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Diplomacy and Events / Re: A Manist Mission
« on: April 23, 2020, 11:16:39 AM »
"The exact number of any tribe is difficult to work out" Karam mused, "it is not like Tamora where we have such things as a Census or regular administration. We don't even have a registration of births like many nations do. I believe officially the nation has 12.5million people, except I believe that number to be closer to 14, but we will never know. Our tribe is also not always in one group, like many of the others we split into sub groups, we call these bands. Each band is lead day to day by someone I appoint known as a Marshall. At set times of the year we all come together at semi-permanent settlements, the birthday of the Prophet being such an occasion. Otherwise these Marshall's carry out my orders and follow my guidance between meetings. One day I shall pack Yasin off to be a Marshall. Currently I have 12 such Marshall's, so along with myself we have 13 bands, each band contains roughly 1,500 people. We then have maybe another 100 people living in the capital full time, I have emissaries with some of the other tribes too and altogether I suspect we have around 20,000 of us. We're one of the smaller tribes mainly because we are not part of the nations main faith so historically we have no enjoyed the position of Sultan. I think ourselves and the Banu Lakhm who follow the Anahitaism faith are the only ones to never have had someone elected to the position of Sultan and I think we never shall." Karam would have loved the thought of one day having his son or other descendent become Sultan but it was never going to happen, the tribes following the folk faiths always ensured one of them became Sultan. When they elected the current Sultan his grand-father had received just two votes and out of those who had been nominated had been the first to drop out the process. It was OK though as at least Sultan Yahya IV kept out of religion, he was an old man concerned about traditions of the desert, the tribal hierarchies and maintaining peace between the tribes and as far as Karam was concerned he was happy with that arrangement.
"The largest tribe are the Talafha, the Sultan's own tribe, it explains why that tribe have amassed the most number of Sultan's. They have enough influence through the smaller tribes by marriages, land shares, just the size of a militia they can put out in emergencies to ensure they will always get the most votes. I believe they have around a million members, in ancient times their raiders were like horde if they put a mind to attack another tribe. Thankfully such situations haven't come about for 200 years, long may that continue. It is this lack of war in a way that has brought me to your nation. In ages past it was a way of us gaining access to slaves, we'd buy from the Seleucid, we'd buy from other tribes who had taken prisoners in their skirmishes with neighbouring tribes. Now both those avenues don't exist and we are stuck with essentially buying our slaves from the small pool of criminals within the tribes. The changes we will see happen in the nation soon mean we need a larger workforce, my people will be unwilling to give up their livestock and their way, thankfully, so we are left with needing slaves and I understand you have an abundence." The Chief began steering the conversation towards one of the main reasons for his visit.
"The largest tribe are the Talafha, the Sultan's own tribe, it explains why that tribe have amassed the most number of Sultan's. They have enough influence through the smaller tribes by marriages, land shares, just the size of a militia they can put out in emergencies to ensure they will always get the most votes. I believe they have around a million members, in ancient times their raiders were like horde if they put a mind to attack another tribe. Thankfully such situations haven't come about for 200 years, long may that continue. It is this lack of war in a way that has brought me to your nation. In ages past it was a way of us gaining access to slaves, we'd buy from the Seleucid, we'd buy from other tribes who had taken prisoners in their skirmishes with neighbouring tribes. Now both those avenues don't exist and we are stuck with essentially buying our slaves from the small pool of criminals within the tribes. The changes we will see happen in the nation soon mean we need a larger workforce, my people will be unwilling to give up their livestock and their way, thankfully, so we are left with needing slaves and I understand you have an abundence." The Chief began steering the conversation towards one of the main reasons for his visit.