Early theologians believed that Jesus was both divine and human, but how did that work in practice? By the time the Gospel of John came to be written, Christianity was already being expressed in the language of Greek philosophy: in the beginning, there was the logos (λόγος). To make a long and complicated story very short, the issue is the physis (φύσις) or nature of Jesus. I'm planning a series of lectures on the Crusades, and I think much of, if not all of the first one is going to have to be dedicated to Christology, because it's very difficult to understand the Middle East before the Crusades without understanding the Christological debates that split Christianity into so many different sects long before the east-west divide. In the game, the Solomonids are miaphysites, which may well have been the case if they actually ruled as far back as then. I'm just going to have to hope they have better things to do - and that the Catholics invent crusades soon. In Crusader Kings at least, the Abbasid caliphate is already firmly established and not particularly well-disposed toward Abyssinia, and I'm not sure if there's a lot I can do to stop being swallowed up by them. Allegedly, the Prophet sent his daughter Ruqayyah and her husband ʿUthmān, the future Rāšidūn caliph, to safety in Abyssinia when the Quraysh were still opposed to Islam, and in gratitude commanded his followers to respect the Abyssinians' Christian faith. In Crusader Kings, this isn't very easy to do the defensive advantages of the Ethiopian Highlands aren't that great in the game, and the Prophet's alleged command to his followers to leave the Abyssinians in peace is nowhere to be found. In reality, the Solomonids made it to 1975, when Emperor Haile Selassie was murdered by communists. The goal in this game is going to be very simple: survive. I set the start date to 769, found the Solomonid King of Abyssinia, and got started. Maybe I should try being a successor of King Solomon? How am I supposed to not think about Crusader Kings? I tried playing as a tribal ruler in Africa before, and it didn't go great. He reckoned himself part of a dynasty reaching all the way back to the Biblical King Solomon. One of my lecture courses was on the Cold War, and I talked about the last emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie. When I finished my teaching last fall, it felt like a good time to do just that. Like I said in my previous Crusader Kings II post, there have been so many changes to the game since I last played that I need to figure it all out again. And Sulaiman was Dawood's heir, and he said: O men! we have been taught the language of birds, and we have been given all things most surely this is manifest grace.

Ck2 how to become caliph