Hi, I’m a solo dev making a little dark fantasy game set in an alternative equivalent to southern france at around the year 1425, but am struggling very much when trying to research arab history during that period for an npc.

I thought making the potion seller in my game an arab woman would be nice, as first off diversity is always nice, but also arabs were leading huge advancements in all fields through the middle ages till at least the XIIIth century from what I saw, with some important alchemist figures being also arabs themselves. So nodding to that felt right, as we don’t often appreciate the advancements they brung to our own society in fantasy.

I also wanted to make her a first generation immigrant (I mean in the sense that she was born in the game’s country, though the phrasing “first generation immigrant” wasn’t a concept at the time), as I feel like medias often depicts immigrants that arrived in their lifetime but not necessarily their kids, yet in real life most of the time immigrants have kids on the country they arrive to that grow up and do their own stuff themselves, so it’d be interesting to explore that type of character in fiction too. Also, on a more personnal level, most people I’ve seen that hadn’t the same origin as mine were still born in the same country as I, so that feel generally more relatable imo to show that instead of assuming that every foreigner arrived in their lifetime.

But then, here lies my issue ;

I knew nothing about arab history going into this. Generally, I am very bad at history even for my own country, but for arab culture and history all I know is what we get in mainstream media, which is a load of crap. So, I had to do a lot of research (as far as “a lot” go for a dev that’s not used to that kind research) just to even start vaguely getting my footing in the topic.

Then, one angle I thought I could use is the fact that Islam seemed to have been very oppressive against science after it’s golden age, I thought maybe one motive I could give was my character’s father being an alchemist (or in my universe even sorcerer, as I’m working with fantasy, but functionally that’d be the same as/intertwined with being an alchemist, most likely), and that as religion became more and more oppressive against scientific improvements (and thus magic research), he decided to move to other countries where that opression would be less present.

The problem is, first off, researching into it, it is incredibly hard to exactly get a timeline of when islam / arab politics started to shift into a conservative stance on progress and culture as there’s both a huge gap in infos in the stuff I found between the XIIIth century and late XVth, with no clear timeline of how things evolved inbetween the golden age and the period where arab politics seemed to have closed itself off from the rest of the world. And then, for the info I do have it seems to have a lot of contradictory infos between some saying the decline of the arab world was showing signs as early as XII century or sometimes that it really was prevalent as late as the XVIIIth century…

Then, the other issue is also that Catholicism doesn’t feel that much better then Islam was, we litterally had witch trials that started around the period my game is set in and religion here always also had been a roadblock for scientific advancements in europe too throughout history from what I’ve understood. But, while the arab world seemed to have been heavily stiffled in it’s evolution after it’s golden age, europe ended up having advancements all the way up to the industrial revolution despite catholicism being also very prevalent and conservative… So I’m fairely confused on what was the difference between both’s impact on societies at the time that led to differences in evolution, and wonder if there would have been differences that’d have made one more attractive for a scientist ?

(or if there was more ways to circumvent religion’s rules in europe in ways the people in the middle east couldn’t mayhaps ?)

Alternatively, another angle I’m thinking of could maybe be simply that somehow there’d be others economic advantages for an alchemist in moving to europe mayhaps? Since often trades were one of the main reasons for people moving from place to place.

Either way, to rephrase in short,

I wish to make a fictionnal character that’d be an alchemist/sorcerer in the year 1420 more or less in France, child of an arab immigrant that was himself a scholar of the occult. But I struggle to find precise info on that exact period of arab history. Thus, I’d be thankfull if anybody had ideas of either what stance islam was at at that point in time and the differences it’d have with catholicism at the time, or what other reasons could possibly lead to someone moving to france / europe in general.

Thank you greatly to anyone that’d take the time to give me pointers.

Important notes :

First, as stated above I am unbelivably bad at history in general, and even more ignorant when it comes to arab history. I’m glad to learn now, and tried my best doing research for a few hours yesterday and the day before, but I wanna apologise sincerely if I said anything that’s unbelivably dumb in my question.

I’m also sorry that the phrasing is a little verbose, I did my best synthesising the details of my question and where I was at but it still ended up being very lengthy

Finally, I understand that someone moving from middle east to france specifically during the XIVth century is very specific and kind of a random premice, being a question trying to fit history into the restrictions of my game rather than having known history and setting my game accordingly. But I’m thinking that mayhaps there could still be some piece of history that could give an at least somewhat plausible motive to my character’s history?

My game isn’t about history, and it being a fantasy game I do get a bit of lee-way with historical accuracy (and already did in it’s lore), but I’m still hoping to be able to represent a fairly accurate depiction of characters and cultures with the motives and story they could have at the time, rather then just informing those parts from my bias.