Coup in Qandal

In the 200th Year of the Prophet, Qandal was a fraught place. The city had held its tributaries for a century, and the great houses of the city had grown used to their position. The assembly of Qandal had long since broken up local militias and instituted a system of rents and price controls. Increasingly, the rural areas and tributary towns of Qandal had come to view the relationship as exploitative, as a mechanism for enriching the merchants and councilors of Qandal at the expense of everyone else.
The first Nuwans had arrived in the emirate decades earlier, and had found the rural areass of the empire to be fertile ground. The Temple of Nuwa taught that there was a divine order to society that included everyone, a system that would include an assembly at Qandal, but as a steward of the emirate rather than the sole beneficiary of its production. As the Nuwan faith spread, they gave the general discontent of the Qandali an organizing principle, a philosophical and political justification, and a list of demands.
The assembly ignored the growing influence of the Temple for decades, until in 205 many of their tributaries decided to stop paying taxes to Qandal. Though the sheikhs and local leaders stated they had no intention of damaging the emirate, and merely wanted more equitable policies from the assembly, the assembly chose to mobilize their troops instead.
A civil war had started.

The Conflict

Deployment

After their attempts to convince the sheikhs to abandon their demands failed, the Qandali assembly called in their mercenaries and city militia, intending to replace the rebellious local leaders. The rebel sheiks and Nuwan leaders saw that the Qandali had no intention of acceding to their demands, and thus began mobilizing their own peasant militias.
Qandal had begun to buy grain from the other emirates in anticipation of reduced supplies from their own countryside, but were still keen to ensure access to their local farmlands. Meanwhile, the sheiks were unwilling to directly engage the more experienced and better coordinated Qandali mercenaries with their militias. The sheiks had the advantage of a largely friendly countryside, while the Qandali had to roam the countryside to attempt to force the sheiks back to heel.

Battlefield

The peasant militias went on the move, melting away when the mercenary forces of the Qandali arrived. The Qandali took over parts of the countryside, but did not have the numbers to take over all of the regions in revolt and defend Qandal at the same time. The assembly had taken a risk in sending out almost all of their forces to try to take over local villages and towns and establish puppet sheiks. 
The first phase of the war ended suddenly, as the sheikh Jumail al-Laham made a daring lunge for Qandal, and the peasant militia fought their way into the city. The Qandali had poor understanding of where and how many armed peasants were in the emirate, and were blindsided by al-Laham's forced march. The assembly sent word to their forces on the countryside, but their home guard was swept aside in a bloody assault. Before the mercenaries had even heard that Qandal was besieged, Jumail al-Laham was standing in the hall of the assembly, dictating his terms.

Outcome

With the assembly captured, Jumail al-Laham was raised to the office of emir. He forced the assembly to grant him dictatorial powers, and he used those powers to fulfill the demands of the rebel sheiks. He invited the Temple of Nuwa into the city, and had a temple built in the city. The assembly continued to act as a rubber-stamp for Jumail for the next few years, but the mercenary forces of Qandal did not stand down quietly. As Jumail refused to pay them, they turned to looting and had to be hunted down by the remaining militias.

Aftermath

Though the assembly eventually orchestrated a palace coup to remove Jumail from power, he still was broadly popular among the people. The assembly revoked the laws giving Jumail absolute power, but out of fear of angering his supporters allowed him to live out his days in relative luxury at Khashan Manse. The policies that the sheiks had championed to begin with remained fait accompli, and were not reverted or even watered down. During Jumail's rule, the Temple of Nuwa had become a mainstream faith, and many of the councilors had even formally converted.

Historical Significance

Legacy

Many other emirates had similar tensions to Qandal boiling under the surface, and the evangelical efforts of the Nuwans were bearing fruit. Facing the prospect of similar internal conflict, many emirates chose to both embrace Nuwa and the social message of her faithful. Seeing both Nuwa and the reforms proposed by the temple to be much more palatable than the possibility of losing the emirate and the assembly, the Runberi ruling class largely co-opted the faith over the next half a century. The Tariqan schools arose out of this period as the Runberi sought to unify their new faith with their cultural and legal traditions.

Start Date

206

Ending Date

207