Koumbasat

The great city of Koumbasat is the capital of the Emirate of Koumbasi, which lies at the furthest western extent of Idiri and the Great Hazari Desert. Although part of the Sirdabi Caliphate for the last several centuries, Koumbasat is far enough from the Sirdabi heartland to be considered tremendously remote by most other people of the caliphate, and its name evokes thrilling and romantic associations which tend to be only partially dispelled by an actual visit to the city. But save for traders and curious travelers from neighboring Tessere, few enough individuals from the rest of the caliphate ever make the long journey to the caliphate's most storied western city.

Layout and Appearance

Koumbasat is located about a mile distant from the Tajeddi River, the mighty waterway of western Idiri which sustains the city's trade in gold and connects it to both the Cloud Kingdoms and the Gilded Plain. This short remove from the river, as well as the city's slightly elevated position on a series of low terraced hills, helps preserve it from the floodwaters that come sweeping in every year with the rainy season. Though none of the terraces are very high, the central and tallest one among them is that upon which the city's great library and attached mosque are situated, enjoying their position at the very heart of Koumbasat physically as well as culturally and spiritually. Running around the base of the lowest terrace and surrounding the entire city is a large moat, dry during much of the year but filled with water from the nearby river during the flood season.

The buildings of Koumbasat are simple in construction but striking and sometimes even fantastic in design. Most are simple mud brick structures, sometimes internally reinforced with timber, and layered with an outer application of plaster made from mud and rice husks. One to three stories in height, they are typically square or rectangular but with smoothly rounded corners -- sharp edges are seldom seen in the city. Ramps and stairways are also built from mud, as are stoops, walls, and the many conical towers that project above the lower roofs of other structures. The larger buildings are studded with palm timbers that project a short ways from the side, giving them an oddly prickly look and casting dramatic shadows in the intense sunlight, but they serve quite practically as built-in braces for scaffolding whenever each building is in need of its semi-annual replastering and painting.

It is in this exterior decoration that Koumbasat is most dazzling, for all the buildings in the city are painted in a dizzying diversity of colors and patterns. Not only decorative, the paint and underlying plaster help preserve the structures of the town from the sporadic but often torrential downpours of the rainy season. Every five years -- a "hand," in Koumbasi reckoning -- the mosque and library are fully replastered and painted as part of a great festival in which the entire city participates. Shopkeepers and homeowners repaint as they please, often every two to three years, replacing one set of colors and patterns with another so that on no two visits to Koumbasat does the city ever look exactly the same.

Government

Koumbasat is the seat of Koumbasi government, so the emir makes his home here along with much of the administration of the emirate. Even in pre-caliphal times it had long been customary for the Philosopher-Kings of Koumbasi to reign from this city, having somewhat controversially moved the government from Jalu-Jaro and re-established the palace and administration in what had become the kingdom's most dazzling and renowned center of learning.

People

People of Bissenke heritage predominate in Koumbasat, though this single heritage is represented by a host of different tribes, families, extended lineages, and demi-nations that lend a multicultural air to the city. As in the rest of Koumbasat, those that are native to the city like to refer to themselves specifically as being of Koumbissenke blood, seeing their people as distinct from those of the Cloud Kingdoms or the Gilded Plain. Many Koumbasati also will call themselves Kitabbissenke, a slightly tongue-in-cheek mashup simply meaning "the Book-Bissenke".

Next most common in the city are the Tessouare, many of whom retain strong ties to kin who make their homes in the surrounding desert and mountain country of Koumbasi. Tessouare often act as middlemen in the gold and book trades and as factors for merchants in Tessere or provinces still further east. Typically not as bookish as the Bissenke, the Tessouare nevertheless benefit from the excellent educational system in Koumbasat and sometimes even become administrators in the emirati government.

Culture

Remote as it is from the center of the caliphate, Koumbasat is a thriving hub of culture, commerce, and new ideas, blending influences from the Cloud Kingdoms, north Idiri, the Gilded Plain, and the broader Azadi community into a very unique whole. Despite its famous wealth, Koumbasat has remained remarkable for its egalitarian ideals, aided by the shedding of the most ossified parts of the ancient Bissenke caste system when Azadi was introduced to the region in the first century of the New Dawn. Although caste itself remains as a system of personal and even familial identification, in Koumbasat it is quite ordinary for individuals to seamlessly shift themselves from one caste to another -- from a warrior caste to a scribal and administrative caste, for instance -- so that this acts more as a career label than something strictly associated with bloodlines. Since the heavy influx of riches from the gold trade, Koumbasat has established sumptuary laws that restrict all citizens to the same range of modest fabrics and relatively plain colors and patterns in an attempt to rein in crass displays of wealth which it is felt might divide the citizenry and undermine ideals of equality. Houses, too, display little external difference regardless of the prosperity of their residents, all being extravagantly painted irrespective of wealth.

Inevitably, however, wealth and status have found a means of display in spite of everything, and characteristically for the Koumbasati this has emerged in the form of books. For centuries nearly every resident of the city, whether man, woman, or youth, has by custom carried around with them their own special tome known in the local vernacular as a kitbah. The kitbah may be any book at all, and may be selected by an individual for any of a number of reasons -- because certain phrases or titles particularly resonate with the individual's identity, or because the subject matter pertains to one's calling or to something else near to their heart, or simply because they found the volume deeply attractive in its design or the execution of its calligraphy. Whatever the case, the kitbah becomes a part of the individual's self, and it is common for them to be able to readily recite lines or passages from their kitbah, and to know much or all of it by heart. Although originally a kitbah might be carried in a plain leather scrip or protected by a simple durable cover, it has now become the practice to house the tome within an elaborate covering which may be ornamented with tooled and painted leather, precious metal hinges and clasps, lavish embroidery, or even encrustations of gems or stippling of gold dust. The ornamented kitbah is then slipped through the loops of a special girdle designed expressly to carry it, displaying one's wealth and expensive tastes for all the city to see.

Notes

Due to the continually changing painted facades of the town, Koumbasat is often referred to as "Ever-Changing Koumbasat," or "Rainbow City." Outside of the emirate, popular legend around the caliphate in fact tells that the foot of the rainbow marks the site of this dazzling far-flung city that few will ever see with their own eyes.