King Hassani of the Sands (Myth)

Summary:
King Hassani of the Sands was a legendary (if not, mythical) warlord of semi-divine nature and the supposed common ancestor of the Seven Great Tribes of Tanaris who led them into the Tanari Desert. While the Tanari Peoples believe him an ancient demigod, some historians believe Hassani to be a former Southsea Pirate Captain that began "colonizing" Tanaris.

Origin:


An old legend is told by Elders, Viziers and Prophets amongst all Seven Tribes about King Hassani; in the beginning, Kalimdor was a supercontinent with the spiraling and alluringly all-powerful Well of Eternity in its center.

Three great empires---the Trolls, the Kaldorei and the insectoid Qiraji Silithid---and fought one another and this resulted in the severing of the former into the Amani and Gurubashi twin empires and the lattermost being contained magically after the War of the Shifting Sands. Caught between this chaos and struggling to survive gigantic Dinosaurs in Un'Goro Crater, the Tanari People were little more than naked barbarians made fodder for such Apex Predators or slave pools of Night Elven and Tol'vir raiding parties.

At some point during the Sundering and the Well's implosion, these uncivilized Human progenitors were convinced the entire world was ending; amidst this catastrophe and the panicking tribesmen, a nameless warrior-hunter rose and commanded a mass exodus to higher ground---thinking the volcano, hot springs and high mountain lakes would fill the Crater during this continent-severing quake; unexpectedly, these frightened proto-humans ascended a mountain pass into the Tanari Desert and the Titanic gates of Uldum. Met with this strange and foreboding landscape, the warrior-hunter had created an entire lifestyle.

Naming himself "Hassan" in their primal tongue, the anointed leader of the newly-christened "Tanarians" set forth to strengthen his people and cultivate a new existence in the boundless desert. Demanding both martial strength and practical industriousness, Hassani had trained countless soldiers and craftsmen while dictating---and exemplifying---rapid population growth by means of polygamous marriage; supposedly, this was done to bolster the ranks of the Tanarians after many of the other Warrior-Hunters met their demise in the desperate attempt to survive in Un'Goro, though some suspect it was with intention to overwhelm and out-populate the Kaldorei Empire. Due in part to the climate and their "civilizing", Hassani demanded they "make themselves modest and cover their barbarity" with concealing clothes.

Having conceived and celebrated countless heirs and assigning masses of Tanarians to specific duties and callings, Hassan died a successful and revered man; however, this did not come without consequence... Because the society Hassan modeled demanded hereditary succession and the numerous contenders and claimants to his legacy, the de facto Empire that was birthed was quickly divided and the Seven Tribes rose from the fragmentation. Each tribe would then scatter to the heated winds in absolute isolation until the Third War and the Southsea Pirates' shipwrecking upon Tanaris and the Goblins' colonizing of the region.

No other Tanari Human or Foreign Conqueror would ever rise to the status of "King of the Sands" or be even the slightest in comparison to Hassani.

Historical Debate:
As there is no tangible proof that the Tanari Humans lived in Un'Goro or had built civilization within Tanaris and the appearance of the Southsea Pirates, historians and explorers speculate that the "Tanarian Ethnicity" is but a farce: that the supposed "culture" of desert nomads and raiding warbands is but an adaptation derived from piracy proper. Additionally, Hassani is suspected to be one of the Captains of such castaway pirates---managing to briefly unite several other crews until his untimely death, calling himself "King".

However, there are ancient human skeletons, enthralled human ghosts and a history of human slavery and gladiators within Uldum's Tol'vir civilization that are far older than the Cataclysm's opening of the veiled desert suggest. Some scholars argue that the "Tanari" simply saw opportunity in the region and swarmed inside, along with various tomb-raiding Humans, Goblins and Gnomes---becoming enslaved or cursed by the angered Tol'vir denizens and protectors.

Another theory, however not-prevailing among scholars, is that Hassani was a shipwrecked Pirate Captain that had wooed (or even enslaved) the already-existing Tanari by means of technology and modeling a new culture accordingly. This could explain the rumored "intermingling" of the Tanari People and the land-bound Pirates, their sudden adaptation to modern desert warfare and the very creation of the Wastewander Bandits.