Imperator Knoedel
Currently obsessed with The Owl House
What about population? I may be small, but at least I have high population density, right?
The Democratic Caliphate.
- Thread starter Sanguivorant
- Start date
jackelgull
An aberration of nature
The Nidham Adl lies on a wooden table in a room as hot as hell. His head is in a cramped container in the shape of the dead Caliphs head. It was built by a sculptor based on the detailed sketches sent to him by the Nidham Adl from an artist that took the Caliphs portrait a few years ago. It wasnt a perfect representation, but it was close enough. Now that the cast has been made, the Nidham Adl waits in a black smiths forge, waiting for him to finish melting bronze so that it could be poured within the cast.
The Nidham Adl breathes in and out, as he tries to not speculate on how much this is going to hurt, but he knows this is the only way to achieve this deception. In order to take on the power of the Caliph, he must become the Caliph, and this is his only opportunity to do so. He knows the position of Caliph no longer wields the power it once has, but he doesnt care. This isnt a matter of power, or money. He already has that in his role as spy master. He is the illegitimate son of the former Caliph and he is reclaiming the birth right that his father stole from him.
For a brief moment the Nidham Adl allows himself to pity his brother. He had never hated the man. He had never met him outside of his role as spymaster, but he could see that being Caliphate ill-suited the man. He was brash, and desired to wield power as Caliph regardless of whether he stepped on the toes of the provincial councilors or not. In this age where the Caliph had lost much of his authority such a move would have gotten him deposed.
Then the blacksmith approaches, his footsteps echoing in the Nidham Adls ears like an ominous warning. His thoughts scatter as the molten bronze is poured in and coalesces into an overwhelming sensation of pain. He screams rending the air asunder with the sound, as the golden dark liquid seeps into the crevices of his face, smoothing the scars and irregularities of the past that created Nidham Adl, and replaces them with the perfection of the Caliph. Under the assault of bronze lava, someone, no something new is created, its birthing cries enough to pierce the heavens.
The Nidham Adl breathes in and out, as he tries to not speculate on how much this is going to hurt, but he knows this is the only way to achieve this deception. In order to take on the power of the Caliph, he must become the Caliph, and this is his only opportunity to do so. He knows the position of Caliph no longer wields the power it once has, but he doesnt care. This isnt a matter of power, or money. He already has that in his role as spy master. He is the illegitimate son of the former Caliph and he is reclaiming the birth right that his father stole from him.
For a brief moment the Nidham Adl allows himself to pity his brother. He had never hated the man. He had never met him outside of his role as spymaster, but he could see that being Caliphate ill-suited the man. He was brash, and desired to wield power as Caliph regardless of whether he stepped on the toes of the provincial councilors or not. In this age where the Caliph had lost much of his authority such a move would have gotten him deposed.
Then the blacksmith approaches, his footsteps echoing in the Nidham Adls ears like an ominous warning. His thoughts scatter as the molten bronze is poured in and coalesces into an overwhelming sensation of pain. He screams rending the air asunder with the sound, as the golden dark liquid seeps into the crevices of his face, smoothing the scars and irregularities of the past that created Nidham Adl, and replaces them with the perfection of the Caliph. Under the assault of bronze lava, someone, no something new is created, its birthing cries enough to pierce the heavens.
baseballpie
Deity
- Joined
- Nov 13, 2012
- Messages
- 2,092
Holy crap that seems painful
adhiraj.bose
Deity
FYI, this procedure was completely unnecessary. Plastic surgery was known at the time, 
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_surgery#History
. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_surgery#History
jackelgull
An aberration of nature
But that wouldn't have been as dramatic.
CaterpillarKing
Conqueror of Cacoons
I think pouring molten bronze even near your head would kill you 
Considering fevers can kill at like 103 degrees Fahrenheit and bronze melts at a lot more than that
Considering fevers can kill at like 103 degrees Fahrenheit and bronze melts at a lot more than that 
Moai_Spammer
Ave, True to Caesar!
I think pouring molten bronze even near your head would kill you
fixed
CaterpillarKing
Conqueror of Cacoons
Hey close enough!
jackelgull
An aberration of nature
Note: I wanted to make the Caliphate more real so I wrote a historical research paper on it.
One question historians have wrangled with is “What happened to democracy in the Islamic world?”
The dominant narrative was that the collapse of democracy in the Caliphate was inevitable. There was a small middle class, a serious lack of technology that makes the modern democratic state impossible and political science hadn’t even been invented. Yet despite these shortcomings the democratic achievements of the Caliphate were remarkable, and the collapse into oligarchy wasn't inevitable. In this essay I seek to explore the changing nature of the Caliphate’s power structure until the Meccan Accords in 1006 to shed some light on “What happened to democracy?” and prove that not only was democracy present, but that it was expanding, and had become very inclusive by 1006.
The beginning of the democracy in the Caliphate goes back to the stepping down of Ali in order to institute a rule by consultation, based on Quranic principle. The people of the Caliphate invested their authority in the Caliph by direct vote, thus keeping the political power in central hands. Now the reason this worked, and didn’t lead to chaos, even though the Islamic empire was so diverse at the time was of two reasons which worked hand in hand: Arab unity, and Arab dominance. Islam acted as a unifying force for the Arabs of the empire, a supra tribal entity that smoothed the differences between tribes and enabled them to work together. The conquests under the righteous Caliphs and persecution Muslims had faced solidified this unity. The other component of this is Arab dominance. Simply put, Arabs set themselves up as the dominant force culturally, socially, economically, and militarily in the provinces they conquered. In order for natives to enjoy some of the benefits of Arab rule, they had to sign on to a tribal register which listed every voter in an Arab tribe, unintentionally relegating natives to inferior status unless they adopted the ways of their patron tribe. This in turn fought ethnic tension as the elite of the nation and its leaders were primarily Arab with support from non-Arabs desperate for a position, any position.
The scale of this democratic process was a marvel for its time. It involved agents traveling from tribe to tribe, where the head of that tribe would, after intense debate with all members of the tribe, hand in the tribe’s decision for Caliph (Non-Arabs were almost never heard in these meetings). There was even a new technology in play- the envelope. So mundane today, in those days it was a laborious process to create enough of these for every tribe, go around placing the votes in these envelopes and sealing them so that if someone to tamper with the votes, it would be apparent through the broken seal. Not completely fool proof, but it helped alert the government if someone had tampered with the votes, though in some cases, the government was the problem.
However, this process could not last forever. Even though it proved its vitality by managing a duarchy, several factors worked against democracy in this form. One is that the Islamic state was too technologically inferior to create a politically strong central government that could satisfy the people. Two, Arab unity no longer existed. Arabs had adapted to their regions and mixed with the locals, shaping the nature of the tribes who lived there in language, culture, even in the how Islam was practiced so that being Arab was no longer a unifying factor. Another is the decline of Arab dominance. As time wore on, the non-Arab parts of the empire intermingled and married with the Arab portions of the empire, until the line between the two was blurred and erased. Also non- Arab portions of the empire began demanding equal station, led by the previous elite who resented their disempowerment. They framed their argument in Islamic terms, and forced the local Arab elite to accommodate the old elite.
As a result, ethnic tension was reintroduced into the equation, as well as dissatisfaction with the status quo. Also, the central government was seen as being too autocratic and out of touch with the people. There were also contemporary events to consider. The war against Ethiopia, for example left other provinces unsatisfied as they wanted to not spill blood for Zanzibar which was considered a backwards barely Islamic province, and Zanzibar felt that they had been betrayed in the peace of Askum. Normally this would lead to the collapse of the nation as a political entity, but at this point the Umma had become too integrated economically through the advent of sailing, and better roads due to engineering that a political split would make everyone involved poorer. But things couldn’t continue as they were.
And so came Umar, the next Caliph. Very aware of the hot water the Caliphate was treading on, he sat down with the elites of various provinces and hammered out a compromise that lead to empowerment of democratic local government at the expense of the national in a document commonly called The Meccan Accords. This meant different things in different places owing to the radically differing nature of the Arab experience in each country as well as geography and other considerations.
Dar al Arab: As the center of Islam, reinforced by the presence of the Masjid al Haram , the locus of power was the theocracy. Tribal authority in Dar al Arab withered as men from all tribes took a part of the Islamic priesthood which rapidly gained political as well as religious authority. The Masjid became a meeting place for all the imams of the Umma who would declare Al Imam, the man in charge of religious authority in the Umma. His role would be to interpret the Quran in times of crisis. He initially shared power with the Caliph, but at the time of Umar’s compromise his role evolved to political governor of Dar al Arab. His absolute religious authority would wane after Umar signed his compromise, and the Ulema would usurp religious authority from him. Many decry this as a decadent elitist practice, but this was an election that expanded to include every imam, and bound Islam tightly together, keeping it from fracturing as Christianity had. This process also had a sordid side, leading to many political assassinations and unscrupulous deals. It was said behind every al Imam was three drownings, two “accidents”, one poisoning, and a thousand broken promises. In short, democracy in Dar al Arab was concentrated in the hands of the theocracy.
Dar al Iraq: No province had ever faced more ware fare and unease in its history than Iraq had. As the frontier province of the Caliphate, under constant threat from the Seljuks, then China, this province evolved into the military power house of the Caliphate. At first the military exercised its authority only lightly, as a way to crush dissent during times of war. However, as dissatisfaction with the central government grew and soldiers felt they were under appreciated, the military began usurping more power, and becoming more independent. As the military became more independent, tribal power waned, as loyalty to the army became more important than loyalty to one’s tribe. Generals would gather together and negotiate who would wield the military’s new found power. The Ethiopian war had the strongest negative reaction in Iraq, and when the time for compromise came this province was heading the cry. Many historians scoff at this system as the rule of brutes, but by the time the compromise was signed a complex democratic system had sprung up. The highest ranks of the military gained stewardship over the provincial affairs, the bureaucracy was run by lower level officers, and the average soldier was allowed to vote on some issues, leading to the establishment of a veteran’s pension system, the first of its time. And so democracy in Iraq took on a military context. Another shaping factor of Iraq was the sizable Persian minority that entered the province. Mainly Persian Muslims fleeing state persecutions, they fled the country for safety, and were welcomed by the Caliphate. Having escaped a brutal governmental administration, these Persians carried with them a distrust towards governmental authority. The aid they received from the provincial military government of Iraq softened their feelings somewhat to local government, but they retained a disdain for big government. This also impacted the Caliphate itself indirectly. This sizable Persian minority demanded the liberation of their homeland under the just government of the Caliph. The outcry against the Ethiopian war in Iraq came partly from Persians who felt that the Caliphate should be expanding into Persia rather wasting time with Ethiopia.
Dar al Misr: The tribal nature of Dar al Misr faded away relatively quickly. Trade networks and inter-tribal mixing blurred line sufficiently, and the mixing of Arab with native helped accelerate the process. Thanks to its central location and position between the Mediterranean and Red Sea, Dar al Misr became an important commercial trading center. As a result the province was dominated by commercial interests. The merchants of Dar al Misr were generally the most content out of all the provinces with central authority, and traditionally have always been the region that has supported central authority the most. However, the commercial power structure had been developing well before the Meccan accords. The central government couldn’t handle all the problems of Dar al Misr all at once, so the merchants of Dar al Misr generally chose among themselves leaders to promote trade and solve economic problems leaving all other authority to the Caliph. By the time of the Meccan Accords, the number of merchants who participated in this process was a quarter of the population, due to the increase in trade as the Caliphate’s horizons grew larger, and was the only province to hold no gender requirements for democracy. The hierarchy in government took form with the richest on top and the poorer merchants lower on the political scale. It’s fascinating that anyone can dismiss this as merely an oligarchy.
Dar as Shams: One of the most urban and successful provinces of the Caliphate, it is also the one with the bloodiest history of slavery. The Caliphate had a steady stream of prisoners of wars coming into the country, and the Caliph shipped most of them to cities to use for his proposed building projects. As Shams forced these prisoners of war to build infrastructure at a breakneck pace, breaking these slaves in the process. More so than any other province, slavery became central to As Shams, and the power structure came to be dominated by slave holders, or rather the slave system singular. This is because as the Caliph handed the slaves over to the cities, the local elite in the city didn't actually own the slaves. They were entrusted with these prisoners to build beneficial improvements. The local elite soon found though, that while 40-50% of slaves died in these projects, the ones that lived became the communal property of the elite for as long as the elites saw fit to have them. In this way, slavery first became a life long servitude, and elites would take from the pile of slaves held in the collective for their own personal use. Not natives to the city, these slaves were isolated from the community and thus powerless. However, several factors changed this. The growing percentage of the city that was becoming slave alarmed masters, and they began to fear an uprising. As such they made increasing concessions to slaves to quell this fear. An increasing number of slave marriages and slave families complicated things, especially after a court ruled that children born to slaves were free. These children then were set loose on the city, and became links for slaves to main stream society. Also there were a growing number of intellectuals who felt that the brutality of slavery as practiced by as Shams was un-Islamic and pushed for better conditions. Thus by 1066 slave marriages had been legalized, slavery wasn't hereditary, rape of a slave girl was a crime punishable by death. Still, by 1066, the local elites of As Shams held most of the power, and the city had a stratified social/ economic system: the elites and everyone else. The distinction between the poor and slave was blurred, and occasionally As Shams or the Caliphate would seize a poor person to be a slave, particularly if the man or woman was Buddhist. However, there was a form of democracy within the slave system, having evolved from when the local elites managed the unfree workforce collectively. By 1066 though, As Shams is among the least inclusive democracies in the Caliphate.
One question historians have wrangled with is “What happened to democracy in the Islamic world?”
The dominant narrative was that the collapse of democracy in the Caliphate was inevitable. There was a small middle class, a serious lack of technology that makes the modern democratic state impossible and political science hadn’t even been invented. Yet despite these shortcomings the democratic achievements of the Caliphate were remarkable, and the collapse into oligarchy wasn't inevitable. In this essay I seek to explore the changing nature of the Caliphate’s power structure until the Meccan Accords in 1006 to shed some light on “What happened to democracy?” and prove that not only was democracy present, but that it was expanding, and had become very inclusive by 1006.
The beginning of the democracy in the Caliphate goes back to the stepping down of Ali in order to institute a rule by consultation, based on Quranic principle. The people of the Caliphate invested their authority in the Caliph by direct vote, thus keeping the political power in central hands. Now the reason this worked, and didn’t lead to chaos, even though the Islamic empire was so diverse at the time was of two reasons which worked hand in hand: Arab unity, and Arab dominance. Islam acted as a unifying force for the Arabs of the empire, a supra tribal entity that smoothed the differences between tribes and enabled them to work together. The conquests under the righteous Caliphs and persecution Muslims had faced solidified this unity. The other component of this is Arab dominance. Simply put, Arabs set themselves up as the dominant force culturally, socially, economically, and militarily in the provinces they conquered. In order for natives to enjoy some of the benefits of Arab rule, they had to sign on to a tribal register which listed every voter in an Arab tribe, unintentionally relegating natives to inferior status unless they adopted the ways of their patron tribe. This in turn fought ethnic tension as the elite of the nation and its leaders were primarily Arab with support from non-Arabs desperate for a position, any position.
The scale of this democratic process was a marvel for its time. It involved agents traveling from tribe to tribe, where the head of that tribe would, after intense debate with all members of the tribe, hand in the tribe’s decision for Caliph (Non-Arabs were almost never heard in these meetings). There was even a new technology in play- the envelope. So mundane today, in those days it was a laborious process to create enough of these for every tribe, go around placing the votes in these envelopes and sealing them so that if someone to tamper with the votes, it would be apparent through the broken seal. Not completely fool proof, but it helped alert the government if someone had tampered with the votes, though in some cases, the government was the problem.
However, this process could not last forever. Even though it proved its vitality by managing a duarchy, several factors worked against democracy in this form. One is that the Islamic state was too technologically inferior to create a politically strong central government that could satisfy the people. Two, Arab unity no longer existed. Arabs had adapted to their regions and mixed with the locals, shaping the nature of the tribes who lived there in language, culture, even in the how Islam was practiced so that being Arab was no longer a unifying factor. Another is the decline of Arab dominance. As time wore on, the non-Arab parts of the empire intermingled and married with the Arab portions of the empire, until the line between the two was blurred and erased. Also non- Arab portions of the empire began demanding equal station, led by the previous elite who resented their disempowerment. They framed their argument in Islamic terms, and forced the local Arab elite to accommodate the old elite.
As a result, ethnic tension was reintroduced into the equation, as well as dissatisfaction with the status quo. Also, the central government was seen as being too autocratic and out of touch with the people. There were also contemporary events to consider. The war against Ethiopia, for example left other provinces unsatisfied as they wanted to not spill blood for Zanzibar which was considered a backwards barely Islamic province, and Zanzibar felt that they had been betrayed in the peace of Askum. Normally this would lead to the collapse of the nation as a political entity, but at this point the Umma had become too integrated economically through the advent of sailing, and better roads due to engineering that a political split would make everyone involved poorer. But things couldn’t continue as they were.
And so came Umar, the next Caliph. Very aware of the hot water the Caliphate was treading on, he sat down with the elites of various provinces and hammered out a compromise that lead to empowerment of democratic local government at the expense of the national in a document commonly called The Meccan Accords. This meant different things in different places owing to the radically differing nature of the Arab experience in each country as well as geography and other considerations.
Dar al Arab: As the center of Islam, reinforced by the presence of the Masjid al Haram , the locus of power was the theocracy. Tribal authority in Dar al Arab withered as men from all tribes took a part of the Islamic priesthood which rapidly gained political as well as religious authority. The Masjid became a meeting place for all the imams of the Umma who would declare Al Imam, the man in charge of religious authority in the Umma. His role would be to interpret the Quran in times of crisis. He initially shared power with the Caliph, but at the time of Umar’s compromise his role evolved to political governor of Dar al Arab. His absolute religious authority would wane after Umar signed his compromise, and the Ulema would usurp religious authority from him. Many decry this as a decadent elitist practice, but this was an election that expanded to include every imam, and bound Islam tightly together, keeping it from fracturing as Christianity had. This process also had a sordid side, leading to many political assassinations and unscrupulous deals. It was said behind every al Imam was three drownings, two “accidents”, one poisoning, and a thousand broken promises. In short, democracy in Dar al Arab was concentrated in the hands of the theocracy.
Dar al Iraq: No province had ever faced more ware fare and unease in its history than Iraq had. As the frontier province of the Caliphate, under constant threat from the Seljuks, then China, this province evolved into the military power house of the Caliphate. At first the military exercised its authority only lightly, as a way to crush dissent during times of war. However, as dissatisfaction with the central government grew and soldiers felt they were under appreciated, the military began usurping more power, and becoming more independent. As the military became more independent, tribal power waned, as loyalty to the army became more important than loyalty to one’s tribe. Generals would gather together and negotiate who would wield the military’s new found power. The Ethiopian war had the strongest negative reaction in Iraq, and when the time for compromise came this province was heading the cry. Many historians scoff at this system as the rule of brutes, but by the time the compromise was signed a complex democratic system had sprung up. The highest ranks of the military gained stewardship over the provincial affairs, the bureaucracy was run by lower level officers, and the average soldier was allowed to vote on some issues, leading to the establishment of a veteran’s pension system, the first of its time. And so democracy in Iraq took on a military context. Another shaping factor of Iraq was the sizable Persian minority that entered the province. Mainly Persian Muslims fleeing state persecutions, they fled the country for safety, and were welcomed by the Caliphate. Having escaped a brutal governmental administration, these Persians carried with them a distrust towards governmental authority. The aid they received from the provincial military government of Iraq softened their feelings somewhat to local government, but they retained a disdain for big government. This also impacted the Caliphate itself indirectly. This sizable Persian minority demanded the liberation of their homeland under the just government of the Caliph. The outcry against the Ethiopian war in Iraq came partly from Persians who felt that the Caliphate should be expanding into Persia rather wasting time with Ethiopia.
Dar al Misr: The tribal nature of Dar al Misr faded away relatively quickly. Trade networks and inter-tribal mixing blurred line sufficiently, and the mixing of Arab with native helped accelerate the process. Thanks to its central location and position between the Mediterranean and Red Sea, Dar al Misr became an important commercial trading center. As a result the province was dominated by commercial interests. The merchants of Dar al Misr were generally the most content out of all the provinces with central authority, and traditionally have always been the region that has supported central authority the most. However, the commercial power structure had been developing well before the Meccan accords. The central government couldn’t handle all the problems of Dar al Misr all at once, so the merchants of Dar al Misr generally chose among themselves leaders to promote trade and solve economic problems leaving all other authority to the Caliph. By the time of the Meccan Accords, the number of merchants who participated in this process was a quarter of the population, due to the increase in trade as the Caliphate’s horizons grew larger, and was the only province to hold no gender requirements for democracy. The hierarchy in government took form with the richest on top and the poorer merchants lower on the political scale. It’s fascinating that anyone can dismiss this as merely an oligarchy.
Dar as Shams: One of the most urban and successful provinces of the Caliphate, it is also the one with the bloodiest history of slavery. The Caliphate had a steady stream of prisoners of wars coming into the country, and the Caliph shipped most of them to cities to use for his proposed building projects. As Shams forced these prisoners of war to build infrastructure at a breakneck pace, breaking these slaves in the process. More so than any other province, slavery became central to As Shams, and the power structure came to be dominated by slave holders, or rather the slave system singular. This is because as the Caliph handed the slaves over to the cities, the local elite in the city didn't actually own the slaves. They were entrusted with these prisoners to build beneficial improvements. The local elite soon found though, that while 40-50% of slaves died in these projects, the ones that lived became the communal property of the elite for as long as the elites saw fit to have them. In this way, slavery first became a life long servitude, and elites would take from the pile of slaves held in the collective for their own personal use. Not natives to the city, these slaves were isolated from the community and thus powerless. However, several factors changed this. The growing percentage of the city that was becoming slave alarmed masters, and they began to fear an uprising. As such they made increasing concessions to slaves to quell this fear. An increasing number of slave marriages and slave families complicated things, especially after a court ruled that children born to slaves were free. These children then were set loose on the city, and became links for slaves to main stream society. Also there were a growing number of intellectuals who felt that the brutality of slavery as practiced by as Shams was un-Islamic and pushed for better conditions. Thus by 1066 slave marriages had been legalized, slavery wasn't hereditary, rape of a slave girl was a crime punishable by death. Still, by 1066, the local elites of As Shams held most of the power, and the city had a stratified social/ economic system: the elites and everyone else. The distinction between the poor and slave was blurred, and occasionally As Shams or the Caliphate would seize a poor person to be a slave, particularly if the man or woman was Buddhist. However, there was a form of democracy within the slave system, having evolved from when the local elites managed the unfree workforce collectively. By 1066 though, As Shams is among the least inclusive democracies in the Caliphate.
Imperator Knoedel
Currently obsessed with The Owl House
Y U NO mention the most progressive and renowned House of them all?
Dar ash-Sham: The sneaky smart province, that resorts on the others to protect its own development.
Great compilation already Caliph, congratulations!
adhiraj.bose
Deity
Good compilation, but you missed out the Persian ethnicity of Iraq's ruling house.
Imperator Knoedel
Currently obsessed with The Owl House
Hey now, I think I gifted more units to the Caliph and other houses than I kept for myself.
That makes you the Caliph's favorite, perhaps?
I'm joking with you, you were the second to take the heaviest casualties of the Ottoman War. But let's agree that if it wasn't for Iraq's and Misr's armies, the Ottoman War would have probably seriously damaged your province, which has been focusing on its own development for quite sometime. You know you're the only one that has Castles, and both your mainland cities are above average in number of buildings. Just by checking the resolution of the last councils, we may see how fast your cities developed themselves with buildings. You are by far the most developed province. Iraq, Misr, Arab and Anadol still have much to do to reach your level of development. And you're going even further on this.
You're 1st in
/turn and 
/turn. 2nd in 
/turn and in Total Pop Points. 3rd in total 
/turn and also in surplus (which takes out all your unit and city maintenance costs).
Dar ash-Sham:
Population: 2,061,000
Dar al Arab:
Population: 1,547,000
Dar Misr:
Population: 1,496,000
Dar al-Anadol:
Population: 1,343,000
Dar al-Iraq:
Population: 1,224,000
Dar al-Zanj:
Population: 512,000
*Insert Flag Here Matthias I
*Dar al-Yu'Qataan:
Population: 91,000
Dar al-Abyssinia:
Population: 35,000
CaterpillarKing
Conqueror of Cacoons
My nation is tiny Most people died or were forced from their homes as a result of the Abyssinian Liberation War though.
Most people died or were forced from their homes as a result of the Abyssinian Liberation War though.
adhiraj.bose
Deity
My province would have been more populated if I just let Baghdad grow. Really that city is awesome !
Moai_Spammer
Ave, True to Caesar!
and once baghdad gets a levee
...yeah, it's probably my one of my favorite city spots
The most curious aspect of these two last reports (area and population), is that Sham is at the same time the smallest yet most populous province of all. A great chunck of our population is concentrated in As-Sur and Al-Quds (mind that Handaq has only 1000 people, so the other 2 cities are responsible for the remaining 2,060,000 people).
So this is the most urbanized province of the Caliphate, undoubtedly.
So this is the most urbanized province of the Caliphate, undoubtedly.
