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Arash bint Sanjar was a Grand Caliph of Zakhara, ruling from the Enlightened Throne in the mid–7th century DR. He was the daughter of Sanjar.[note 1][note 2]

History[]

According to a treatise by a Mar writer of the Utter East, in the Year of the Nine Stars, 657 DR, suffering the Plague of Fiends, the Five Kingdoms of the Utter East had sent ships out north and south, desperately begging for aid from their neighbors. Grand Caliph Arash bint Sanjar heard these pleas, but he saw the Ffolk people as only heathens and barbarians, the land as infected and ravaged by the fiends and undead.

Instead, he sent an armada of sambuk to the Utter East in early Mirtul of 657 DR. The corsairs launched a surprise attack on the Five Kingdoms, swiftly overrunning and seizing their defenseless port cities. Then legions of askar, clad in djinn-forged lamellar and thrusting killing katars, disembarked and marched across the land. With murderous efficiency, they razed every village and slew all they encountered, whether fiend or Ffolk, in what became known as the Scouring of the Utter East. The Grand Caliph had no plans to occupy this land, so by the time autumn fell, his forces boarded their sambuks and sailed home again.[1]

Appendix[]

Notes[]

  1. In both the Arabic naming convention and the Arabian Adventures sourcebook, page 26, the patronymic "bint" means "daughter", and thus Arash bint Sanjar is "Arash, daughter of Sanjar". However, the text of The Grand History of the Realms, page 95, refers to Arash as "he". Furthermore, the name "Arash" is a common Iranian name for men. The discrepancy may be an error, either in-universe or in the text, or may suggest a change in sex or gender, or a woman ruling as a man. This article adopts the literal interpretation for faithfulness.
  2. Arash's role as Grand Caliph on the Enlightened Throne may be a continuity error, as Land of Fate—undated, but conventionally assumed to be set in 1367 DR—establishes that the First Caliph, first of the Grand Caliphs and founder of Enlightenment, arose five centuries before, or in the 800s DR, while Arash rules much earlier, in 657 DR. Furthermore, it states that there had only been eighteen caliphs since, all men. There are countless possible explanations, the simplest being that the Mar writers of the treatise presented in The Grand History of the Realms, perhaps made centuries later, are mistaken, or it really is just an error by author Brian R. James.

References[]

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