Sattari people

Sattari people (Pardarian: مردم ستاری, tr. Mārdom-e Sattāri; Rahelian أهل الستاري, tr. Nās al'Sattari) or Citizens of the Union (Pardarian: شهروندان اتحادیه, tr. Šahrvand-ân-ye Ettehad; Rahelian: مُوَاطِنُون الاتحاد, tr. Muwāṭinūn al-Ittiḥād) is the official umbrella demonym (politonym) for the population of the Union of Zorasani Irfanic Republics. It exists in parallel to the more popular and common Zorasani. The term was officially adopted on the 1 January 1980 with Zorasani unification and is use primarily in official state documents and nomenclature.

The People of Sattari Monument, was built atop the historic Ain Hadir border crossing between Khazestan and Irvadistan.

Origin

The origins of term are widely disputed among historians as prior to its formal adoption in 1980, the Pan-Zorasanist term varied between "Zorasani" and the individual demonyms for the constituent parts of the pre-defined state. According to government records, the term Sattari as a politonym was devised as a temporary "unifying term for the peoples of the Union.” These documents further stated, that “until such time the universal identification of the citizenry is that of Zorasani, we must beat back the continued ignorant terms Pardarian, Rahelian and such, proclaiming the peoples of the Union, the people of Sattari is therefore key.”

Further to the government rationale, was the significant return of the Sattari personality cult. In celebration of unification, the new government contracted the construction of hundreds of monuments dedicated to him, songs, poems and a printed media campaign, leading some to conclude that the major driving force behind the adoption of Sattari as a politonym was part of the wider resurrection of the cult.

Between 1980 and 1990, the term Sattari was used in all official documentation, including the census. As the Union does not recognise ethnicity, during this period, the population was forced in part to fully identify as Sattari, from 1990 onward, the census began to include the option of Zorasani, which over the preceding decades grew in popularity. By the 2012 census, 98% of citizens identified as Zorasani over Sattari, though the term continues to be used in government documents and affairs.

According to Said Abdullah-Ali, a prominent historian on post-unification Zorasani history, “the decision to introduce the identifier ‘Sattari’ over ‘Zorasani’ after 1980 was in many ways ingenious. The state knew that opposition to unification existed among the “Rahelian” and other minorities, so by introducing something complete different, yet all-encompassing while the Zorasani identity was fostered and nurtured, ensured that the Pardarian and Rahelian and so on, were bound together in equal measure.”

Today, the term is used interchangeably with Zorasani in everyday life.

Nationality and ethnicity in Zorasan

Throughout its post-unification history, Zorasan has confronted the issue of nationality and ethnicity in a manner that has not changed in over 40 years. Prior to unification, the Sattarist approach to these two issues was to dismiss them outright. Ethnicity and nationality according to Sattarist thought is a Euclean product, rooted in racialism, to divide and conquer states into submission and subservience. In many ways, the rejection of ethnicity by the Sattarists was rooted in the socialist rejection of such as a capitalist-bourgeois construct, even if the Sattarist approach is inherently nationalist in nature.

From the end of the Pardarian Civil War in 1950, through to 1980, the Sattarist regime in the Union of Khazestan and Pardaran, ceaselessly attacked the notion of “nations” and “separate peoples” within the borders of Zorasan. It outright rejected the concept of Rahelia, describing the region as just a “geographical expression that provides no basis for an independent identity or existence.” Historians also note that the relative success of the post-unification period was that as Rahelians saw any nascent “Rahelian identity” crushed, they could see the same for the Pardarian, Kexri, Togoti etc. The UKP and subsequently the UZIR, actively refurnished national history, describing every pre-colonial state as “Zorasani”, rather than Pardarian, despite the latter’s dominant role for millennia. Textbooks, publications, thesis, museum exhibitions have all since described the Pardarian-led classical era empires, and post-Heavenly Dominion dynasties as Zorasani, going as far as either fabricate contributions or roles of Rahelians (primarily), or greatly enhancing them.