Azadi

Azadi is a monotheistic faith that reveres the One True God and considers the prophet al-Azad to be God's final messenger to humankind. It is chiefly worshiped in the lands of the Sirdabi Caliphate, where it is the official religion, but adherents of the Azadi faith can also be found in places such as Jalanjhur, Cadenza, Yalanbari, and even further abroad.

Azadi

Deity	The One True God
Texts	The Song of God, the Remembrances
Founder	al-Azad
Community	the Redeemed
Symbols	Key with a six-pointed star in the bow, Key constellation
Origin	Rahoum
Language	Sirdabi
Most Sacred Site	The Sirdab

Scripture

The Perfected Song of God

The fundamental holy scripture of Azadi is the Song of God; more accurately, the Perfected Song of God. This distinguishes it from the Song of God as followed by the Yehani and the Kalentoi, which Azadi dogma judges incomplete and marred by error. While Azadi consider much of what is in the Yehani and Kalentoi Song of God to be correct, they believe that the One True God revealed Its true and perfect Song to the Rahoumi prophet al-Azad, who is therefore the last of the God's several prophets. The Perfected Song of God is not only God's message completed, but also freed from the error of past scripture as followed by the Yehani and Kalentoi.

Remembrances

The Remembrances are a set of traditions, stories, and sayings through which the life and words of the prophet al-Azad are remembered. By describing al-Azad's deeds and manner of living, as well as his commentory on a host of topics, they provide additional guidance for the Azadi community beyond that which is furnished by the Song of God. The Remembrances are not only an aid to help people know how to live well in their daily lives, but have also been used to draw up codes of law and right behavior for the faithful.

Practices & Beliefs

Fundamentals: The Six-Pointed Star

There are six fundamental practices which are expected of all Azadi, and which together make one a member of the Azadi faith:

1. Affirming the Faith: Believing and affirming that the God is One and the Song is of God, and that Fadil al-Azad is the bringer of the Song's final verses.
2. Incantation of Prayer: Prayers must be chanted to the One God three times a day: the Prayer of Awakening at daybreak, the Prayer of Full Song at noon, and the Prayer of Dreaming at dusk.
3. Seeking the Song: As Azadi go through life, they must always strive to Seek the Song of God both outwardly and inwardly. Outwardly, they are encouraged to seek it through knowledge of other people and places, and imparting what they have learned to others in the community. Inwardly, they should strive through prayer and Tending the Garden for a better understanding of the Song as manifested through their own lives and experiences.
4. Charity & Redemption: Almsgiving is mandated by the faith, with a strong emphasis on providing both material support and compassion for the poor, the weak, the sick, and all those who find themselves isolated and alone. The regular visitation of prisoners is strongly encouraged, as well as other people physically or socially isolated by their current circumstances such as widows and those confined to their homes through illness. The offer of redemption for those imprisoned or in bondage is equally important, with freeing of prisoners and slaves occurring on certain holy days.
5. Solitary Retreat: During the fortnight of Solitary, all Azadi faithful should isolate themselves from others from dawn to dusk, and may speak only by sign or gesture during these hours. The only sustenance allowed during this time is water and a plain, crusty kind of flatbread called gaolbread. Solitary retreat is balanced out by the commitment of charity to the community and the reaffirmation that those in bondage still belong to the Sirdab.
6. Tending the Garden: At least once in their lifetime, each adult who is able should travel to the Sirdab to tend the garden there. This may take the form of actually physically tending the Sirdab, through trimming, weeding, planting, and other tasks, or it may consist of a purely spiritual tending consisting of praying while walking the garden paths according to the proper formulae. Both the physical and spiritual tending involve prescribed prayers and recitations. "Tending the garden" is also used to refer to perfecting one's internal spiritual state and tending one's relation with the God.

The first three tenets are known as the Trivium of the Key, and the second three as the Trivium of the Bolt. To faithfully follow all six tenets unlocks the door to spiritual freedom and redemption.

Practices

Seeking the Song

It is believed that through al-Azad the One God has revealed all the fundamental components of the Song, so that people can live according to them and thereby create a harmonious life in tune with God's creation and wishes. However, humanity's knowledge of the whole Song is incomplete so long as peoples exist who have not learned and accepted the true fundamentals of the Song. Each individual and each people in the world is believed to have their own personal arrangement of the Song's fundamentals, creating a melody unique to itself, but they are deaf to it without first accepting and understanding the Song of God.

It is the duty of Azadi to bring knowledge of the Song to the other peoples of Avaria, so that each people and individual in turn may discover the true harmony by which it is meant to live. It is generally accepted that people cannot be made to hear by force, though the idea of more easily exposing all people to the Song has been used as a justification (often sincerely, sometimes not) for the conquest of other peoples in the past. Regardless, Azadi are encouraged to learn more about other people and cultures of the world in order to add to the faith's knowledge of the Song, as something of benefit is thought to be gained by the Azadi community even without the full understanding that can only come through the conversion of an individual or a people.

Solitary Retreat

Although considered essential to achieving a fuller understanding of the One God's wishes, retreat is not strictly governed outside the holy days of Solitary. It is expected that the believer will retreat from time to time as their own spiritual needs or those of their community demand. Some people may spend time every week in retreat, contemplating the God and Its Song or seeking self-knowledge through Tending the Garden, while others may retreat only occasionally when confronted with significant trials in their life or faith.

Tending the Garden

Azadi are also encouraged to to discover a fuller understanding of the Song through prayer and the practice known as Tending the Garden. Tending the Garden involves meditation and self-conscious reflection, whereby the believer achieves a fuller awareness of their own song and its place within the greater Song of God. Some ascetic sects of Azadi exist which have refined Tending the Garden to a way of life by which they hope to achieve perfect resonance with the Song.

General Beliefs & Ideals

Those who have embraced the Azadi faith are considered to be redeemed from the bondage of error by the One God. Although now freed from living in error, they are not free in the sense of now being able to do whatever they like, but rather have been redeemed by God to labor honestly and faithfully as servants within Its house, striving to carry out Its will through the essential tenets of the faith.

Living in the Song

The Song of God dwells in the world, waiting to be heard by mortalkind. All people can hear it, and all may attune their hearts and souls to resonate with it. They may hear those parts of it that resonate most strongly with them more clearly than others, but most will hear the whole imperfectly. The community of faithful together can hear the Song far better than any one woman or man, and therefore what the community as a whole believes the Song to be is correct. Prophets are those who are privileged to receive fuller revelations of the Song from God Itself, and the prophet al-Azad is he who has received the final movement of the full composition which is meant for all God's children.

However, it is important for all the faithful to seek their own personal connection to and resonance with the Song, and in certain places in the world they may hear a part of the Song which they are individually meant to hear. However, whatever an individual hears in the Song may not conflict with the Song as it dwells within the whole community of faithful; if it conflicts with the community's Song -- if it is discordant with it -- the individual's song must be incorrectly heard. An individual's song is meant to provide pleasing accents and variations on the overall theme but remain within the limits defined by the Song itself, just as a unique musical improvisation must still follow the rules of the style of music to which it belongs.

To one who is pure and well attuned to the will of God, the Song will always resonate within him, as music resonates within the instrument that then broadcasts it upon the air. An individual should submit himself gladly to the playing out of God's Song, as an instrument submits to playing the music devised by the musician; that is their purpose in life. It honors the God to sing Its song, and it pleases the God to hear it, as it pleases God that Its children create their own songs and poems -- though never mistaking these, pleasing but pale echoes that they are, for the Song itself. The world itself may be cultivated to make hearing parts of the Song easier, and therefore gardens and fountains (sirdab) are typically part of Azadi places of worship.

Community

Azadi has a strong emphasis on community, which privileges both the overarching community of faith as well as the local community of those who must live and work together over narrower allegiances to kin or tribe. Members of a community are all bound to care for one another as equals in the estimation of God, regardless of wealth or connections. Thus the ideals of Azadi are not only communitarian but egalitarian, emphasized by the practice of charity and the aid of those in bondage. The egalitarian nature of the Azadi community has lapsed since its early days, in part due to the absorption of the culture of conquered peoples, particularly Irzali and Kalentoi communities, and in part simply due to the growing size and sophistication of the caliphate over generations. Nevertheless, this remains the ideal.

Compassion

Compassion and generosity are considered key virtues of Azadi, and are meant particularly to encompass the weak, the poor, the ill, the infirm, the elderly, and those in bondage. This last includes slaves and servants as well as prisoners, and also animals that are used for their labor. Compassion towards all animals is important to Azadi, who believe that all living things have souls that are known and cared for by the One God. Just as humans labor as willing servants doing God's work, and thereby merit God's compassion and kindness, so animals laboring in the service of humans merit kindness and compassion from them. One must give gladly of one's wealth and possessions, sharing them with the community and those less fortunate. Hospitality is a highly valued form of generosity.

Organization

Azadi is faith in which it is felt that all believers are able to personally draw close to the God, understand Its word, and strive to live in harmony with the Song without need of special mediation. As a result there is no true priestly class responsible for carrying out complicated religious rituals or serving as intermediaries between the God and Its people. Most formal religious roles are based more on scholarship or leadership than any idea of a special relationship with the divine.

Prayer Leaders & Scholars

Imams are responsible for leading the weekly prayers at community mosques, and are also often respected leaders or elders in local communities. Other clerical roles are based on interpreting both the Song of God and the Remembrances for use in daily life, including in various legal situations. These interpretations, though considered authoritative once agreed upon by a wide section of the community, are not accorded the reverence due the Song itself and may evolve over time; there are also multiple schools of such thought which wax and wane in influence. The construction of practical interpretations of the Song is the work of individuals of special training called mufti, while qadi make judgments based upon the mufti's work. The formal name for this divinely inspired social law is al-ansijam (the Harmony).

The Caliph

At the head of the entire faith is the caliph, who functions as the secular head of state but is also considered to be the successor to the prophet al-Azad and therefore the leader of the entire faith community. As such, the caliph is ideally supposed to be a man of great virtue, piety, and wisdom, who is to be selected for these traits by a special council of all the great tribal chiefs known as the Sirdabi Convocation. Although the first few caliphs were chosen and appointed in this manner, in most cases the appointment of a new caliph falls along hereditary lines or else is accompanied by a large amount of chaos, intrigue, and occasional outright assassination as those who consider themselves candidates jockey for supremacy. Opinion among scholars is split over whether it is one's duty to obey even a corrupt caliph simply because he is caliph and therefore evidently the candidate of God's choosing, or whether it is instead one's duty to oppose the caliph's will wherever it conflicts with true virtue, being a test upon the faithful likewise sent by God.

Structures & Sites

Mosques

The chief place of worship for Azadi is the mosque. Different types of mosque exist based on the size of the community they serve and the frequency with which services are held. Within larger towns and cities, every enclave of size will have their own local mosque, or masjid, used for daily prayers. In addition to these mosques serving a local community each day, there will typically be at least one larger mosque where the weekly prayer is held and several neighborhoods or sections of the town gather together to hear it. The largest cities and pilgrimage sites will additionally have a congregational mosque meant to host hundreds of people at once. These are typically very simple spaces consisting of a spacious courtyard surrounded by walls or arcades.

Sirdabs

Each mosque, however large or small, has its own sirdab, a garden with a central fountain which usually lies above a cistern. These are modelled conceptually if not materially upon the Sirdab in Rahoum, and are meant to create a medley of sights, sounds, scents, and other physical sensations to draw the visitor nearer to harmony with the Song of God. A sirdab will typically include a combination of shade trees, flowering plants, scented shrubbery, fountains or pools, rocks, flagstone and gravel paths, windchimes, waterwheels, and other components calculated to soothe and captivate all the senses. These gardens are a place for contemplation and prayer, but also for physical labor, communal gatherings, and simple repose.