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State of the Central Scipian Accord ⵞⴰⵔⵏⴻⴰ / Charnea (Tamashek) تشارنيا / Tasharnia (Gharbaic) טשאַרנעאַ / Tsharnea (Hebrew)
Flag
Capital and largest city	Agnannet
Official languages	Tamashek
Recognised national languages	Zarma Gharbaic
Ethnic groups (2019)	22.9% Ikelan 22.8% Imuhagh 19.3% Zarma 14.1% Gharbaic 6.6% Yoruba 4.5% Fula 2.5% Sara 2.4% Hausa 1.9% Deshretic 1.8% Zaghawa 1.2% Akan
Demonym(s)	Charnean
Government	Unitary one-party presidential republic under a military junta
• Supreme National Authority	Martuf Lamine (Chairman) Rezkou Goma (Vice Chairman)
• President	Makhia Anaba Meslar (acting)
• Vice President	Makhia Anaba Meslar
Legislature	Agraw Imegharan
Area
• Total	2,621,088 km2 (1,012,008 sq mi)
Population
• 2020 estimate	33,023,983
• 2019 census	33,010,572
• Density	12.6/km2 (32.6/sq mi)
GDP (PPP)	estimate
• Total	$101 billion
• Per capita	$5779.45
Gini	35.9 medium
HDI	0.701 high
Currency	Charnean Dinar (CDR)
Date format	mm.dd.yyyy
Driving side	right

Charnea (Tamashek: ⵞⴰⵔⵏⴻⴰ; Gharbaic: تشارنيا; Hebrew: טשאַרנעאַ), formally the State of the Central Scipian Accord (SCSA), is a political union in Scipia bordered by the Messidor Union to the northwest, Alanahr to the northeast, Fahran and Kembesa to the east and M'biruna to the southeast. Originally established as a federation of constituent states, the SCSA is now a unitary state made up of seven administrative subdivisions and encompasses numerous ethnic and religious groups, with Imuhagh, Zarma, and Gharbaic peoples making up the largest ethnic contingents, while religious groups present include White Pilgrims, Yen, Jews and Asalists which practice their traditions exclusively or in conjunction with the highly syncretic native Charnean faith known as Kaharnism which deifies the ancient Charnean ruler Kaharna. The Kaharnic faith in its many variations is highly prevalent and serves as a unifying force in a highly diverse nation, causing Charnea to often be referred to as the Kel Kaharna (Tamashek: ⴽⴻⵍ ⴽⴰⵀⴰⵔⵏⴰ, lit. "Those of Kaharna"). The SCSA is currently ruled by the Supreme National Authority (SNA), a military junta which has been in power since the 2011 Charnean coup d'etat and is led by its Chairman, General Martuf Lamine who led the 2011 coup and now serves as de facto commander-in-chief of the Charnean military and chief executive of the national government.

Modern day Charnea was once part of three great Scipian empires, the Yoruba-Hausa led Sunset Empire, the Zarma led Hsewa Empire as well as the Imuhagh led Empire of Charnea for which the country is named. Various Deshretic domains as well as the Tamashek speaking Amazigh confederations of the northern and western deserts have also existed within what is now Charnea, eventually being subsumed into the Empire of Charnea. At its peak between 1350 and the 1420s, the Empire of Charnea controlled a majority of the Scipian continent and was one of the largest contemporary military powers in the world. Throughout the early modern period, the empire's frontiers receded to what was considered its core territories, a region roughly equivalent to the modern day borders of the SCSA. From 1906-1909, the empire underwent a period of escalating civil conflict known as the Charnean Revolutionary Period eventually leading up to the dissolution of the Charnean Empire into several newly independent states and the creation of the Central Scipian Accord in 1911, a treaty which created a supranational organization for resolving disputes between the former nations of Charnea. By 1925, cohesion between the signatory nations had returned with the resurgence of Charneanism, resulting in the federalization of the treaty signatories and the formation of the State of the Central Scipian Accord along the lines of the former empire with a new republican government. 27 years later in April of 1952 a new constitution was ratified, known today as the April Document, which abolished sub-divisional autonomy and transitioned the SCSA into a unitary state.

In the past century, Charnea has experienced two revolutions, four dictatorships, seventeen coup d'etat attempts both failed and successful, the ten year Ninvite War with neighboring Fahran, and the longest running civil conflict in the world. Many of its internal conflicts can be traced back to the dissolution of the Empire of Charnea and the aftermath of the ensuing events, particularly the unfulfilled promises of independence, self determination and autonomy which were made to many Charnea's myriad ethnic groups living under the often incompetent and heavy handed late Imperial rule. Another cause of political instability has been the outbursts of periodic infighting between factions of the county's upper class over control of Charnea's valuable natural recourses, which include petroleum and precious metals like gold and platinum. Petroleum industries nationalized under the state owned COPEC extraction and processing company account for roughly 45% of the national GDP and 70% of government income and accounts for a large portion of Charnean wealth, although the national reliance on oil exports to sustain its economy has made it especially vulnerable to disruptive fluctuations in the price of oil on the international market. Despite these frequent disruptions and the occasional imposition of economic sanctions by foreign powers, the Charnean economy based largely on the processing and export of its natural wealth has become moderately prosperous. Charnea is a member of the Forum of Nations and party to the Four Rising Nations Summit.

Etymology

The first people to be called Charneans were the ancient Amazigh tribes of the eastern Ninva which were called the Charkesh or simply Cha by the Deshritic peoples of the Saawa Oasis. The Charkesh amazigh tribe are first referenced in inscriptions dating to 1,300 BCE and is no longer recorded after 700 BCE, however it is believed that the Charkesh people may have been one of the founding tribes of the large Amazigh confederation of Queen Kaharna and remained in the Ninva desert after the dissolution of this kingdom. Historically, the desert abode of the Charkesh and their Tamashek speaking descendants the Imuhagh tribes has termed Charna, later corruption to Charnea. This latter term in was associated with the Empire of Charnea, a conquering polity native to what was originally called the Charnean desert, now known as the central and eastern Ninva. Through the Empire of Charnea, the name would come to associated not only with the cradle of its desert-faring civilization but with most of the areas it conquered, particularly those it retained until its late dissolution and reorganization into the SCSA in the 20th century.

History

Classical Period

Sarcophagus belonging to Omotanwa the Great, leader of the Sunset Empire

The Sunset Empire (Yoruba: Iwọoorun Ijoba, lit. "Western State") was the culmination of the ancient Obulite civilization which was established on the banks of the lower Obul river as one the early river valley civilizations around 2,630 BCE, making it the first recorded civilization in what is now modern day Charnea and one of the first in the world. Its final ieration as the Sunset Empire was originally established by a northern offshoot of the ancient Hausa along a portion of the river to the west of the Yoruba tribes who would give the polity its common name and would later become absorbed into the political realm. The Obulite people had long practiced agriculture, which grew to intensive levels under the Sunset Empire and fueled population growth and the emergence of the first major cities in Charnea. While the Obulites had been a settled polity, the Sunset Empire was the first and only state to unify them and achieved great success in doing so, establishing a powerful military caste and expanding the empire's borders aggressively. For much of its history, the empire faced no significant external threats and primarily devoted its military to protecting its borders from raids and incursions by small neighboring tribes. Tributary states were often employed by Sunset emperors as buffers to control territory outside the main Obulite stretch and protect the primary agricultural and urban centers of the empire from attack. Despite its expansionism, the empire never expanded beyond the south Charnean savannah where it remained embroiled with Amazigh tribes from the Ninva desert, and saw no success penetrating the desert itself. At its peak, the empire expanded across all regions of the upper Obul, but was limited to the thin strip of territory along the river as that region was and remains highly arid and devoid of vegetation away from the Obul's lifegiving waters. The Sunset Empire established a long lasting literary tradition, using precursors of the N'Ko writing system as well as Adlam script in some regions. Inscriptions in stone, clay tablets and writing on preserved reed paper make up much of the established record of the Sunset Empire, which was known to keep extensive writings on administrative processes, contact with neighboring cultures and important figures of the day making the few surviving examples of Sunset era writings which survive to this day of great archeological and scientific importance. Many of its larger structures were destroyed by the fall of the empire, and are most often discovered in the rubble buried underneath still surviving structures of the later Hsewa empire which supplanted it in the Obul region centuries after its fall.

Tamazgha

Main article: Tamazgha

Ruins of Ekelhoc, the capital of Tamazgha, located within the Azalay mountain range in the western Ninva.

The establishment of the Tamazgha confederation in Scipia marks the beginning of statehood for the northern Charnean tribes, which have retained and transmitted their ancestral Amazigh culture to neighboring peoples. Recorded mentions of Tamazgha and confederation of tribes is part of recovered military reports of the late Sunset Empire in what is now southern Charnea, detailing clashes and raids undertaken by the nomadic Amazigh of the conferation. Archeological finds suggest that the Sunset Empire undertook a massive fortification of its northern frontiers between 565 and 540 BCE, suggesting an increase in the frequency and strength of incursions into their territory or that of their buffer states.

The founder of the Tamazgha confederation was the legendary Queen Kaharna, who unified various Amazigh tribes native to much of northern and central Scipia, including the ancestors of the Aghmatians, as well as Charnean Imuhagh and their Talaki cousins. At its peak under Kaharna and her succesors, Tamazgha streached from the Periclean coast in the north to the north bank of the Obul river in the south, from the Saawa Oasis in the east to the borders of ancient Yisrael and parts of the Thassalian coast of west Scipia in the west. Although many of the tribes which were joined under the rule of Kaharna and her successors were traditionally semi-nomadic or fully nomadic pastoralists at that time, Tamazigha was an emerging urban civilization, the second one to arise in the barren expanse of the Ninva after the Deshritic civilization of the Saawa oasis. This was achieved through the digging of extensive tunnel networks which allowed Amazigh city builders to tap into fossil water of the central Scipian region, specifically in regions such as the Royal Valley and the Thumer basin where such excavation into the flanks and mountainsides around the low ground would reach the lowlying deep aquifer, where water could then be moved by aqueduct to sustain a permanent settlement in the desert.

Thumer Necropolis, the burials of Queen Kaharna and many of her dynasty which ruled Tamazgha during its golden age.

Tamazgha was highly successful in its military engagements with its neighbors, making use of its vast manpower and advantages in cavalry to prevail in conflicts. Particularly, Amazigh forces were engaged in escalating hostilities against the Sunset Empire to the south, which was considered to be one of the principal rivals of the confederation. Although the Sunset Empire survived the conflict, records show they suffered many resounding defeats and their armies took irreparable losses. The collapse of the empire's military at the hands of Amazigh riders loyal to Tamazgha may have caused the empire's decline in the following decades as its military would never fully recover from the conflict. From then on, the Sunset Empire lost control of its northeastern portions accounting for more than half the land the empire ruled at its zenith. Evidence suggests Tamazgha was not interested in conquering the Sunset Empire or annexing the northeastern lands, as the Amazigh polity appears to have been fully capable of doing so if its rulers and tribal leaders desired it. Instead, the war with Tamazgha shifted the balance of power in what is now southern Charnea from a mostly Yoruba-Hausa dominated state to the Zarma dominated state of the later periods.

Tamazgha eventually dissolved in large part because of the depletion of the fossil water reserves which had sustained its most important urban centers in the central Ninva, near the shared border of modern Charnea and the Aghmatian portion of the Messidor Union. Without water to sustain its political centers, the sedentary portion of the Amazigh hegemony dominating Scipia abandoned its capital and resettled near the Periclean sea in modern day Aghmatia. The disruption of its powerbase and dissolution of much of Tamazgha's infrastructural connective tissue cause many of the Amazigh peoples under its rule to secede and effectively ended the confederation. The southern portion of Tamazgha which remained in the Ninva after the dereliction of the major Amazigh settlements there became the ancestors of the Imuhagh and reverted to their pre-unification pastoralist lifestyle and living a hard, nomadic existence in the harsh expanse of the deserts.

Late Medieval Period

Consolidation

Ihemod ag Jeqan, Amghar within the Awakari tribes of the Imuhagh, was the adopted son to the Amenukal of the Awakar confederation, Jeqan ag Boru. He was named heir to his father's influential position on the latter's deathbed, a proclamation which is contested by modern historians and was largely discounted by contemporary sources. Jeqan's three surviving biological heirs contested Ihemod's status, igniting a war across the Kel Awakar. The significant military resources and portions of the nomadic population of the confederation were split between the claimants, Ihemod retaining only a small number of Jeqan's closest followers with whom he had worked as his father's lieutenant. Ihemod tracked down and confronted Tenge, the youngest of the three Jeqid brothers and the claimant with the second smallest force after Ihemod. While the forces were preparing to do battle, Ihemod challenged Tenge to a duel as a means of settling the dispute, which was not uncommon in that time. Tenge was pressured by his followers to accept, and was then defeated and killed in the duel with Ihemod to their dismay. With Tenge's forces joining his, Ihemod was cornered by the remaining brothers Agtab and Mechtegen who had agreed to temporarily join forces to defeat Ihemod after hearing of their brothers death. The brothers surrounded and attacked Ihemod's forces, but in doing so a portion of their army came under ambush and was destroyed, allowing Ihemod's riders to escape and regroup. After reinforcing with a group of Zarma mercenaries, Ihemod counterattacked at the Battle of the Red Way and defeated Agtab and Mechtegen, consolidating their remaining forces into his army and executing them. Unusually, he spared many of his former rival's top officers to integrate into his own army, which began to swell as he prepared to expand the domains of the Kel Awakar. Following the conquest of the Kel Atram and Kel Dinik confederations of the Lullemmeden Amazigh tribes, Ihemod further bolstered his numbers and began to absorb many smaller clans of Imuhagh peoples across the Ninva without conflict. Many voluntarily joined Ihemod's confederation upon request, as the leader had proven himself in combat and had already united a large portion of the Imuhagh, while others resisted and were coerced into joining the confederation by threat of war if they refused. In some cases, the threat was insufficient and further conquests were undertaken, resulting in minor Imuhagh clans being destroyed, their population enslaved as Akli and their herds and wealth distributed equally as loot among the confederation's tribes.

Formation of the Empire

Imuhagh warriors, a Takouba-wielding noble (right) and a zagaya spear-wielding common herder (left)

Having consolidated the Imuhagh tribes of the Ninva, Ihemod began a number of military reforms and began to reorganized the tribal forces into a more unified army under his command. The new army was established along the lines of Ten-Thousands or Meraou Igiman, massive army formations consisting of thousands (Igiman), hundreds (Temad) and finally squad level tens (Meraoued). Commanders for the top level units were to be appointed by Ihemod, while lower level commanders were elected by their men. Within these decimal units, Ihemod intentionally mixed multiple tribes and clans with the intention of erasing their tribal identity to form a homogenous Imuhagh army. He also adopted many technological reforms, adopting advanced bows made of multiple materials, new riding equipment and later transitioned the entirely mounted army of the Imuhagh from camelry to cavalry mounted on Barbs. Camels were still used in an auxiliary role, and led the initial conquests in the desert regions where they could outrun and outlast horses in the dry heat. Ihemod's immediate target was the Hsewa Empire to the south, which he perceived as having oppressed and divided the Imuhagh for their own gain, a sentiment which many of his followers shared. The war against the Hsewa empire began in April of 1351 with the sacking of several border towns. The initial Charnean cassus belli was to retaliate against the Zarma people of the Hsewa empire by showing their superiority in battle and extracting tribute as restitution for past wrongs. In the early stages of the war, Imuhagh forces commanded personally by Ihemod or by his closest advisors attacked Hsewa garrisons, raided the countryside and ambushed the forces sent to deal with their raids. Almost immediately, the Hsewa emperor was alerted that the Imuhagh were not merely raiding the borderlands as had been expected, and mobilized a major force to destroy it. This force was caught in a pincer movement by the far more mobile mounted Imuhagh who had begun to wage a guerilla style war while within enemy territory. The resulting battle, the Battle of Achra, was pivotal in the conflict and is seen as a key moment in history in large part due to the unexpected rout which led to the death of the near totality of the massive Hsewa force. The Imuhagh victory at Achra was of such an overwhelming nature that the Hsewa would be virtually defenseless to further attacks for a time. Ihemod decided in the aftermath of the battle to alter the course of his offensive, turning it from a war to extract tribute to a war of conquest and subjugation, deciding to eliminate the threat posed by the powerful Hsewa now that he saw the opportunity to do so. Historians label the Battle of Achra and its aftermath as the moment at which the Empire of Charnea truly came into being as an empire of the Imuhagh subjugating the neighboring nations, rather than a simple confederation of tribes like the ancient Tamazgha.

Following the capture and burning of the Hsewa capital, the lands of the large empire were partitioned into vassal states. The invasion had displaced and killed predominantly Zarma farmers and citizens numbering in the hundreds of thousands, even millions by some estimates, depopulating large swaths of the Obul river particularly in the north. As a result, many Imuhagh people began to settle the land and establish sedentary communities in the derelict villages and farms left behind by those who had fled or been killed by Ihemod's forces. Ihemod encouraged this as a means of strengthening the core of his empire, and authorized the Iklan, the slave caste of Imuhagh society, to be settled in the captured regions under a system similar to serfdom. Additionally, many engineers and public servants of the former Hsewa empire were taken into Ihemod's service as administrators and military auxiliaries following his victory. In 1357, Ihemod attacked the Mawlen Sultanate to the east, capturing the ancient city of Azut and driving off many of the Gharbaic Mawlen rulers. Azut became Ihemod's capital and seat of power as the staging area for further invasions to the east and west. With the fall of Mawla, Ihemod annexed Hatheria with the help of the Saawa Deshritics who became vassals of the empire, and then prosecuted a short war to vassalize the Saadian Emirate, conquering all of what is now eastern Charnea by 1360, a mere nine years since the beginning of his war with the now defunct Hsewa. During the war with Saadia, the Imuhagh forces made ample use of Zarma engineers from the west to overtake the many fortifications the defenders had prepared. With their help, the Charnean armies where quickly becoming highly proficient in siege warfare on top of their increasingly refined cavalry tactics and supremacy in field battles. On the heel of this conflict, Ihemod advanced further into what was the Azdarin Caliphate. It was in these offensives that the Empire of Charnea suffered its first defeat, in 1366 at the Battle of Al-Hira by the Charnean General Ahag ag Salla at the hands of an Azdarin Gharbaic prince. Nevertheless, since the decline of the Almurid Caliphate years earlier, the region was divided and Ihemod met success in his invasions despite setbacks. In 1372, Ihemod invaded the Periclean coast of Scipia, launching incursions beginning with the conquest of Alanahr in a two pronged invasion from 1372-1373, to the incursion on modern day Aghmatia in 1380 which ended the Periclean campaign and extended Charnean rule from the Periclean to the Thessalian. The period of 1380 to 1395, known as the Crushing in many histories, was marked by massive waves of rebellion across conquered areas, including a mutiny of some of Ihemod's Generals and other officers objecting to his absolute rule and what they saw as reckless expansion. The delay caused by these rebellions undoubtedly postponed many further invasions and significantly impacted the final size of the Empire of Charnea on Ihemod's death. Ihemod would go on to spend his remaining years conquering the south and west before his death ended the so called "Age of Terror", the period of unchecked Charnean expansion and seemingly unstoppable military supremacy.

Pax Charnica

The Pyramid of Ihemod, tomb of the Empire's founder.

Amenukal Ihemod died in 1409 at the age of 66, from what historians suspect was a brain tumor based on reports of headaches and seizures in the old conqueror's later years. His death soon halted the campaigns of expansion, granting a reprieve to the Periclean world and the lands of eastern Scipia, modern day Fahran, Vardana and Kembesa, as the invading Charnean armies retreated and their generals returned to Ihemod's temporary capital at Azut. There, the imperial assembly of elders known as the Agraw Imgharan met to elect as new ruler in the traditions of the Imuhagh confederations. The new Amenukal, Magdan ag Barka, was slow to send the armies back to the front lines of expansion and prioritized internal matters of the empire. Magdan had been one of Ihemod's generals, assigned to put down rebellions in the region of the Obul river bend, and had in that time developed a concern that the mighty Imuhagh empire would soon face major internal threats to its integrity greater than any outside foe. Magdan and his successors are largely credited with the administrative reform of the empire, which codified the Agraw Imgharan as a permanent deliberative assembly with important powers and responsibilities, set up the provisions for the government of captured cities and internal relations with the empire's many new tributary states and vassals. While new territories were added into the empire when the Generals and their armies returned to the frontiers, this was only a fraction of the meteoric expansion that had been seen under Ihemod's reign. In 1435, Magdan ordered the construction of a pyramid in the ancient style of some Tamazgha era tombs to house Ihemod's body, which had been mummified and kept in the Azut crypts after his death. Ihemod's reburial was an elaborate ceremony, one which drew clear parallels between the Empire of Charnea and her rulers, and the ancient Tamazgha confederation which Magdan wished to evoke as Charnea's predecessor state. Soon thereafter, Magdan established the new imperial capital at the Fish-Blood Bastion, a citadel in the desert near Ihemod's new pyramid monument. The resulting settlement would soon develop into the city of Agnannet, which has been the seat of every Charnean state since.

The period of internal peace and stability which followed Magdan's reign, historiographically known as the Pax Charnica, saw very little further military expansion and largely defensive wars or reconquests of insubordinate vassal states. In some areas, the empire indeed lost territory as tributaries broke away, although Amenukal Madgan reportedly viewed some of the losses as beneficial, seeing some of his predecessor's annexations as either undue overextensions or as vestigial first steps into campaigns which never occurred due to the conqueror's death. Despite these losses, Charnean prospered without a major rebellion for nearly 300 years. Tamashek language literature as well as patronage of the arts and sciences was at an all time high under this new reign of the Imuhagh tribes, and manu monuments, tombs and elaborate palaces were built in this period which stand in the modern day. It is also during this period that much of the assimilation into Imuhagh culture took place, especially amoung those taken as captives during the initial conquests. These populations had diverse ethnic backgrounds and hailed from all over Scipia, and even had representatives originating in Malaio, Ochran and Belisaria. Under the Charnean form of slavery, the slave caste was not held as chattel but instead lived in settled villages, especially in along the Obul and in the south Charnean grasslands, where they established agriculture and practiced pastoralism. The fruits of these labors would be collected by the Imuhagh tribes which remained nomadic, and served as a more direct and reliable source of food, material and wealth than the vassal states and occupied foreign peoples such as the Zarma or Gharbaic nations under Charnean rule. Over time the slave population adopted the Tamashek language and many aspects of the Imuhagh culture which had enslaved them, while retaining some mixed vestiges of their mother cultures, often confused and fragmentary due to the heterogenous cultural backgrounds introduced into the slave caste communities. As they began to homogenize into a new culture and partially assimilate into the Imuhagh world, these Iklan would be recognized as a unique ethnicity. Where previously the Iklan had only been a caste label denoting people in bondage living in heavily exploited sedentary communities, the Iklan were now considered a new subject nation of the Imuhagh led empire, and despite their state of subordination they would serve as one of the central components of imperial power and a counterbalance to the Zarma and Gharbaic subject peoples which remained under Charnean rule.  

Okha Dynasty

Ziwa Soumer N'Okha led the Azut rebellion and successfully raised the Okha dynasty to the throne of Charnea

Culture

Wedding Traditions

A Charnean Fantazey exhibition of horsemanship, common in traditional Imuhagh wedding celebraions

Festivals

Traditional new year celebration in Charnea includes a ritual reenactment of the Battle of Achra