Hanan Talibah

Hanan Talibah, "the Immortal Caliph", was the first woman that became the Caliph, as Hanan I.

Youth
In the 9th century Hanan was born as the daughter of Hadi Talibah and a female slave. Her father was an aide of the Merchant King of House Basiri, Aqil al-Basiri. She lost her mother in an accident very young and her father spent around nine months a year away from their home at Medinat al-Salaam due to his work. She was raised by servants, and grew fearful of death and loneliness.

Orphan
On the eve of her fifteenth birthday, she rummaged through her father's belongings, recently returned from the Senpet Empire, looking for her gift. Instead, she discovered a copy of the Senpet Book of the Dead. Shortly after, her father was murdered in the Residential Quarter of his city. Because she had no other relatives, the Merchant King took charge of his aide's estate, "adopted" Hanan, and auctioned all of her belongings.

Fears
Young Hanan was deeply affected by the death of her parents, and she developed an extreme fear of death as well as a resultant fear of being left alone. These fears were instrumental in the most prominent actions Hanan took in her life.

Book of the Dead
She soon had reasons to hate the Merchant King, who treated her as his property and was open about his intention to sell her as a wife, as he had done with Hanan's mother. She secretly learnt the Senpet language from a servant and studied the Book, that she had somehow managed to keep hidden. The Book taught her about the Senpet's cosmology, and many secrets. It also had secondary effects over her: her magical ability increased, and her inner fears became full grown obsessions.

Becoming a Khadi
The Merchant King was her first victim, stabbed twelve times in the chest. She knew the penalty would be her death and came to the Book of the Dead to find a escape. From teachings found in the Book, she created a new magical technique - the Ceremony of the Hidden Heart - that allowed her to make herself immortal, and her enemies into undead thralls: the Khadi. Talibah left the house after she told the guards an assassin had killed the King Merchant.

Caliph
Her magical power increased and she soon become the most powerful sahir in the city. She had returned with a group of khadi and Hanan openly worked to aid the people with her magical power, while at the same time several sahir were killed in secret by her khadi guard. When the Caliph died in an accident, Hanan was claimed as the new Caliph by the people, and she had also the support of the Prince Hassan, because she was indeed the lover of the Sultan's son, and became the Caliph.

Khadi guard
The Qadi suffered many incidents with casualties, and their posts were filled with the loyalist Khadi. The heartless suffered the curse of those who had performed the ceremony, and their behaviour became bizarre, or even mad. They were the Caliph's enforcers through fear and brutality. The people became to realize the true nature of Hanan and her followers.

Sultan is slain
The Sultan after one year began to criticize Hanan. Somehow, she manipulated the Prince into killing his father the Sultan.

De facto ruler
She governed alone for a time, but the people claimed a new Sultan to replace the murdered. A new Sultan was appointed, on her recommendation, chosing a member of the House Menjari, from the family al-Rassoulli. Hanan became the de facto ruler of Medinat al-Salaam. From that moment on, she governed the city with an iron fist, with her Khadi patrolling the streets. He lasted fourty years, and was succeeded by his son. Hanan was as young as when the Sultan had begun to reign and she finally revealed her true nature, a immortal Khadi.

Revolters
Her revelation disgusted the people, and the Qabal led a revolt against the Caliph, which was crushed in less than a month. The Sultan enacted a law that forbade the use of the magic, but the Khadi. Always fearful of anybody challenging her, she forbade any practitioners of magic into the city, and shut down or even burnt down all the libraries.

Assassins
The Prince was cursed by the murdered Sultan's mistress, the Grey Woman, and became the immortal Old Man of the Mountain. The Old Man used the curse as incentive fighting his former lover and avenging his father founding the Assassins sect. His daughters (and some of his least crippled sons) were trained as ruthless killers, dedicated to undermining the Caliphate.

Qabal
Renegade men of learned quality as well as a great amount of sahirs founded the Qabal. Its goal was to destroy the Caliphs hold over the people of the Sultanate. They wanted the shelves of the libraries restocked with the scrolls, and books of knowledge taken from them.

Senpet Empire
In the 12th century an alliance with the Senpet Empire renewed the strength of the city guard and provided them with a standing army.

Avatar of the Goddess
Hanan knew that an avatar of the Goddess had been reincarnated in one child, called Amru. She sent her Khadi to take her with them, but they were magically killed by an unknown sahir.

The Robber
Hanan listened the tales a imprisoned tomb raider, the Robber, told her to delay his execution.

Loss of the Heart
In 1131 Hanan suffered two great lost, the Book of the Dead and her Black Heart disappeared. She began to seek who was the responsible and their current location. By happenstance they had been taken by Keseth, who had fled from the Jewel with them.

Attacked
The Erba'a Alliance confronted Hanan power in 1132. When her enemies approached the city she sent the Senpet agains them outside the walls. Eventually she killed the Sultan Yusef III, because Hanan believed he was an obstacle for the events that was happening.

Death
The vendetta of the Assassins ended this year with the death of the Old Man himself, assassinated by his eldest daughter, Fatima, and later the death of Hanan during the Shattering of the Jewel. The young Senpet sahir Keseth destroyed the Ivory Box and the Caliph's black heart which was inside, and that had fueled so many of the city's evils for so long. It allowed that Talibah could die. The release of the Goddess Shinjo from her imprisonement in the Black Earth had allowed the overthrown of the Immortal Caliph.

Story tale
Hanan Talibah's story was recorded by one of the Scribes in the book the Genesis of a Tyrant.