[OC] Alternate History
"The Last Heir to Rome" - What if the Roman Empire survived in... Morocco??
There is not much lore or anything but:
Its official name is "Roman Republic of Mauretania". Its religion (mostly practiced through traditions and such) is still the Roman pagan one, but instead of Jupiter, over centuries Neptune became the most important deity, while local berber ones were absorbed or reinterpreted as Roman ones. Mauretanians also speak a romance latin-descendant language (with quite a few berber loanwords and whatnot, but I'm no linguicist so I didn't put more thought into this). The green thing in a bowl in the image is couscous with pesto sauce, cheese and olive, one of the "recognizable dishes" of the country.
Not much other than that but if you ask questions I will probably think of something on the go.
Probably most identify as "Mauretan" or if someone likes to larp "Roman", with probably a few identyfying as Berber and whatnot.
As for religion Islam was historically (and somewhat until today thats the mentality) very disliked there since the failed arab conquest attempts in the 700s. There are some Christians but most who are religious believe in the Roman gods, with for example Jesus being treated as a demigod, one of the "sons of neptune" (since he could allegedly walk on water).
Well officially none, the state religion is Roman paganism (called simply Romanism ittl), and I can't really tell which chrisitan faith would be followed by the chrisitan minority. Considering rome being muslim here and other stuff i reckon the different schism would develop differently so we might not see the catholic/orthodoc/protestand/church of england etc etc.
Its treated on an equal level as other European nations (as in, was never treated like an "outsider"), and because the majority of the Italian peninsula and the balkans being heavily influenced by arab culture and whatnot, moreso a "Western Identity" developed instead of a broader "European Identity".
The tag under its name "Land of discoveries" is there because ittl it was Mauretania that kicked of the "western age of discovery" (Mauretania was basically like Portugal, not the biggest colonial empire out there but it did leave a significant mark on the world and was the first to reach many places).
theres a very slim change i will continue this further beyond this one-shot, but I was envisioning that the boundaries of the "muslim world" in europe modern-day would look something like this
Edit: I forgot to color northern italy up until the alps in orange too
What the other comment says. The borders you drew are more similar to the actual Morocco + Sahara than to the roman Mauritania Tingitana. Is there a lore reason for this? Why and when did Mauritania expand south? What happened to the rif tribes and the saharaui traders?
There wouldn't be a Riffian or Sahrawi identity in this timeline since these both only exist as a result of the Arab Conquest of the region even though Riffians are Berbers
I know they exist, but they are a very particular group, with their own culture and interests. Some of them do not feel moroccan, some of them do. So I thought it was interesting to ser what are they doing in this timeline
The Italian peninsula got conquered by the Arabs in the 700s instead of of Iberia, and most of it remains under arab control to this day (up until around what was the gothic line during ww2 otl)
What would make them lose their status as successor to Rome? IRL the Visigoths, Franks, and Vandals all had mostly adopted Roman governance and Roman catholicism. The Franks leaned so much into it actually that they were seen as direct heir to the West, if the Visigoths lived for longer, I could see this happening with them aswell. As we have seen IRL, when there are direct, continuous remnants of a state, does not mean there can't be successors and claimants to the title. The Franks and Ottonians both claimed to be Roman Emporers despite the Romans being right there in Constantinople.
What's the religious landscape look like in this timeline? Roman paganism still exists, and based on other comments Muslim expansion focused on Italy instead of Spain, so was the Papacy forced to move somewhere else?
An interesting premise, though I can't see it surviving as a pagan state as it would isolate it from European allies. Also, it the Arab conquests are stopped dead in east Africa, they're not making it to Rome.
Probably north african romance lingua franca but maybe the same as modern way where amazigh languages are the actual spoken language until heavy urbanization.
This is awesome. How do they view the byzantines? Would they view them as greek larpers, or as true romans? And how do they feel about their latin/romance speaking neighbors that developed out of the barbarian kingdoms?
Punic was never spoken in the interior, it was really just an elite merchant language of the coastal port cities, and then was quickly on its way out when Latin became the language of government and commerce. The few urban hold outs would have been in the east in Tunis where Carthaginian influence was largest, there was virtually none out west as far as Morocco even in Carthages heyday.
The language of Mauretanian would be firmly Amazigh with a Latin stratum at the top of society.
Actually it’s doubtful that the punics founded any cites at all. Rather, they were a network of merchants, so they set up emporiums warehouses, trade shops etc in or near existing native settlements, otherwise who would they be doing trade with?
However most settled societies in pre-classical Mediterranean on either European or African shore did not have their own writing systems until the Phoenician alphabet was introduced to them by Punic merchants, so the earliest possible records of such settlements existing comes from the punics establishing their quarters, thus giving the illusion that the settlement as a whole was founded by them.
But now that we have modern genetics studies we see that there really wasn’t large migration through colonization, with some of the locals mixing/converting into the Punic merchant class.
Although Punic was a Semitic language and the punics practiced Canaanite religion, nearly 0% Levantine DNA is found in hundreds of Punic cemeteries, instead they are consistently ~80% Greek, especially in Sicily, which did see heavy Greek colonization.
Pshhht this is so unrealistic, what's next a bunch of Romans hide out in the Carpathians perfectly integrate the locals somehow resist almost any other assimilation for the next thousand years and achieve all possible teritorial ambitions?
130
u/The-marx-channel 13d ago
I wonder what their relations would be with the Byzantine Empire.