walls of the city frustrated the land attack and the Saracen fleet was defeated at sea. In the west, Charles Martel of the Franks stopped a Saracen invasion of modern France in 732 at Poitiers.
Frustrated in the west, the forces of Islam turned east. By 750 they had conquered to the Indus River and north over India into Central Asia to the borders of China.
In 656 the Muslim world fell into civil war between two factions, the Sunnites and the Shiites. They differed on several points, including who should be caliph and interpretation of the Koran. The result of the 60-year war was that the Islamic state broke into pieces, some governed by Sunnites (the Iberian Peninsula) and others by Shiites (Egypt and modern Iraq). The new Islamic states acted independently, thereafter.
Muslim Spain developed into one of the great states of Europe during the early Middle Ages. Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in relative harmony, and a rich culture rose out of these multiple influences. There was a flowering of the arts, architecture, and learning. By 1000, however, Muslim Spain had divided into warring factions. This civil war facilitated the slow reconquest of the peninsula (the Reconquista) by the emerging states of Castile and Aragon, completed finally in 1492.
Asia Minor and the Middle East were conquered by Muslim Turks in the early eleventh century. In response to a call for aid from the Byzantines, a series of Crusades was launched from Europe to regain Palestine from the Turks. The independent Muslim states in the area lost Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean coast to the First Crusade. In the last part of the twelfth century, the great Saracen leader Saladin succeeded in uniting Egypt, Syria, and smaller states, and he retook Jerusalem.
The Muslim states remained independent long after the Middle Ages and eventually developed into the modern Arab nations of the Middle East and North Africa. They went into economic decline, however, when the European nations opened trade routes of their own to Asia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
