The House of Submission
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
Capital: Kufa.
Religion: Islam, of course.
Languages: Arabic, with the Hashemite court particularly favoring the Hejazi variant of the language which was natively spoken by the Prophet, his household and his closest companions. The majority of the Caliphate’s newly conquered subjects still speak their own tongues, including:
- Aramaic
- Hebrew (as a sacred language among the Jewish populace – they would have spoken Aramaic day-to-day)
- Greek
- Persian
- Kurdish
- Coptic Egyptian
- Ge’ez
- Turkic
When Muhammad died, he had unified the Arabian peninsula, but not yet ventured beyond its borders. It fell to his son Qasim, the Khalifah (‘successor’) and Warith an-Nābiyy (‘Heir of the Prophet’) to spread Allah’s final revelation to the masses living in jahiliyah (‘ignorance’) everywhere else around the globe, and to compel these unbelievers to submit themselves to the divine truth outlined to his father – by persuasion or by the sword. In that regard he has been exceptionally successful, thanks in part to his neighbors having inadvertantly weakened themselves either in wars with one another or themselves: first fell Aksum, weakened by decades of civil warfare, then the Southern Turkic Khaganate, which was already resting on a shaky foundation snatched away from the Eftals and Romans even before it beat itself senseless against the walls of Constantinople. In the space of a few decades, Islam spread from Arabia to overtake much of the Middle East, large parts of northeastern Africa and even extend into Central Asia and the eastern Caucasus.
However, the Muslims’ expansion seems to have hit a limit as of 680 AD (or 65 AH – ‘Anno Hegirah’, ‘year of the departure’ to the Romans – in their own religious calendar, which uses the year of Muhammad’s flight from Mecca for its epoch[1]). Buoyed by the might of its western half and late-comer assistance in the form of the Khazars, the Roman world was able to withstand Islam’s surging power and fight the armies of the Caliph to a bloody standstill in the western Levant. Qasim assures his kin and subjects that this is no matter: he has always been prudent (his critics would whisper ‘over-cautious’) when it came to warfare, and yet the results speak for themselves – when he strikes, it is always with the providence of Allah, who delivers conquest after conquest into the hands of His humble servant. No doubt one day, Allah will be so kind as to deliver those western and northern conquests which the Muslims were unable to secure in these past years too, and when He does no army nor Emperor can possibly resist His will.
More pragmatically, Qasim has concerns other than expanding at the moment. He is much more interested in consolidating the still-impressive conquests he has already racked up, which stretch from the Köpet Dag in the north to colonies along the Swahili coast in the far south, so that these lands will not escape the grasp of the Banu Hashim when he inevitably shuffles off his mortal coil. And speaking of which – being eighty-two years old as of 680, the first Caliph is also keenly aware that he is not long for this world, and is as concerned with his succession and the future of his realm as any other ruler who knows they might never wake up after going to bed every night would be. He had no brothers with whom to share or fight over the inheritance left by his venerable father: but he had several sons with his wives, and these sons (even the one martyred by the Roman infidels) all have children of their own. Even if his sons miraculously do not contend with one another for the right to succeed him, the generation after them are practically strangers to one another, this he knows…and Qasim is also painfully aware that his do not seem to be a people made for peace, prone to clan and tribal and brotherly rivalries when they are not battling outsiders, going all the way back to their forefather Ishmael who was cast out in favor of his half-brother (and Jewish patriarch) Isaac.
Conquering huge swathes of land has proven to be easier for these early Muslims than consolidating and ruling over them. The ancient tribal structure of the Arab peoples has proven as ill-suited for the administration of an empire stretching from Persia to Egypt as Rome’s own original political structure from its city-state days had for ruling over the Mediterranean Basin, and Caliph Qasim has had to make significant changes to adapt. Islamic rule now rests on three pillars: the Hashemite court itself, the wilayat or external provinces with their civil & military governors, and the majlis ash-shura or consultative assemblies through which the Arab tribes can most directly communicate with the Caliph.
As the direct male-line descendants of the Prophet Muhammad himself, it is considered only natural for the Caliphs or ‘successors’ to steward over the realm he left behind. They rule, at least in theory, as the divinely-sanctioned and nigh-infallible leaders of the Islamic faithful whose authority is absolute and whose final word cannot be challenged by any who claim to have submitted themselves to Allah, and their legitimacy is founded equally on their line of descent from Muhammad and the victories they have brought to Islam. Qasim ibn Muhammad had no surviving brothers, and so smoothly ascended to succeed his father when the aforementioned Prophet passed away: he is firmly of the opinion that nobody has the authority to determine the next Caliph but the incumbent one, and that a Hashemite monarch’s choice in this matter is always guided by Allah. In the past Qasim alternated between Mecca and Medina, but in more recent years he has resolved to build a permanent, fixed capital for his court at Kufa in Mesopotamia.
A depiction of Qasim ibn Muhammad, the first Caliph, late in life. While drawing the descendants of the Prophet is not strictly forbidden, unlike the case for his father, most Islamic artists still typically choose to portray the Hashemite Caliphs with their back turned or a halo of light shrouding their face as a sign of their respect for the Prophet's bloodline
In practice, of course, few men ever truly rule alone – least of all when they are in charge of an empire so massive it would be virtually impossible to govern without delegation. Thus even though Qasim has yet to construct a bureaucracy approaching the size & scale of that of the Romans, he has to date appointed a number of ministers (titled wazir, ‘helper’) and secretaries (titled katib, ‘writer’ or ‘scribe’) to assist him in his daily administrative duties. At this stage, most of these positions are dispensed on an ad-hoc basis with little established formality: by far the most important and consistent ‘vizierate’ is that of the wazir al-sayf or ‘minister of the sword’, who is responsible for the Islamic army’s logistics and recruitment. All of Qasim’s viziers are civil officials, though for obvious reasons the wazir al-sayf is usually a man with military experience, and he does not delegate military commands to them but rather keeps them close to him at court. Theoretically absolute authority or not, it would be uncharacteristic for Qasim, or any other Caliph, to arbitrarily make decisions without at least consulting with this privy council of top-ranking advisors.
To govern his vast conquests, Qasim has divided the territories of the Caliphate into a dozen provinces or wilayat. These are headed by governors (wali) appointed by the Caliph himself, working with a number of other provincial officials (sometimes additional Caliphal appointments, but often local recruits of proven loyalty and competence) of whom the most important are the sahib ul-kharaj (chief tax collector), the qadi (chief Islamic judge) and the emir (provincial military commander). As of 680, the fourteen provinces of the Hashemite Caliphate include:
As the Qur'an encourages Muslims to resolve their grievances by way of mutual consultation whenever possible, the majlis ash-shura has emerged as the closest thing the Caliphate has to a legislature. It is not exactly a permanent parliamentary institution (at least not at this stage), but an ad-hoc assembly of representatives from the many Arabic tribes who have embraced Islam called by the Caliph to deliberate over decisions of import which are known to impact the entire Muslim community, such as going to war or the division of the spoils of a victorious conflict. Ostensibly any Muslim who has reached puberty, is of sound mind and well-versed in the tenets of Islam can participate in a shura council: in practice, the tribal elders will appoint men from the ranks of their favored clansmen to represent their interests before the Caliph.
Banu Tamim envoys chosen by their elders to represent the tribe at a session of the Majlis ash-Shura perform evening prayers on their road to the new Hashemite capital at Kufa
Speaking of the tribes, tensions are simmering between the Quraish tribe to which the Banu Hashim clan themselves belong; the other Arabic tribes; and the masses of non-Muslims whom they rule over. In theory all men are equal in submission to the will of Allah, and He recognizes no tribal distinction between a Hashemite and (for example) one of the Banu Hanzala. In practice, few men can live up to this ideal and Qasim naturally has leaned most heavily on his own kin to administer the choicest parts of the Islamic empire, trusting his sons & grandsons above his in-laws & cousins who he in turn trusts more than distant Quraish kinsmen, and he inevitably favors those distant kindred over the men of other tribes. This in turn has allowed the various Sayyid princes to begin establishing their own regional power-bases under their elderly patriarch’s umbrella. So far, the Caliph has amassed so much booty and conquests that giving the non-Quraish tribes and clans a stake in upholding the unity of Islam has not been overly difficult, but this is likely to change as Islamic expansion stalls against stronger foes like the Romans.
The need to integrate non-Muslims into government, especially at the local level where they often will be better-versed in the politics and better-suited to administering their own kind than Muslim outsiders, has added an additional layer of competition for the non-Quraishi to deal with, as well. Major non-Muslim communities within the Caliphate’s borders include the Monophysite (and to a lesser extent, Miaphysite) Copts of Egypt, the Nestorians of Mesopotamia – both of whom were condemned as interminable heretics and persecuted by the Roman Ephesian authorities, but now hope to bounce back from the brink under Islamic rule – as well as the Jews of Babylon and the Buddhists, Manichaeans and lingering Zoroastrians of Persia. The Muslims are generally more favorably inclined toward the ahl al-kitab, or ‘People of the Book’, which is to say the other Abrahamic religions, than followers of non-Abrahamic creeds like Buddhism: they view Jews and Christians as merely misguided peoples clinging to imperfect and outdated renditions of the truth revealed to their final Prophet, and thus deserving of additional privileges and protections which they do not extend to mushrikun (pagan polytheists). Especially important non-Islamic leaders, such as the Jewish Exilarch of Babylon, are given the special rank of wasita: ‘intermediary’ between the Caliph and their people.
Hasdai ben Hasadiah, Exilarch of the Babylonian Jews, is helped along by his family to greet an envoy of the Caliph Qasim
As the direct male-line descendants of the Prophet Muhammad himself, it is considered only natural for the Caliphs or ‘successors’ to steward over the realm he left behind. They rule, at least in theory, as the divinely-sanctioned and nigh-infallible leaders of the Islamic faithful whose authority is absolute and whose final word cannot be challenged by any who claim to have submitted themselves to Allah, and their legitimacy is founded equally on their line of descent from Muhammad and the victories they have brought to Islam. Qasim ibn Muhammad had no surviving brothers, and so smoothly ascended to succeed his father when the aforementioned Prophet passed away: he is firmly of the opinion that nobody has the authority to determine the next Caliph but the incumbent one, and that a Hashemite monarch’s choice in this matter is always guided by Allah. In the past Qasim alternated between Mecca and Medina, but in more recent years he has resolved to build a permanent, fixed capital for his court at Kufa in Mesopotamia.
A depiction of Qasim ibn Muhammad, the first Caliph, late in life. While drawing the descendants of the Prophet is not strictly forbidden, unlike the case for his father, most Islamic artists still typically choose to portray the Hashemite Caliphs with their back turned or a halo of light shrouding their face as a sign of their respect for the Prophet's bloodline
In practice, of course, few men ever truly rule alone – least of all when they are in charge of an empire so massive it would be virtually impossible to govern without delegation. Thus even though Qasim has yet to construct a bureaucracy approaching the size & scale of that of the Romans, he has to date appointed a number of ministers (titled wazir, ‘helper’) and secretaries (titled katib, ‘writer’ or ‘scribe’) to assist him in his daily administrative duties. At this stage, most of these positions are dispensed on an ad-hoc basis with little established formality: by far the most important and consistent ‘vizierate’ is that of the wazir al-sayf or ‘minister of the sword’, who is responsible for the Islamic army’s logistics and recruitment. All of Qasim’s viziers are civil officials, though for obvious reasons the wazir al-sayf is usually a man with military experience, and he does not delegate military commands to them but rather keeps them close to him at court. Theoretically absolute authority or not, it would be uncharacteristic for Qasim, or any other Caliph, to arbitrarily make decisions without at least consulting with this privy council of top-ranking advisors.
To govern his vast conquests, Qasim has divided the territories of the Caliphate into a dozen provinces or wilayat. These are headed by governors (wali) appointed by the Caliph himself, working with a number of other provincial officials (sometimes additional Caliphal appointments, but often local recruits of proven loyalty and competence) of whom the most important are the sahib ul-kharaj (chief tax collector), the qadi (chief Islamic judge) and the emir (provincial military commander). As of 680, the fourteen provinces of the Hashemite Caliphate include:
- Medina (northern Arabia)
- Mecca (central Arabia)
- Yaman (southern Arabia)
- Kufa (western & central Mesopotamia)
- Basra (southeastern Mesopotamia)
- Al-Jazira (northern Mesopotamia)
- Bilad al-Sham (Syria & Phoenicia)
- Filastin (Palestine)
- Misr (Egypt)
- Habasha (Aksum)
- Sawahil (east African coast)
- Fars (southwestern & central Persia)
- Azerbaijan (northwestern Persia)
- Khorasan (northern Persia)
As the Qur'an encourages Muslims to resolve their grievances by way of mutual consultation whenever possible, the majlis ash-shura has emerged as the closest thing the Caliphate has to a legislature. It is not exactly a permanent parliamentary institution (at least not at this stage), but an ad-hoc assembly of representatives from the many Arabic tribes who have embraced Islam called by the Caliph to deliberate over decisions of import which are known to impact the entire Muslim community, such as going to war or the division of the spoils of a victorious conflict. Ostensibly any Muslim who has reached puberty, is of sound mind and well-versed in the tenets of Islam can participate in a shura council: in practice, the tribal elders will appoint men from the ranks of their favored clansmen to represent their interests before the Caliph.
Banu Tamim envoys chosen by their elders to represent the tribe at a session of the Majlis ash-Shura perform evening prayers on their road to the new Hashemite capital at Kufa
Speaking of the tribes, tensions are simmering between the Quraish tribe to which the Banu Hashim clan themselves belong; the other Arabic tribes; and the masses of non-Muslims whom they rule over. In theory all men are equal in submission to the will of Allah, and He recognizes no tribal distinction between a Hashemite and (for example) one of the Banu Hanzala. In practice, few men can live up to this ideal and Qasim naturally has leaned most heavily on his own kin to administer the choicest parts of the Islamic empire, trusting his sons & grandsons above his in-laws & cousins who he in turn trusts more than distant Quraish kinsmen, and he inevitably favors those distant kindred over the men of other tribes. This in turn has allowed the various Sayyid princes to begin establishing their own regional power-bases under their elderly patriarch’s umbrella. So far, the Caliph has amassed so much booty and conquests that giving the non-Quraish tribes and clans a stake in upholding the unity of Islam has not been overly difficult, but this is likely to change as Islamic expansion stalls against stronger foes like the Romans.
The need to integrate non-Muslims into government, especially at the local level where they often will be better-versed in the politics and better-suited to administering their own kind than Muslim outsiders, has added an additional layer of competition for the non-Quraishi to deal with, as well. Major non-Muslim communities within the Caliphate’s borders include the Monophysite (and to a lesser extent, Miaphysite) Copts of Egypt, the Nestorians of Mesopotamia – both of whom were condemned as interminable heretics and persecuted by the Roman Ephesian authorities, but now hope to bounce back from the brink under Islamic rule – as well as the Jews of Babylon and the Buddhists, Manichaeans and lingering Zoroastrians of Persia. The Muslims are generally more favorably inclined toward the ahl al-kitab, or ‘People of the Book’, which is to say the other Abrahamic religions, than followers of non-Abrahamic creeds like Buddhism: they view Jews and Christians as merely misguided peoples clinging to imperfect and outdated renditions of the truth revealed to their final Prophet, and thus deserving of additional privileges and protections which they do not extend to mushrikun (pagan polytheists). Especially important non-Islamic leaders, such as the Jewish Exilarch of Babylon, are given the special rank of wasita: ‘intermediary’ between the Caliph and their people.
Hasdai ben Hasadiah, Exilarch of the Babylonian Jews, is helped along by his family to greet an envoy of the Caliph Qasim
The official name of the Hashemite Caliphate is a dead giveaway to its nature as a theocratic monarchy: Dar al-Islam, the ‘House of Submission’. Befitting a theocracy, the new Islamic religion dominates and completely pervades virtually every aspect of early Hashemite society, forming the basis for its legitimacy and laws as well as guidance on how it treats non-believer subjects. The Caliphs of the Banu Hashim clan, being the blood of the Prophet, govern the faithful with absolute authority from on high and answer to nobody but Allah, the one and only God in the eyes of the Muslims. To go against them is to go against the will of Allah, and they can easily excommunicate any Muslim who defies their command by issuing a declaration of takfir against them. When he ascended to succeed his father as leader of the faithful (Amir al-Mu’min, one of several Caliphal titles) Qasim set the precedent with his oath: “If I order anything that would go against the order of Allah and his Messenger, then do not obey me.”[2] (The implication, of course, being that Muslims should obey his commands without question in all other instances.)
The Qur’an is Islam’s foundational text, believed to not merely be written by divinely inspired sages (as was the case for the Church Fathers who compiled the Biblical canon in Christians’ reckoning) but the literal, unvarnished and certainly unchallengeable Word of God delivered to Muhammad by the Archangel Gabriel and written down by his companions & son. Even the Caliphs who claim descent from Muhammad himself do not dare to think they can in any way alter or contradict the contents of the holy Qur’an. The Qur’an outlines the core Islamic teachings, such as the existence of the eternal, singular and omnipotent God who alone merits worship from men: for instance while Islam acknowledges Jesus as a prophet who performed miracles, the new religion denies Christianity’s belief that he is the Son of God, the more specifically Trinitarian-Ephesian belief that he is God incarnate, or that he actually died on the Cross and was resurrected. These teachings are supplemented by the hadith, reports of Muhammad’s deeds and commands in life as also recorded by his companions and descendants: for example, the Qur’an itself does not prohibit the depiction of Muhammad in art, just idolatry in general – that particular tradition (and Islam’s general prohibition on religious icons depicting living beings) arose from the hadiths.
The extreme Islamic aversion to idolatry and the usage of images, as recorded through the Qur'an and especially the hadiths, has compelled Arabic artists to instead refine the art of calligraphy
The Hashemites descended from Muhammad, along with his other family members and companions in life as well as past prophets, are duly venerated as saints (awliya, singl. wali – ‘friend (of God)’, not to be confused with the Islamic title for provincial governors) after their death. Unlike the prophets, saints are not thought to be capable of interceding on behalf of men in their hour of judgment, but miraculous powers are still attributed to them and the faithful make pilgrimages to their gravesites called ziyarat (which however are not mandatory, unlike the hajj or main pilgrimage to Mecca, which all able-bodied Muslims are expected to undertake at least once in life) in hopes of acquiring a blessing from the deceased saint for themselves. At present, the most prominent Hashemite wali is Abd al-Fattah ibn Qasim, who was martyred at the hand of the Emperor of the Romans in the Battle of Manzikert, 671: his father has had him buried in the new Islamic capital of Kufa, where his tomb will eventually become one of many in the great Hashemite graveyard complex to come.
Outside the Banu Hashim themselves, in theory the entire Islamic community or ‘Ummah’ is supposed to share a position at the pinnacle of the Caliphate’s pecking order, all of them being equals under Allah. In practice, this ideal remains ephemeral: of course there are rich Muslims, poor Muslims, Muslims who give orders and Muslims who must carry them out, and there certainly is no sense of egalitarianism when it comes to relations between the sexes in the Caliphate – not that the Romans are especially 'progressive' in this realm either, but the notion of a female royal being allowed as much authority and autonomy from her husband as Helena of the Coal-Black Eyes (for example) is inconceivable to Caliph Qasim and his peers, who regard the Augusta with a mix of contempt and confusion that her husband has not simply snatched the reins of the Roman East out of her dainty hands. Worse still, Arabic society remains divided into clans and tribes with their own myriad old feuds and friendships, although the imposition of the new religion has made some progress in bridging over these ancient fault-lines. “I against my brothers, I and my brothers against our cousins, I and my brothers and my cousins against the world” – so goes the ancient Arab saying, and it holds every bit as true in 680 AD as it did in 680 BC. Many of these tribes still live as Bedouins – desert-dwelling pastoralist nomads, honing skills which also serve them well on the battlefield – though ironically the Banu Hashim themselves are not nomads, instead having previously been a sedentary clan of traders hailing from the coastal cities of the Hejaz.
The largest and most obvious geographic divide between the Arab tribes is that between the northern tribes (including the Hashemites themselves), so-called the ‘Adnanites’ for their mythical descent from one Adnan (himself a descendant of Qedar, founder of the first known Arab kingdom which bore his name and one of the twelve sons of Ishmael), and the southern tribes who claim descent from Qahtan (better known as Joktan to non-Arabs) who was actually a son of Eber, great-grandson of Shem son of Noah. By and large the Adnanite Arabs are in a dominant position over their Qahtanite kindred, who have fallen on hard times since the destruction of the Himyarite kingdom by Aksum, and form most of the strength of the Hashemite armies: it does not help the Qahtanites that their northernmost branch, represented by the Ghassanids and Banu Kalb, have firmly aligned themselves with the Roman enemy.
But even within the Adnanite ranks there is dissension, though it has yet to boil over while Qasim still lives. That Qasim and his close kin favor their own tribe, the Quraish, for promotion and plum administrative postings over others has not gone unnoticed in the eyes of the other Adnanites, such as the Tayy and Ghatafan: are they not all supposed to be equal in the eyes of Allah, and the Caliph their impartial ruler? For now Qasim has been able to appease them with slices of the vast bounty he’s reaped from his campaigns, much of which has been distributed to the poor as part of zakat (obligatory almsgiving), and he has also settled entire tribes in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Syria to both better hold down those conquests and to keep the tribesmen themselves (ever hungry for new territories and sources of wealth) happy. But Allah help the Hashemites should they ever run out of easy conquests and the pie they must split with the non-Quraish tribes starts to shrink…
Qasim distributing gifts to non-Quraishi tribal chiefs so as to reinforce their allegiance to him
Not even a century since the death of Muhammad, religious fissures have already begun to crop up within Islam itself, although the presence of a male line of clear successors and Qasim’s own skill at rulership have prevented them from evolving to the stage of a formal schism thus far. Some who profess to be Muslims question whether a just God who considers all believers equal would really elevate any among them, even if they be the blood of the Prophet himself, to rule over their peers in perpetuity – especially when the Prophet’s descendants are clearly but mortal men, prone to the same virtues and flaws as any other. Others prefer to trust strictly in the Qur’an and have no place for the hadiths in their hearts, believing that the pure Word of God needs no further embellishment or support or creative ‘interpretation’. While still comparatively few in number, if the Hashemites should encounter more defeats abroad or fail to live up to the high moral standards demanded of them at home, it is a foregone conclusion that heresies like these will swell in number as their own legitimacy wanes.
These khawarij (‘those who have left [the Ummah]’) and Qur’aniyyah (‘Qur’anists’) are denounced by the faithful followers of the Caliphs as heretics and apostates (murtad)…and there is only one, non-negotiable punishment for those who have been branded with this label: the sting of death. In turn, some of these heretical sects have already struck at Qasim, some of the first Kharijites most infamously trying to kill him for not going to war against the Romans and Turks quickly enough in the early 660s. Though they failed to assassinate him and were killed to a man in retaliation, they did successfully push him to instigate hostilities earlier than he would have liked.
Outside of the Muslims themselves, as has been previously mentioned, there exist large majorities of non-Muslims virtually everywhere across the Caliphate outside of Arabia. Of these, Jews and Christians are the most favored: Islam considers them to be ahl al-kitab, ‘People of the Book’, who have had the truth partially revealed to them by previous prophets and try to live by some of God’s commandments, even if their understanding of God is imperfect in the eyes of the Muslim faithful. Many of these have been recruited into the burgeoning civil administration of the Caliphate – in particular, while the Hashemites have a very personal reason to despise the ‘Rūmī’ or Romans, who they considered the last corrupt and decadent remnant of a bygone era that needs to get out of their (and their new age’s) way even before Aloysius Gloriosus struck down the martyr Abd al-Fattah, they recognize that not all Christians are Romans and that the ‘heretics’ cast out by Roman authorities can be very useful to them indeed. The Babylonian Jews have similarly been able to leverage themselves into positions of relative privilege within the Caliphate through their rapid submission to & collaboration with their new overlords, allowing them to protect & eventually absorb their Galilean cousins who’d been expelled by Aloysius and Helena. All in all, the combination of pragmatic religious tolerance and (for now, thanks to the vast amounts of war plunder they have amassed over the course of their conquests) low taxes has greatly endeared the new Muslim overlords to their Abrahamic subjects, who consider them a massive step up over the oppressive, dogmatic Romans and the chaotic, ceaselessly warmongering Turks.
Zoroastrians, Buddhists and other polytheistic ‘pagans’ are considerably less fortunate. The Muslims despise idolaters, and consequently believe the followers of non-Abrahamic religions to not only be unenlightened but more degenerate than the ahl al-kitab. It certainly does not help that the Qur’an dictates that these pagans’ sin of shirk (idolatry) is unforgivable unless they repent and turn away from their old ways before they die. In general, because Qasim is of the opinion that it is not practical to try to kill every single Buddhist, Zoroastrian and other varieties of ‘pagans’ in his realm unless they insist on causing trouble for the new order, so far the Caliphate has given these infidels the chance to live on their knees in exchange for paying the jizya tax, seemingly no different than the ahl al-kitab. But in practice they are overlooked for official appointments in favor of Jews and Christians instead, tend to be judged more harshly by Islamic qadi, and do not enjoy the same level of protections that the People of the Book do. For example, Christian and Jewish women are not compelled to convert before marrying a Muslim man, even if non-Muslim men are barred entirely from marrying Muslim women; the same is not true of, for example, Zoroastrian women.
An Islamic qadi judges a case which a Buddhist Turk, a Nestorian Mesopotamian and a Babylonian Jew have brought charges against one another. While the Hashemites favor a flexible approach to justice that does not go out of its way to offend and trample upon local customs unless they flagrantly contradict Islam's teachings, they can give 'pagans' like the Buddhist only so much leeway
The Qur’an is Islam’s foundational text, believed to not merely be written by divinely inspired sages (as was the case for the Church Fathers who compiled the Biblical canon in Christians’ reckoning) but the literal, unvarnished and certainly unchallengeable Word of God delivered to Muhammad by the Archangel Gabriel and written down by his companions & son. Even the Caliphs who claim descent from Muhammad himself do not dare to think they can in any way alter or contradict the contents of the holy Qur’an. The Qur’an outlines the core Islamic teachings, such as the existence of the eternal, singular and omnipotent God who alone merits worship from men: for instance while Islam acknowledges Jesus as a prophet who performed miracles, the new religion denies Christianity’s belief that he is the Son of God, the more specifically Trinitarian-Ephesian belief that he is God incarnate, or that he actually died on the Cross and was resurrected. These teachings are supplemented by the hadith, reports of Muhammad’s deeds and commands in life as also recorded by his companions and descendants: for example, the Qur’an itself does not prohibit the depiction of Muhammad in art, just idolatry in general – that particular tradition (and Islam’s general prohibition on religious icons depicting living beings) arose from the hadiths.
The extreme Islamic aversion to idolatry and the usage of images, as recorded through the Qur'an and especially the hadiths, has compelled Arabic artists to instead refine the art of calligraphy
The Hashemites descended from Muhammad, along with his other family members and companions in life as well as past prophets, are duly venerated as saints (awliya, singl. wali – ‘friend (of God)’, not to be confused with the Islamic title for provincial governors) after their death. Unlike the prophets, saints are not thought to be capable of interceding on behalf of men in their hour of judgment, but miraculous powers are still attributed to them and the faithful make pilgrimages to their gravesites called ziyarat (which however are not mandatory, unlike the hajj or main pilgrimage to Mecca, which all able-bodied Muslims are expected to undertake at least once in life) in hopes of acquiring a blessing from the deceased saint for themselves. At present, the most prominent Hashemite wali is Abd al-Fattah ibn Qasim, who was martyred at the hand of the Emperor of the Romans in the Battle of Manzikert, 671: his father has had him buried in the new Islamic capital of Kufa, where his tomb will eventually become one of many in the great Hashemite graveyard complex to come.
Outside the Banu Hashim themselves, in theory the entire Islamic community or ‘Ummah’ is supposed to share a position at the pinnacle of the Caliphate’s pecking order, all of them being equals under Allah. In practice, this ideal remains ephemeral: of course there are rich Muslims, poor Muslims, Muslims who give orders and Muslims who must carry them out, and there certainly is no sense of egalitarianism when it comes to relations between the sexes in the Caliphate – not that the Romans are especially 'progressive' in this realm either, but the notion of a female royal being allowed as much authority and autonomy from her husband as Helena of the Coal-Black Eyes (for example) is inconceivable to Caliph Qasim and his peers, who regard the Augusta with a mix of contempt and confusion that her husband has not simply snatched the reins of the Roman East out of her dainty hands. Worse still, Arabic society remains divided into clans and tribes with their own myriad old feuds and friendships, although the imposition of the new religion has made some progress in bridging over these ancient fault-lines. “I against my brothers, I and my brothers against our cousins, I and my brothers and my cousins against the world” – so goes the ancient Arab saying, and it holds every bit as true in 680 AD as it did in 680 BC. Many of these tribes still live as Bedouins – desert-dwelling pastoralist nomads, honing skills which also serve them well on the battlefield – though ironically the Banu Hashim themselves are not nomads, instead having previously been a sedentary clan of traders hailing from the coastal cities of the Hejaz.
The largest and most obvious geographic divide between the Arab tribes is that between the northern tribes (including the Hashemites themselves), so-called the ‘Adnanites’ for their mythical descent from one Adnan (himself a descendant of Qedar, founder of the first known Arab kingdom which bore his name and one of the twelve sons of Ishmael), and the southern tribes who claim descent from Qahtan (better known as Joktan to non-Arabs) who was actually a son of Eber, great-grandson of Shem son of Noah. By and large the Adnanite Arabs are in a dominant position over their Qahtanite kindred, who have fallen on hard times since the destruction of the Himyarite kingdom by Aksum, and form most of the strength of the Hashemite armies: it does not help the Qahtanites that their northernmost branch, represented by the Ghassanids and Banu Kalb, have firmly aligned themselves with the Roman enemy.
But even within the Adnanite ranks there is dissension, though it has yet to boil over while Qasim still lives. That Qasim and his close kin favor their own tribe, the Quraish, for promotion and plum administrative postings over others has not gone unnoticed in the eyes of the other Adnanites, such as the Tayy and Ghatafan: are they not all supposed to be equal in the eyes of Allah, and the Caliph their impartial ruler? For now Qasim has been able to appease them with slices of the vast bounty he’s reaped from his campaigns, much of which has been distributed to the poor as part of zakat (obligatory almsgiving), and he has also settled entire tribes in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Syria to both better hold down those conquests and to keep the tribesmen themselves (ever hungry for new territories and sources of wealth) happy. But Allah help the Hashemites should they ever run out of easy conquests and the pie they must split with the non-Quraish tribes starts to shrink…
Qasim distributing gifts to non-Quraishi tribal chiefs so as to reinforce their allegiance to him
Not even a century since the death of Muhammad, religious fissures have already begun to crop up within Islam itself, although the presence of a male line of clear successors and Qasim’s own skill at rulership have prevented them from evolving to the stage of a formal schism thus far. Some who profess to be Muslims question whether a just God who considers all believers equal would really elevate any among them, even if they be the blood of the Prophet himself, to rule over their peers in perpetuity – especially when the Prophet’s descendants are clearly but mortal men, prone to the same virtues and flaws as any other. Others prefer to trust strictly in the Qur’an and have no place for the hadiths in their hearts, believing that the pure Word of God needs no further embellishment or support or creative ‘interpretation’. While still comparatively few in number, if the Hashemites should encounter more defeats abroad or fail to live up to the high moral standards demanded of them at home, it is a foregone conclusion that heresies like these will swell in number as their own legitimacy wanes.
These khawarij (‘those who have left [the Ummah]’) and Qur’aniyyah (‘Qur’anists’) are denounced by the faithful followers of the Caliphs as heretics and apostates (murtad)…and there is only one, non-negotiable punishment for those who have been branded with this label: the sting of death. In turn, some of these heretical sects have already struck at Qasim, some of the first Kharijites most infamously trying to kill him for not going to war against the Romans and Turks quickly enough in the early 660s. Though they failed to assassinate him and were killed to a man in retaliation, they did successfully push him to instigate hostilities earlier than he would have liked.
Outside of the Muslims themselves, as has been previously mentioned, there exist large majorities of non-Muslims virtually everywhere across the Caliphate outside of Arabia. Of these, Jews and Christians are the most favored: Islam considers them to be ahl al-kitab, ‘People of the Book’, who have had the truth partially revealed to them by previous prophets and try to live by some of God’s commandments, even if their understanding of God is imperfect in the eyes of the Muslim faithful. Many of these have been recruited into the burgeoning civil administration of the Caliphate – in particular, while the Hashemites have a very personal reason to despise the ‘Rūmī’ or Romans, who they considered the last corrupt and decadent remnant of a bygone era that needs to get out of their (and their new age’s) way even before Aloysius Gloriosus struck down the martyr Abd al-Fattah, they recognize that not all Christians are Romans and that the ‘heretics’ cast out by Roman authorities can be very useful to them indeed. The Babylonian Jews have similarly been able to leverage themselves into positions of relative privilege within the Caliphate through their rapid submission to & collaboration with their new overlords, allowing them to protect & eventually absorb their Galilean cousins who’d been expelled by Aloysius and Helena. All in all, the combination of pragmatic religious tolerance and (for now, thanks to the vast amounts of war plunder they have amassed over the course of their conquests) low taxes has greatly endeared the new Muslim overlords to their Abrahamic subjects, who consider them a massive step up over the oppressive, dogmatic Romans and the chaotic, ceaselessly warmongering Turks.
Zoroastrians, Buddhists and other polytheistic ‘pagans’ are considerably less fortunate. The Muslims despise idolaters, and consequently believe the followers of non-Abrahamic religions to not only be unenlightened but more degenerate than the ahl al-kitab. It certainly does not help that the Qur’an dictates that these pagans’ sin of shirk (idolatry) is unforgivable unless they repent and turn away from their old ways before they die. In general, because Qasim is of the opinion that it is not practical to try to kill every single Buddhist, Zoroastrian and other varieties of ‘pagans’ in his realm unless they insist on causing trouble for the new order, so far the Caliphate has given these infidels the chance to live on their knees in exchange for paying the jizya tax, seemingly no different than the ahl al-kitab. But in practice they are overlooked for official appointments in favor of Jews and Christians instead, tend to be judged more harshly by Islamic qadi, and do not enjoy the same level of protections that the People of the Book do. For example, Christian and Jewish women are not compelled to convert before marrying a Muslim man, even if non-Muslim men are barred entirely from marrying Muslim women; the same is not true of, for example, Zoroastrian women.
An Islamic qadi judges a case which a Buddhist Turk, a Nestorian Mesopotamian and a Babylonian Jew have brought charges against one another. While the Hashemites favor a flexible approach to justice that does not go out of its way to offend and trample upon local customs unless they flagrantly contradict Islam's teachings, they can give 'pagans' like the Buddhist only so much leeway
Fittingly for the armed forces of a newborn empire on an expansionist streak, the early Hashemite army has built up a reputation for aggression, mobility and fervor in battle. A core requirement for all of its soldiers is that they must be Muslim: unlike the Turks or even the Romans (who had no trouble deploying pagan federates and allies), while the Caliphs are willing to enlist non-Muslims in administrative roles, they are determined to avoid arming anyone who is not a believer almost without exception, lest they eventually turn their weapons against the descendants of the Prophet. The ‘almost’ preceding that ‘without exception’ remark applies to the Jewish auxiliaries raised from Babylon and the ranks of the Galilean exiles, in whom Qasim saw very valuable and convenient allies against the Romans, although now that he has reached a truce with Aloysius & Helena it is likely that they will be made to disband in the coming years.
The Romans have found the footsoldiers of the early Caliphate to be, on average, much more lightly equipped than their own legionaries, not that this has stopped them from fighting extremely aggressively. While certainly well-armored Muslim warriors in mail coats and pointed helmets (around which they would wrap a turban) were known to exist, the majority of the Islamic infantry enter battle wearing scale or lamellar armor made of leather, one of the primary trade goods produced in Mecca and the other cities of the Hejazi coast; still others trust simply in their clothes and the will of Allah to protect them, often functioning as skirmishers boldly striking ahead of their more heavily armored fellows. Their standard weapons include javelins and thrusting spears (often made from reeds found along the coast of the Persian Gulf), paired with wicker or cow- and camel-hide shields – elite Islamic warriors did also wield swords, but rather than the iconic curved scimitar of later centuries, in 680 their blades would have been straight rather than curved.
On the offense these footsoldiers would have repeatedly surged toward their foes and then retreated, a tactic known as al-karr wa-l-farr (‘attack and withdrawal’) which was intended to wear the enemy down. Such a strategem inherently demanded great discipline and zeal from those who practice it, lest they be broken and driven into a real rout by said enemies, but fortunately for Caliph Qasim his soldiers have regularly demonstrated that they have plenty of both. When it has been determined that offense is not in fact the best defense in any given situation, Hashemite footmen will instead arrange themselves into a shield-wall called the tabi’a to defend both themselves and their archers. Either way, even though they fight on foot, these Arab infantrymen are known to ride horses or camels to the battlefield before dismounting, giving them an edge in mobility and endurance over most adversaries.
A heavy infantryman of the seventh-century Hashemite army. Note his usage of leather lamellar armor combined with an iron helm and aventail, as well as his straight sword
Speaking of archers, the missile component of the Islamic army has made a name for itself on the Caliph’s battlefields, and for good reason – they are the second most important element of the Hashemite fighting forces. The Arabs have a lengthy tradition of archery, similar to many other Semitic peoples like the Syrians or their ancient Midianite and Qedarite ancestors, and wield composite bows made from wood, goat horn and sinew to terrific effect against the enemies of the Caliph: they are known to possess a high rate of fire and good accuracy, even if they may still be outranged by the famous longbowmen of Nubia. Aside from the foot-archers who rely on the infantry to protect them in close quarters, the Hashemites also field large quantities of horse- and camel-archers capable of matching the mounted bowmen of the Turks, Eastern Romans and Africans shot-for-shot.
And on the subject of mounted warriors, by far the cavalry are the most famed and most important of the Hashemite military’s arms. Riding Arabian horses carefully bred by their Bedouin ancestors for agility, alertness and fidelity, those among the Arab cavalry who are not unarmored scouts or mounted archers are known to fearlessly gallop into combat in fine mail and turbaned helms, wielding two-handed lances and switching to swords or maces (a weapon they have increasingly picked up from their new Persian subjects) once they have charged into enemy ranks. Their only weakness is a lack of stirrups, but Qasim is working on introducing that new technology after his first bloody bouts with the Romans and Turks. Other, lighter horsemen armed with javelins and shorter thrusting spears fulfill the role of mounted skirmishers, and still other Arab cavalrymen eschew horseback combat entirely in favor of riding camels into battle: these beasts frighten horses with their stinging scent, and so the Caliphs typically deploy them to counter enemy cavalry, be they Roman cataphracts or Bulgar lancers or Khazar light riders.
Heavy Hashemite cavalry of Talhah ibn Talib's 'mobile guard' amassing for battle against the Romans in Galilee
There exist three prominent contingents, two of which are recognized as elites, among the greater Hashemite army of the seventh century. The first are the mubarizun, ‘champions’: these were small units of specially-picked master warriors who were tasked with hunting down enemy commanders on the battlefield or dispatching rival champions in duels to demoralize the foe. Of their Roman adversaries at least, only the indomitable Aloysius Gloriosus himself and a few of his mightiest captains are known to have withstood these champions of Islam in combat. The second elite regiment of the Islamic army are the tulay’a mutaharikkah or ‘mobile guard’, veteran heavy horsemen equally adept at wielding bows or lances in battle, who serve the nearly-undefeated general Talhah ibn Talib – himself reputed as the iron fist of the Caliph.
The third distinct (though not necessarily elite) element fielded by the Muslim army are the guzat (singl. Ghazi): their frontier raiders, brigands and zealots who have volunteered to continuously raid Islam’s enemies in search of riches and slaves even in nominal peacetime. Since most infidel realms are part of the Dar al-Harb, they are considered fair game for raiding by Muslims at any time, and when it comes to foes personally despised by the Hashemites (such as the Roman Empire) they may not even wait for the ink on their peace or trucial treaties to dry before breaking them anyway. They play an important role in Islamic offensive strategy, keeping targets for future expansion off-balance and continuously draining them of resources either by forcing a military response time & again or simply raiding them unopposed. The guzat will be responsible for centuries of endemic raiding and low-level warfare from the sands of Libya to the mountains of Syria and the Caucasus, as well as matching Khazar raiding parties on the steppes of Central Asia – and causing trouble even further beyond.
A guzat raiding party in the Caucasus is intercepted by local Georgians, supported by Cilician Bulgar federates sent by the Empress Helena
Finally, there are the non-Arabic contingents of the Islamic army to speak of. The Jews have been mentioned before: those who have been allowed to serve by Caliph Qasim are most valuable to him not as warriors, exactly, but as skilled siege engineers capable of overcoming Roman or old Persian defenses (this is especially true in the case of the Babylonians), of whom precious few can be found among the ranks of the Arabs themselves. As well Qasim has heard of the dreadful fire wielded by Greco-Roman sorcerers to drive the Turks from Constantinople, and has turned to engineers of Jewish and Persian heritage to concoct something similar for the Islamic army's use.
The Turks constitute a much larger division within the Muslim ranks than the Jews do: after being defeated, many Turks were motivated to convert to Islam owing to both Qasim’s leniency (if they should submit quickly) and the opportunity to resume their warlike, raiding ways under the cloak of the new religion. The children of other Turks who resisted to the bitter end and were put to the sword were often enslaved, and the boys will grow up to be the first ghilman (singl. Ghulam) – Islamic slave-soldiers, raised from youth under a strict disciplinary regime to become fanatical and fearless warriors for the Banu Hashim. The practice will doubtlessly soon be expanded to include non-Turkic ghilman, most notably Ethiopians from the fallen empire of Aksum. From the Turks the Muslims will absorb many new military traditions, ranging from the stirrup and the curved blade design to the very idea of deploying non-Arab slave-soldiers on a large scale, which may prove to be a double-edged sword in the hands of future Hashemites.
The Romans have found the footsoldiers of the early Caliphate to be, on average, much more lightly equipped than their own legionaries, not that this has stopped them from fighting extremely aggressively. While certainly well-armored Muslim warriors in mail coats and pointed helmets (around which they would wrap a turban) were known to exist, the majority of the Islamic infantry enter battle wearing scale or lamellar armor made of leather, one of the primary trade goods produced in Mecca and the other cities of the Hejazi coast; still others trust simply in their clothes and the will of Allah to protect them, often functioning as skirmishers boldly striking ahead of their more heavily armored fellows. Their standard weapons include javelins and thrusting spears (often made from reeds found along the coast of the Persian Gulf), paired with wicker or cow- and camel-hide shields – elite Islamic warriors did also wield swords, but rather than the iconic curved scimitar of later centuries, in 680 their blades would have been straight rather than curved.
On the offense these footsoldiers would have repeatedly surged toward their foes and then retreated, a tactic known as al-karr wa-l-farr (‘attack and withdrawal’) which was intended to wear the enemy down. Such a strategem inherently demanded great discipline and zeal from those who practice it, lest they be broken and driven into a real rout by said enemies, but fortunately for Caliph Qasim his soldiers have regularly demonstrated that they have plenty of both. When it has been determined that offense is not in fact the best defense in any given situation, Hashemite footmen will instead arrange themselves into a shield-wall called the tabi’a to defend both themselves and their archers. Either way, even though they fight on foot, these Arab infantrymen are known to ride horses or camels to the battlefield before dismounting, giving them an edge in mobility and endurance over most adversaries.
A heavy infantryman of the seventh-century Hashemite army. Note his usage of leather lamellar armor combined with an iron helm and aventail, as well as his straight sword
Speaking of archers, the missile component of the Islamic army has made a name for itself on the Caliph’s battlefields, and for good reason – they are the second most important element of the Hashemite fighting forces. The Arabs have a lengthy tradition of archery, similar to many other Semitic peoples like the Syrians or their ancient Midianite and Qedarite ancestors, and wield composite bows made from wood, goat horn and sinew to terrific effect against the enemies of the Caliph: they are known to possess a high rate of fire and good accuracy, even if they may still be outranged by the famous longbowmen of Nubia. Aside from the foot-archers who rely on the infantry to protect them in close quarters, the Hashemites also field large quantities of horse- and camel-archers capable of matching the mounted bowmen of the Turks, Eastern Romans and Africans shot-for-shot.
And on the subject of mounted warriors, by far the cavalry are the most famed and most important of the Hashemite military’s arms. Riding Arabian horses carefully bred by their Bedouin ancestors for agility, alertness and fidelity, those among the Arab cavalry who are not unarmored scouts or mounted archers are known to fearlessly gallop into combat in fine mail and turbaned helms, wielding two-handed lances and switching to swords or maces (a weapon they have increasingly picked up from their new Persian subjects) once they have charged into enemy ranks. Their only weakness is a lack of stirrups, but Qasim is working on introducing that new technology after his first bloody bouts with the Romans and Turks. Other, lighter horsemen armed with javelins and shorter thrusting spears fulfill the role of mounted skirmishers, and still other Arab cavalrymen eschew horseback combat entirely in favor of riding camels into battle: these beasts frighten horses with their stinging scent, and so the Caliphs typically deploy them to counter enemy cavalry, be they Roman cataphracts or Bulgar lancers or Khazar light riders.
Heavy Hashemite cavalry of Talhah ibn Talib's 'mobile guard' amassing for battle against the Romans in Galilee
There exist three prominent contingents, two of which are recognized as elites, among the greater Hashemite army of the seventh century. The first are the mubarizun, ‘champions’: these were small units of specially-picked master warriors who were tasked with hunting down enemy commanders on the battlefield or dispatching rival champions in duels to demoralize the foe. Of their Roman adversaries at least, only the indomitable Aloysius Gloriosus himself and a few of his mightiest captains are known to have withstood these champions of Islam in combat. The second elite regiment of the Islamic army are the tulay’a mutaharikkah or ‘mobile guard’, veteran heavy horsemen equally adept at wielding bows or lances in battle, who serve the nearly-undefeated general Talhah ibn Talib – himself reputed as the iron fist of the Caliph.
The third distinct (though not necessarily elite) element fielded by the Muslim army are the guzat (singl. Ghazi): their frontier raiders, brigands and zealots who have volunteered to continuously raid Islam’s enemies in search of riches and slaves even in nominal peacetime. Since most infidel realms are part of the Dar al-Harb, they are considered fair game for raiding by Muslims at any time, and when it comes to foes personally despised by the Hashemites (such as the Roman Empire) they may not even wait for the ink on their peace or trucial treaties to dry before breaking them anyway. They play an important role in Islamic offensive strategy, keeping targets for future expansion off-balance and continuously draining them of resources either by forcing a military response time & again or simply raiding them unopposed. The guzat will be responsible for centuries of endemic raiding and low-level warfare from the sands of Libya to the mountains of Syria and the Caucasus, as well as matching Khazar raiding parties on the steppes of Central Asia – and causing trouble even further beyond.
A guzat raiding party in the Caucasus is intercepted by local Georgians, supported by Cilician Bulgar federates sent by the Empress Helena
Finally, there are the non-Arabic contingents of the Islamic army to speak of. The Jews have been mentioned before: those who have been allowed to serve by Caliph Qasim are most valuable to him not as warriors, exactly, but as skilled siege engineers capable of overcoming Roman or old Persian defenses (this is especially true in the case of the Babylonians), of whom precious few can be found among the ranks of the Arabs themselves. As well Qasim has heard of the dreadful fire wielded by Greco-Roman sorcerers to drive the Turks from Constantinople, and has turned to engineers of Jewish and Persian heritage to concoct something similar for the Islamic army's use.
The Turks constitute a much larger division within the Muslim ranks than the Jews do: after being defeated, many Turks were motivated to convert to Islam owing to both Qasim’s leniency (if they should submit quickly) and the opportunity to resume their warlike, raiding ways under the cloak of the new religion. The children of other Turks who resisted to the bitter end and were put to the sword were often enslaved, and the boys will grow up to be the first ghilman (singl. Ghulam) – Islamic slave-soldiers, raised from youth under a strict disciplinary regime to become fanatical and fearless warriors for the Banu Hashim. The practice will doubtlessly soon be expanded to include non-Turkic ghilman, most notably Ethiopians from the fallen empire of Aksum. From the Turks the Muslims will absorb many new military traditions, ranging from the stirrup and the curved blade design to the very idea of deploying non-Arab slave-soldiers on a large scale, which may prove to be a double-edged sword in the hands of future Hashemites.
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[1] The hijrah happened in 622 historically, but in 615 ITL.
[2] Actually attributed to Abu Bakr, the first Sunni Caliph, historically.
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