Remade Map of Bilalistan

If you've seen this blog since 2019, you may have seen several tabs that were labeled "ART" and "MAPS". I removed them sometime in May 2020 because there were too many tabs and were not all showing up on the HOME page. In the ART section, I posted pictures from the book cover of Lion's Blood that showed Aidan, Wakil Abu Ali on a horse, and European slaves working in the field. I also posted Kai with his two wives running away from a city under attack; this image was from Zulu Heart.

Under the MAPS section, all of the images were maps of Bilalistan, including its provinces, the Aztec Empire, a viking colony called Vinland, Chinese settlements, and areas where ownership of territory was disputed. Another map of Dar Kush and a fan-made version originally on DeviantArt by RlyehSummerisle were included in the section.

To the best of my ability, I decided to recreate a map with some slight modifications. The Chinese Settlements are smaller (It should have been bigger than what was show in the books, in my opinion) and primarily located around the San Francisco Bay area. It is unknown how much the Aztec Empire controls Central America, so I chose to make it smaller and more focused on border disputes with New Djibouti. In the book, Zulu Heart, it is mentioned that the Songhay Islands exists in what would be considered the Caribbean islands. I don't know if they are part of New Alexandria, but I assumed that they are until a future correction exists. 

Bilalistan on As-Sabt, Shawwal 14, A.H. 1279 [Saturday, April 4, 1863]

For each nation, I included their names in Arabic, English and how their names may have looked like in their native languages. Vinland is written in Old Norse, with runes, although it is an approximation since the only phrase I was able to find contains additional words that describe it more. For the Aztec Empire, I recently learned that the people who lived there did not call themselves Aztecs. Since I couldn't find a more accurate word with citations, I decided to keep the word "Aztec" for the sake of familiarity to the reader. The Chinese Settlements are written in Traditional Chinese calligraphy. As a bonus, I included Aztec writing that translates to "Triple Alliance", because that is the more accurate name of the Aztec Empire. Central and South America are included as part of "The Nations". The Nations are the name the Black colonists use for the remaining indigenous peoples of Bilalistan. I've also included the literal translation of Bilalistan in Arabic and Persian. The reason why I chose this is because the suffix -istan is a Persian word that means, "country" or "place of". If English existed in Lion's Blood and translated the "country of Bilal", Bilalistan is one way to write it, among others.