Sufyan

Born: 1790s. [details?]
Died: 1850s. [details?]

Long ago, before I started this blog, I was writing Andalusada mostly on paper. At some point, I realized that I'd need to know something about the succession of the UCNA. So I drew up a very tenuous outline of the dynasty.

There are a few names that I haven't mentioned yet (Yusuf II and Yusuf III, and some others), but all the key names of the succession survive only in the four-word tag of the UCNA's brief history: "the six weak caliphs." All the names but one: Sufyan.

A few nights ago, after I got out my GURPS book again, I started writing him up, based on what I knew about backbiting and so forth.

Disadvantages: Lecherous [-15]; Sense of Duty (his father) [-2]; Sense of Duty (his children) [-5].
Quirks: Bad with names; Wears his heart on his sleeve; Prudish in public.

Quite a character, no? And this is his story.

Sufyan's life in sketchy outline

According to his biography, Abu Sufyan was born in 1772. I have no idea when he was married, but assuming that they follow Islamicate norms, it was probably around his 20th birthday, so ca. 1792. His firstborn son was probably born within a few years of that point [when?], most likely in Cuba.

I don't know when or where Sufyan was born. What I do know, however, is that from a very early age the world had already written him off.

• Young Sufyan didn't start talking until he was almost three. In a family plagued by neurological disorders, this was a really bad sign.
• Yusuf traveled a lot in the turbulent days following the collapse of Seville (and, more than that, the collapse of Moorish Mexico.) Umm Sufyan got out much less; after travel-related sickness nearly killed her [details?], she settled in Cuba with her children.While the family spent a fair bit of time together, Sufyan never remembered his father being around until he was nearly seven.
• For all intents and purposes, Sufyan grew up with only a single parent. He had a lot of relatives, though; his father figures were his maternal uncles, who were typical Caribby-corsair khassa types.

For lack of any better schools on the mainland, Yusuf enrolled his son in the same school he'd been enrolled at: the madrassa of the Masjid al-Fath. There, under teachers as bitter and hardline as those who'd beaten an education into his father two decades prior, Sufyan had an education beaten into him.

• On April 5th, while Sufyan was in class, his father became Caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate in New Andalusia. Sufyan hardly noticed.
• Moorish Dissent was dead by the time Sufyan came of age; it had mostly given way to Mahdism, and Cuba at the time was leaning toward the Mahdist camp. Sufyan hated the Masjid al-Fath as much as Yusuf, but left it without a political vision of his own.

In 1811, the unspeakable happened: Umm Sufyan died. [details?] While he was still grieving, Sufyan packed his things, bade his maternal relatives farewell, and dutifully headed for Port-Royal. He later described it as "leaving his family to join his household."

Mediocrity (cont'd.): Sufyan on the mainland

Sufyan arrived in Port-Royal ten days later, and instantly failed to fit in. He both discovered and met his new stepmother. (It was chilly.) Yusuf proudly introduced his firstborn son to half-siblings a third his age, whose first impression was that the faces he made when they teased him about his accent were hilarious. Within three weeks, Sufyan was so homesick that Yusuf's physician [who?] seriously considered sending him back to Cuba.

The sad, bad, mad adulthood of Sufyan b. Yusuf

By 1820, Sufyan had finally entered adulthood. It was a disgrace to all involved.

Eight (or possibly nine) wives: While it was completely within his rights to do so, he clashed with his father about this quite a bit.

• Yusuf I was polygamous himself, but he wasn't terribly fond of it. He was far more influenced by Europe than Caribby, and felt his son was setting a bad example by doing the same.
• Sufyan (rightly) saw it as rank hypocrisy, but wasn't in any position to do much about it.

...and a pair of identical twins: Who Sufyan adopts because he can't be sure that he didn't father them before they were abandoned on his doorstep.

• The press always loved to hate Sufyan; when he adopted the twins, Sufyan started to hate them back. After a few self-deprecating jokes were quoted verbatim and seized on as gospel truth, he snapped and called them "backbiters." The name stuck.

Sufyan outlived his father by at least a decade, a national shame that would not be expunged. At his funeral, the imam of the Yusufiyya Mosque [who?] took the chance to remind the mourners that backbiting is a sin more serious than adultery, and called for a moratorium on personal attacks. His call was ignored.

Sufyan's legacy

A popular recent subtype... is the Airhead Heiress - a young, brainless, fashion slave party girl heiress. Any resemblance to Paris Hilton in recent works is purely coincidental.

-TV Tropes, "Upper Class Twit"

If TV Tropes existed in Andalusada, it'd distinguish a verse-specific variant of the Upper Class Twit. It'd be primarily a New World thing (and let's face it, at this point the House of Sansinger has spun off more than its share as well), distinct from the parent trope in two ways. The first way is that they're permanently damned to being a Twit, and nothing they do will ever let them shake that status; secondly, they're very self-conscious about it, and the stories in which this trope appears will play with the psychodrama of the character.

It'd be called the Sufyan, and it'd be Truth in Television, because Sufyan himself was a Most Triumphant Example. He was the laughingstock of his father's nation for most of his life.

It bears mentioning, though, that for all his character flaws Sufyan did a fair bit of good:

• Sufyan could very well have tried to seize power for himself; he would have been a great figurehead if he'd tried. The UCNA owes Sufyan a debt of gratitude (which he'll never get) for not only refusing to do so, but raising his kids to be good members of New Andalusian society.
• The second of the six weak caliphs [who?] was responsible for founding the Yusufiyya mosque and madrassa. It got off to an unremarkable start, but the children Sufyan chose for the scholarly life were all sent there, partly because of Cuba's occasional cholera epidemic but mostly to spite the Masjid al-Fath. Those children [who?] (and the teachers that he was willing to pay for [who?]) eclipsed the hated Cubans, and did a lot to make the Yusufiyya into a New World al-Azhar.

The world was a less colorful place on his passing.