Emissary Chapter 3 The School

Master Badr came back a few months later. However this time he brought with him a large entourage. They numbered more than fifty people; men, women as well as young boys and girls of different ages and ethnicities. Badr also brought food and horses to replenish his stables. Jaafar and I were relieved that Badr didn’t ask about the two that died. The stables were now full of horses and I was busy all night helping the stable master take care of all the new animals.

Again the first thing Badr did was visit his harem and spend the first night in the arms of his slave girls. However he didn’t retire before giving his instructions to the estate manager on how to arrange quarters for all the new people. The females who came with the master were shown to the main house where as the males were shown to the new quarters that had been recently constructed a few hundred yards north of the main estate. 

These new quarters had been under construction months earlier but nobody knew the reason why until that day. Many thought that Badr was building a mosque however the new building didn’t align to the east in the direction of Mecca, the holy city where Muslims pray. Besides who builds a large mosque out of no where. Badr’s estate was secluded way north on the furthest side of the city and very few people lived in the area. However the layout of that new building complex resembled a miniature grand Mosque without the minarets. It consisted of a large main hall connected on either sides by several smaller rooms built consecutively one next to the other. These rooms formed two parallel rows on either sides of the main hall. And finally a high wall with a wooden gate closed off the complex to the outside. The main hall, the rooms and the walls all surrounded a large square area and in the middle of the square stood a small running fountain. The building complex was almost a small fort disguised as a mosque but it turned out to be something else entirely.

The next morning Jaafar told me that I would be going to stay with the young boys in the new compound. I was a little sad to leave the stable master but he assured me that he wasn’t going away and that I will continue to see him around the estate. But I never did see him again. I took what little I had and walked over to the new building complex. I introduced myself to the guard at the gate and was led to one of the large rooms that looked over the square. The room housed nine boys of different ages and I was to be the tenth. They showed me where I was to sleep and said that we should wait for new instructions from the master. This was to be my living quarters where I would be sleeping, eating, reading, writing and spending hours with my new friends for years to come.

“You have been chosen to become my new loyal Mamluk soldiers in the service of the armies of the Ismaili Fatimid Caliphate. In the coming days you will be learning new ways to fight and win. You will learn to win at all costs. I do not want to train just plain soldiers that I can send to fight and die. I have plenty of those. I want to train men who will become special soldiers and commanders maybe generals in a new army that we are planning to oversee. The time has come when our Ismaili way of life prevails and we finally defeat our enemies using all the means we have under our disposal,” master Badr explained after he gathered all his men and women young and old, in the large main hall. The men he brought turned out to be our instructors and the women were also his special teachers. Everyone was present to hear his speech and we were all moved by his commitment and strength especially myself. I knew then that God had meant for me to be here and to train under this man. He was to become my master and commander. A man to which I would ever give my allegiance to him, his family and his cause. Up to this day I do not know why I was thus committed. Maybe I found in him the father figure that I never knew and I would always try to appease him in what ever venture he undertook and there were plenty of those to come.

“This is Chief Daii (missionary) Mustafa Ibn Qays. He will be your commander while you are in this school. I will be dividing my time between Acre and here. When I am away you will listen and obey every word he says and follow his explicit instructions. He will assign you to your duties and set your training schedules. You will have many Daiis, teachers and instructors. You will do as they say. I do not tolerate failure, insolence or disobedience. There is no quitting this school except if you die and many of you will. But hear this, God has showed us a way and it is for us here to fulfill his wishes or the world will perish with us. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?” 

His last command echoed around the school and every one of us answered back even the women who were standing and listing further aback. We all answered in one voice,”YES SIR.”

The boys in Badr’s school were divided into four groups. Each group consisted of ten boys the youngest was not older then ten while the eldest was fifteen. I came to be close friends with a few and tolerated some others. Many of us didn’t make it out alive. I saw some of my friends die during training and others killed in combat but I managed to survive not because I was the best but I was one of the lucky ones. I certainly wasn’t the strongest nor was I the fastest but I was one of the bright boys in my class. Ever since I was a young boy I had always been a keen observer and a fast learner. I don’t forget a name or a face and I have an excellent memory, a gift that helped me out of some bad situations in the days to come. I eventually caught Badr’s interest and became one of his close commanders. But that is a story for later.

The school turned out to be a very special training facility. We started out by training in horsemanship, swordsmanship as well as the use of many different kinds of weapons; swords, spears, axes, bows, knifes until we learned to be proficient in every killing tool you can think of. We were also given lessons in Arabic, history, theology as well as military tactics and strategies. Our training wasn’t only limited to those however we were chosen to perform some very special tasks. Only these special lessons didn’t commence until a few months after we settled down in the school.

We were also so ethnically diverse that I was surprised we even managed to understand one another. Together we could speak more then ten languages; Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Greek, Roman, Armenian, French, German, Spanish, and Barbari the language of the people of North Africa.

The majority of the boys were Turkish but Arabic was the common language which was understood by every one. However I was surprised that non of the boys were from Egypt. I asked Badr one day why his troops were mostly Armenian and Turkish and why he didn’t have any Egyptians slaves and he said, “in order to guarantee the loyalty and obedience of your soldiers, you should not choose your Mamluks from the local region. The loyalty of any local soldier is always to his family, tribe, people or region and he would never do anything to harm his own. Where as gold can persuade any foreign soldier to do what ever you want.”

Turan one of the boys of our group was put in charge of our party. He was an Azari from the regions around Baku who preferred the company of Turkish boys to us foreign kids. I was considered to be a Greek boy by every one although I was born and raised in Egypt. Turan was a tall boy and because he was the eldest he was picked to be our group leader. I didn’t like him much and he wasn’t fond of me either. Come to think of it he didn’t like any one except his close circle of Turkish friends. He was a bully and an idiot and he didn’t live long to amount to much.

From the start we were assigned into pairs. I was paired with Peter, a boy who spoke the language of the Franks. Peter was taken as a slave a few years earlier. He used to work as a deck boy aboard a trading ship that was unfortunate to be shipwrecked off the coast of Sinai. Badr bought him in Acre from the slavers who captured him and added him to his household. Peter was a short kid for his age. He said that he was picked to be a deck boy on a ship because of his hight. Two years after he became a slave his body still didn’t show much signs of growth. Peter and I became close friends. For many years we slept in the same room, ate together, trained together and studied together until he died. But that didn’t happen until many years later.

“I have paired you with each other so you can teach one another your native tongue,” Mustafa the chief Daii told us when he assigned us to our partner. “Every day you must teach one another until you both become fluent in the other’s language.”

I was paired with Peter because chief Mustafa thought we spoke a similar language. However he was so mistaken, Greek and French were so much different. This turned out to be one of the most difficult of our tasks specially for Peter. Very few of the boys also succeeded in this assignment. I tried to help Peter but it wasn’t easy for him. Fortunately for me I was one of the few who excelled in this task. In less than a year I became very fluent in French and I let Peter take the credit for helping me learn so quickly.

“Why do you think we are learning another language?” Peter asked me one day complaining about the task of learning Greek. Even though he was more than a year older than myself however he looked up to me and always asked my opinion on everything.

“I don’t know. But the master thinks that this is an important matter, so we should keep it up and do as he says,” I said trying to encourage him.

“If we are to be soldiers in the Fatimid army why do we need to know how to speak another language? Arabic is all we need.” Peter added. Arabic was the language of the holy book of Islam and it was spoken by every one. Some even said that it was spoken in Rome and Constantinople. To my surprise I later learned that this was true in some circles.

“Why are we learning to speak another language?” All the boys have asked that same question at some point during their training. We didn’t realize the importance of our learning until years later.

However I pretended that I knew the answer to the puzzle and I told Peter, “the master says that the Fatimid Caliphate will rule the world and maybe we are training to be soldiers in the army which will open up all the lands in the future.” I said that with real conviction. 

I was really committed to the Ismaili cause and I thought that every one was as serious about our training as I was. I didn’t know whether Peter believed me or not because at that time the Fatimid empire was in fast decline. Every day it was losing grounds to the Seljuks. 

“How could master Badr dream of rebuilding the Caliphate when all hope seems to be fading away?” Peter asked me again but I didn’t have an answer so I kept quite and we continued our lessons.

I have to admit that in the beginning I was not certain about many of the things we did at the school however I never once questioned our Daiis or teachers. I tried to keep the faith. I was a loyal soldier and I was confident in the master even when many were not. And that was my mistake.