Safferid

The Safferid are a Hamalfite clan and one of the largest tribal groups. Directly following the reign of Omar Abd-al-Amir they ruled Haisuuna until their eventual fall from grace and the election of Khodor ibn-Samun al-Michindi. Their rule is regarded as one of the longest dynasties in Hamalfite history, but as well as the most controversial. Though they sponsored a long period of cultural pluralism within the realm they however did not foster the most politically stable and cultural growth was often mired by rather reactionary rulings and intensely shifting legislation.
The Safferid were also often infamous practitioners of inter-marriage which often created solidified inter-clan circles of power in incredibly tight-knit sub-clans in their own right. And the reign of the Safferid can as well be described as a shift between three notable cells of Safferid power: Banu Rasferid, Banu Sahlid, and Banu Sabrid.
Much of the modern architecture of Haison is attributed to Safferid patronage. As well as Safferid patronage of the old cults.
== Background ==
The Safferid represent one of the oldest tribal authorities still active in the Haisunna caliphate. Over the years their localized traditions have gone on to not only be conservative but antique and their family lore contains some of the oldest legends of Hamalfite civilization.
The tribe is believed to have been founded by Saffar ibn-Khomanid two-hundred years prior to Mombadin. Saffar, acting as a bandit carved out for himself an independent fief in the internal desert. His assertive claim to power was dug a well where he watered his people, horses, and camels from the deep reservoirs below the desert. As the stories around him tell: he dug the well himself by hand over thirty-five days, after which he was forced to climb out as the water gurgled around his ankles.
The clan he was able to build through outlaws and taking slave-girls as concubines acquired a fair amount of majesty in the coming generations and became a flash point of interest between the Sheikhs of the Gabul-Urd and the Shalim-Kafid. Both confederacies fought the Safferids to force them into subjugation or flirted with them with patronage of horses and slaves. The fluctuation of combat and gifts shifted between one and the other in a crude game of politics until Irm ibn-Khofor pledged his support to the Gabul-Urd, closing the struggle between the confederacies for their loyalty.
Safferid loyalty was however not always a given as the sheikhs after Irm clashed with that of the Gabul-Urd over tribal rights and marriage concessions. At the rise of Mombadin, then-Sheikh Ali ibn-Irm - the third son of Irm - took the Safferid clan and joined Mombadin's cause under the pretense of contentious conflict with Konfar. At the bequest of Ali the tribe converted to the reformed Sun and Moon cult of Mombadin.
Their conversion however was a permanent one and at the death of Ali and the ascension of his cousin Siruz the tribe was again in the command of a tribal cultist. This functional conversion of the tribe however did not meet protest by Mombadin and the clan continued in loose service to Mombadin and his followers since.
Safferid faith danced between the cult of C'lestia and L'wna as well as the traditional cults of the Hamalfite throughout their history. During the reign of Rashdun they took a premier role in the first Caliph's conquests. In the battle negotiations they managed to maneuver themselves into acquiring further territory across the Caliphate and the right to subjugate some hundred smaller tribes and clans, inter-marrying them into their own or simply enslaving many of their members and stripping them of their family bonds.
Their expansive growth however created within the unruly family a multitude of cliques that stunted their own progress and turned their reputation sour in comparison to the smaller and more ambitious such as the Rashid. They competed with the likes of these tribes for the Caliphal nomination at the lapse of the Mombadid dynasty, but failed at the Hejaz-al Shura and again against the Magi-backed Omar Abd-al-Amir. They finally however achieved nomination at the death of the slave-turned-Caliph.
Category:New VoldraniaCategory:HaisonuunaCategory:Organizations