Uthmarid Empire of the Holy Successor
The Uthmarid Empire was a state which claimed the title of Holy Successor Empire for over 200 years following the dissolution of the Jafarids. Although primarily remembered for their embarrassing collapse and loss to the Fatimi dynasty, the Uthmarids were critical to the development of the Illahic faith in general. The existence of a powerful Illahic state after the fall of the Jafarids, especially one such as the Uthmarids, cemented Illahism as a powerful and prestigious religion. In addition, early Uthmarid rule saw the rise of a distinct trend of Illahic and Al'Salaanic writing, art, poetry, music, and architecture which has persisted even after the fall of the state. Additionally, the Uthmarid legacy of successfully converting a diverse amount of peoples to Al'Shahrism left the religion stronger.
History
The Uthmarid Empire was founded following the civil war which tore the original Jafarid Empire of the Holy Successor apart. With the victorious priestly class believing that the Jafarid dynasty has lost their way, in addition to the male line rendered extinct, new leadership was needed to head the remaining lands loyal to the Successor. Although the clergy now claimed the title of Holy Successor as an electoral position which would thereafter be restricted to those of their calling, they could not then be direct rulers of the Empire, as their own casus belli for war had been to split the Successorship and Emperor titles. Instead, the Uthmarid dynasty, a family which had formerly been one of the most prestigious families of the Empire, holding several governorships and being the right hand of the Jafarids before siding with the priests, was granted the title of Emperor. This organization of government would come to define the Al'Shahri sect.
Initially, this system was greatly successful. The clergy and the Emperor being once more at peace saw the wounds of the bloody civil war healed swiftly, and over the next few generations the majority of the rebel holdouts of the proto-Al'Fatimi, reuniting the lands. The only notable regions which were never retaken were the Ægyian islands and delta. Commerce boomed and the Illahic faith began to spread to new outposts in foreign lands as traders established homes and businesses in them. With the majority of their notable rebel groups defeated, the Uthmarids also launched major wars of expansion, utilizing zealous new converts to launch ambitious conquests. Though the rebels in the delta remained a pestilence until the fall of the Empire, the Uthmarids saw success in conquering the majority of the river from the Ægyian peoples. They even bound the Ægir itself, which had consistently opposed Illahic conquests since the time of Jafar. Their conquest of the river basin saw them bordering the Tilḫasic city-states, which were next to be conquered, despite fierce fighting lasting from 1308-1313. Then, in 1315, the Uthmarids shocked the world and rolled over the factionalized Ursumar civilization, seizing their Divine Empire. Their conquest of the Ursumar made them by far the strongest state in the world, as it nearly doubled their population.
While these southern conquests were in progress, the Uthmarid dynasty was also expanding in the north towards the Taltas. The limited forays made by the Jafarids and previous Uthmarids into Taltic lands before had netted Taltic slave soldiers, most of whom were educated in the Al'Shahri manner and often became loyal servants if freed for their service. These Taltic soldiers were especially adept in wars against their fellows Taltas, as they had effective knowledge of their tactics. One of these Taltic slaves, known primarily by his Al'Salaanic name of Walid iq Abu, would rise far enough to become a general in the armies of the Uthmarid, and lead military forces into the his old homeland in 1309, concurrent with the Tilḫasic wars. His invasion saw great success and had finished conquering the scattered tribal forces present in the southern plains of Khŭlmozhi by 1316, with raids reaching lands controlled by giants. This would spark a larger war between the giants of Khŭlmozhi and the Uthmarids, which saw Giantish power nearly totally broken and which opened the way for the conquest of most of the rest of Khŭlmozhi during the 1320s.
However despite his conquests of huge swathes of land for the Uthmarids, Walid iq Abu was not treated equally to the Al'Salaanic elites. Although granted the governorship of these new lands, he was obliged to send a huge tribute to the Uthmarid Emperor in both slaves and taxes and he was seen as lesser, not given the privileges of a typical governor. In addition, despite taxes dropping as a result of the mass conversion of the Taltas to Al'Shahrism (who in this time period did not pay them), Walid was obliged to pay the same amount of money, which caused resentment and cut into his budget. Consequentially, in 1332 he revolted against the Uthmarids, leading an army of Taltic converts against the Al'Salaanic elites. Although his forces were eventually defeated in 1345 after his death, the long and drawn out war cost the Uthmarids a huge number of men and led to devastation in the north as well as the resurgence of religious rebels in the central lands as citizens questioned the legitimacy of the Uthmarid dynasty. Most of the lands conquered by Walid were also once more lost to independent states which loosely embraced Illahism, but in a heretical manner. During this rebellion, the Uthmarids also saw their control of the Ursumar diminished, as the people of the city of Bāblus revolted in 1339 following the signs predicted by their oracles. The Bāblus rebellion soon picked up steam and expelled the Uthmarids from the southeastern parts of their conquest.
For many of the Uthmarids and their loyalists, these rebellions proved once and for all that only Al'Salaanic peoples could be trusted to rule over and 'guide' the faithful of other ethnic backgrounds, a view similar to but unrelated to that proposed by the Al'Uthami. Henceforth, they implemented much harsher rules and regulations to prevent any non-Al'Salaanic person from taking high office and kicked off a wave of reshuffling of administrative positions, causing bureaucratic issues for much of the 1350s depending on how far a province was from the capital. Many of these new administrative appointments saw less experienced Al'Salaanic nobility or army commanders appointed to high posts simply due to being able to take up the position at all. Their reforms also made it harder to be legally recognized as a convert of Illahism and thus escape taxation, but saw little real effect because many of the new appointees were corrupt.
These reforms also ran into trouble with the clergy, who protested the change. A large part of this was that the clergy depended on the tithe paid by true believers while the state subsisted entirely on the higher taxation on non-Illahic citizens, tariffs, and on the spoils of war. With taxation and war spoils gone, the state had become heavily reliant on its merchant fleet, and levied heavy taxes on such trade. This led to an increase in smuggling and piracy, and the defeat of the Uthmarid fleet at the hands of a coalition of Ægyian islands left them without a way to enforce their regulations and saw the commercial golden age stifled.
Desperate for cash, the Uthmarids led a costly war against the dwarves of tbd in 1358, which although successful saw the army viewed increasingly as less of a holy duty from which one could gain loot and familial prestige and more as a sacrifice for Uthmarid cash, especially when the dwarves were set to minting coins to fill the Uthmarid treasury. In order to acquire more soldiers, they would then seek to reconquer the lands lost during the Walidin revolt of the 1330s and 40s. These wars (1366-1374) proved successful, and the armies of the Uthmarids were soon staffed with loyal slaves who were educated in the Illahic fashion. Although not taxpayers due to their Illahic education, they were groomed to be exceptionally loyal and of course cost less than free armies, so this saw much of the administration and garrisoning of the non-illahic lands be staffed by these Taltic slaves.
Things would continue to decline, however, and the Uthmarid army was decisively defeated in campaign in 1389 by the forces of Bāblus, prompting a rebellion which soon overran the remaining Uthmarid hold in the Ursumar lands. This would prompt a general revolt of the Tilḫasic city-states, who hired mercenaries which ambushed the Uthmarid army in the desert and saw them nearly all perish in 1390.
Although the Uthmarids were not defeated by these rebellions, they lost a large portion of their tax base and the route to their mints in the dwarven mountains were likewise vulnerable to raids from desert nomads, who, once subdued, now became rowdy and disloyal. To make matters worse, the destruction of the elite armies of the Uthmarids left them dangerously reliant on slave-soldier imports from the north, with powerful new slave governors in the like of Walid soon rising and taking control of the region, often it autonomously except for their tithe of slaves taken from wars and expeditions into the steppe and from Taltic tribes which continued migrating into Khŭlmozhi. These slaves became so loyal, in fact, that their stance on nonbelievers was often even more harsh than the Uthmarids themselves, and their ranks saw a huge amount of converts to the Illahic faith following their enslavement or exposure to the faith.
Despite the steady supply of slave soldiers, for which the Uthmarids soon became obligated to pay tribute for, their empire continued to crumble. Rebels in the delta of Ægyia who had long been a nuisance began to spread down the river, all while the Uthmarid lands in upper Ægyia saw their own rebellions by proponents of the native Hōsuyan religion. Ægyia was largely lost by 1395, when the Fatimi dynasty, which had recently taken charge over the main force of Illahic rebels, defeated the Uthmarid forces in the battle of Argelab, cutting the Uthmarids off from the rest of Ægyia. Although the Uthmarids gained a breather after the fall of Ægyia, this would be short-lived. In 1431, the Fatimi unified lower Ægyia, leaving Upper Ægyia to the Hōsuyan, and their leader Hamidhal Jafarid Shorkot y Fatim II declared a crusade against the Uthmarids. Linking up with other Illahic rebels, the Fatimi crusade proved simply too much for the fading empire and broke through the Uthmarid defenses several times in the 1430s, linking up with rebels elsewhere. However, with the emergence of a religious rival, the clergy and Uthmarids once again found common ground, and their armies soon swelled with volunteers to fight the Fatimi menace. This renewed resistance was bolstered by the arrival of more slave soldiers and by the shadowy forces of the Al'Ukhan w Alzal'a, and the Uthmarids were able to assert their supremacy in numbers to seize back some of their provinces, particularly in the spring of 1441. However, the Uthmarid coalition was running thin, and the Uthmarids themselves neared bankruptcy by 1445. This led to the dispersion of the paid troops and soon the shattering of the slave-soldier forces in 1447, by which time the Uthmarids saw the writing on the wall and fled to their island holdfast of tbd.
The abandonment of their own domain by the Uthmarids irrevocably broke the state structure, and regional governors immediately began carving out new sultanates and emirates for themselves, while the Fatimi did their best to conquer these new foes. They were largely unsuccessful in this regard as the old slave-soldiers of Khŭlmozhi declared the Taltas Sultanate in opposition to the Fatimi, working alongside other new sultanates to establish a defensive alliance, which, alongside the Al'Ukhan w Alzal'a (once they finished their own civil war) prevented the Fatimi from making significant conquests of the coastal regions beyond Ægyia.
The Uthmarid dynasty, near bankrupt, was eventually forced to sell off even their lands on tbd after an 1852 revolt made them essentially powerless. Returning to the mainland in 1859, they were shortly thereafter caught in the Orcish migrations. Although their line continues to this day, they are largely seen as a disgraced and worthless house, especially since their Al'Shahri faith forbids the veneration of royal houses and they are not seen having held the title of Holy Successor.
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