The Rat City Chronicles

"From the first page, readers are pulled into the lush, vibrant West Asian culture that serves as the heartbeat giving life to this tense, fascinating story. Full of thrilling twists and turns that kept me guessing, profound emotions, and colorful characters, I was entertained, captivated, and thoroughly swept away." - Gabriella Saab, author of The Last Checkmate

THE WORLD OF AMAN-KALA

The year is 986H/1578CE and Derya Mack lives and works in Aman-Kala, a plague fortress between Arab, Persian, and Turkic lands. Seven-hundred years earlier, the Zanj army—a rebel force of mainly enslaved Africans—toppled the Abbasid Caliphate, outlawed slavery, and turned regions and large cities into client states. The Zanj armies were able to resist the Mongol invasion in the 7th/13th century well enough to keep control of Iraq as well as some Persian and Turkic lands to the north and east. But thus weakened, they lost significant surrounding territory to Buyids and others to the east, the Qarmatis to the west, and the Fatimids further west through North Africa. The reduced Zanj Caliphate governs from Baghdad, backed up by the force of their caliphate-wide army. Regional militaries are outlawed and distant cities are left to govern themselves without police or jails. In Aman-Kala, private detectives solve crimes, large and small. Derya Mack is one of those detectives.

The Mosque is the city government and oversees administration of The Treaty.

The Treaty is a constitution outlining power-sharing and principles of justice.

Power is shared between The Treaty Holders: The Mosque, The Elders Assembly, The Guilds, and The Merchants Congress.

Justice is based on the Quranic and Prophetic principles of self-accounting and victim-centred recompense. Neighbourhood Elders mediate disputes and wrongdoings, and lead wrongdoers in self-accounting. If disputes or wrongdoings cannot be resolved at that level, they go before the judicial arm of The Mosque government.

The Tribunal is the recompense-based judiciary. A religious Judge leads hearings in which guilt is admitted or denied. If admitted, the case goes before a sentencing mediation hearing led by a judge, an elder, and the victim or their representative. If denied, the judge leads further investigation with the help of a detective.

Detectives are licensed and paid by The Mosque, but operate independently.

Crimes are divided between wrongdoings and violations. Wrongdoings include all crimes, even murder. Violations are reserved for breaking bright-line boundaries of The Treaty. Imprisonment of the guilty is outlawed except when holding over suspects for a hearing. Capital punishment of any sort is a last resort and only if the victim or victim’s family insists after a lengthy process of mediation. Treaty violations result in banishment of the guilty, and at times, their extended families.

The Guilds are formerly criminal organizations that agreed to share power when The Treaty was formed, with the proviso they may carry on ventures such as smuggling in their territories and within limits. To break these limits would be a violation and result in banishment. Treaty sanctioned ventures are thus no longer crimes, but a way of keeping power and peace among all the city stakeholders. The Treaty affords the guilds the right to "smuggle" imported goods by paying a nominal bribe to officials, thus avoiding the city’s onerous import tax, but they must abide by the same strict quarantine as other importers. Although guild ventures are no longer legally crimes and The Guild amirs have a public role as Treaty Holders, the guilds still act as shadow powers.

The Plague is ongoing, transforming the world since a particularly virulent wave was introduced by Mongol invasion, and ultimately took hold of the world in the late 6th/13th century. The Mosque government of Aman-Kala responded by building fortress walls around the city’s surrounding farmlands—shutting off Aman-Kala from the world on its completion only three decades before the time of this novel—and creating a system of quarantine for people and goods entering.

The Rat Policy was instituted by the mosque, despite being controversial initially, it became a well-regarded system of breeding and supplying rats to the city, providing an endless stream of rodents to die of plague infested fleas that would otherwise bite and infect humans. The rat policy was written into The Treaty, thus making any wrongdoing against the Rat Keepers a violation of The Treaty.

Rat Keepers breed and supply these rats to the city. They are governed by The Rat Keepers Council, an arm of The Mosque government, and are paid by a special tax. Though The keepers are now seen as sacred, a few city-dwellers continue to protest the actual need for them and decry the cruelty to animals.

Aman-Kala and its denizens exist in an alternative medieval world. No such city exists. While many of the people, places, cultural forms, and situations in this novel are rooted in the history of the early to late medieval period in Muslim lands, I also make use of anachronisms past and present.