Tebad 1


 * Tebad 1: Black Sheep
 * by Anthoney Mayer
 * 25 January 2002

Tebad - Black Sheep

Throughout recorded history the great cultured civilisations of both east and west had suffered from the scourge of the steppe -- nomadic pastoralists who swept out of the wilderness and shattered the settled agricultural kingdoms, before themselves adopting a sedentary lifestyle. The memories of the Huns were still fresh to the peoples of the early era of Submission. But when the disaster happened few could have foreseen it. The Turkish peoples had already begun their interaction with the ancient cultures of India, Persia and Asia, sometimes peacefully, sometime not, but they were a known and measurable quantity. They had been defeated in battles, and when victorious had begun to imitate Persia and Khazaria, beginning to build something that might have become a state, based around Samarkand. An interesting counter-factual question asks what might have grown in this fertile soil, had Tebad not been born. For any but the historian it is enough to know that Tebad wrenched the history of the Turks from its course, and with it the fate of the cultured agrarian empires of Eurasia. Tebad was the last and greatest of the light-horse conquerors -- a general and leader of men comparable only to Alexander the Great, an Empire builder and preserver of knowledge, but also the most ruthless and brutal despot of the medieval world. The deaths at his hands are incalculable but must surely have numbered in the millions.

Tebad was born circa SE 370 [1142 CE] in the lands to the north of Kashgar. His father was a local tribal chief, leading a pastoral community that ranged widely across the steppes, occasionally fighting with other tribes, or preying upon trade from China and Persia. Tebad's birthname is uncertain -- but recent archaeological evidence suggests that either “Alptigin” or “Tulpigin,” his father's name, is quite likely. The earliest accounts of Tebad refer to him as such -- and the remarkable _Secret History of the Turks_ suggests that he was called Tebad by his grandfather, who was kept awake by his crying as a child! "Tebad" is the name of a wind, meaning "Fever Wind", the simoom of Central Asia. It is the name of the dessicating heat-induced phenomena the Arabs call the "Poison Wind", where humidity drops so low heat stroke drives men mad. Though a pet name for an unruly child with an annoying howl, the Fever Wind would one day strike terror into the hearts of mighty kings.

From an early age Tebad was distinct from his peers. He could out-ride, out-swim, and out-fight everyone he encountered. He learnt violence young -- vendetta was a common way of resolving disputes, and Tebad was witness to his father and mother's murder. His weaker older brother failed to lead his tribe to take vengeance, and Tebad vowed that he would do so. Tebad betrayed his ruthless nature by poisoning his brother, in order to take power and satisfy his honour claim.

Tebad's skill as a leader of men and as a military tactician were unquestioned. He fashioned his nomadic herders into what can only be described as a modern army, recreated with the most primitive technology the medieval world possessed. His forces relied upon mobility, leadership, communication -- all skills ingrained into the herdsman by the needs of the steppe. Their tremendous skill with horse and bow also contributed to their remarkable victories. Tebad used a system of army organisation based upon hierarchical leadership, where each warrior gave absolute obedience to his senior. This discipline, married to the speed of his forces, allowed sophisticated tactics that would be beyond that of his opponents, and would not be replicated until modern times.

Tebad was not only a military leader -- he had a political vision beyond that of the tribal chief. He realised what power he had when leading his troop against a Company caravan. Seeing the wealth of the Persian traders, and the inadequacy of their escort, he vowed to bring together all the nomadic peoples, so that they could claim what was rightfully theirs: the wealth the soft city dwellers possessed and the nomadic peoples were denied.

By the age of 25 Tebad's fame had spread, and he had managed to subdue the Qara-Khitai and the Uighurs of Turfan to the east. But Tebad's eyes were always on the west and south. With the nomadic peoples under his control, and morale heightened by the prospect of plunder, Tebad began his campaign against the Black Sheep Turks of Samarkand. The army of the Shah of the Black Sheep was annihilated at the Battle of Tashkent, after charging forward against a feigned retreat that inevitably turned into a trap. None were spared, and the pyramid of skulls remains to this day beneath the `mound of the fallen' constructed after Tebad's death.

The massacre, though atrocious, had an immediate political effect. Numerous elements within the Black Sheep leadership, those that were not at Tashkent, immediately submitted to Tebad. He took the opportunity to show leniency and favour, elevating those with ability into his army, and ruthlessly exterminating those that resisted. Samarkand fell without a struggle.

Though Tebad was illiterate, he found himself amazed by the libraries and schools of learning in Samarkand, many established by Ananite refugees. This was truly the prize he had fought for! Declaring that wise men were inviolate, he continued to support and protect the learned of any faith throughout his life -- those that were given a chance to prove their learning were unfortunately few.

Tebad had been raised amongst an animist tribe, and initially had no formal religious conviction, though he had a strong sense of destiny, convinced that he was God's instrument on earth. Though mightily impressed with his capture of Samarkand, he wasn't yet satisfied and refused to take residence in the city, preferring to remain under his felt tent in his military encampment. He had unfinished business.

Those that refused his rule had fled, forming two separate groups. One group, led by Khazi Djemmel, brother of the dead Shah, established himself in the recently conquered Khazar territories between the Aral and the Caspian. The others, those that felt no loyalty to either Khazi or Tebad, fled to join the White Sheep Turks of Bactria and Tukharistan. Tebad initially took his forces north against Khazi. The sheer scale of Tebads operations seem unbelievable in a modern context, and to his contemporaries he must have seemed possessed with some ungodly will. Leading his men in a great northward circle, he marched hundreds of kilometres through the winter of SE 397-98 [1169-70 CE], before descending upon the territories held by Khazi's supporters. Scattered by Tebad's army, they were hunted down throughout Transoxania, and to the west. Outriders, pursuing refugees and resistors, managed to penetrate as far as the Don before turning back (this is known through examination of the surviving records of the court of the Spectral Submissive Kings, where terrible rumours of Tebad's ferocity had reached Kiev). Khazi himself was caught and trampled under Tebad's horse.

Sweeping around in the following year Tebad crossed the Oxus, and defeated the White Sheep Turks in yet another successful campaign, bringing into his sphere all the Turkomen peoples. Outriders this time managed to penetrate into the Hindu Kush before being turned aside by the forces of the Mourners. To Tebad this was but a minor skirmish, and though he resolved to deal with the Mourners eventually (in fact he was never to attack them again), he had more pressing concerns. To those in this mountainous region the 'Halting of the Fever Wind' is still celebrated with annual festivities.

With all Central Asia under his control, Tebad adopted the standard of the Black Sheep, and declared himself ShahanShah, King of Kings, Lord of the Horizon. In an elaborate ceremony he took Khazi Djemmel's sword (reputedly made of African steel) and rededicated it as the `Fever Knife' (which, after Tebad's death, was lost -- legends about this weapon are as numerous in Turkish lands as Arthurian mythology is in Britain).

In the spring of SE 400 [1172 CE] Tebad marched upon Persia.