The Majlis al-Huraz, commonly called the Council of the Tribes, is the principal deliberative body of the Huraz Confederation. It was created by the Mithaq al-Huraz before the stabilization of the Nymothun Crossing and remains the institution through which the member tribes exercise their collective sovereignty. Each recognized tribe holds one seat and one vote regardless of population, wealth, military strength, ancestry, or whether it joined Huraz at the founding or centuries later.
A tribe’s ruler may occupy its seat personally or appoint a wakil to speak and vote on its behalf. The office belongs to the tribe rather than to the representative, and tribes differ greatly in how they choose, instruct, replace, or constrain their wakils. Some rulers send close relatives or permanent diplomats to Qaranth, while others appear personally for major decisions and delegate routine sessions. This variety reflects the central compromise of Huraz government: the Confederation acts collectively in shared matters without requiring every tribe to adopt the same internal political structure.
Membership and Representation
The twelve founding tribes possessed exceptional prestige, but the Mithaq did not permanently reserve full membership to them. Additional tribes were admitted over Huraz’s long history and received the same constitutional standing once recognized. Admission is a confederal decision of the Majlis and carries obligations as well as privileges, including participation in common defense, contributions to shared institutions, acceptance of confederal adjudication in matters covered by the Mithaq, and recognition of the protected status of the great waterworks.
Modern tribal identity is political, historical, and familial rather than an ancestry category. The founding tribes were originally six Tavashi and six Liyonir communities, but centuries of intermarriage, migration, adoption, resettlement, and incorporation have left many member tribes ancestrally mixed. Later tribes were never required to fit the founding six-and-six pattern. The Majlis therefore contains no formal Tavashi or Liyonir bloc, even when ancestry, family networks, or regional culture influence particular alliances.
Qaranth remains a persistent exception to the tribal model. The city itself has no Majlis seat, and Qaranthi residents are represented through the tribes to which they belong. This has repeatedly generated political movements seeking independent representation for the capital, but established tribes have resisted creating a Qaranth seat because the city already contains the Rashir, central administration, and the institutions governing the shared water system. To many tribal leaders, giving the capital its own vote would permanently weaken the balance the Mithaq was designed to preserve.
Authority
The Majlis governs matters that affect Huraz collectively. Its traditional responsibilities include foreign relations, admission and expulsion of member tribes, major confederal obligations, disputes between tribes, common defense, and the legal framework surrounding Zhar Qazir, Majra al-Qaranth, the Qaranth River, and other shared institutions. It selects the Rashir, whose executive authority depends upon the constitutional legitimacy provided by the Council.
The practical boundary between Majlis authority and tribal autonomy has never been static. At some periods, the Council closely supervised the Rashir and the Diwan al-Qaranth. At others, strong executives, expanding bureaucracies, military necessity, or commercial revenues allowed the center to act with considerable independence between major votes. Huraz political history is therefore not a simple progression from tribal government toward central government, but a recurring negotiation over which problems require common authority and which should remain with individual tribes.
The Cult of the Stars and the Present
The rise of the Cult of the Stars occurred during a period when substantial authority still rested with the tribes, but the Cult’s eventual capture of influential political networks helped drive a sharp centralization of Huraz government. Confederal administration, military coordination, security powers, and Qaranthi patronage became more important as the movement pushed Huraz toward restorationist policies and confrontation with Tadrium. The resulting system gave actors close to the capital far greater leverage over the Confederation than the formal equality of Majlis votes might suggest.
The Cult’s exposure and collapse produced a lasting reaction against that concentration of power. Over the decades since, the Majlis has increasingly reasserted tribal control over functions that had accumulated in Qaranth. Modern Huraz nevertheless remains more centralized than it was during the early rise of the Cult. The redistribution is gradual, contested, and incomplete, with central officials warning that excessive devolution could weaken common infrastructure and defense while tribal leaders argue that the Cult demonstrated the danger of allowing too much confederal authority to become concentrated in institutions that a political movement can capture.