Earth 01-001-0750 is a founding member of the Interdimensional Energy and Technology Community (IETC) and the first human inhabited Earth to discover brane breaking. The city of Baghdad is the capital of the IETC.
History[]
After an invasion by European Christians was defeated in 1099, the Islamic world was put under pressure to end the squabbles that tore them apart in so many other timelines. Under the leadership of the Abbasid Caliphate, the Islamic world was once again reunited and the military strength of the Caliphate was revived. Reforms ended the political mismanagement that had plagued the Caliphate and ijtihad (independent reasoning) was once again encouraged ensuring the technological superiority of the Caliphate against its enemies.
In 1206, Genghis Khan established a powerful dynasty among the Mongols of central Asia. During the 13th century, this Mongol Empire conquered most of the Eurasian land mass, including both China in the east and the Kievan Rus in the west. Their expansion into the Middle East was prevented by the Caliphate after they defeated Hulagu Khan's army at the Battle of Baghdad, though it did mean the loss of Persia to the Mongols. Later Mongol leaders, such as Timur, mended relations with the Caliphate and instead focused on easier targets for conquest, such as Western Europe and Japan. The sack of Rome forced the Papacy to move to Dublin, where the Pope of this timeline still sits today.
Eventually, most of the Mongol peoples that settled in western Asia converted to Islam and in many instances became assimilated into various Muslim Turkic peoples. The Ottoman Empire rose to power in Central Asia and eventually subjugated most of Eastern Europe, creating an empire that rivaled that of even the Mongols at their height. The intense competition between the Ottoman Sultan and the Abbasid Caliphate spurred a period of growth and advancement on this Earth. Philosophers, scientists and engineers of the Islamic world contributed enormously to technology and culture, both by preserving earlier traditions and by adding their own inventions and innovations. In the mid-14th, explorers from Al-Andalus discovered the New World, beginning a new era of exploration, conquest and colonization.
As the two empires expanded, the Caliphate focused on creating a confederation of Islamic states with the Caliph as the glue that kept them together, while the Ottomans sought only conquest and submission from its new subjects. The latter policy was not sustainable, however, and the Ottoman Empire collapsed in the 17th century, leaving the Abbasid Caliphate the sole superpower in this timeline. It was their scientists who eventually cracked the secret to opening the multiverse in 1901, exploring the multiverse decades before the other founding Earths. Their monopoly ended in the 1970s as other Earths began discovering the secret of brane breaking technology. The wars that followed destroyed most of the interdimensional empire the Caliphate had built, following the same strategy they used on their own Earth.
In 1985, a peace conference in Baghdad ended the fighting between the competing Earths and established the IETC as the regulatory body of all the Earths that explore the multiverse. Since then the city of Baghdad has become the largest city on Earth 01-001-0750, mostly due to the large interdimensional immigrant community that lives in the city.
Culture[]
More to come...