Les Grands Caciques mahométans de l'Amérique septentrionale
The Cacique Nizam, or Cacique Order was the first dervish state on the steppes of North America, established in the year 1153 (1740 A.D.) At its origin was an alliance formed between the cacique of the Iron Confederacy and an octogenarian marabout, Sidi Moulay Idriss ben Abdesalam ben Hassan Jilani, a Sufi murshid and hermit, in order to establish a religious and political absolute lordship, in the name of the Saadian sultan, to purge the North American steppes of modernist practices and deviations from folkloric Islam as they understood it. Historians of North America concur that, aside from the hostility of Bayouk’s republican experiment, the steppes during the mid-18th century were facing an increasing wave of Moorish settlers beyond the traditional domains of Bayouk, following the establishment of the first republic in 1717. A marriage between the elderly marabout and the daughter of the Guardian of the Covenant of the Iron Confederacy would seal the pact between the Confederacy and the marabout, as well as mark the appearance of the Jilanid, or Dhahirid dynasty on the North American steppes.
Dervishists see this joint effort as the restoration of the natural belief in the ancient Sufi orders through the silsilas, or lineages of sheikhs, tracing back to the Prophet through the progeny of the fourth caliph, Ali. The appearance of the Cacique Nizam marks the beginning of the folkloric revivalist movement that swept not only the Muslim, and syncrtic tribes of the steppes outside of the domains of the Republic, but also within Bayouk, primarily in the northern emirates, where the cult of the Saadian sultan and the Malikite rites remained strong; as well as amongst the syncretic tribes loosely tied to the Husseinid sultanate of the Kadwani Confederacy. Together with unresolved sociopolitical complaints of the rural, traditional northerners with the urban, republican elite of the southern emirates; the rise of the first dervish state, as well as the Dervish conquest of Kahoqiya in 1768 would eventually result in the Moorish Civil War, and dissolution of political ties of the northern emirates from the Republic.
Assumption of lordship over the steppes
The Iron Confederacy and its allies quickly rose to become the dominant lords over the steppes by first allying various Adite tribes of the steppes against common enemies, namely: Anglo and Métis fur-traders, the advance of the Haudenosaunee-allied Sioux, and the armed Moorish settlers following the establishment of the Republic. While individual caravans of Moors, other Muslim Adite tribes and Marabouts had existed within the world of the steppes since the early 17th century, none had attempted to exert domination over the steppe tribes until the jihads of the great plaines during the early years of the republic which saw Mahdia eagerly seek to secure and expand its domains in the lawless steppes. The Iron Confederacy first rose to prominence during the heigh of the fur trade, acting as middlemen between Europeans and other Adite tribes, Muslim and non-Muslim, later adopting the horse and arms, becoming a major actor in the bison hunt.
After many conquests and ascent to lordship over the tribes of the steppes, in 1757, the daughter of the Marabout, Lalla Fatima-Wabigwani (known by Moorish contemporaries as the “Kahina of the New World,”) began writing letters on behalf of the Iron Confederacy and her father, known simply as “the Marabout,” in the name of the Cacique Nizam of His Sacredness the Sultan and Miramolinus in Arabic to citizens of the republic in the northern province of Bayouk, encouraging the Muslims to remove elements of modernism and republicanism from their practices, and to return to the “natural orders” of the Sufis and marabouts.
Referring to an indigenous governance-concept – the Cacique Nizam, or Order – as “order of orders,” the letters of Lalla Fatima-Wabigwani reflect an atypical literacy on the part of her father, this mystic marabout about whom little historical facts are clear. Traditionally seen as an ageing mad medicineman by Moorish historiographers, much evidence points to the likelihood of his being a Mudéjar judge from the north that fell from favour following the establishment of the republic, subsequently joining up with the remaining Baywani zawiyas in the steppes before the gradual dominance of the modernists in the Umayyad Madrassa over New World Islam at the end of the 17th century.
After many military campaigns, the Marabout died in 1759, and military control over the Nizam was given to Lalla Fatima-Wabigwani’s maternal grandfather, who had since become the cacique, and was proclaimed “Wali” over the Cacique Nizam, as the women of the Adite tribes were much less politically involved than their eastern and southern counterparts. The Lalla continued, however, to act as the spiritual mother of the dervish state, enjoying much popularity amongst the religiously illiterate, folkloric and syncretic tribal societies of the steppes as a sort of reincarnation of the daughter of the prophet, the Lalla sharing the same name as the venerated daughter, as well as being the only child, and mother of the grandsons of the Marabout.
The death of the wali a year later in1760 would see Sheikh Abbes, the Lalla’s son by a chieftain of the Iron Confederacy, assume his grandfather’s political role as Wali, or deputy of the Saadian sultan, as well as his mother’s role as spiritual leader of the Jilani order of the Nizam. While the Lalla maintained immense popularity, historians often see the assumption of religious authority of Sheikh Abbes from his mother as the result of careful negotiations to ally with the traditionalist Malikites of Kahoqiya and the Saadian dynasty’s supporters, who would demand the soothsaying “sorceress” retreat into purdah, and allowing her son, Sheikh Abbes ben Yasin bin Mistawasis Al Dhahri (the dynasty, known as “Jilanid” due to Sheikh Abbes’s maternal grandfather being a shariffan descendant of the Jilanis, is also known as “Dhahrid,” often by Moorish historians, who sought to debate Sheikh Abbes’s claim to the title “moulay” and other shariffan honours due to his mother, and not his father, being a descendant of the Prophet – “dhahriya,” or progeny, being the Arabic term used to compensate those descants of the Prophet through their mothers, but not their fathers, and those excluded from the titles shariff, sayyid and moulay, or shariffa, sayyida and lalla) to be recognised by the Saadian sultan, who had fled his confinement in Mahdia, to be proclaimed the Shaykh al-Islam and as his deputy in the established sultanate at Kahoqiya.
Seven years later in 1767, the dervish forces of Sheikh Abbes of the Cacique Nizam invaded the Republic of Bayouk, going so far as to destroy the provincial capital of the emirate of Baduqa in the northeast of Bayouk. Sheikh Abbes’s forces attempted to push further into Bayouk, however were dealt a timely defeat by the republican armies in upper Bayouk at the Battle of Dioun in in 1769. As they controlled Kahoqiya, Sheikh Abbes reinstituted and enforced practices such as use of the calumet in syncretic meditations of dhikr, offering prayers to saintly figures, making pilgrimages to tombs and special mosques, venerating groves, trees and other natural phenomena, and burned entire librairies of Zahirid and secular sciences, shutting down the Atlantean schools, as well as famously destroying the great printing press of Kahoqiya.
Decline of absolute lordship
The end of the Ottoman Revolution and the Sultanic Wars in the Old World in 1770 would allow the Republic to focus its full efforts on the dervish invasion and northern mutiny. The task of weakening the grip of the Cacique Nizam was given to the powerful Chief Eunuch of the Diwan, Allayaton (his neo-Carthaginian name chosen especially by the first shophet himself) Pasha Yaaqoub, who had been the chief confidante of the first shophet of the republic, Seifeddine bin Ahmed bin Soufiane Al Hafsi. A subsaharan slave born in Bornu, bought by a Virginian on Somers Isle and resold in New York and a native anglophone, he had entered into the Diwan of the first shophet, and commanded an extensive network of spies throughout the republic. He had been responsible for significant diplomatic and spy victories in the Meditteranean campagins of Bayouk during the Ottoman Revolution, and, in 1771, successfully carried out the assassination of Sheikh Abbas, dealing a significant blow to the dervishists, resulting two years later in the collapse of the Cacique Nizam in 1773.
The leader of the Cacique Nizam’s brother, Sheikh Ali, seeing his days numbered, kidnapped the Saadian sultan’s son and, along with other senior advisors and leaders of the Cacique Nizam, fled Kahoqiya to the Far North, before the forces of Allayaton Pasha expelled the dervish warriors, commencing the Moorish Civil War between the republican armies of Mahdia, and the Moors of Kahoqiya sympathetic to the pro-Saadian cause of the Cacique Nizam. In the Far North, the remnants of the Nizam gathered with their allies amongst the syncretic tribes near Methye Portage (known as Al Dioloqos Al Kibra Methiyya, or just Dioloqos in Arabic hence the name “Grand Dioloqos”) in 1776 and established the Second Cacique Nizam, where they would come into contact with British expeditions of Peter Pond from the Hudson Bay Company two years later in 1778. From the end of the 18th century, the Cacique Nizam would both challenge British expeditions into the Far North and northwest of the continent, as well as serve as useful bargaining positions as relations between the Anglo-Dutch and Moors continued to decline due to Anglo-Moorish rivalry in the Meditteranean and on the high seas.
The first Cacique Nizam, however, after its failure, played the important role in securing northern independence of Kahoqiya from Bayouk, as the Peace of Hassinay, held in the inland city of the neutral Kadwani Confederacy in 1781 (which opted to remain in the Republic, seeing the removal of the northerners as greatly influencing their ability to extract a special status) saw the end of the Moorish Civil War and the establishment of the Sultanate of Kahoqiya in the provinces of Kahoqiya, Kofitashekiya, Kaliza and Meshemal, as well as to the steppes north of the Ghofaina and Northern Ghofaina rivers (the northern traditional boundary of the Kadwani confederacy) and east and north of the Great Basin, effectively forming a buffer between the Republic and dervishism of the Cacique Nizam, and turning the one-time allies of the Saadian sultanate and and the dervish state into bitter enemies when the descendants of the kidnapped Saadian prince, raised in the wildness of the forests and portages of the Far North amongst the syncretic tribes and senior dervish leaders, would attempt to reassert his rights to Kahoqiya, beginning a little over half a century later.
