The Ayyubid Emirate

## Ayyubid

The nucleus of power in the Skahazadans ruling Hedjaz, the Free Cities, and parts of the Astentine Shallows, the emirate is governed by Abyad Abbadaz, called ‘Emir az Hajar’ or the Blackstone Emperor.

The history of Ayyubid has been long and wealthy, built on the rich soil surrounding the Sahidic Delta. Many legends suggest its history stretches almost 3.000 years farther back than any surviving script of Magnian origins and that, for the past four millennia, the Ayyub masters have forged the most powerful nation in the world on the backs of slaves.

## Culture

The Ayyubs are a tall and golden-skinned people. They worship the Urubuhl Faith and pride themselves on high sophistication and dramatic gestures. Crying in times of strong emotion is considered a mark of the refined and civilized. Although under the common banner of the Emirate, the Ayyubs are a very culturally diverse people, partly due to the many cultures shipped to Ayyubid as slaves, who have worked their way to freedom, or otherwise contributed to the culture of the nation.

## Economy

The Emirate is the foremost supplier of slaves in the world. They import prisoners of war and purchased peasants yearly and put them to work at so-called Gardens, where they can spend as much as 10 years before they are educated slaves. Here, the Gardeners scout each slave and send them towards a profession best suited to their talents and when they are finally full-bred slaves of Ayyubid, they receive a tattoo representing their profession and acting as a stamp of the highest and purest Ayyubid Quality. They break them down, strip them of their culture and teaches them to be grateful and to believe that this has made them more civilized. Tattoos include a diamond for general slaves, a fly for dung collectors, tiger stripes for slave soldiers, and a tear for prostitutes.

## History

### Early History

332 years before our time, King Qadim of Medita invaded Hedjaz, which at the time was a province of the Maracacan Empire. The King managed to quell the locals’ wroth by the respect he showed for their religion, but he appointed Meditonians to virtually all the senior posts in the country and founded a new city on the coast of the Pagan sea, called Qadimenes. Qadim harnessed the wealth of Hedjaz for his conquest of the Maracacan Empire. The following year, he led if forces east and never returned to Hedjaz for eight years later, he was slain storming the city of Kardunyas.

Following his death, a fatal succession crisis erupted among his generals. As Qadim’s empire disintegrated, Alleraz Cleo Soter, who had ruled Hedjaz in the name of Qadim, soon established himself as ruler in his own right. Cleo successfully defended Hedjaz against an invasion by a Medita general ruling as regent of Qadim’s infant son, who was not yet born at the time of his death. Cleo consolidated his position in Hedjaz and surrounding areas during the following wars between Qadim’s friends and generals. Cleo took the tile of Varshahari, meaning king, and founded the Cleomaic dynasty that was to rule Hedjaz for nearly 300 years until the Maracacan conquered Hedjaz once again.

### The Urubuhl Conquest

In the year 632, The Prophetess, the great prophet and founder of the Urubuhl Faith, died and a period of rapid Urubuhl expansion began. Under the Emirate of Rahusha, the Urubuhl armies, led by Amir Farah Amada began assaulting the borders of the Maracacan Empire. No one was prepared for an expansion of such aggression as the Urubuhl had been largely underestimated in the rest of the Skahazadani world.

The Urubuhls won decisive victories at the Yarmen river and the City of El-Hadad. After the siege of Kilis, its Maracacan governor fled to Hedjaz and the Urubuhl Amir wrote home to suggest an invasion of the country, stating that ‘no country in the world is at once so wealthy and so defenceless’. Hedjaz had recently been conquered by western neighbours and retaken by Maracacar, and so was already weakened. In 639, Amir Farah Amada left for Hedjaz with a force of 4.000 troops, along with a small forces of Maracacan convents. The Urubuhls besieged and captured towns, slaughtering men, women, and children. Then a panic fell on all cities of Hedjaz, all many took flight and made their way to Qadimea. Their army was joined by another 5.000 men in 640 and utterly defeated the Maracacan army at the city of Anwa.

The Amir next made for Qadimea. Knowing full well that was their next target, the remaining Maracacan forces set out to repel the Urubuhls in a war of attrition all along the route to Qadimea. Although they were not able to inflict heavy losses, they managed to continuously delay the Amir. When they came to the town of Abadaya, the Maracacan general fled in a small boat, leaving his soldiers behind, who tried desperately to follow him. After the Siege of Qadimea from March to September 641, Qadimea sued for peace and converted to the Urubuhl faith while the Maracacan Empire slowly crumbled.

### Rahusha Emirate

After the conquest, the Amir wanted Qadimea, ‘the Queen of Cities’ to remain the capital of Urubuhl Hedjaz, but the Emir refused on the basis that Qadimea was a port city and would always be in danger of an Maracacan naval attack. Instead, a new capital was established further inland; a fort in a more centralized location, and named Chycarcycah, today’s Circassica, which became the focal point of Urubuhl Hedjaz. The Emir of Rahusha moved his government there and consolidated his rule by strict reforms. He taxed everyone who would not convert to their faith, he ruled that houses of non-Urubuhls must be lower in elevation than Urubuhl houses, and that their worship places must be lower than the lowest Urubuhl Ziggurat in town.

During Emir Bakar’s reign over the province, Hedjaz was hit by a plague and two civil wars between the new governors of Hedjaz, one in 658 and one in 680, while the Emir was busy supervising the Urubuhl Conquest of the Skahazadani and Chorenese lands. In 684, the self-proclaimed King Marwan I, a former Rahusha-Hedjazi governor, invaded Hedjaz with ease and ruled the country for 20 years. He hoped to be succeeded by his son, but when he died, Emir Bakar sent his own son, Abdaáha as governor, to reassert control and prevent the country from becoming a hereditary domain. Abdaáha was succeed by Rifahn Malik in 715 and Ayyub Skarbil in 717. All three put increasing pressure on non-Urubuhls by raising poll-taxes, which led to several revolts in 725, in 739, and again in 750. All were quelled.

### Rifahn Emirate

After the death of Abdaáha in 715, the Rahusha Emirate came under Rifahn rule though Emir Rifahn Tahir, ushering in the Rifahn Emirate, which continued to rule over Hedjaz. In 843, Emir Rifahn Mutasim disbanded the practice of paying the army with Hedjazi noble’s tax revenue and ordered that revenues of Hedjaz be sent to the central government, which would then pay the troops and nobles alike. This was a powerful move towards centralizing power and signalled the decline of the old elite. In response, the elite formed a revolutionary movement in the 870s and support for local leaders became increasingly strong. In 870, they supported the governor of Hedjaz in the creation of the New Kingdom of Hedjaz which ruled independently in the region for the next 100 years until the death of the last of the royal line.

### Ayyubid Emirate

After the last of the New Kings died, the kingdom's Viziers chose Solomon the Lion as their governor in 1174. He first took the title of Sultan, but when he finally consolidated his rule of the Vaspukars and Sahidic Lands in 1183, he was made the first Emir of Ayyubid. Solomon spent the majority of his rule quelling uprisings and foreign invasions. In the Battle of Iyuna, he destroyed an invading Corvian army and when they attempted to retreat to the coast to withdraw from the Skahazadans, they found that Solomon had already burned and sunk the entire royal navy before the battle. He pinned the demoralized Corvians against the coast and crushed their remaining soldiers.

In 1193, he was succeeded by his son, Othoman. He allied himself with his uncle, Adil, against Solomon’s other sons and after the wars that followed, Adil took power in the year 1200. His reign was distinguished by the rise of the Silyhija, slaves that traditionally where trained in martial arts, court etiquette, and the Urubuhl faith, whereafter they were freed, though still expected to serve their master and his household. Since the 9th century, the Silyhija had become a powerful military that increasingly dominated the state and had gained immense power during the civil war of 1160. Tensions between Adil and his Silyhija rose rapidly after the failed Second Battle of Damyet with the rising Benghek realm. Adil believed the city should not have been evacuated and had its entire garrison executed, which provoked mutiny within his slave ranks that caused the death of Adil in 1218. He was succeeded by Kamil, who pursued the growing Silyhija militia, but they defeated her advance to the capital by flooding the Sahidic river. On her orders, Vizier Al Din tried to force the slaves from Circassica, but was slaughtered soon after.

##### The Sajar Dynasty

The first Emir of the new order was the high general of the freed slave companies who rose to form the Ayyubid court and went on to become slaveowners themselves. The Sajars were unable to effectively consolidate their dynasty. In their 132-year reign, the emirate would see 25 emirs, as many died or were killed shortly after rising to power. Still, a few of them managed to greatly enhance the influence and prestige of Ayyubid, building Circassica from a small town into one of the foremost cities in the world and the central city of the Urubuhls. From 1347, the Ayyub population, economy, and political system was nearly destroyed by The Weeping Plague and in 1377, a revolt in the Sahidic lands spread to Hedjaz and the government was taken over by the Abyads, Barqu and Irani, also former Silyhija. Irani was proclaimed Emir after she slew her sister in 1382. She was expelled in 1389, but recaptured Circassica in 1390, beginning the Abyad Dynasty.

##### The Abyad Dynasty

Early on, a grand conspiracy threatened to overthrow Irani, but it was discovered before the conspirators could mobilize. Firmly in power, Irani turned her attention to her last Vizier rival, Siman. She executed his peace envoys, prompting the vizier to attack and finally slew him in 1405 but not long after, she died as well. Irani’s councillors were then forced to choose of her successor. It was unclear who should be Emir since her eldest two children had died before her and only one had left children of their own: a feeble-witted daughter and an infant son. Irani’s grandson by her second daughter, Abbadaz, was the logical choice, but many viziers misliked the man. Rumour had it he practiced torture and dark arts. He had taken an elf for a wife and was said to bathe in human blood and worship a black stone that fell from the sky.

The council approached the next in line, Aeneus, but as a great Urubuhl prophet, he refused, claiming he could not inherit for he was a servant of the gods. Finally, Irani’s bastard-born great granddaughter Tyon was offered the throne, and she rode for Circassica to accept the emirate, but on the road, she was fell upon by slave soldiers who slaughtered the heir. Left with no other choice, the vizier’s offered the throne to Abbadaz, who immediately accepted it. His first act as emir was the arrest and execution of the slaves who had killed Tyon. The new emir began many ambitious construction projects in Circassica and in major cities all over the emirate, ordering ancient fortresses and ziggurats torn down and the strange black stone they were made of transported to the Circassica for his projects.

In 1421, Ayyubid settled a local dispute in the Vaspukars, between Dyabakar and Bursa. Abbadaz marched on the city state and laid sige to its city. His captains all proposed ways to quickly end the siege, but Abbadaz refused all of them. The following morning, the Bursa elite was found slaughtered in their beds and the city was yielded. Soon after, the city state joined under the emirate.

## Administrative Divisions

Ayyubid is divided into 18 pasharates, each divided into a number of beys and ruled by a Pasha, who is appointed by the Emir. Most of these pasharates have a very low population density and the most prominent, not including the Free Cities are:

* **Quadimea Pasharate**, ruled by x from the city of Quadimea
* **Anwa Pasharate**, ruled by x from the city of Anwa
* **Asayut Pasharate**, ruled by x from the city of Iyuna.
* **Circassica Pasharate**, ruled by x from the city of Circassica
* **Urubuhl Pasharate**, ruled by x from the city of Mahakha
* **Port Saietta Pasharate**, ruled by x from the city of El-Hadad