Tebad 3


 * Tebad 3: Fever Wind
 * by Anthony Mayer
 * 15 March 2002

Tebad - Fever Wind

Tebad's emissaries returned in 401 SE [1173 CE] with the expected reply -- the west would not submit. Spies reported how the Armenian King Hethoum had begged the Emperor's help. The Emperor was marching east, with the largest army the Turks had yet faced. Tebad mustered his troops and met those of the Emperor near the fortress of Manzikert. Here the Imperial Army met the same fate as that of the Royal Persian forces: total defeat, and absolute slaughter of every man. The annihilation of Imperial forces led rapidly to the complete occupation of Anatolia by the Black Sheep Turks. The Emperor himself escaped and organised the defence of Constantinople. Tebad refused to countenance an attack on the city, as he possessed no ships and the waters of the Black Sea and Aegean were dominated by the Byzantine navy.

"Sheep do not swim," he claimed, before turning southwards.

In 402 SE [1174 CE] Damascus fell to Tebad's army, and he marched on Jerusalem. The Syrian army was shattered by these battles, and the survivors fled into Palestine. It was during this pursuit campaign that Tebad had a narrow brush with death. Charging on ahead in the van, he was surprised by what he had assumed were defeated dregs at the Pools of Goliath (the place that the Syrians called Ain Jalut). Here he demonstrated his own personal bravery and skill in combat, managing to extricate himself and the majority of his lifeguard from the trap. A great opportunity had been lost to the Syrians. Tebad was suitably chastened by this battle but proceeded to lay siege to Jerusalem.

It was during the siege of Jerusalem that Tebad decided to make his conversion to Christianity. Increasingly short of supplies, he felt he had to resolve the siege quickly. He would humble himself before God. He made the startling request that the Patriarch of Jerusalem should baptise him. The ceremony was performed on the banks of the Jordan, and Tebad was invited into Jerusalem as its King, in return for his mercy. Legend has it he had at last become weary of conquest and bloodshed. His detractors claim he had lost his way following the Pools of Goliath. Like Asoka he decided to dedicate himself not to battle, but to the just rulership of his people. How much of this story is later embellishment is impossible to say, but what was certain was that Tebad's time as conquer was over, and not through defeat on the field. Negotiations with the Egyptian King established a common border and trading rights through to the Red Sea, as Egypt once more saw the evident weakness of the Empire as a chance for independence and greatness.

Tebad himself returned to Georgia, the site of his greatest humiliation, yet also one heavy with great personal meaning, and there he built a capital, enlarging upon the ancient city of Tiflis. From here he ruled his empire. Future conquests were restricted to clearing the Caucasus of rebel elements and restoring order throughout Turkmenistan and the Volga steppes. While Tebad's conquests were terrifying and bloody, and his empire one built on slaughter and misery, he ruled strongly and competently for another 20 years. Roads were cleared of bandits, and as poachers turned gamekeepers Tebad and his Black Sheep were unwilling to lose out on the great opportunities provided by the land routes opened from India to China and to the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Religious tolerance was a hallmark of his brief time as overlord, and the displaced scholars of his domains soon found patronage at Tiflis and elsewhere. Though Tiflis blossomed as capital of this vast empire, Tebad himself always lived an austere life, and he and his closest associates remained encamped in their felt tents in a clearing outside the city. In 422 SE [1194 CE] Tebad rode out into the Caucasus with a minimal guard, whom he dismissed at the foot of Mount Elbrus. He climbed the mountain and was never seen again. There Tebad ceased to become a historical figure, and became the Fever Wind, the legend of central Asia and the Turkish peoples.

His empire remained, but never achieved the stature of its founder. Rulership passed to his only son, who was later killed by an assassin in his harem. The Tebadine dynasty was an unmitigated failure following the glorious success of its patriarch. Within two generations Persia had rebelled, and Syria was soon to follow. However the wounds of Tebad's conquest and the despotism of his line ran deep. Persia would never again take its place as a leader of civilisation -- its reborn leadership had violent disagreements with the Company diaspora, and it was with them that the future of Persian culture lay.

The Empire's visible decline can also be marked from this period. Though Constantinople remained (for now) the loss of Anatolia, the destruction of her armies, and the interruption of her supremacy in the east marked the beginnings of an irreversible descent. Though the Mediterranean culture would outshine that of the Turks and the House of Submission for centuries to come, the eruption of this new power had struck a blow from which the Empire would never recover.

In 505 SE the last of the Tebadine rulers, Masood the Drunken, was overthrown by Jahangir of the Ghazanid dynasty who moved his capital from Tiflis to Trebizond in tacit recognition of the westward orientation of Turkey and the loss of the provinces east of the Caspian.