Fire Magic

Winter did not come to the Fatimid Caliphate as it did to the north. The Caliphate saw three comings of fiery beings the sages identified as jinn, the selfsame creatures of ancient lore not seen by man for more than four hundred years.
The jinn set fire to field and home with their touch, and could not be harmed by even the mightiest weapons. They were overcome only by the power of the Fatimid mystics. The second coming brought ifrit, mighty jinn who blasted apart city walls with black fire and left volcanoes in their wake. The third coming was helmed by the king of the ifrit, an unstoppable force of destruction, a walking inferno given form and evil intent.
The Norse do not distinguish between jinn and ifrit - they are always called fire giants [eldjotnar], or Muspellsmegir [sons of Muspell]. Their king, of course, is the one called Surt by the Norse, whose devastation was only halted by his summons to Vigrith. The Fatimids called him An-Nar.
The apparent victory of Surt’s departure was short-lived. The jinn would return, and in greater numbers. In the interim, the survivors found themselves swarmed by ghuls, foul demons that sought the flesh of the newly dead and, when all graves were desecrated, sought the flesh of those still living.
The Fatimid scholars were anxious to learn more of their foes, no easy undertaking as vanquished jinn are consumed with fire from within, or else explode. But at the center of each, just briefly, they saw a bright red flicker, like a shining ruby, that drew their curiosity. Mukhtaar Baig was the first to risk his life to examine the remains of an ifrit. He found the ruby to be smokeless, undying fire, possessing a strange solidarity and an otherworldly gravity. He called it essential fire, theorizing it to be a seed of primordial flame. The fire was bonded irreversibly to the palm of Mukhtaar’s right hand, the hand he had reached out with to grab it, and it stayed joined to his skin until his death, when it disappeared as a flame dying on a candle.
Through the study of essential fire, which all endeavored to obtain, the mystics found they were able to emulate the jinn’s control of fire to some degree. Boundless torrents of flame could be pulled from their palms Though useless against the jinn and ifrit, the Black Sand Mystics, as they are called by outsiders, became an invaluable weapon against ghuls and other horrors.
Today, Fustat and Cairo are the last bastions of the Caliphate, fortress-cities on the western rim of what is now called the Thrice-Burned Land. After a brief repose which, unbeknownst to most, was due to the Final Battle, the two cities are now constantly beset by ifrit crawling up from the south and ghuls that spring from a source unknown.
After years of civil strife and weakening authority, the region was again united under Fatimid rule with the goal of mutual survival. To that end, the caliph carefully manages his dwindling forces. The caliph, Al-Amir bi-Ahkami'l-Lah, lives in relative safety on Sicily, an island formerly under Fatimid control, which was found empty when the caliph’s scouts sailed searching for aid. To the north, he sends some to implore all nations for aid. To the south, he sends some to find the source of the jinn and ghuls. None who ventured south have every returned. Surely ghuls have gnawed the charred flesh from their blackened bones and left their bodies strewn unceremoniously on the obsidian plains and ashlands that now make up most of Africa.
The envoys received mixed reception in the north, as many still mourn their losses from the crusades and some even blamed them for the catastrophes of Ragnarok. Among more tolerant and open-minded peoples, though, the caliph’s men trade knowledge throughout the continent as they once traded silver. Few follow the Smoking Road back to the caliphate to join the fight, but the enchanted arms and armor of the Norsemen have graced many of a soldier of the Caliphate. Likewise, the mystic’s fire-calling was a welcome addition to the galdsinger’s stock of spells.