A condensed history of Tahar Joblis

[Tahar Joblis]

Volume I: The pre-history of Tahar Joblis

Chapter I: Joblissan history

In the beginning, there was a cluster of islands - including one main island, and numerous smaller islands, containing a small variety of related tribes, known today as the Joblissans, after their name for the land, Jo ibilis, lit: "End of the journey" in the dialect extant prior to the Taharan migration. Some scholars suggest that, from the earliest recovered Joblissan writings, the name would be better translated as "final destiny" in older times.

Joblissan history is divided into several phases. First, the obsidian stage, beginning with human arrival on the island (commonly dated between 1200 and 800 BCE) and lasting until an event identified in later Joblissan oral histories as "the burning," est 300 BCE. In this era, the ideographic script known as Joblis-B was prevalent, and sophisticated obsidian tools have been recovered along with the remains of large structures and several cities. Native deposits of silver and copper were used mainly to decorate jewelry. It is unclear what sort of catastrophic event "the burning" was; oral histories refer to divine judgment and an assortment of plagues, at the end of which the great ruler of the main island decided that civilization was an offense against the gods and led a razing of every building, a burning of every book, and the burning of the ships that were used to visit other islands (and, critically, to collect obsidian, a substance not found in any significant quantity on the main island.)

The residents of the other islands were warned off and told to stay away on fear of death. Within a generation, Joblissan population plummeted. Skeletons dated to this time period commonly show signs of long-term malnutrition and occasionally cannibalism. Tools become sparser and less sophisticated sharply. This period, identified as the hungry stage of Joblissan history, lasted nearly two hundred years.

Around 100 BCE, copper knives begin to show up in isolated grave sites, often etched with a script identified as Joblis-A. Joblis-A appears to have been partially ideographic and partially phonetic, with proper "name" symbols for people, places, and gods, with phonetic letters used to spell out words. A few of the ideographs bear some resemblance to those in Joblis-B. Worked copper appears first on the main island, and within fifty years, spread to all the outlying islands, followed by a proliferation of increasingly sophisticated bronze tools. Nevertheless, grave sites continue to show etched copper knives, suggesting a religious purpose for the pure copper knives.

The copper stage of Joblissan history lasted around seven centuries. The earliest written versions of the oral histories relating to the burning show up in this period. Later accounts are more detailed, many giving specific names of gods and stories - some contradictory, and some invoking the later (and hence anachronistic) Octopus Emperor. What is known about this period is that it marked a sharp rise in both technology and development, and rapid shifts in culture and religion. Some historians suggest that there were several new migrations to Tahar Joblis during this period.

All written records in this period are fragmentary and incomplete, but point to the development of three major tribes or nations, generally hostile to one another. This period is considered to come to a sharp end in 641 CE, because in that year, a man known as the Octopus (identified with an octopus ideogram) united the two coastal and outlying island nations with the inland nation, and instituted a system of regular record-keeping. The Annals of the Octopus include a history of this man's life, but this history is widely thought to have been largely a work of fiction designed to glorify the Octopus, and includes mythological elements such as gods and dragons.

For about a thousand years, an Octopus Emperor reigned over Joblis in an unbroken dynastic line. The imperial stage is often divided into an early imperial stage, a late imperial stage, and an early republican stage, characterized respectively by the form of government. Early on, the Octopus Emperor was an absolute dictator who exercised all authority by fiat and maintained complete control over the military, with mass executions common; later, the Octopus Emperor begins to delegate more authority to regional subordinates - initially, by appointment; these positions later became hereditary, and eventually elected.

[Tahar Joblis]

Chapter II: Conquistador

In 1541, on the one thousandth anniversary of the Octopus Emperor's ascension to the throne, the first European set foot on Joblis. His name is recorded as Antonio de Costa. Some historians suggest that the name has been fictionalized, as no European records exist of his expedition. The artifacts remaining from his expedition do not make it clear; while quite obviously, there was such an expedition, there are no convenient inscriptions identifying the name of the ill-fated captain.

Antonio de Costa landed first at one of the outlying islands. The Joblissans marvelled at his large and well-built ship, the unusually hard silver helmets his men wore, and the strange devices they carried with them. He, in turn, was interested in their jewelry. They held a feast for him and his crew and sent word back to the main island. The reigning Octopus Emperor, an elderly man and the thirty seventh to sit on the throne, sent back word that the visitors were to be brought to him, and an escort. Antonio de Costa played along, coming to the palace to visit.

What happened next is not clear, but it ended with the Octopus Emperor and his heirs shot to death and forty dismembered Caucasian skeletons being buried in the palace grounds. The survivors of the expedition fled back to Europe, sailing quickly out of sight. A Portugese map dated to 1544 shows a small land mass in approximately the correct location, labelled "Chobils Island" and marked with a hangman's noose. Back on Joblis, the death of the Octopus Emperor and all his apparent heirs led to a short civil war. Joblissan fought Joblissan in a bloody two-year war as several new diseases ran rampant through the isles; the population of the main island dropped a quarter, and at the end of it, the palace lay abandoned and the Octopus Empire was shattered into distrustful pieces.

[Tahar Joblis]

Chapter III: Taharans come to Joblis

It is difficult to talk about the pre-history of the Taharans, because the Taharans themselves were an amalgamation of multiple nationalities and ethnicities, a product of circumstance rather than design. The Taharans' common thread was piracy. Mainly from the North African coast, the Taharan pirates preyed on ships far and wide for several centuries. Their name comes from a mysterious figure called Tahar ibn Ahadan (lit: "Tahar, son of none"), who, legend says, swam aboard a sailing ship one day and declared himself the Admiral of the Atlantic ocean. Any who objected, he said, were welcome to challenge him. The legend goes on to claim that Tahar dueled a thousand men who challenged him, and yet each man he defeated he did not kill, and each defeated man joined the ranks of his followers.

What is known about Tahar ibn Ahadan is that as of 1540, he commanded at least twenty galleys, and had designs on the small, but growing trans-oceanic shipping, and a mind to be independent of empires. The earliest mention of Tahar ibn Ahadan by that name has been traced to 1528. It is likely that his name was an assumed name; several candidates for the "true" identity of Tahar have been proposed. It is probable that Tahar ibn Ahadan was, prior to his term as an independent pirate, a Barbary corsair operating out of Tunis or Algiers; however, his ambitions were great. In 1548, after a series of highly successful and incredibly violent raids, Tahar's fleet drops off the map for several years - possibly until as late as 1554, in which year a gold-laden caravel - the lone survivor of a convoy of three - reported narrowly escaping Taharans in sailing ships.

Taharan accounts say that the Taharans founded themselves a hidden kingdom on the African coast, living there for several years. Each year, three sailing ships would be sent out. The third sailing ship to return in the third year brought word of an island, so perfectly located as to be off-course for anyone not travelling to it, fruitful and abundant. The Taharan account says that the Taharans prepared the expedition for three years, and that they sailed in three hundred ships to the island of Joblis.

Joblissan accounts place four Taharan ships arriving at one of the outlying islands in 1550, with many more arriving in small groups. The Taharans came seeking a safe long-term port; from this base, they would send out expeditions. A Taharan pirate squadron would spend four months to a year, usually, chasing after European shipping, and then return home with a full load of captives and goods, sometimes with additional ships, once the expedition's senior captain was satisfied with the haul.

[Tahar Joblis]

Chapter IV: Taharans and Joblissans

In the so-called Years of Chaos following the death of the last Octopus Emperor, Joblis was a hostile place for foreign visitors to land. Unfortunately for Joblissans, foreign visitors often brought guns, and the Taharans were no exception. However, while European explorers sought to find Joblis's silver mines, Taharans simply wanted a safe harbor where no European navy would find them. Initial contacts were still mostly violent, and on the isle of Seva, where the first Taharan port was constructed, many Joblissans died, and many more fled.

Those that remained watched cautiously. Soon, the Taharans began trading with the Joblissans. At first, small things - fish, fruits, coins, knives, clothing - then, larger things. Tahar ibn Ahadan decreed that his people should exchange goods and information freely with the natives, as this was their new home; by 1570, Joblissans were casting bronze cannon and manufacturing gunpowder for the Taharans, and across Joblis, nothing was more stylish than the Western goods - and slaves - the Taharans brought in, shipload by shipload.

The Taharans had the best of both worlds: A steady income of booty, with a native market willing to pay a premium, supplying wood, guns, gunpowder, and provisions at low rates. An especially exotic-looking healthy young slave - one with freckles, or blond hair - might go for a price as high as a half dozen light cannon, and a good haul from a trip would be enough to purchase and outfit an entirely new ship. Taharan vessels travelled far and wide for loot and capture.

In 1575, the name "Tahar Joblis" first appears in European literature, following a failed punitive expedition on the source of the Taharan pirates. In The Expllored Landes, the isle is described thusly:

"And ther exists the Isle Joblis of Tahar's. It is a lush green Lande, more than a hundred Leagues in Width. About it lie a half dozen smaller Isles, rocky and high, and the Civilised Man is not welcum ther. The womyn bear Children in litters like Dogs, and the Men eet the smallst of them in Gravy. Heere be Pirates of dread Tahar, and if the Savages do not eet you, the Pirates will perform Unnaturale Acts upon you, and then sell you to the Savages. Avoid Tahar Joblis."

Tahar ibn Ahadan died shortly after, in 1578; however, the name stuck. Foreigners came to refer to the island as Tahar Joblis.

[Tahar Joblis]

Chapter V: The Great Enslavement

With the death of Tahar ibn Ahadan in 1578, there was a void in Taharan leadership. Tahar ibn Ahadan had a number of sons and daughters, and two surviving wives, but no clear favorites and no clear heir. The Taharans had been organized beneath him by ship; each ship elected its captain, and the captain pledged to serve Tahar ibn Ahadan and Tahar ibn Ahadan alone.

Tahar ibn Ahadan died slowly, a long wasting illness lasting nearly ten years. In the last two, he was virtually bedridden. As Tahar ibn Ahadan wasted away, more and more of the day-to-day governing of the settlement on Seva was run by a committee of ships' captains - some of which never set sail outside of the waters of Tahar Joblis, their aging ships occasionally shuttling goods to and from the mainland. By necessity, this group fluctuated sharply with the seasons as ships set sail and returned; by the time of ibn Ahadan's death, a complex system of proxy votes had organically grown up in the committee. Judicial matters were resolved by juries selected by lottery from the crews of the ships. Raiding captains took first to leaving representative crew members behind to act as their proxies, and soon took to "hiring" their families, gunsmiths, carpenters, accountants, warehouse owners, and other non-sailors as "crew," to insure that their interests were represented in any court of law as well as on the captains' committee.

With ibn Ahadan's death, the committee soon fractured into bitterly opposed factions with different interests. Captains who disagreed with the Committee's decisions packed up and moved, building harbors on other isles and on the mainland. A system of ritualized duels resolved conflicts between different Ships, and each Ship was a miniature autonomous state of its own. Some Ships controlled no raiding vessels; in 1620, one particularly powerful Ship, based on the eastern coast of the main island, commanded a fleet of twenty raiding vessels.

On the Joblissan side, Joblis was mostly organized on the scale of towns. Coastal Joblissan communities tended to get incorporated into the wealthy Taharan Ships piece by piece; inland Joblissan communities tended to be self-governed. Although anarchic, the period of the Great Enslavement was not marked by much internal conflict. To put it simply, Tahar Joblis, although literally hundreds of self-governing groups, shared an overwhelming commercial - and military - interest:

Bringing treasure, goods, and slaves to Tahar Joblis, and defending it against anything resembling an organized national navy. The Tahar Joblissan economy was booming for one reason and one reason alone: Piracy. It is estimated that from 1640 to 1660, Tahar Joblissan pirates accounted for nearly one in five of ships reported "lost at sea." One period account, the Census of 1650, estimated that nearly a quarter of the population of the island were slaves taken at sea or from coastal communities. This figure did not include the children of slaves, or former slaves that had been granted their freedom. It is for this reason that the name Tahar Joblis came to be used for the whole community; neither Taharan Ships nor Joblissan cities considered themselves a part of any larger nation, but foreign-born slaves knew the isle as the feared Tahar Joblis.

[Tahar Joblis]

Chapter VI: The Unification

Historians often debate the true cause of Tahar Joblis's great civil war, known as the Unification, and its origins. Some point to the development of a de facto aristocracy of wealthy Ships, and contend that the Unification started with a rivalry between the Ships of the East (a loose coalition of the wealthiest of the Ships owning raiders who sailed westwards) and the Ships of the West (a similar coalition of Ships associated with raiders who sailed eastwards). Contrary to common nationalistic films of the mid-20th century, neither the Ships of the West nor the Ships of the East conducted much actual piracy; these two coalitions were primarily bankers and suppliers, and leased more raiding vessels than they themselves operated.

What is true is that beginning in 1659, period records show a sharp rise in the number of official duels conducted, and the rise of a class of professional mercenary duelists. The Ships of the West and Ships of the East, between them, controlled close to 10% of the wealth of the island, and much of this fortune was being spent on bankrolling the destruction of their rivals.

Other historians point to a series of slave uprisings. With no uniform code of conduct regarding slavery, treatment of slaves varied widely across Tahar Joblis. In some areas, slaves were afforded rights, and their owners had obligations to their care and well-being, even to allow them to keep money and purchase their own freedom; in others, slaves were legally classified as livestock. On the island of Minta, the child of a slave woman was automatically considered the property of her master, to keep or dispose with as he saw fit. The 1669 Minta Revolt was one of the bloodiest slave rebellions of this period.

It was very common for slaves to flee to other parts of the island; regional tensions were rising over how to treat slaves. In some cases, slave revolts were successful, and "Freedman" compounds fortified themselves against the return of their former master class.

A third group of historians point to the rise of religion in this period of Tahar Joblissan history. This period saw the founding of the Church of the Reborn Octopus Emperor, a religious group who held that the Octopus Emperor would return and right all that was wrong with Tahar Joblis; it also saw the beginning of a number of more obscure sects (some of which survive today), and a sharp rise in practicing Christians and Muslims among the citizens of Tahar Joblis, particularly among the more aristocratic of the Ships and among the descendants of former slaves.

Most historians acknowledge that all of these elements played some role in the Unification. By 1672, war had broken out; not simply the ritualistic duels that ibn Ahadan devised to minimize conflicts between his crews, but open warfare. With the armed raiding vessels of the Ships needed to secure their coastal villages back home against attackers - or to engage in offensive operations against their rivals - Tahar Joblissan pirate activity abroad dropped by a factor of ten from 1670 to 1673. By 1680, no Ship operated official raiders anymore; only renegade independent pirate captains plied the seaways to bring wealth back to Tahar Joblis.

An economic depression was setting in on top of the gradually intensifying conflict - and something else. Most Tahar Joblissan jurisdictions considered the child of a slave to be born free, and barred the enslavement of Tahar Joblissan citizens. The slave trade had virtually stopped, and slaves were being granted their freedom as soldiers, or rebelling, left and right. The enslaved fraction of the population was dropping. At the end of the war in 1690, the surviving factions agreed that a unified federal government was necessary to prevent further conflicts. One of the first acts of this new government was to ban slavery, an act referred to as the Unslavement Act.

[Tahar Joblis]

Chapter VII: The Rise of the Republic

The Peace of 1690 set terms for a provisional federal government, whose purpose was to standardize existing laws and minimize armed conflict within Tahar Joblis. The form of this provisional government was that of an ad hoc Republic. Each remaining Ship, independent city, and a certain number of the smaller isles was given a vote in the Temporary Senate; the method of selecting a delegation for the Temporary Senate was left up to the various cities, Ships, and isles and their current de facto governments.

Some of these jurisdictions overlapped. For example, the isle of Seva, the city of Sevaspolis, and the seventeen remaining Ships of Sevasport each had their own seat. The Temporary Senate had a total of 99 votes - fifty one Ships, forty Cities, and eight Lesser Isles, but the number of delegates assigned to the Temporary Senate ranged from 200 to 250 over the ten years that the Temporary Senate existed. Delegations often consisted of a committee of three (rarely, but sometimes, five or seven); in a some cases, a pair of "tied" or "twinned" delegates who each had a half vote. On the other end of the spectrum, the Arm of Takopolissa held the votes for the city of Takopolissa, the ship of Tako, and the isle of Tako as a single delegate. Delegates might be appointed or elected; some were subject to recall at any time, some served terms, while others remained on the Temporary Senate for the full ten years of its existence.

The Temporary Senate was, in other words, a mess, and the parliamentary rules that evolved within the Temporary Senate reflected the messy nature of it. The Temporary Senate did, however, lay the foundation of what would become the modern Tahar Joblissan state. This began with the Unslavement Act, Equality Act, Free Migration Act, the disarmament of the individual warring parties and the institution of a national compulsory-service military. These measures were not all passed with unanimous consent; brief rebellions flared up in 1693 and 1697 by protesting parties, but the central government was able to press its case forward with superior firepower and majority support.

The Temporary Senate dissolved itself with the Election Act of 1700. If the Peace of 1690 was Tahar Joblis's first draft of a constitutional government, the Election Act of 1700 was a much-improved second draft, enumerating powers, rights, and standardizing the method by which the representatives of the people were elected. Some historians prefer to call the Election Act the first constitutional document of Tahar Joblis; however, it is the near-unanimous agreement of historians that a clearly defined "Republic era" began in either 1690 or 1700.

In the elections of 1701, the Temporary Senate was replaced by a tricameral assembly. Each citizen would partake in voting for the representative of one Ship, one City, and one Isle. New Ships were devised and old Ships were revised, and the main island was divided into fourteen "Isles" of similar area by a grid. Each citizen would also be able to vote directly for the office of President of the Senates, an executive official of sorts whose job it was to coordinate action between the three ruling assemblies.

With the rise of peace came the opportunity for a resurgence in piracy. However, with no market for slaves, and a new generation not accustomed to the pirate life, the resurgence was highly limited. The dissolution of the private armies of the Ships and the widespread impressment of young men into a national service made it difficult to staff pirate vessels. Tahar Joblissan pirate activity would rise from 1690-1740, but never came anywhere near the heights of the previous century, even as more ships plied cross-oceanic routes.

OOC Note: I previously identified the date of illegalization of slavery in Tahar Joblis as 1662 in Chains of Pride. Here, a slightly different course of history is presented, one which advances a little more slowly in social democratic terms.