A Brief History of the Tumbuktu Kingdom
A Brief History of the Tumbuktu Kingdom
The Reign of King Qallic
The reign of King Qallic was a golden age for the Cheauri; to go from chaotic, seemingly endless war to a state of peace within 5 years seemed like nothing less than a miracle. The people at last had an opportunity to settle down and rebuild, and one of the first things they did was reopen the gold mines. With gold flowing out of the country like never before, the Cheauri entered a time of incredible prosperity.
The Tumbuktu Kingdom Period marked the beginning of the first organized relations between states: Cheauri envoys to the Volta River Civilization, by then known as the Kingdom of Cozzi, established the first foreign embassy in the capitol city of Kofi. While many in the Cheauri viewed Cozzi as a potential conquest, Qallic had no desire to return to war so soon after establishing peace. To secure gold trade between the two countries, Cozzi willingly became a client state of Cheauri, in exchange for Cheauri mining methods. Cozzi was now ruled by a man with a title which will here be translated as “Duke”.
The Gambia River Civilization, by then known as Jolof, likewise became a client of Cheauri. While the tiny land had little to commend itself, its weakness allowed a greater deal of Cheauri influence, essentially creating for them a second port; though one far from any sources of trade. Growing Jolofan fisheries would help to feed their desert neighbors in Cheauri, and some intrepid merchants would begin expeditions north, to find the rumoured forest land beyond the Sahara and the Great Sea.
The Royal Family
One of the earliest things that Qallic did as king was marrying into the royal families of the various city-states along the Niger. All in all, he took nine Cheauri wives, and later took a wife from both Cozzi and Jolof to cement those alliances. By the end of his life, these marriages had produced a total of 37 children. These children would become the founders of most of Africa’s royal houses over the course of the following centuries.
His first wife was
Minda of Tumbuktu, daughter of the treacherous king whom Qallic had deposed. From Qoll (OTL Gao) he married
Frusu, from Djaali (OTL Djenne) he married
Oksum, from Agadesh (OTL Bamako) he married
Simoan, from Zill (OTL Tembakounda) he married
Tushael, from Lusendech (OTL Niamey) he married
Gorm, from Gutuku (OTL Lokoja) he married
Suruma, from Samsa (OTL Onitsha) he married
Joruka, and from
Ghoahorrum (near OTL Yenagoa) he married Kaija. His wives from Cozzi and Jolof were named
Yoko and
Tika respectively, for a total of 11 wives.
That is a lot of names to remember, so don’t feel bad if you just skipped that paragraph because your eyes began to glaze over, or if you can’t remember them all, because Qallic probably couldn’t either. Most of his wives were effectively concubines who existed solely to cement the Tumbuktu Kingdom’s legitimacy. Only Minda, Oksum and Kaija held any real political sway, due to the prominence of their home cities. These three wives accounted for eleven of Qallic’s children, and it was mostly these eleven who would found royal houses with lasting influence. The two most prominent children during Qallic’s life were
Thaisha, his eldest child, daughter of Kaija; and
Roshorruk, his fourth child, son of Minda.
As the first product of a union between previously warring families, Thaisha’s birth represented the end of the Gold Wars, and the dawn of a new era of peace. A precocious child, she was beloved by both the nobility and the general populace, and she was seen as the queen-to-be. Some extremely conservative families of the nobility even suggested that Qallic should abdicate the throne upon Thaisha coming of age, since she as a woman would be more fit to rule a kingdom at peace. However, these views were not held by many, as Qallic continued to hold folk hero status. The family situation became more complicated as more children were born and grew older. The second-oldest son, Roshorruk, was the spitting image of his father, and took after him not just in appearance but in manner. The nobility nicknamed him Kallutu, the Cheauri Nubian word for jackal pup, in a teasing reference to how much he took after the king. It soon became apparent that Roshorruk was the king’s favourite.
The Succession Crisis
At the age of 57, King Qallic fell ill with sleeping sickness. Preparing to die, he officially named Roshorruk his heir, surprising and enraging the nobility. Various noble families began quietly making plans to convince Roshorruk to leave, and install Thaisha as queen after Qallic died and would no longer have a say in the matter. However, when they approached Roshorruk with the plan, he was enraged and informed the king, who had Thaisha banished to her homeland of Ghoahorrum, to prevent any efforts to defy his wishes concerning inheritance.
While the king would recover from his illness, he suffered irreparable neurological damage from it. As a result, for the rest of his life he remained bedridden and dubiously lucid, and for those five years Minda effectively ruled as a regent. The brief regency was a time of conspiratorial planning, with whispers of assassinating Roshorruk. Minda, however, was both widely respected and supportive of her son’s ascension, and she headed off all plans to depose him. Upon Qallic’s death, Roshorruk became King of the Cheauri. In imitation of his father, he took a regnal name: Qasim, which meant “falcon” in the proto-Nubian language of his father’s name.
The Reign of King Qasim
In a play to build the people’s confidence in him, and evoke memories of his father’s early reign, Qasim set out on a campaign to annex the Tchadda River. In preparing for this, he accomplished probably the greatest achievement of his reign: he united the roving bandits into a professional Cheauri army, the first of its kind in the world. With this army, he invaded and conquered the Tchadda River Civilization, bringing it into the Tumbuktu Kingdom. However, this would soon prove to be a pyrrhic victory at best.
The move to militarization alienated a nobility used to peace, and they perceived the new army as a potential threat to their status. Furthermore, while the people were excited and enthusiastic for the very premise of conquest, the nobility were aware that the Tchadda River Civilization was little more than a huge tract of desert with some farms along the shore of the river, and that it had little offer the rest of the Cheauri. There was also a racial element to this resentment, as most of the nobility were primarily Waati or Nubian, whereas the population of the Tchadda was uniformly Shasong, a group stereotyped as uncivilized.
With the war over and a huge professional army standing around doing nothing, Qasim instituted the Companions of the King, an order comparable to feudal knights. All of the soldiers in the army became Companions, individuals tasked with upholding the law in the Cheauri, becoming the first police force in the world. However, this didn’t really work out. The Companions had gone, in less than ten years, from being looting, raping, and pillaging bandits, to being the men tasked with upholding the law. Needless to say, corruption was rampant. Many of the Companions were the same terrors they had always been, but now with the backing of the King. This led to a period of chaos that hadn’t been seen since the Gold Wars, eroding popular support for the King.
The Cheauri Civil War
After about five years of this chaos, the Duke of Ghoahorrum called for an election. A move like this was unprecedented, since the election of the ruler had long since become the nobility giving their rubber stamp to the monarch’s heir. It had been over a hundred years since any of the kingdoms of the Cheauri had actually conducted serious elections. Over the course of the year, one by one, each city’s duke recognized the election call, and upon the vernal equinox, all the dukes (save for the Duke of Tumbuktu) met in Ghoahorrum to elect a new monarch. In their first round of voting, they unanimously chose Thaisha to become Queen of the Cheauri. This did not go over well with King Qasim, who dispatched the Companions to Ghoahorrum to kill the dukes and Thaisha.
Only about half the Companions’ force could be mustered against Ghoahorrum, many simply disregarded the order and continued to wreak chaos in their areas, while some supported Thaisha to become Queen. As the Companions did not travel together, they arrived at Ghoahorrum at different times, and when they did, they continued to use the bandit tactics they’d always used, tactics the city guards were trained to counter. All these factors allowed the city’s organized militia to rout them. Following the end of the botched siege of Ghoahorrum, Thaisha announced that all Companions willing to swear allegiance to her and a code of honour would be made nobility, and all who sided with Qasim or continued to pillage would be killed. Around a fifth of the Companions swore their loyalty to Thaisha, and with this army and the very best militiamen of the cities, Thaisha laid siege to Tumbuktu.
Instead of seeking to take the city by force, Thaisha’s army planned to simply starve the city into submission without ever engaging in direct battle. With the city cut off from outside contact, the nobles quickly began plotting against the king. After two weeks of siege, supplies were essentially exhausted. The nobles could take no more, and had both Qasim and the Duke assassinated. They then appointed one of Qallic’s daughters, Simoan the Younger, as Duchess of Tumbuktu, and she immediately negotiated surrender.
The Ascension of Thaisha
While Thaisha was beloved by the nobility in Tumbuktu, she distrusted them. She viewed their allowing her exile as a betrayal, and became far more at home in Ghoahorrum among her mother’s people. Despite being half-Nubian through her father Qallic, she distrusted Nubians, believing them to be inherently warlike. This was not helped by the majority of the Companions being Nubian, though this was attributable to social factors, not race. Thaisha made the decision to move the capitol from Tumbuktu in the far north to Ghoahorrum in the far south. This began a period that would see the racial integration of the Gold Wars begin to break down, as smoldering racial resentment would begin to develop between the cities at the two ends of the Niger. The Tumbuktu Kingdom had ended, and the Ghoahorrum Queendom Period began.
