Nizzarids

The **Nizzarid Sultanate** is a sultanate covering most of Egypt and Levant. They were founded by Nizzar the Great, a general in the service of the Ayyubid dynasty who went from servant to the master of a realm at the very heart of Islamic world.Due to the fact that they are viewed by many as a usurper or traitor dynasty, the Nizzarid Sultans have to rely on their armies in order to legitimize their rule.

## Lore

After decades of ceaseless infighting and court intrigue, the rug would be pulled out from beneath Egypt's feet in the year of 1240, when its feeble Ayyubid boy-sultan was slain by the Mongols at the Battle of Damascus. It was also in this battle where an unassuming young officer by the name of Nizzar rose to prominence. Rallying the Egyptian forces in a daring - yet ultimately successful - counterattack, Nizzar would win the day for his Kurdish masters, securing the eternal loyalty of the Sultan's army.

The threat from abroad may have been dealt with, but alas, the already-precarious domestic situation rapidly deteriorated into the Ayyubid Civil War. Nizzar, a freedman of both Masri and Coptic descent, found himself swayed by the plight of the average Egyptian. Growing increasingly discontent with the Ayyubids' rampant pillaging and wanton disregard for their subjects, he would - to the rapturous cheers of his troops - overthrow his liege and declare himself the rightful Sultan of Egypt and the Levant.

The war would drag on until May of 1250, when the Ayyubid garrison at Cairo capitulated to Nizzar. Although his enemy took flight and wormed their way into Seljuk hands, what mattered to Nizzar was rebuilding the state - from the ground up. Justifying his regime with a merging of the Islamic Iskandar mythology and pan-Egyptian Pharaonic policies, the Nizzarid state quickly found friends in Leon Gabras' Nicene Kingdom, briefly uniting in their armed struggle against the Turks and Romans.

Nizzar would die in his sleep 5 days short of his reign's 40th anniversary, having come to earn the epithet of "the Great" for setting the benchmark which any good Sultan would seek to match. Within the next century Nizzarid Egypt would rapidly modernise, becoming the envy of the Islamic world while also holding it hostage, having kept the Abbasid Caliphs locked within their gilded cage of Cairo since the Ayyubid expulsion.

Peace would not be a permanent fixture, however, for the Era of Good Sultans ended abruptly with the disastrous reign of Sultan Abdulrahman. His avarice had driven him to attack Jerusalem in 1414, and again 1423, ending when Jerusalem’s forces thoroughly wiped out the Sultan’s retinue at the Battle of Sidon. Abdulrahman’s sickly son Prince al-Husayn was subsequently forced to accept a mockery of a peace treaty, ceding only a small strip of land in the northern Sinai and some war reparations.

Al-Husayn reigned a mere 17 years, abdicating the throne in 1440 due to poor health induced by his drinking habits and severe stress from pulling the Sultanate from the brink of collapse in the aftermath of his father's unthinkable blunder. Succeeded by his only son, Abdul Jabbar, the Nizzarid state ought to be in safe hands, for this driven young man has grand ambitions for the future.

If he succeeds, he would wield the respect of the mighty Egyptian military in one hand, and the adoration of his subjects in the other. Should he fail, though, all that the Nizzarids fought to achieve could be washed away in a mere generation.