it’s my pleasure, really! these are things i Care About™ and i rarely get to talk about them in the context of fandom so this has been fun!

i answered a question about joe’s last name here. following the logic laid in that post i don’t personally think it makes sense to draw conclusions about which sect he belongs to from his name; instead we can turn to spatiotemporal location. where from the maghreb is yusuf al-kaysani from? eh, pretty much anywhere you want him to. in the sense that yeah, marwan is tunisian, but these are modern borders and even in 1066 many amazigh tribes are still semi-nomadic. we can infer from canon that he grew up in an urban center, and so is a certain degree removed from the tribal lifestyle, but i don’t think that means anything about his direct ancestors considering the timeline: the 11th century truly was a very tumultuous time in the region and geopolitics shifted INCREDIBLY fast. as in, the islamic world was reshaped multiple times in a single person’s lifetime.

which brings us to: are there shia muslims in northwestern africa at the time of joe’s birth? yes, although they are already in the minority in terms of pure numbers. in terms of influence it’s another story: many arabized amazigh dynasties were shi'ites, and the fatimid caliphate was ismaili - at that point the largest branch of shi'ism.

when joe is born, however, especially if you place him in tunisia (but not only), most rulers in the maghreb have converted to sunni islam, and so has their aristocratic and merchant class. the zirid are actually in direct conflict with the fatimid, which i think is super interesting considering… you know… where joe ends up fighting and dying.

it makes most sense to me to think he was raised sunni at least - i have my personal opinion on what he believes in today, but that’s not the point of this ask. but like. it would not be historically inaccurate for him to be shia either! with the right backstory it would still make sense! it would however have really specific implications re:his life in a zirid controlled environment + his political beliefs, so. you know!