East Africa
Savahila polities
Kapudesa - Over the course of the eleventh century, it became increasingly obvious to those of influence in Africa that there were two great seats of economic and political power – axes around which the numerous city-states of the Savahila and their hinterlands orbited. The League of Kapudesa, based around Mzishima, was perhaps the greater of these two leagues, both in political power and influence. It’s language, Kapudesigaru, and its script, are the trade languages of the East Coast of Africa, and have communities of speakers as far afield as Arabia, Iran, and India.
Since the ninth century there has been a republican undercurrent in Kapudesa, brought by Indian merchants. However, there has always been a King, or Rajsah, in Mzishima itself, and that position, though elected, has a broad degree of authority and relatively few checks. However, Kings are limited by tradition and common sense – it does not do to impose oneself heavily when true power depends on league allies and guilds. In a sense, there is a deeper state lurking behind the notional displays of royal authority – that of merchants and landholders.
Public religion is focused around the bhakti version of Indian religion, and is primarily described as Ishvara worship – although Buddhism is also quite popular. Large Zoroastrian, Jain, and Saihist communities still exist as well, and religious tolerance has enjoyed relatively few interruptions. The plurality of religious faiths matches the polyglot nature of the state.
However, for all this tolerance, there are clear social hierarchies beneath the surface. Intermarriage between faiths and ethnicities is commonplace but those who trace their lineage back to the indigenous peoples of Savahila are considered substantially lesser than those whose ancestors were migrants – and in the matter of migrants, newcomers and their children are considered lesser to established families. Ishvara worshippers enjoy more privileges than Buddhists. There is a complex code which controls one’s status in life, and it is difficult to overcome – a legacy of the Indian castes.
Large scale warfare is essentially unknown in Kapudesa – which is not to say that theirs is a peaceful country. As with many frontiers, there is a certain sense of lawlessness in the hinterlands. Those who lack a place in their society can find one often among illegal communities in the high country. Accordingly, Kapudesa maintains an army, although in training and quality it would be an embarrassment compared to an Indian or European army. Their navy by contrast is extremely skilled and crewed by professional citizen-soldiers.
Pazudesada - Once known as the three cities, Kintradoni overcame an alliance of her former federates in 1021 and shortly thereafter reorganized her state into a stronger, more unified regime. Where Kapudesa had remained broadly disunited and polyglot, Kintradoni has not had that luxury. Migrations of the Maa and Garre peoples pose a significant threat – forcing them to import horses and mercenaries from Arabia. Accordingly, Kintradoni has maintained something of a more martial character – allowing her southern sister to surpass her in matters of political dominance is a small price to pay for survival.
Now however, at the dawn of the century the Maa and Garre and their allied clans are largely scattered or forced to submit, broken by two major campaigns led personally by Parajian, Prince of Kintradoni. Clever alliances with the growing “Shah” of the Mbisha and trade pacts with the Ganda have allowed Kintradoni to have a far safer and stronger position than her rivals. So long as she can maintain her position as a vital link the Eurasian trade system, Pazudesada may be the stronger state.
The Shah of Pazudesada is himself an Iranian, descendant of a line of generals who kept the state safe during the 1021 crisis. However, like his southern counterpart he worships Ishvara and speaks the Kapudesigaru language – as do his nobles and bureaucrats. Like Kapudesa, the Indian Sreni still have substantial political importance, and accordingly the Shah keeps a major embassy in Bharukaccha.
Tangrasirabh – Tangrasirabh is very different from the other major Savahila states. While there is a large foreign merchant community, it is a colony run by Izaoriakans, and accordingly for most of the 11th century was governed by a council of Randryan nobles. Tantric Hinduism, rather than the monotheistic bhakti cults, dominate, alongside a few communities of Arabian and Iranian Buddhists. Tangrasirabh, like her counterparts, does two sorts of trade – caravans navigating the often risky land routes into the interior and serves as a waystation for naval trade. By what is now an ancient treaty, Tangrasirabh ensures that no Watyan ships pass the port of Ramamida without paying a toll, and through that toll if nothing else they have become rich.
However, in 1019 the Sakalava monarchy on Izaoriaka was overthrown, and shortly thereafter Tangrasirabh came under the dominion of an Antemoro governor whose rule was despotic and theocratic at the best of times. For some fifteen years this condition persisted, until a man named Hasan Khutay, a prominent Arab merchant who had spent much of his life in the city’s military, rebelled against an attempt by the Antemoro governor to shut down a prominent Buddhist university in the city. He and his followers went south to Ramamida, where they rallied a large army to travel north and overthrow the Antemoro governor in 1034.
Henceforth, Tangrasirabh has been an independent polity, run by a “Mahasangha” or guild council, where members of the Khutay family still enjoy outsized influence.
Other
Kw`adza – the Kw’adza are often considered an inland version of Kapudesa by their contemporaries, and the reason for this is not hard to see. After the legendary Sah Jirata unified the disparate Cushitic tribes in the middle of the tenth century, they established diplomatic relations with Mzishima, including intermarriages between tribal leaders and major coastal potentates. Sah Jirata himself converted to Ishvara-worshipping Hinduism, and encouraged his subjects to worship the same god – in a single step abandoning the polytheistic ancestor-worship of the Kw’adza.
Kw’adza community life is based around the small, crudely fortified agrarian village. These villages typically contain a meeting hall which doubles as a temple to Ishvara (and also often the ancestors) and a mustering field where the young men go in times of war or strife. They fight much as they always have, with throwing spears, round wooden shields, and iron axes. Perhaps because they generally outnumber any tribe migrating from deeper in the interior, and because relations with Kapudesa are generally peaceable, there have been few innovations to the Kw’adzan style of warfare. The King himself has a small force of retainers, heavily armored in mail or scale, who fight ceremonial duels and the battles themselves are typically resolved by a few frenzied charges. Due to the tsetse fly, horses are almost unknown to the Kw’adza.
The current king of Kw’adza is Sidam Busula, whose dynasty claims matrilineal relation to Sah Jirata. He has no fixed capital, but rather tours the villages in a yearly cycle which coincides with a small festival in each township that he visits.
Ganda – Ganda is relatively isolated from the broader world – the kingdom of the great lakes, ruled by the Abakama Ndahura of the Burenzi clan. There are many hundreds of rough kinship groups united by the great kingdom of Ganda, and though the foremost clan changes frequently through internecine plots and sporadic bursts of warfare, the overall system remains as strong as the stone cities which dot the shores of Lake Nyanza.
Gandan culture acknowledges these frequent changes in power structures. Older clans with more historic claims to land receive special deference and are called banansagwa, or “those found in the place.” These clans are also the most traditionally agriculturalist and the builders of the largest and most permanent urban communities. By contrast, many of the newcomers are pastoralists and seek to imitate the traditions and mannerisms of the older, more established clans. The fact that Lake Nyanza’s banks are thickly forested has helped the Gandan agricultural communities to survive and thrive – many of the northern and western newcomers are forced to abandon their traditional patterns of settlement on arrival, leaving them vulnerable to assimilation.
Ganda has some small contact with Makuria, but more commonly they encounter Arab missionaries and merchants from Pazudesada or Mbisha caravans. These caravans have to cross substantial mountain ranges, however, and rely on the good will of intermediaries such as the Taita, Iraqw, and Sabaki tribes – all of which consider themselves allies and federates of the Kapudesa and take pleasure in extracting “gifts” from Pazudesada expeditions. To their north they are bordered by a people called the Kalenjin, who are a semi-pastoralist people who like their southern cousins the Kw’adza have adopted agricultural techniques from the Savahila coast. The Kalenjin are a proper, organized rival, and in a confederation with several other tribes have fought a few wars with Ganda.
Tsaibwe – The High Round remains the primary seat of political power in Tsaibwe society, and still lacks meaningful rivals. Utilizing heavy (by the standards of the region) cavalry to great effect, the Tsaibwe have retained their dominion, crushing any migratory hunter-gatherer groups who might otherwise have posed a threat.
A few notable sites exist outside of the horizon of the High Round’s dominion. The greatest of these in Kangila-Chomo, sitting on a high plateau to the north of Tsaibwe and stubbornly refusing to submit. Like the High Round it has substantial roughstone walls, sufficient to negate the cavalry which traditionally dominate the region, and like the High Round it has impressive granaries. Despite routine wars and sieges, Kangila-Chomo refuses to fall.
Tsaibwe is relatively unique among the indigenous societies of East Africa. Alone it represents the substantial consolidation of political and economic power in the hands of a miniscule percentage of the population. Compared to the relatively egalitarian Gandan and Cushitic societies to its north, the cattle-kings of Tsaibwe hold vast amounts of property and wealth in the form of cattle, stored grain, and precious metals without distributing them among their broader kin-group.
Accordingly, this has left the vast majority of the population dependent on their lords for the ability to maintain more than a lifestyle of marginal subsistence agriculture. It is no wonder then, that the cities of Tsaibwe are far more monumental in their construction than the scattered townships of Ganda or Kw’adza – they are built by what is effectively indentured labor, contracted in exchange for an additional ration of food. Visitors to the High Round and the Eagle’s Seat and other major seats of power describe the ruins of enormous palaces meant to house comparatively tiny populations.
Watya - The sheer availability of precious metals and the lack of centralized state control over its supply (as in West Africa) has depressed the global value of gold substantially. While at first Watya’s production was only a trickle in the grand scheme of things, and much of that production went straight to Izaoriaka, social upheaval in the home country has released huge stockpiles of stored gold onto the markets, coupled with a growing Watyan population who are massive exporters of precious metals and diamonds. Pazudesada and Kapudesa have both struggled economically as Indian financiers are all too aware of gold’s comparative easy availability.
Of course, Watya also exports many other luxury goods – bush tea, rare fruits and herbs. It is a land of impossible wealth, a mysterious place across the sea where many travel to seek their fortune. According to legend its land has healing properties and those who travel there live incredibly long lives. More reasonably, this can be attributed to the easy availability of land and the fact that even those who in their poverty are forced to pledge themselves to a local Randryan upon arrival tend to have a far better diet and manner of living than they might have been accustomed to in their homelands.
Politically, little has changed in Watya over the past half-century. New laws to protect the rights of landholders have been passed, ensuring that frontier violence over “claims” (especially those relating to precious metal finds) is brought to a minimum. However, there is the growing specter of tension as Indian and Arab merchants have begun setting up shop in coastal cities along the cape – and these merchants are stigmatized as outsiders in a society that traditionally has been pretty clearly homogenous – they are often accused of bringing crime and immorality.
