The Britons continued their war in Ireland through 951, though in a generally lower-intensity form than the campaigns of the previous years. Elan took advantage of Irish disunity and disillusionment among the Ulster lords with their allies to seek a ceasefire & peace talks with Muichertach, though he did not negotiate in good faith and was primarily just seeking to stall hostilities with the Ó Néills so he could focus on beating down the Ua Briain of western Ireland instead. Mathgamain Ua Briain may have deliberately botched any follow-up on Muichertach's earlier victory out of jealousy and fear of allowing the descendants of Niall the Red-Handed to grow too powerful, but since he also was not inclined to accept British suzerainty, he remained an enemy of the Pendragons and had to be dealt with regardless.
With Muichertach now being the one to hold his own forces back, as he sought not only to spite his treacherous ally but also to use the ceasefire to regroup, the Britons handily defeated the Ua Briain army and its allies in central Ireland at the Battle of Cionn Átha Gad[1]. They then gave chase to the retreating Gaels but were hobbled by the rough terrain of & near-total lack of infrastructure in the heart of Ireland, ultimately turning back at the banks of the River Chamlainn[2] in order to avoid overextending themselves – a threat exposed by the constant Irish attacks on their lengthening, and thus increasingly vulnerable, supply lines. Mathgamain, safe behind the great Sionainne[3] of which the Chamlainn was but a tributary, now sought rapproachment with the Ó Néills on one hand and a separate peace with the Britons on the other, though his hopes for the latter were quickly dashed by Elan's continuing insistence that peace between the Tuadmhumhu and Britannia can come only when the former recognizes him as the High King of all Ireland as they had his father before him.
British knights bearing down on the Western Irish forces of the Ui Briain at Cionn Átha Gad. Less exposed to foreign influences and thus less militarily innovative than the eastern & southern Irish, the Gaels of Connacht and Tuadmhumhu proved little match for the latest crop of invaders in a pitched battle, unlike Muichertach's forces
Meanwhile in Iraq, the Turkic coalition rebelling against Ja'far in the name of Caliph Hasan found itself at an impasse with the Grand Vizier. Ja'far's
ghilman & lesser hirelings had definitively locked down Kufa and were manning its stout fortifications, which had already comfortably withstood the attacks of the Kharijites recently, in defiance of their greater numbers. An all-out storming of the Hashemite capital was not guaranteed to be a success, and even if it did end as such for the besiegers, it would be a very costly success indeed – one that would leave them vulnerable to attacks from the other, less-spent Turkic warlords to the east or the surviving Kharijites to the south. Moreover, he had effectively placed the Hashemite household under house arrest in their palace and was certainly not above using them as hostages to deter an assault: true, he couldn't control Iraq without the fig leaf provided by Hasan's presence, but neither could Saif al-Islam and the other Turkic warlords. On the other hand, the Vizier did not have the numbers to fight the Turks in the field head-on and knew that the men he
did have would be cut to ribbons if they left the safety of Kufa's walls.
Thus, much of 951 passed by with little being accomplished on either the side of Ja'far or the Turks. The former sought relief from more loyal governors who owed their office and fortunes to his patronage, but these men turned out to be more interested in dedicating all their remaining resources to securing their own little fiefdoms for the most part; those who tried to come to the Vizier's rescue, coalescing under the leadership of Abu Yazid Isma'il ibn Bandar al-Khuzāʿī of Madharaya[4], were utterly defeated by the warlords in the Battle of Al-Diwaniyah east of Kufa. The latter remained encamped around Kufa but did not dare attempt a serious assault on its walls out of fear of sustaining excessive casualties or risking the safety of the Caliph in whose name they were claiming to fight, instead hoping for attrition to eventually do Ja'far in. In the meantime, and especially after destroying the loyalist relief army under Abu Yazid, Saif al-Islam left Badr al-Din to maintain the siege while he roved through the countryside, subjugating the allies of Ja'far and gathering hostages to ensure their compliance to the new order.
Further still toward the eastern seaboard of the Eurasian landmass, negotiations began between the Vietnamese and Chinese courts – only to break down in short order. Giáp Thừa Lang conceded that he probably was not going to be able to expel the ascendant Chinese armies from his kingdom by force and petitioned Emperor Renzong for peace, professing that he was prepared to kowtow before the Dragon Throne and pay tribute in exchange for the removal of the Chinese army which had overrun most of his kingdom and his own reinstatement on the Vietnamese throne (which would also mean Kishi no Kisa would have to be removed). However, these terms were unacceptable to Renzong after all the blood which had been spilled on both sides of the border up to this point, and he made as much known to the Vietnamese king: even explaining that had Giáp negotiated such terms at the beginning of this conflict, he may have been inclined to graciously accept, but since they had arrogantly thought to resist his overwhelming power and managed to cost him a pretty penny (in blood as well as coin) he would now settle for no less than grinding the Vietnamese kingdom into dust.
Vietnamese nobles prostrate themselves before Renzong during the latter's visit to Cổ Loa, where his security & the people's compliance have been guaranteed by Kishi no Kisa. Giáp Thừa Lang is not among them however, having resolved to hold out and try to force better terms out of the Chinese at the negotiating table rather than sign his kingdom over for annexation
Unwilling to accept his own displacement from the hard-won throne of his ancestors, Giáp resolved to show Renzong the error of his ways by spilling even more blood. After beating back several Chinese offensives into the mountains and jungles around Sơn La in the middle of the year, the king returned to his re-secured western stronghold and surprised the invaders by immediately launching a counteroffensive of his own with the help of Tai auxiliaries, mauling the last of Kishi's armies to leave the still-free Nam Việt territories. While the Vietnamese could not hold territory closer to the Red River Delta against the invaders' far superior numbers, nor did they even try, Giáp not only demonstrated his persistence in fighting to hang on to the Vietnamese crown but also rescued many thousands of his subjects, bringing them back toward Sơn La, where they were trained as new soldiers and served as much-needed reinforcements for his beleaguered army. Since Kishi had proven to be a more able commander than his predecessors Giáp also marked him for assassination, though the agents he assigned to this task were unable to get past the man's extensive security measures this year.
952 brought with it a limited reconciliation within the Irish camp, engineered by Bishop Eógan Ó hAnluain of Ard Mhacha, with the Ó Néills and Ua Briain arranging marriages and exchanging hostages to firm up their renewed oaths to stand together against the British onslaught; Mathgamain for his part also personally renewed his recognition of Muichertach Ó Néill as the true High King. However, the Irish had wasted their opportunity to really knock the Britons back on their heels in the aftermath of the Battle of Lios na gCearrbhach with their fruitless intrigues against one another, and Elan of Britannia was taking steps to make it much harder for them to root him out of not just the Pale around Dublin but also the tracts of the Irish hinterland which he had managed to occupy. The
Ríodam enacted the strategy he first devised with his war council back in Britain, allowing some of his lords to detach themselves & their contingents from his main army in order to raise up castles on the fiefs he had promised them: these fortresses proved useful in locking down the surrounding areas, securing British supply routes and serving as staging bases for offensives further inland or as refuges for Britons in need. Thus emerged the so-called 'Hiberno-Briton' nobility: represented by new aristocratic houses which made their fortune in Ireland such as the Crésgentí (Lat.: 'Crescentii'), Epòlité ('descendants of Hippolytus') and D'Elaunódui[5] ('from Alaunodunum'), and who despite their collective name were also joined by houses of Anglo-Saxon extraction as well, such as the unfortunately named Geldings ('descendants of Geld' – 'Geld' being the name of the English thane who founded their lineage).
While on paper dividing his forces may have seemed like a violation of common sense, Irish infighting had given the British more than enough time to finish their first round of planned castles, and even if the resulting constructions were of wood rather than stone and weaker than the castles back in Britain itself, with their high walls & towers and well-watered moats these proved very difficult indeed for the Irish to take. Attempts by the Irish coalition to take the outermost of the new British castles on their island exposed yet another weakness of the relatively backward Gaelic armies – engineering & siege warfare, in which the Irish turned out to have few options past encamping around the enemy castle and hoping to starve the defenders out. Raiding the countryside to deny the Britons supplies was certainly another option which they indulged, but the existence of the castles gave the Irish commoners in said countryside a place in which to safely shelter with all the food & animals they could bring with them and the new lords a base from which to counter such raids, not to mention that such marauding activities alienated them from the Gaelic ruling class. Elan and his lords were quick to take advantage by asserting that their conflict was with the petty-kings only and that life wouldn't change significantly for the worse under their rulership, in fact perhaps it would even improve for the common Irishman as they brought order, safety & other benefits of civilization with their advances.
A wooden castle of the motte-and-bailey design which became increasingly popular throughout Europe from the 10th century onward, and was brought to Ireland by the Hiberno-Britons. While relatively simple and underwhelming in appearance compared to the stone keeps of higher nobles, such forts were sufficient to keep most Gaelic warbands out and provide shelter to the victims of their raids
In Iraq, the struggle against Ja'far reached its climax this year. Even as more & more of Iraq declared for their cause (in some cases the governors installed by Ja'far in previous years were ousted by their own subjects or felled in battle with the ascendant Turkic insurgents, while in others these same governors turned coat in a bid to preserve their positions in the new order to come, thus proving as faithful to Ja'far as he would have been to them if the situation were reversed) the Turkic warlords had made no progress against the defenses of Kufa, much to their frustration, so they turned to an unorthodox proposal to try to break the stalemate. Ala ud-Din snuck back into the city with a few handpicked companions under the cover of a late-night rainstorm, then worked to exert all of his abilities as a rogue and called in every contact and every favor he still had to get his party into the heavily guarded Palace of Qasim & back out with no less than Caliph Hasan himself in tow. Unfortunately for the plotters, one of Ala ud-Din's old friends was now on Ja'far's payroll: as the rain receded and the Sun began to rise, he and Hasan would find all the gates barred and ambushes prepared for them by the Vizier's men.
Improvising on the spot as Ja'far's troops trapped them in one of Kufa's great bazaars and started killing the other infiltrators, Ala ud-Din decided to incite unrest by advising Hasan to call his people to act against the tyrannical Vizier now that he had momentarily escaped the latter's hold, essentially repurposing the earlier failed anti-Ja'far plot which his father & former master had been a part of. One of Ja'far's
ghilman carelessly trampled a child beneath his horse's hooves in his haste to arrest his nominal overlord and the man assisting him before the latter could stir the confused people just beginning to open or trade at the bazaar's stores into rebellion, which was very unfortunate for said child & her family but a most fortuitous turn for Hasan and Ala ud-Din: the enraged father attacked this
ghulam with his mattock and in so doing kicked off the riot which Ala ud-Din had been hoping for. Once it began, this outpouring of popular anger at years of corrupt misrule proved impossible to stop and the mob grew large enough to take control of Kufa's northern gates, which they opened to Saif al-Islam and Badr al-Din. And once
their troops stormed into the city, Ja'far knew there was no holding Kufa any longer.
The Grand Vizier did not bother trying to hold the Caliphal palace, but instead escaped through a prepared secret passageway; Ala ud-Din observed him from afar after first making sure Hasan was delivered safely into the warlords' custody but did not dare get in his way alone, as the rogue knew he stood no chance against Ja'far's armed bodyguards. By the time he alerted his superiors to Ja'far's escape route, alas, the Vizier was already out of the city. In any case, mopping up the remaining resistance in Kufa took priority over hunting down Ja'far, who Hasan considered too unpopular a figure to be able to mobilize any great rebellion for the purpose of his restoration now that he had been evicted from his seat of power. Although the Grand Vizier might have gotten away for now, his sons and grandsons were not so lucky – they were all killed or captured (and almost certain to face execution for their own crimes afterward), including his eldest Abu Yahya, who tried to escape through a different secret passageway but was pointed out to a nearby mob by Ala ud-Din and torn to pieces. The
ghilman who survived the chaotic early battles with both the angry mobs & the Turks retreated to their barracks and surrendered after it became clear that Ja'far had abandoned them; popular sentiment and the warlords both sought their extermination, but Hasan prevailed in having them spared in exchange for renewing their loyalty to him, as he needed every counterweight he could find to the newly settled Turks.
Several of the sons of Ja'far trying to flee, only to be overtaken by Turks from Saif al-Islam's army and an angry mob out for their blood outside of Kufa
Continuing immediately from where the previous year had left off, 953 in the Near East was initially dominated by operations to finish off Ja'far, who managed to flee to Wasit and found safe refuge with the governor he had installed there. This situation did not last long however, as the Turks immediately attacked the city precisely to leave him with no time to recover or build another coalition against them and smashed said governor's militia in a battle situated around the ruins of Kaskar across the Tigris. Ja'far fled once more, abandoning his benefactor to face the executioner's ax alone, and made it to An-Nu'maniyah northwest of Wasit: however, though the governor there also amicably welcomed him, in truth he had already made the decision to surrender the much-wanted ex-Vizier to the authorities upon receiving a letter penned by Hasan's hand informing him of the changes in the capital and further proclaiming Ja'far to be an outlaw. The Grand Vizier's appointees were by & large worldly men he could rely on to support him (and ignore, or even benefit, from his corruption) so long as his position seemed strong, but now that he was weak, too few turned out to be like Abu Yazid or the governor of Wasit – many more were perfectly happy to throw him under the oncoming carriage of Caliphal justice to save their own skins now, like the governor of An-Nu'maniyah.
Ja'far knew the end had come when his former lackey's soldiers struck down his few remaining bodyguards and advanced upon his temporary residence next, and unwilling to face a humiliating trial which would assuredly be followed by an even more painful and humiliating public execution but also knowing that he was physically in no shape to fight his way out of the city, he proceeded to hang himself with a fine silken cord he had taken with him from the capital – indulging in a bit of stolen, unnecessary luxury even at the very last moment. The governor of An-Nu'maniyah duly sent his head to Kufa and was rewarded for it by being allowed to keep his office, even as the rest of Ja'far's creatures were being removed from their governorates and ranks. Such was the end of Ja'far ibn al-Awwam al-Turani, whose few defenders in the Islamic histories are far outnumbered by his detractors: his legacy is that of the archetypal wicked Vizier, a shameless and thoroughly self-serving schemer who managed to avoid justice and hang on to his office well after any other man would have been kicked out or resigned through underhanded means and relentless backstabbing, but who could not outrun his sins and was himself ultimately brought down in an act of treachery in a moment of weakness & misplaced trust as he had done to many others.
The suicide of the disgraced Grand Vizier Ja'far. Like a true roach, he proved so difficult to kill even after being evicted from his seat of power that in the end, the only man who could take him out for good was himself
But if all involved thought that stomping out the great cockroach after many decades would finally bring peace and prosperity back to Iraq, they were soon proven wrong. The removal of Ja'far had created a power vacuum which both Caliph Hasan and the Turkic warlords now sought to fill, and in truth both camps had already begun sharpening their knives with an eye on plunging it into the other's back as soon as their common enemy was dealt with. Hasan had all the pilfered wealth of Ja'far that he could find in Kufa distributed to the citizenry to win them over, and also to cool their fury toward the Vizier's former
ghilman enough to keep them from lynching the latter so that he could employ said
ghilman as a security measure against the warlords. Dealing with the Turks was much harder: Badr al-Din was less ambitious than Saif al-Islam and might have been bought off with additional territories, offices and riches, but Hasan had little enough of any of these to give away. The Caliph failed an early test of his nominally restored authority when he commanded the atabegs to return to their fiefs, only for the pair to cordially refuse under the excuse that their military muscle was clearly still necessary to restore order to central & southern Iraq and also to root out any partisans of Ja'far who might still be around.
In another early and sharp blow to the barely recovering prestige of the Banu Hashim, when offered any boon he might ask for as a reward for his help, Ala ud-Din had the audacity to ask for the hand of the same Hashemite princess desired by the sons of Ja'far – having briefly seen, and immediately become enchanted by, the beauty of Badr al-Badur while exfiltrating her father from the Palace of Qasim. Despite having promised his one-time savior 'anything', Hasan was not willing to allow this lowborn rogue and slave's son to marry his eldest daughter, and after failing to convince Ala ud-Din to take the governorate of Basra instead (a 'gift' which the thief saw to be a poisoned chalice, as Basra itself was still a devastated ruin and vulnerable to raids by the Baqliyya Kharijites) & finding the latter increasingly insolent in his refusal, ordered that he be arrested. Alas, no sooner had he left Kufa to begin overseeing the reconstruction of central Iraq and to maneuver against the atabegs did Ala ud-Din escape prison, thanks to the prison guards being his own friends from the street who'd been newly recruited into the growing Caliphal army, and run off with Badr al-Badur. Legend has it that they fled toward China, aided in their escape by a djinn, and ultimately settled down among the Uyghurs: more likely they just slipped through the lines of both the Caliph and his atabegs in the post-Ja'far confusion & had the good sense to keep a very low profile wherever they ended up, but in any case they disappear from the pages of history at this point, and that his oldest daughter ran off with riffraff like Ala ud-Din greatly embarrassed Hasan at a time when he could ill-afford it.
Chinese painting of Ala ud-Din Arslan urging the Hashemite princess Badr al-Badur bint Hasan to elope with him and leave turmoil-plagued Iraq behind entirely
Beyond the Islamic world, a revolution was beginning to brew on the steppes. In the decades since their final victory over the Hashemite forces in and north of Azerbaijan, the Khazars had increasingly come to settle down into a sedentary existence around the northern and western shores of the Caspian Sea, centered around cities like Atil and Samandar which had recovered from the sackings inflicted upon them by the furthest-ranging Islamic armies north of the Caucasus Mountains in the eighth and ninth centuries. After all, these cities served as lynchpins for trade on the steppe and in the Caucasus region, and provided the Khazars with a much more comfortable lifestyle than the nomadic one of their predecessors. However, success and wealth made the Khazars increasingly complacent and incapable of maintaining the already rather weak grasp they held over the Pechenegs, who they had barely subjugated (and not without a good bit of luck) in the first place. Sensing that their overlords were losing their martial edge, the Pecheneg khans increasingly agitated to break the yoke Khazaria had placed around their necks and to finally take their place as the next masters of the Eurasian steppe, which they felt said Khazars had denied them more than a century prior in an accident of history – one they would soon rectify. After all, it was the way of the steppe for older, calcified powers to be swept aside by new ones from time to time, and if the Pechenegs had their way the Khazars would not remain an exception to this rule for much longer.
In 954 Hasan, despite his family troubles and much mockery by the Turks for his inability to control his own household, seemed to be on the verge of a breakthrough in arranging a deal with Badr al-Din which would have enormously improved his dire position. The Turkic warlord had set a high price for his allegiance: he wanted all of Saif al-Islam's territories, a veto over the appointment of governors in neighboring cities such as Tikrit, and the appointment of his sons to high office within the Caliphate – most prominently, his eldest son Awal ud-Din Yeke was to become the first Turkic
Amir al-Hajj, entrusted with the holy duty of organizing and protecting the first pilgrimages to the Holy Cities since the suppression of the recent great Kharijite revolt of Ibn Junaydah. In exchange, he would set an ambush for his fellow atabeg and take not just Saif al-Islam but also, if possible, his entire family off the board, and henceforth serve as the primary protector of the Caliph. Hasan also planned to appoint an Arab Grand Vizier in Ja'far's stead, the court nobleman Mu'sab ibn al-Ashtar, and Badr al-Din agreed to recognize him in exchange for the further concession of Awal ud-Din's marriage to Hasan's next-oldest daughter Ḥusnīyah.
However, Hasan proved about as luckless in intrigue as he was at controlling his daughter. Among those that Badr al-Din put his trust in, his brother-in-law and lieutenant Abd al-Rahim Tolun Beg wasted little time in ratting the plot out to Saif al-Islam in exchange for his own promised ascent to Badr al-Din's throne once the latter was dealt with. In turn Saif al-Islam arranged his own ambush of Badr al-Din's ambush, and went on to prevail in the confused and sanguinary Battle of Al Jami'ayn[6], a village near Babylon: in turn that city's citizens looked on with astonishment at the unexpected hostilities erupting under their nose, but opened their gates to Saif al-Islam when he demanded entry and rations for his men with Badr al-Din's head on his lance, claiming to have just uncovered & suppressed a new conspiracy against the Caliph. In fact it was he who was now in rebellion against Kufa, as would be made clear in the coming days & weeks when he marched against the Hashemite capital. Still pretending to be a faithful supporter of his late brother-in-law, Abd al-Rahim sent false information to Hasan's court claiming that the ambush had indeed been defeated but that they inflicted more casualties on Saif al-Islam's army than they actually had, encouraging Hasan to sent Ibn al-Ashtar with the remaining
ghilman and several thousand more
ahdath (Kufan volunteer militiamen) to finish the rebel Turks off.
Abd al-Rahim approached the Caliphal army south of Al Jami'ayn with 2,000 men, a mix of his own followers and those assigned to him by Saif al-Islam, bearing the bloodied colors of Badr al-Din. He attempted his own surprise attack on the Caliphal army, starting by striking down Awal ud-Din when the latter rode ahead of the rest of said army to greet him, but was rebuffed by Ibn al-Ashtar's defense and died in the confusion of the retreat – there was a better than even chance that the arrow which felled him came from Saif al-Islam's soldiers, who were under secret orders to eliminate him on the grounds that a man who would so easily betray his family for personal gain would surely inevitably betray their master too, if the right incentives were presented to him. Ibn al-Ashtar now realized the danger he was in and tried to hurry back behind the walls of Kufa, but Saif al-Islam rushed to attack his weakened army before they could complete their retreat and inflicted a shattering defeat upon them in the Battle of Al-Kifl. Having outmaneuvered and routed or killed all of his new enemies in central Mesopotamia in the span of a few chaotic and sanguinary weeks, the last atabeg standing was able to march upon a near-defenseless Kufa and impress upon Hasan the necessity of his appointment to the office of Grand Vizier shortly afterward.
Confrontation between Caliph Hasan and the Turkic atabeg Saif al-Islam Ghazi, with the latter wasting no time in telling the former what he needs to do if he wants to stay alive
In Nam Việt, after a string of multiple failed attempts on the life of Kishi no Kisa culminating in the summary execution of a spy who had disguised herself as a courtesan in a bid to get closer to the governor, the agents of King Giáp in his former capital decided to eschew subtlety for their next plot and simply bullrush the man's palanquin as he traveled through the streets of Cổ Loa. They managed to get further than usual this time, as one man who jumped from a rooftop onto the palanquin itself managed to get inside and not only stab Kishi in the side but even slash his throat before – like the rest of his compatriots, who were considerably less fortunate – he was killed on the spot by the governor's guards. Apparently, the sheer audacity of such an attack had caught Kishi and his men off-guard: they were expecting some other overwrought intrigue aimed at eliminating him in a more subtle manner, not a blunt and brazen attack by a mob of assassins and men jumping off a nearby roof in broad daylight.
Now to Giáp's great anger and consternation Kishi still managed to survive such blows thanks to a combination of his robust constitution, the timely assistance of Chinese physicians and sheer good fortune, although the critical injuries did leave him bedridden and unable to speak. Nevertheless, while he may have been unsuccessful in eliminating the regional enemy commander, the Vietnamese king took his chance to mount a larger-scale push against the occupying Chinese forces, recovering towns and strongholds closer to Cổ Loa with the assistance of rebels incited and organized by other spies of his behind their lines. Giáp was also assisted by an outside factor he could not have foreseen – a rebellion against the pro-Chinese king of Tibet this year grew so large that Renzong had to dispatch troops to help his client suppress it, meaning fewer soldiers and resources were available to reinforce Kishi as the latter lingered on the border between life & death.
Kishi no Kisa's stomach wound is treated by expert Chinese physicians following the latest and deadliest Vietnamese attempt on his life
955 seemed, at least on paper, a year of endings in western Eurasia. The Irish had been unable to make significant progress against the Britons' new strategy of biting and holding smaller chunks of land beyond the Pale by going on a castle-building spree, lacking both the means with which to take the new castles in a reasonable timeframe as well as the strength & opportunity to inflict truly decisive defeats on the British armies in the field. Conversely, the Britons were unable to conquer massive swathes of Irish territory and the demands of warfare were placing undue stress on their treasury, depleting even the stores of plunder which they had acquired during the Crusade. Once more Mathgamain Ui Briain betrayed his northeastern overlords by seeking a separate peace with the British, though he was far from alone as the other Irish petty-kings involved in the conflict were also starting to look for the exit by this point, and this time Elan had died and was succeeded by his more peaceable son Íméri (Lat.: 'Ambrosius', Cam.: 'Emrys') III.
Without the support of the rest of Ireland, Muichertach Ó Néill could not carry on the fight (at least not if his intent was to achieve a total victory over the British), and he too had to grudgingly sue for peace through Bishop Eógan. The resulting peace settlement was one that allowed both sides to walk away with something, which however was certainly not entirely to their satisfaction: per the Peace of Ceanannas[7] Muichertach finally received British recognition of his high kingship as legitimate and was allowed to proceed to Tara for the traditional coronation at long last, accompanied and protected by a Papal legate as well as official representatives of Aloysius V per his own insistence, and furthermore the Pendragons agreed henceforth that they would not obstruct the coronation of Irish high kings outside of their family (although Íméri did not attend the ceremony, instead sending lesser representatives of his own in a pointed snub). As for said Pendragons, Íméri extended British control beyond the Pale through the preservation of the first Hiberno-British fiefs, which displaced the native Gaelic rulers in an arc reaching from the former Viking longphort of Linn Duachaill to the now-former kingdom of Firceall in western Meath and the fringes of the Cualu Mountains in the south.
The Hiberno-Britons would in time marry into the local Gaelic nobility and come to adopt some of their customs, even if they didn't go so far as to assimilate entirely into their neighbors' ranks as the Norse-Gaels in Ireland had already done, which combined with their autonomous tendencies as marcher nobles would at times spark conflict with their overlords back home; however, for the foreseeable future they remained sufficiently reliable extensions of British authority further into the Irish hinterland. The Gaels themselves dubbed them
dubgaill, 'dark foreigners', in contrast to the Norse-Gaelic
finngaill or 'fair foreigners'[8] – not merely a reference to the stereotypical hair colors associated with the Britons and Norsemen (nevermind that the Pendragons themselves tended to be light-eyed redheads or blondes, with the late Elan and Brydany both having been among the 'red dragons' and Íméri being among the 'golden' ones), but also to the considerably greater hostility they had in their hearts for the Britons, who were perceived as arrogant interlopers and much more durable tyrants in contrast to the destructive but comparatively short-lived and fast-assimilating Vikings in Ireland. In any case, the only certainty guaranteed by the Peace of Ceanannas was that it was only a matter of time before hostilities flared up again.
Íméri III of Britain distributing additional fiefs in Ireland to his new Hiberno-Briton lords following the Peace of Ceanannas
Meanwhile in Iraq, Saif al-Islam Ghazi imposed his own settlement on the Caliph and by extension all Iraq and those parts of Arabia which were still under Hashemite control. He was persuaded against assuming the office of Grand Vizier himself but did manage to push the candidacy of his own son-in-law, the Arab Qays ibn Khazim al-Ghanawi – an inoffensive scholar with medical inclinations who had served as his personal physician, and thus was someone he knew he could trust and boss around with ease – in his place; Ibn al-Ashtar was seemingly dismissed with honors at first and even treated to a conciliatory feast at Saif al-Islam's expense, but was later killed before the year's end, ostensibly for plotting to retake his office. The atabeg also arranged his own heir Imad al-Din Mahmud's marriage to the princess Ḥusnīyah and his appointment to the office of
Amir al-Hajj in place of the fallen Awal ud-Din, while annexing the Bursuqids' atabegate and chopping it up into appanages for his younger sons.
Now Saif al-Islam, having firmly established himself as the new power behind the Hashemite throne, was logically supposed to take the fight to the Baqliyya and other Kharijite remnants still persisting in the Nejd and Bahrayn – after all, he was not only the official commander-in-chief of the Hashemite armies, but also led the
only real army left standing in Mesopotamia after having neutralized all the others on his road to power. However, he instead spent the rest of 955 in Kufa, purging the government of anyone whose loyalty to him specifically was in doubt and installing his own creatures, something done cordially through the official channels where possible and at lance-point where necessary. As far as Saif al-Islam was concerned, he was the right man to end the ruinous infighting which had begun with the outbreak of the Fitna of the Third Century (though officially ending said Fitna would require him to also defeat Egypt & reunify Dar al-Islam under Hashemite authority), but to accomplish such a feat it was absolutely necessary that he render it impossible for anyone to undermine his authority or plot his removal; failure to do so and a reversion to the decay under Ja'far or the chaos which immediately followed his overthrow would surely doom Iraq. His caution was well warranted, as Hasan resented being placed back in a gilded cage and intrigued with the Turco-Persian sultans to try to remove Saif al-Islam even before the year ended.
An agent of the Caliph trying to negotiate with servants of the Sultan of Fars. Despite many failures and even his victories rapidly turning into ash in his grasp, if nothing else Hasan proved no less persistent than the fallen Ja'far
But where the fires in Ireland and Iraq were dimming this year, a new conflagration was just beginning on the steppes. The Pechenegs gained a young new leader in the form of Kuerçi Khan this year, and being a highly ambitious and spirited warlord, his first act in office was to finally put to use the preparations undertaken by his father & grandfather to overthrow the Khazar yoke and realize his people's claimed destiny as the next great power on the Pontic Steppe at long last. He struck fast and hard, blindsiding the complacent Khazar armies in bloody battles east of Atil and capturing many formerly Khazar-held points along the steppe trade routes north of the Caspian Sea. Highlighting shifts in Khazar culture & strategy toward the sedentary, Menachem Khagan resolved to avoid challenging the Pechenegs in the field after his first few defeats but instead employed a much more passive plan: he would focus on defending Atil, Samandar and the other significant Khazar cities, sallying into the open only to protect the roads linking them, and essentially concede huge parts of the steppe countryside to his more dynamic rival. With luck, the Pechenegs would bleed themselves white against these fortified cities and make themselves vulnerable to a counterattack (or assaults by their other neighbors, for that matter) down the line.
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[1] Kinnegad.
[2] The River Camlin.
[3] The River Shannon.
[4] Kut.
[5] Alaunodunum – Maidenhead, Berkshire.
[6] Hillah.
[7] Kells, County Meath.
[8]
Dubgaill and
finngaill originally referred to different bands of Vikings, respectively either Danes and Norwegians or Vikings led by the Ivaring dynasty and those opposed to them. The former came after the latter, and seem to have been more destructive too.
, the attrocity that is Welsh language is too much even for the Irish, even the Polish names don't come close to what the Welsh are capable.