I find that Islamic flavor doesn’t really get talked about much on this forum, so I wanna touch on something that I think could lead to some interesting flavor. I’m not a scholar or anything so feel free to correct me. From my general knowledge on Islam and some internet digging, it seems like the early 14th century was actually a pretty important time for Islam especially when it comes to excommunication (takfir), and that should matter gameplay-wise because widespread takfir helped Muslim rulers justify wars — not just against non-Muslims, but even against other Muslims. It basically gave them a legit casus belli.
The best-known example is probably the Mongol invasion of the Levant around the 1300s. There was this (in)famous Sunni cleric named Ibn Taymiyya who gave a fatwa (religious declaration) saying the “Tatars” (aka the Mongols, or Ilkhanate in-game) weren’t real Muslims. Even though they had converted to Islam, he argued they didn’t fully follow Shariah (Islamic law) and were still ruling by their old traditional laws, so in his view, that made them not proper Muslims. This gave the Mamluks a strong religious reason to go to war, and Ibn Taymiyya was very involved — he preached to the soldiers, called for jihad, and even traveled with them to rally morale.
What’s interesting is that even after the Mongol threat faded, some Muslim rulers kept using his (and other similar clerics) kind of thinking to justify their own power grabs, wars, or crackdowns on rivals — even if those rivals were also Muslim (at least according to themselves). But these radical views weren’t universally accepted either of course as other scholars thought he was way too extreme and debated him, and Ibn Taymiyya even got jailed because of some of his opinions after pressure from his religious opponents. Rulers back then obviously could tilt religious debates by backing certain clerics or suppressing others, so it wasn’t just theology, it was politics too
In-game, I think moving closer to this traditionalist school of thought (you could call it "Athari" although that would be an oversimplification) could give rulers powerful tools: solid casus bellis, high morale troops, and religious legitimacy(?). But it should come with downsides — like unrest from minorities, tension with other scholars resulting in public discontent (since Atharis are usually non-compromising), and maybe slowing down things like science and therefore research progress since this school was against a lot of Greek-style reasoning. It wasn’t anti-knowledge but it did reject stuff that didn’t come straight from scripture
This could be a really fun dynamic for Muslim rulers in the game: you could choose to align with more moderate traditions (like Ashariyya or Maturidiyya), or go full Athari for a more hardcore path with both strong bonuses and serious trade-offs.
Also don’t forget the Wahhabis later on — they popped up in the 1700s, took over inner Arabia and were heavily influenced by Ibn Taymiyya’s ideas. They basically launched a takfir-fueled movement and started declaring war on everyone they thought was doing Islam wrong. That could be a cool bit of late-game flavor.
Even the Ottomans had their own version of this religious tension. Like the Kadızadeli movement, which was way more strict and tried to shut down stuff like Sufi practices and coffeehouses, clashing with the more moderate side of Ottoman Islam (eg. Sufi orders)
I personally would love to play a Mamluk game where I would go full Takfiri and use it to create a hyper-religious army and conquer neighbouring Muslim countries, demolishing shrines/icons etc. and just be a complete asshole overall
The best-known example is probably the Mongol invasion of the Levant around the 1300s. There was this (in)famous Sunni cleric named Ibn Taymiyya who gave a fatwa (religious declaration) saying the “Tatars” (aka the Mongols, or Ilkhanate in-game) weren’t real Muslims. Even though they had converted to Islam, he argued they didn’t fully follow Shariah (Islamic law) and were still ruling by their old traditional laws, so in his view, that made them not proper Muslims. This gave the Mamluks a strong religious reason to go to war, and Ibn Taymiyya was very involved — he preached to the soldiers, called for jihad, and even traveled with them to rally morale.
What’s interesting is that even after the Mongol threat faded, some Muslim rulers kept using his (and other similar clerics) kind of thinking to justify their own power grabs, wars, or crackdowns on rivals — even if those rivals were also Muslim (at least according to themselves). But these radical views weren’t universally accepted either of course as other scholars thought he was way too extreme and debated him, and Ibn Taymiyya even got jailed because of some of his opinions after pressure from his religious opponents. Rulers back then obviously could tilt religious debates by backing certain clerics or suppressing others, so it wasn’t just theology, it was politics too
In-game, I think moving closer to this traditionalist school of thought (you could call it "Athari" although that would be an oversimplification) could give rulers powerful tools: solid casus bellis, high morale troops, and religious legitimacy(?). But it should come with downsides — like unrest from minorities, tension with other scholars resulting in public discontent (since Atharis are usually non-compromising), and maybe slowing down things like science and therefore research progress since this school was against a lot of Greek-style reasoning. It wasn’t anti-knowledge but it did reject stuff that didn’t come straight from scripture
This could be a really fun dynamic for Muslim rulers in the game: you could choose to align with more moderate traditions (like Ashariyya or Maturidiyya), or go full Athari for a more hardcore path with both strong bonuses and serious trade-offs.
Also don’t forget the Wahhabis later on — they popped up in the 1700s, took over inner Arabia and were heavily influenced by Ibn Taymiyya’s ideas. They basically launched a takfir-fueled movement and started declaring war on everyone they thought was doing Islam wrong. That could be a cool bit of late-game flavor.
Even the Ottomans had their own version of this religious tension. Like the Kadızadeli movement, which was way more strict and tried to shut down stuff like Sufi practices and coffeehouses, clashing with the more moderate side of Ottoman Islam (eg. Sufi orders)
I personally would love to play a Mamluk game where I would go full Takfiri and use it to create a hyper-religious army and conquer neighbouring Muslim countries, demolishing shrines/icons etc. and just be a complete asshole overall
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