In Forgotten Realms what is the historical parallel of Calimshan?

One of FR's big advertising points in the early days is that while it took inspiration in a few places it didn't directly steal from the real world, at least for the development of Faerun itself.

Once TSR started expanding the setting with the Moonshae Isles being reworked, Kara-Tur, Zakhara, Maztica, and all that shit it started becoming more and more "We need this to be based off of the real world."
As a result parts of the continent that were more heavily defined in the old days, such as Calimshan which had three or four books talking about it in the AD&D days, tend to be less based off of the real world.

Per Greenwood, the oldest part of the realms is waterdeep (his first short story) and dalelands (he was dm'ing for a party there, the whole knights of the myth drannor jazz and another party which was stationed around waterdeep)

Moonshae Isles novel was not suppose to be a FR novel in the first place, it came as an after tought of "hey why don't you change few things and names and place your nearly done novel in our new setting" thingie. I think moonshaes "fantasy britain" tone set the pace for all other "worldly" adoptions that you mentinoed, kara-tur, maztica, amn being spain, the bucaneer trope at sea of fallen stars etc.

Although Greenwood himself said FR had a connetion with earth but that connection later wained, hence the "forgotten" realms. Although I do believe Ed is not responsible for most of the "direct inspiration from world" places. Sword coast north of amn and dalelands are %100 his and they lack the real world influence.

>I love everything over explained because I'm not creative. Mary sue under every blade of grass is awesome too!
This is what you posted

tunak tun

>tunak tun

I love this piece of music, not just because it is banging but also for the epic BTFO it represents Daler Mehndi giving his critics.

i had no idea but it is indeed so bangin that it holds up 20 years later

>Mary sue under every blade of grass is awesome too!
That's what cool, the Forgotten Realms is basically the cold war but instead of only having two blocs you have dozen of archmage and other powerful character/thing using adventurer as agent.

>i had no idea

>At the time, critics complained that Mehndi's music was only popular due to his videos that featured beautiful women dancing

Then he makes a video with only himself and I hear it in the gym, at the paki rice place, in every taxi, for the next literally decade.

Yeah it was a legit song in its own right and one of the first turn of the century memes. I have no idea what it's about but I fuckin remember the name at a glance of that fly outfit

>the sheer fucking Transsexual pozfest that is Elistatree's clergy,

Not much to investigate here.
Elistatree has an all-female clergy but in the transition to 4E's "points of light" setting her cult began dying off and had to start accepting male clerics, with the understanding that they would use a genderbend spell now and then to get in touch with their feminine side.
And then Elistatree died, too.

And this doesn't get old, or completely bullshit pretty much right away?
So, this giant uber powerful mage over here hires your party to go do shit in another uber powerful mages territory, right?
Well, it's very unbelievable for the other mage to be so fucking uber if he doesn't have powerful retainers and abilities that they would unleash on you as soon as you walked across the border.
And let's not forget the biggest mary sue/small penis compensator of all time: Elminster. That mega faggot just goes wherever and does whatever with a wiggle of his fingers and boom, job done. As far as over compensating: he's Greenwoods answer to a supermage done right: Gygaxs Mordenkainen.

If you want to be creative you can run your own campaign. I do believe realms give you a leeway in a lot of places too.
If you are really going to the creative route why chose any campaign? Expect maybe you are a really beginner to worldbuilding.
3rd ed campaign book had a nice box of text adressing this topic, on concerns of the mighty or something like that, basically it boils down to high level characters a-cannot be at everywhere at the same time b-have the risk of getting killed while trying to kill the opponent, so the situation becomes a coldwarish standoffs with use of proxies and occasional move by the powerfull

>Ed Greenwood's deal with WOTC to have anything he says about FR to be made canon that he writes and publishes including his posts over the Candlekeep forums
That's not how it works.

Anything in the original notes he provided to TSR is canon, even if it's unpublished and TSR, now Wizards, are the only ones who ever read it. And there were a shitload of notes, several authors and TSR/Wizards people over the years have mentioned he has a basement full of them. These notes are what his Candlekeep replies are drawn from, with the caveat that because TSR and now Wizards actually own publication rights for the setting, they can put a NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) in place on particular aspects of the setting in case they want to use them. So for example, if they decide that they're going to push out a sourcebook on Calimshan, they could drop a NDA on all Calimshan stuff, so he can no longer legally talk about it in any Candlekeep reply until the NDA is lifted. And sometimes they'll drop a NDA and never bother to lift it, because it's easier to NDA something than remove a NDA, the latter requiring time spent investigating why it was put in place, is there still a need, etc.

He also has a deal that once a year TSR, now Wizards, has to publish a full-length novel by him or by later adjustment of the agreement a FR sourcebook, for which adventures may also count depending on the adventure. If he writes new lore in those publications, then they'd go through as "canon" like any other new publication that adds lore to an existing universe.

Ed himself, however, is perfectly happy for individual DMs to change around and alter FR for their home games as they see fit. His own home game ignored the Time of Troubles, for example, and is still running on 2e rules.

It's Arabian Nights and golden age caliphates.

That's more or less what I read.
Moonshae came from a Fantasy Britain novel series + board game that TSR didn't think would take off on its own as an IP so they put it in FR via a bit of renaming.

And yeah, it's one of those things I find curious with how many later writers and TSR just wanted to copy real world shit, as opposed to say Mulhorand where the fact it copied real world shit was a major plot point for the setting.

>Anything in the original notes he provided to TSR is canon
It should be said that part of their putting things under NDA is in part because of planned retcons. Most of Ed's netheril notes, which he said there were "only" a few pages, were NDA'd ages ago because TSR wanted to put out books in regards to Netheril, only for the writer they hired to throw out most of the notes and write his own version of Netheril with a lot of unfitting details.