Kingdom of Casbah

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Kingdom of Casbah
Flag
Motto: none Musical Anthem: Turkey in the Straw, by Daniel Decatur Emmett

Location:	Landholding at unspecified locality (thought to be Bloomsburg) in rural Pennsylvania, USA
Co-ordinates:	41°00′04″N 76°27′14″W
Area:	0.01 km²
Capital:	Casbah Palace
Membership:	6
Date of foundation:	? July 1997
Leadership:	Travis McHenry (Maharaja Daniel)
Organisational structure:	Absolute monarchy
Language:	English
Currency:	None

The Kingdom of Casbah was an absurdist micronation created by Travis McHenry, an actor, cryptozoologist and former US Navy sailor who as of August 2010 resides in Anaheim, California.

It was created in July 1997 - purportedly as a consequence of a longstanding property boundary dispute involving un-named farm-owning friends of McHenry and the owners of two adjacent landholdings, at an unspecified locality in rural Pennsylvania - very likely McHenry's hometown of Bloomsburg.

According to the Casbah website, McHenry was initially invited by his friends to act on their behalf in negotiating a resolution to the dispute. When this did not materialise McHenry convinced them - for reasons that remain unclear - to instead declare the tongue-in-cheek independence from the United States of their property, as the Kingdom of Casbah, and later, to acclaim him as "Maharaja Daniel of Casbah".

Aside from its association with a piece of rural real estate, Casbah was an exercise in creative fiction, the sole vehicle for which was the website McHenry created for the micronation, which was last updated in December 2007. Most of the site's content appears to be an elaborate satirical fictionalisation of the mundane sequence of events leading to the escalation of the actual property dispute. The remainder describes an entirely fictional military conflict in which Casbah's antagonist is the Empire of Atlantium.

Subsequent to his involvement with Casbah, Travis McHenry created the Grand Duchy of Westarctica. After withdrawing from that venture, he established a third micronation: the Kingdom of Calsahara. McHenry is also the author of Delusions of Grandeur - a stage play with a plot based loosely on Casbah.

References

External links

Casbah official website at the Internet Archive.
Delusions of Grandeur - self-published play by Travis McHenry, loosely based on Casbah.
Into the Abyss - self-published cryptozoological-themed book written by Travis McHenry.
Travis McHenry at The Internet Movie Database.
Travis McHenry demo reel on youtube.