discussion: Al-Murabitun (The Moors) faction

[jermagon]

The Moors always have a different taste they represent the Islamic culture in western Europe,the term ''Moors'' is a corrupted name for the native Muslims of Iberia in the Medieval ages.from the 711-1031 AD century the Umayyads ruled Iberia following the death of Al-Mansur -the de facto leader of Muslim Iberia- in 1003 AD civil war took place between the Arabs and the Berbers, Muwaladis (native Iberian Muslims) Iberia was divided into warring factions. the Most powerful kingdoms were the Kingdom of Seville (Ruled by the Arabic family of Abbadids), Kingdom of Toledo (ruled By Banu Zulnun),kingdom of Badajoz (ruled by Aftasids).




in the north the Christians benefited from this civil war. they penerated the Muslim lands and imposed huge tribute upon the Muslim princes. in 1085 it was clear that both the civil war and the heavy tribute had exhausted the Muslim warring states they were no longer able to stop the Christian invasion from the north.the fall of Toledo casued a sense of terror and shiver among Iberian Muslims.



shortly follwoing the fall of toledo many Andalusian emissaries -sent by the kings of sevilla,Garanda,Badajoz- crossed the sea to Africa seeking military aid from Yusuf ibn Tashfin the emir of Al-murabitun both their prayers and their appeal was answered and Almoravids crossed the strait of Gibltar and defeated the armies of Alfonso VI king of Castile & leon in the battle of az-Zallaqah in 1086.after the battle was over Yusuf and his army set sail to Africa. few years later almoravids deposed all the taifa kings thus Muslim Iberia came to the direct control of almoravids.

Almoravids ruled Muslim Iberia from 1094-1147 AD,the Bulk of their armies was formed from the berber tribes of Northern Africa like the Lamtuna tribe,they also recruited Black African Slaves who were well known as ''Al Haras Al Sudani'' or the Black Guards,and following their Iberian Campaign many christians mercenaries were hired forming ''Al Haras Al Nasrani'' or the christian Guards sizeable numbers of those Guards converted to Islam and took Arab names but the Majority didn't,the impact of the Christian guards in Northern Africa was strong enough that they were hired till late 13th century

[jermagon]

Almoravid army

The Murabitun were the first Saharan Islamic religious movement to establish a large state.they captured morocco and extended their empire from the Senegal River to Tunisia.
During their early conquests most soldiers were consisted of Lamtuna Berber Tribal contingents, and as the empire expanded other people were recruited. At the peak of the Murabitun power the army included Lamtuna, Juzalla, Zanata, Masmuda berber Tribes.
African slaves were also recruited, Yusuf ibn Tashfin –second Murabit ruler- created a ‘’Hasham Guards’’ of some 2000 Black infantry.
Ali ibn Yusuf -third ruler- was the first North African leader to train Black Africans as Cavalry.
He also recruited European Christian mercenary cavalry into his guards forming ‘’Al Haras al Nasrani’’ the Christian Guards. They eventually exceeded several thousand men and they were permitted to have their own bishop in Marrakesh
Murabit tactics introduced major changes to Saharan warfare, their armies were discipline, solid formation.
On the march the Murabitun included large numbers of Camel-mounted infantry, but in battle these dismounted to form solid infantry phalanxes, those in the front ranks used as pikes, while those behind the ranks supported then with Javelins.



Customs

Customs was the typical Saharan ‘’Litham’’ viel , accoeding to the Arab geographer Al Yaqubi ‘’the people of western Sahara had veiled themselves in turban clothes and wore a single large winding sheet.
The Berbers of the deep Sahara were said to consider the mouth as unclean like the private parts. Even after conquering Morocco and Al-Andalus the Murabit elite tried to stop anyone else wearing the litham ‘’veil. especially Mercenaries who were trying to pass themselves off as genuine Murabitun.
Al-Masudi –Arab Historian- that many sub-Saharan people dressed only in animal skins, while a third Arab geographer maintained that some sub-Saharan warriors wore quilted soft armour.



Amour
In wealthier regions one-piece iron helmets of round and pointed outline were probably more common than in Western Europe. Whereas mail armor remained the normal form of protection. A newer fashion seems to have been a decorative tassels fastened to shields in Muslim Iberia, North Africa, Muslim Sicily.
South of Sahara war equipments were much simpler and armor rarer. The first Murabit leader introduced massed drums which proved effective psychological weapons against the Christians.


Pictures

Al Murabitun army from hat.com

http://www.hat.com/Othr7/Beggs05P.html
http://www.hat.com/Othr7/Catel17P.html
http://www.hat.com/Othr7/Catel18P.html
http://www.hat.com/Othr7/Ahmed08P.html
http://www.hat.com/Othr7/Willers73P.html
http://www.hat.com/Curr2/Bx8189ALI/Bx8189ALIa.h
http://figureativelyspeaking.blogspo...vid-iii74.html

Al Murabitun Banner from Hukam.net http://www.hukam.net/family.php?fam=101


Al Murabitun banner from XII death or glory game













North African warrior (from Mauritania) 1902. his weapons are very similary to the one used by the Murabitun in the 11-12th century AD.








Examples of Litham wore by the Tuareg berber tribes





I have many pics of the Almurabitun army but unfortunatelyI can't post them cuz they belong to Osprey.

[Mega Tortas de Bodemloze]

Wow great stuff...Mega-Deep...+Rep I'll try and stop back by later and try to contribute..thanks for taking the time and energy to post this...

[jermagon]

Wow great stuff...Mega-Deep...+Rep I'll try and stop back by later and try to contribute..thanks for taking the time and energy to post this...

Thanks mega for your post and Iam waiting for your contributes

[Mega Tortas de Bodemloze]

Thanks mega for your post and Iam waiting for your contributes

Okay everyone. Take note that he asked for this so blame the OP...

I had the privillage of visiting Spain awhile back at Malaga and got to see the Alhambra too...Mind-Blowing...History yo...

Those units are Breathtaking....one of you modders go snag'em please...

Now I play baseSS6.1 ATM and the Moors always end up getting the raw end of the deal. Usually their pushed out of Iberia by turn 25-30 or just hanging on to Granada... Has ANYONE ever had a Crusade called for in Spain by the AI??? I better quit with this as I'm not being productive...

Guess I'll just leave it with Moorish Fan here yo...

If anyone has pics of their Moorish Campaign that would be pretty neat. +Reps for good efforts.....

[Awellesley]

Now I play baseSS6.1 ATM and the Moors always end up getting the raw end of the deal. Usually their pushed out of Iberia by turn 25-30 or just hanging on to Granada... Has ANYONE ever had a Crusade called for in Spain by the AI??? I better quit with this as I'm not being productive...

I too always found the Moors go the shaft. In my mini-sub-mod, they have more starting territory and I am working on improving their recruitment. I know in RR, they also have the moorish auxiliaries. I really liked the strong urban units they had access to at the start of MTW.

[Navajo Joe]

Fantastic, I have always wondered about the background to the Moors, but been to lazy to bother. Really like the maps and pictures. rep

[jermagon]

Fantastic, I have always wondered about the background to the Moors, but been to lazy to bother. Really like the maps and pictures. rep

thanks man for the rep,btw I'll post more pics soon

wow, thanks for posting this stuff!

what is that screen shot from btw? the ui looks different

it's from a game called XIII century:death or glory

[Nightbringer]

wow, thanks for posting this stuff!

what is that screen shot from btw? the ui looks different

[jermagon]

is there any plans to make them??

[Warmaster Tibs]

I want to play the Moors now. Good read thank you.

[baronfuming]

I played a game as Moors on m/m, and I found it pretty easy to take Iberia from the Catholics. The only problem was Jinties (sp), as they were hard to catch.

When I play as another faction, Moors is always driven from Iberia, their lack of diversity in their unit roster might be the cause of this.

They are fun to play, though there is some improvement needed.

[jermagon]

I played a game as Moors on m/m, and I found it pretty easy to take Iberia from the Catholics. The only problem was Jinties (sp), as they were hard to catch.

When I play as another faction, Moors is always driven from Iberia, their lack of diversity in their unit roster might be the cause of this.

They are fun to play, though there is some improvement needed.

the Moors are one of the weakest -if not the weakest- faction in m2tw. all their units are fictional.

[Awellesley]

the Moors are one of the weakest -if not the weakest- faction in m2tw. all their units are fictional.

I agree with the first point. The Moors need to have stronger spears, better crosssbows and light cavalry. They are tricky to use properly, especially against heavy cavalry and infantry but you need to play to the strengths of the faction. I am not sure if the AI can handle lighter units properly. Hit and run tactics do not seem to be an AI strength. Their city units need to be rethought.

Disagree with the second point. There is evidence for the grenadine jinettes, mounted xbows, urban milita, christian guard, desert/ african troops.

[ALFAJI]

the moors rules

[Sir Walter]

The Moors always end up killing Portugal and pushing Aragon north into Marseilles region but that won't happen when I'm finished modding France to make feudalism work...

[Awellesley]

but that won't happen when I'm finished modding France to make feudalism work...

Can you explian this better? I am interested.

[Sir Walter]

Can you explian this better? I am interested.

I was bored of RR/RC so I decided to mess about with descr_strat to make it a bit better and I've ended up modding loads of countries (but especially France and Kiev) to make the situation more realistic in terms of who they control nominally and how well they actually control it (e.g. in RR/RC Genoa can invade Marseilles with no problems but that would be a declaration of war in real life so I've put reduced garrisons in places like Marseilles and Toulouse but made them French and had lots of rebels around, plus increased brigand spawn number etc). It's modded on top of SS 6.2 RR/RC version with your 1100 AD mod and Caralampio's Odds and Ends. I made it mainly for me so it's not going to be very good, though I'll locally host it in a .rar on TWC if you're interested... If anyone wants to update the pictures on the campaign start or anything I can send them the files... to continue this I'd need to make a new thread, it's little to do with the Moors

[Black_ice_Spain]

You forgot to add that there was actually a crusade to help spanish christian's recover their lands. (thanks god).

idk if it was oficially declared, but many crusaders fighted in the battle of "Navas de tolosa" where almohads got pwned.


Except granada (which was conquered in 1492) moors as faction disappeared in 1212 and yea, they rule in early ages, but then sucks.


@@ no javascript, aka no line-jump

[RollingWave]

an bit old thread, but very interesting and deserve more attention.

Currently, in RR/RC 1.3 SS 6.2 the Moors core roster is.

City:

Spear milita
Crossbow milita
Moorish axeman
Urban milita
Hand gunners
Sudanese gunners

Castle
(Feudal) Faris
(Barrack) Spear Milita, Nubian Spearman, Arab Spearman, Christian infantry, Heavy spearman
(range) Peasant x-bow, Heavy archers (most of their starting area get desert archers though)
(cavalry) arab cav, granadine lancers, christian guard


The Almoravid was mostly based on it's berber core, and the primary specialized units seem to be the Christian guards and the black slaves.

General suggestion: Well, Faris are kidna ahistorical, though i enjoy destroying countless christian army like childrens with them (my field army was basically entirely Faris + some christian guards and/or arab cavs after awhile). HA didn't seem to play a serious role in the region like it did in the east. the removal of Berber from the roster and making Lamtunas and Tauregs as ZOR units seems very questionable.

I would generally suggest that their core units be 1. Berbers, 2. Slave units 3. Christian guards. elite Berber and Black Slave units forming the Feudal units make a lot more sense. and give the Almoravid a more distinct flavor.

Berbers should be more diverse in it's units, possiblly a archer / spear / cav unit, Lamtuma should be a fairly elite (and possiblly fedual ) unit, since it basically represented the Caliph's personal clans man,

Cut down on the Granadian units, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. after the Alomhads got pushed out of the region, Granada became militarily irrevelant, they survived because they built very strong defensive fortifactions in a very defensable position. so it wasn't until gunpowder artillery became more common that they fell, I always thought Granadine jinet is a complete joke of a unit that doesn't make sense on so many level. (like, the fact that the term Jinet came from the Spanish after they were influenced by the Berbers. so a unit of the Moors copying the Spanish copy of their units??? huh??)

The elite Moorish cav (other than Chrisitan guards) should probably be a Ghulam unit based on black slaves, you could call them the Black Guards (such terms existed for different elite black slave units in different periods).

A general list I would guess (though obviously open to a lot of debate) I would love to see more discussion on how we can make the Moorish roster more unique and probably historical accuate.


City:

Spear milita
Moorish crossbowman (generally better than similar level crossbow militas)
Arab infantry (since they were the richer folks of the cities)
Arab Cavalry (back avalible in the race track again, though this isn't a huge issue right now since most cities get them VIA merchant guilds anyway)
Urban milita
Hand gunners
Pike companies (basically mercenary pikemans, reflecting more that the Moorish area relied on various Catholic merecnaries in it's different stages)
black guard gunners (replaces the otherwise useless Sudanese gunners with a more elite version of Arbeques units, the barbary states relied heavily on these, slightly ahistorical to this periods but with their arrival date it makes some sense)

(I kinda think you should be able to build a few of the elite units if you built a Sultan's palace like all the blackguards units)

Castle:
Lamtuna spearman (fedual, able to get more armor upgrades)
Lamtuna lancers (fedual, replaces the Granadine lancers)
Black Guards infantry (feudal, halberdiers)
Black Guards cavalry (feudal, basically a slightly better version of Ghulams)

barrack
Spear milita
African infantries (basically the sudanese javelin man, though they should have a larger units size to represent how they were deployed and/or maybe slightly better attack stats in melee)
Berber infantry (again, I think they should allow for more levels of armor upgrades, they didn't use them in the desert didn't mean they didn't when they were needed)
Christian guards infantry ( i keep thinking we should replace the moduel, they were just mercenary knights / men-at-arms, so their armor / equipments should reflect that, so they should like like mail knights / feudal knights in the early periods and chivaric knights in the high etc.)

range
Peasant crossbow (not a bad unit really, for their cost they are much more useful against serious enemies than levy archers if you can get a clean shot)
Berber archers (replace the generic and vague desert archer )
heavy crossbowman (to give a more distinct vibe from the other muslim factions. and it is in line with their theme, obviously could change name to something else)

Stable
Berber Cavalry (similar to berber archer replacing desert archers, maybe slightly improved with the Jinet style shield and a bit better stats in general though, after all, this was really their most common strike unit since the days they invaded Iberia, they were the true natural masters at the game of javelin cavalry. the Jinets merely tried to follow them. )
Arab cavalry (to reflect that these light to mid cav were the most common theme )
Christian guards