Husain II Jalayirid
The Regency
On June 26, 1608, Hasan IV died, leaving a three year old Husain II the only heir to the vast realm of the Jalayirids. Due to his long regency, Husain had never held any idea other than that he should be king due to the greatness of his fathers and forefathers. However, several of the tribal chieftains had other ideas, revolting in the Egyptian and Omani provinces as all of the Jalayirids armies were tied down in the east fighting the crusading Vijayanagara and Rajput armies.
Husain had many years to wait until he could take the throne.
The interim leader of the armed forces: Anwar Husain sent armies to the west to deal with the revolts. After eleven months of hard battling, the infidels had advanced deep into the borders of the Jalayirid’s Empire, the Egyptian rebels were too powerful for the worn down western armies to fight, the rebels in the Levant had been pushed back, but had gathered together, the Indian armies were too large for the eastern armies to make any meaningful advances against and there were still no armies free enough to deal with the peninsular rebels. Each month, more than three thousand men died on the battlefields when only two-thirds of them could be replaced. The rebels would not negotiate, but the Indians would. And so Anwar Husain made peace with the Indian heathens in the name of the King on April 27, 1609. By July of the next year, the Jalayirid lands were rebel free.
Anwar used this time of peace to reform the army into a musketeer calvary force. In that same year, Khalil Sa’id arranged for Husain Jalayirid to marry Derya Jalayirid, Kamar Jalayirid’s daughter.
The Ottomans, in doing so, also acknowledged that the Jalayirids could rule over the Levant while they were preoccupied with reclaiming Anatolia. The chieftains of the Empire used this, as well as the wealth of Damascus, Aleppo, Dayr Az Zor and Shirvan to lay claim to them over the years.
However, the locals of Alexandria, still freshly remembering their own conquest saw this (perhaps justly) as a thinly veiled excuse for conquest and rose up in revolt, hoping to return to their city to the Mamlukian King. However, they were swiftly dealt with and routed before September 1611.
By 1612 the king was old enough to be asked on some matters of running the Kingdom. In this, he showed his characteristic stubbornness. When asked if peasants could enter the ranks of the military, he told them “Yes you can.”
The nobility were outraged over this right being granted to the peasantry and threatened revolt and made many smaller acts of rebellion, however the general furor had largely died down by the beginning of 1613 (read: stability loss regained within the year).
1614 looked to be a tumultuous year, beginning with a revolt by the Alexandrines and then by the inhabitants of Al Karak, who both wanted freedom, politically and socially, respectively. The province of Nile joined them in July.
When nobles asked Husain to turn back his father’s pushes towards modernization, thinking that Husain might see the reason of following the Baghdad way and not that of those upstart European countries, Husain flatly told them that he follows his father. They rose in revolt, hoping to break Persia away from the empire.
They could not.
Again and again, throughout the provinces, the nobles, peasants and merchants argued over whether or not to continue the path of the western heathens. Again and again, Husain followed the path of his father, using the regency council to absorb any of the loss of confidence that resulted.
The population of Negev and Sidon rose up in revolt again, hoping to gain more local control so that they can ignore those western ideas. The army, however, sided with Husain and Husain sided with his father. The population was quickly forced to their fields.
Soon the locals of Tabouk rose up, hoping to reform the Kingdom of Hedjaz. The regency council realized that something needed to be done and Khalil Sa’id proposed building treasuries and road networks to show the riches that would result from following the westerners. However, this only served to further incense the population, leading to more revolts in Sinai and Najd.
Any other monarch might have thought that moment to be the worst to accumulate more power to himself. But Husain was not any other monarch. He brought every province to be more tightly connected to Baghdad, and for his efforts, Asyut, Basra and Al Karak rose in revolt.
On his eleventh birthday, Husain received enlightenment from Allah. Armenia was to be included in his empire. Though the regency refused to let him declare war, he knew it was only four short years until he could dispose of them. Though he did have other priorities first.
However, his twelfth birthday was not as enlightening. A week after his birthday, Persian reactionaries came to Husain, saying that if the council did not turn their back on this westernization, they will raise an army and revolutionize the country. He refused. And so they raised an almost 30 thousand man army, larger than any single army of Husain’s. Luckily, he had more than one.
Soon, even the regency council had had enough. The country reviled them and the reforms were against everything Baghdad had to offer and weakened the country greatly. Anwar Husain threatened to take the armies and march them against Husain. Husain killed him there and then.
Three years passed, as rebels rose in revolt throughout the east and south, there was hardly a bright spot in the picture. The budget had to keep being revised to support the troops, men were loss and barely replaced, no one came forward to replace Anwar Husain, leaving the still-underage Malik to manage the army. But one good thing happened: The nobles collectively agreed that Ak Konyunlu should be a part of the Jalayirids.
But then, in May 1620, Husain II Jalayirid took to the throne.
The nobles, frustrated by his support for the westerners, and seeing a better ruler when they look in the mirror, rose up against him. Husain knew he ought to be King and knew he would ensure this was the last time the tribes as a whole questioned the succession of a Jalayirid. However, most of the revolts were limited to the Mediterranean coast.
EDIT: My, aren't the picture sizes... strange. I'll have to come back and fix them.