On summer's breath, to me you came
Like butterflies in...
"Oh,
bother," Sanjula groused as she scowled at the paper. Well, continued to scowl. She'd been trying all afternoon to get a poem going, but even the first couple of sentences seemed lodged up somewhere in her mind. Writing should've come easier than this.
It was harder these days. There was a lot on her mind.
"Trouble?" Moving up at the desk behind her, Uthman laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.
She sighed, brushing back a few locks of raven-black hair with one hand before bringing her fingers to rest on the back of his. "Always," she murmured. "I keep thinking about it. What happened."
"With Tariq?"
Nodding, she looked off towards the window. Uthman's house was well outside the city, overlooking picturesque farmland splayed out in a field of emerald beneath the sun, the frosted glass window panes swung open to let the air in. The warmth of the day was little comfort. The bruises from her ordeal under the lash had passed with time, but something else had not.
The anger - the frustration. The sheer fury at having been thrown beneath the horse's hooves by a man she'd spurned, at being used as an example by a backwards fool of a Hajib.
"Sometimes I wonder how you don't think about him all the time, love," Sanjula mused as she turned in her seat to rest her head on Uthman's shoulder; he drew his arms loosely around her as if on automatic, cradling her against him. "After what he did. Knowing that he killed your father and brother."
"I do think about him all the time, actually." Uthman closed his eyes and lowered his cheek to hers. His dark beard brushed against her forehead and temple. "But if I let myself be driven mad by what a
munafiq he truly is, I would let him defeat me too."
With a sigh, she squeezed her eyes closed and set her jaw, then released them. For all that Tariq had made her life miserable, he'd done more to Uthman and his family. She hadn't known until she met him how sudden Abd ar-Rahim's death had been - died while preparing for his breakfast after taking a drink of his morning tea, found blackened in the face and stiffened from poison. That Shurayh died so suddenly afterwards was no coincidence, and it left two possibilities: That Tariq arranged the murders of his uncle and cousin, or that he benefited from the support of murderers.
There was little distinction to her. Both of them made the man even more of a monster. A sterling example of the rank hypocrisy of the Usulids. Performatively pious old men willing to kill and hurt to uphold words put in the Prophet's mouth long after His passing - men more concerned with protecting the hurt feelings of crusty old scribes than in caring for God's people.
She'd never been a person of politics. But Sanjula wasn't accustomed to being treated like a pawn in a game of idiots. And she wasn't accustomed to letting those who wronged her walk away unscorned.
"My love," she murmured, lifting deep hazel eyes to meet Uthman's. "I want to get him. Knock him off his high seat."
Uthman pressed his lips together before nodding gravely. "So do I."
~
Excerpt: The People's Faith: A History of Modern Islam - Abu Najib ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Mufaji, AD 2007
3
SANJULA'S RESPONSE
In Sanjula bint Hamdan, hajib Tariq had earned himself a surprisingly powerful enemy.
In the wake of her public flogging in 1539, Sanjula, now aligned with Tariq's cousin Uthman ibn Abd ar-Rahim, transitioned from an active socialite to a political force far more tangible in her impact than virtually any other Andalusian woman of her time. By late 1540, she had married Uthman, but their relationship appears to have been significantly more coequal than was typical for the period. Her surviving poetry, while not considered among the most literarily fluent or skillful examples of period poetry, is remarkable in its focus on romance from the point of view of a willful woman - but it was her political activities that stirred controversy at court.
Her marriage to Uthman gave Sanjula somewhat greater freedom of movement among the Asmarid ruling class, and contemporary writings suggest she socialized frequently with the wives and daughters of key amirs and walis as well as leaders on the Majlis. Uthman, for his part, stood aloof from the political maneuvering, seemingly content to remain out of the fray of Sanjula's efforts to sway public opinion against Tariq.
The balance of power between Tariq, the Majlis and his new rivals stood on foundations of assumed legitimacy that made open challenges to either difficult. Dismissing the Majlis may have been feasible, but Tariq's lack of popularity - and the representative nature of his office, established as an assumption generations prior and accepted mainly by convention, not law - made an open move to dismiss the voices of the ummah risky. With neither side willing to raise the stakes, political debates between the Majlis members and the beleaguered Hajib grew increasingly rancorous as members of the council swung steadily into the anti-Tariq camp.
The most powerful backers of Tariq, however, stood apart from the Majlis. The aging Caliph Al-Musta'sim held views largely consistent with the Usulid viewpoint, and while his deteriorating mental health and frequent bouts of dementia rendered him a relatively ineffective force in terms of day-to-day politics, the appearance of Caliphal sanction was nevertheless vital. While Al-Musta'sim apparently valued the concept of the Majlis as a means to hear from the populace, his personal views were eminently traditional. The more effective backers were military men: Izemrasen ibn Ghanim al-Masmudi controlled a significant bloc of Masmuda Berbers in the Maghreb and contributed much to Asmarid military efforts, while Hunayn ibn Karabo al-Sudani, the head of the elite Black Guard, had few strong political opinions but tended to go along loyally with the will of the Caliph.
Of the two military backers, Hunayn held the most immediate threat, but Izemrasen's interests were the most divergent in real terms. The Masmuda largely occupied territories in the High Atlas centred on the old city of Aghmat, and while they controlled some ocean ports, they largely detested the "coastal merchants" upon whose activities Asmarid prosperity rested in those days. Discussions in the Majlis increasingly turned towards matters of trade and taxation, whether due to Sanjula and Uthman's prodding or due to simple tensions between Izemrasen's economic interests and those of the bulk of the Majlis members. While the Masmuda did have supporters on the council who succeeded in winning investments of dinars from Tariq, fuelling investments in new mosques and roads around Aghmat, the diversion of public funds inland annoyed much of the rest of the council.
The efforts of the conspirators in the years following Sanjula's public flogging mainly focused on trying to drive a wedge between Izemrasen and Tariq. However, in late 1540 those efforts were diverted when Caliph Al-Musta'sim suffered a seizure and withdrew into incapacity. With the Caliph's death seeming inevitable, Sanjula and Uthman swung their focus to his potential successor.
The likeliest candidate to replace Al-Musta'sim was his second son, the future Caliph Al-Adid. While he sympathized in some respects with the Usulids, Al-Adid was somewhat more moderate in his personal beliefs: He favoured more conservative styles of personal behaviour and dress while still valuing scientific pursuits. While not particularly loved by either the Ghimarid or Usulid camps, he stood as a likely compromise candidate for an office that had traditionally ceased to matter beyond the ceremonial.
That ceremonial role would change dramatically in the spring of 1541. The actual course of events is unclear, but sources from the time suggest that Al-Adid had been in conversations with Uthman and Sanjula, meeting with the two frequently enough to alarm Tariq and his backers. Some sources suggest Tariq sought to push Al-Adid aside and replace him, while others state that he was engaged in his own discussions with Al-Adid in the hopes of winning his political support. Nevertheless, the events of April 27, 1541 would surprise the Asmarid political world.
That evening, two eunuchs were intercepted by members of the Black Guard while trying to break into Al-Adid's home with poisoned knives. The assassins were killed in a short and one-sided fight, but Hunayn, the leader of the Black Guard, came forward to reveal he had been tipped off by a slave girl in Tariq's house that Al-Adid was to be murdered. Al-Adid himself strenuously denied knowledge of the attempt and ordered an investigation, but the incident drew loud protests from the Majlis: The perception was that Tariq had ordered the Caliph's son and heir apparent killed. Assassinations were hardly unheard of, but to target the son of the religious leader of western Islam was seen as a grotesque affront to the faith.
Debate over the appropriate course of action continued through the inconclusive investigation, but by early June, Al-Musta'sim had died, leaving Al-Adid to assume the Caliphate. By month's end, the new Caliph took an unprecedented action: He ordered Tariq to be dismissed as Hajib.
Al-Adid's dismissal was utterly shocking to an Islamic world accustomed to the Umayyads acting for generations as passive kingmakers at best and puppets of the Hajibs at the more conventional. Yet the move was fully justified by the flimsy assumptions upon which the Hajib's power rested. The Hajib was always positioned not as the sole ruler, but as the Umayyads' man in charge of the Asmarid realm, serving with the presumed sanction of the Commander of the Faithful. In theory, the Caliph had every right to dismiss the Hajib at any time - and his decision carried all the more weight by the movement of the Black Guard solidly out of Tariq's corner and into Al-Adid's. The Black Guard's loyalty was institutional, and while Tariq had benefited from it before, the attempt against Al-Adid had ensured that Hunayn would rest entirely on the side of the Caliphal power.
Tariq at first attempted to declare his dismissal a fraudulent decree written up by his enemies, sending word to Izemrasen to support him. He found few others willing to back him, particularly as printing presses began to churn out copies of Al-Adid's announcement. Scribes took time to write up decrees en masse; the holders of the presses could circulate documents easily and quickly, ensuring that public sentiment turned towards awareness that Tariq's power had been firmly checked. The beleaguered Hajib held out for a few weeks before finally agreeing in mid-July to withdraw from power.
To the surprise of most, Al-Adid did not rush to appoint a new Hajib. He simply reconvened the Majlis and moved into session with them to produce a landmark document: The Governing Fatwa.
The Governing Fatwa codified for the first time a formal power structure in the Asmarid realm. While affirming the centrality of the Umayyad Caliph as supreme authority and holder of the final say in religious affairs, the Fatwa formalized the existence of two institutions: The Hajib as the Caliph's chosen head of government and civil administrator, exercising temporal power to execute the law, and the Majlis ash-Shura, the Shura Council. The Hajib in particular was specified to be chosen by the Caliph and dismissed by the same in the event of gross breaches of authority or of Sharia, and charged with authority over matters of taxation, warfare, economics and other temporal management of the realm. Supreme spiritual authority continued to reside with the Caliph.
It was the formalization of the Majlis ash-Shura that would prove most consequential. The Governing Fatwa specified that the Majlis was to be assembled for a certain number of days each year, to sit in session to advise the Hajib. It called for a set number of representatives from each wilayah of the Asmarid empire and from each dhimmi community to make up the council. Perhaps most importantly, it empowered the Majlis to make recommendations to the Caliph directly on whom from the extended Asmarid line to appoint as the next Hajib. Effectively Al-Adid had made a play to take the office out of the hands of the usual method of choosing a Hajib - heredity punctuated by periodic bursts of assassination - in the hopes of ensuring a smoother succession.
It was far less surprising when the Majlis advised Al-Adid to appoint Uthman as his Hajib. The appointment was quickly formalized, all but finalizing Sanjula's revenge and vindicating her efforts in winning political support from both the Majlis and from Al-Adid himself. Historians largely view the Governing Fatwa as not merely a turning point in governance, but as the culmination of extensive backroom dealmaking between Sanjula, Uthman, Al-Adid and key members of the proto-Majlis to get rid of a hated Hajib.
The Fatwa, however, was far from the end of things. A furious Tariq withdrew to Aghmat, where he was received warmly by a protesting Izemrasen. While a military showdown against the powerful Black Guard and the merchant houses would have been unthinkable, Izemrasen effectively withdrew behind the bounds of Masmuda territory, withholding taxes to the Caliphal coffers and continuing to acknowledge Tariq as the rightful Hajib.
The presence of his deposed relative as a noisy parallel power in the High Atlas would be one of many thorns in the side of Uthman as he and Sanjula settled in. The dealmaking to depose his father's alleged killer left him in a predicament: The office of Hajib was more constrained than it had been in many years, with an empowered Majlis entitled to weigh in and an empowered Caliph still disagreeing with the Ghimarids on fundamental social issues. Further, angry Usulids continued to seethe in the broader public, and while the Ghimarids had powerful tools at their disposal to sway public opinion, riots broke out in a few cities upon Uthman's ascendance. While these would be put down, Uthman nevertheless came to power weakened and faced with considerable internal political and social turmoil.
