The shrine of Sarafiq had a madrasa connected with it, noted for the quality of the students it turned out. Umar bin Ibrahim, high priest of Ravan, was a graduate of Sarafiq’s madrasa; so was the wizard Akar just a decade later. If the shrine of Sarafiq had done nothing but turn out great scholars, its fame would have been secured.
But the shrine had even more than that, for at the shrine dwelled a prophet. There had always been a prophet at Sarafiq for as long as people could remember. Each prophet reigned for ten, twenty, thirty, sometimes even forty years or more before yielding to his successor with never a trace of a fight. The secret of how a prophet gained his powers, and how each prophet selected and trained his successor, was a total mystery to the outside world—but the system wo
