Ninva

State of the Ninva ⴰⴷⴷⴰⵓⵍⴰⵜ ⵏ ⵏⵉⵏⵠⴰ Addawlat n Ninva (Tamashek)
Flag
Capital and largest city	Agnannet
Official languages	Tamashek
Recognised national languages	Randeshret Zarma Tedaga
Recognised regional languages	Tamahaq Tawellemmet Dazaga Darja Tichkalloɣat
Ethnic groups (2020)	40.2% Tenerians 19.4% Tebu 17.4% Zarma 15.3% Deshrians 4.1% Gharibs 2.4% Tichkans 1.2% Other
Demonym(s)	Ninvite
Government	Unitary dominant party constitutional monarchy
• Tamenokalt	Amina Harakkat ult Tanermat N'Okha
• Premier	Marus Ibiza ag Haqar
Legislature	Agraw Imgharan
Population
• 2022 estimate	50,023,983
• 2020 census	48,995,572
GDP (PPP)	estimate
• Total	$1,109.5 billion
• Per capita	$22,179.45
Gini	29.4 low
HDI	0.801 very high
Currency	Ninvite Azref (₳)
Date format	mm.dd.yyyy
Driving side	right

The State of the Ninva (Tamashek: ⴰⴷⴷⴰⵓⵍⴰⵜ ⵏ ⵏⵉⵏⵠⴰ, Addawlat n Ninva) is a landlocked country in central Scipia bordered by Aɣmatia to the northwest, Tyreseia to the north, Alanahr, Vardana and Fahran to the northeast, Kembesa and M'biruna to the east, and Itayana to the south. Geographically, country consists of the arid expanse of the eponymous Ninva Desert, the Agala highlands in the far south of the country, and a transitional semi-arid sahel belt stretching between the two. The Ninva extends halfway across the continent of Scipia from east to west, commanding many of the overland routes of travel between the densely populated southern Scipia and the wealthy Periclean states to the north. Ninvite government is a coalition of the region's four major ethnic groups, the Tenerians, the Tebu, the Zarma and the Deshrians, joined into a unitary state under the conditional rule of the Okha Clan, one of many dynasties that has governed the State of the Ninva and its numerous successor states. The Agraw Imgharan, the Ninvite legislature, allows political participation under a dominant party system by a variety of political parties representing various majority and minority ethnic and religious groups in the country. However, the Assembly of Progress and Development (Tamashek: ⴰⵍⵥⴰⵎⴰⵖⴰⵜ ⴼⴰⵍ ⴽⴰⵔⵔⴰⵙ ⵏ ⴻⴼⴻⵙ, Alzamaɣat fal Karras n Efes or AKE) has dominated the national elections and the Agraw Imgharan since 1982, limiting the role of the multi-party system in the de facto governance of the country.

The Ninvite economic model is best defined as developmental state capitalism, with strong and frequent intervention by the government in the economy both in a regulatory capacity and as a directive force. Ninva possesses a diversified middle income economy based on resource extraction, refining, manufacturing and a developing service sector. The nation experienced a period of rapid economic growth coinciding with a demographic explosion in the mid to late 20th century known as the 2nd Stride, but growth rates declined thereafter due to economic and political factors and the Ninva has since stabilized with only a low-moderate rate of population growth and cooling economy. The Okha government, installed in 2013, has perused a policy of renewed investment in the economy and has been seeking to develop the service sector of the Ninvite economy to limited success as part of the so-called 3rd Stride. Because the country is landlocked, the Ninvite economy relies instead on internal and external land routes developed with an extensive rail network traversing most of eastern and central Scipia across many national borders. The Ninva relies on these rail links to access shipping lanes via ports in neighboring countries in order to interact with the broader global economy in any significant way.

Sitting at the geographic confluence of northern, eastern and southern Scipia, the Ninva has always been a crossroads for trade and a hinterland region at the edge of many empires throughout history. Many of the important regional cities within the Ninva such as Agnannet, Azut, and Hamath, are all ancient urban centers that prospered as hubs for merchant caravans and trading posts frequented by the indigenous nomadic peoples of the desert, the ancestors of today's Tenerians and Tebus. Long overlooked by the Latin Empire and later the Almurid Caliphate, in the 14th century the Ninva desert became the seat of one of the greatest empires in Scipian history, the Charnean Empire. Under Ihemod the Inheritor and his heirs, the Tenerian Charneans ruled over roughly half of the Scipian continent for over a century from their capital at Agnannet. Although this zenith of Ninvite power on the world stage was relatively short lived compared to its predecessors, it revolutionized the backwater region of the continent. The Charnean rump state, the Awakari Empire, continued to rule the arid center of the continent for centuries after its predecessor's fall and eventually transitioned into the early State of the Ninva, sometimes called the Third Tenerian State, in the mid 19th century amid a wave of modernization and reform, the 1st Stride. In many ways, the Ninva has remained the outer frontier of the many polities surrounding it, while in others the modern state has rivaled its Ihemodian antecedents in its local prominence on the Scipian continent.

Etymology

The State of the Ninva takes its name from the Ninva Desert, itself a name of unknown origin. The name first appears in Deshrian inscriptions, describing the barren region to the west as Nishwa. It was adopted as the name for the new nation during the modernization and reform process of the old Akawari Empire, itself a rump state of medieval Charnea. Awakar is the name of a sandy region of the Tenere known as the Erg Awakar, itself a sub-region of the Ninva desert. The name Charnea has equally uncertain origins. The prevailing theory posits the name comes from Kel Kaharna, the united Tenerian tribal confederation that formed the Charnean Empire from its conquests beyond the Ninva.

Demographics

Historical population
Year	Pop.	±%
23	805,006	—
651	908,261	+12.8%
1009	920,675	+1.4%
1515	1,323,082	+43.7%
1603	1,736,529	+31.2%
1698	2,284,922	+31.6%
1750	2,714,374	+18.8%
1805	3,044,513	+12.2%
1820	3,034,818	−0.3%
1840	3,238,890	+6.7%
1860	3,676,020	+13.5%
1880	4,231,048	+15.1%
1900	4,727,781	+11.7%
1920	7,102,411	+50.2%
1940	10,696,378	+50.6%
1960	19,648,367	+83.7%
1980	24,004,635	+22.2%
2000	38,307,623	+59.6%
2020	48,995,572	+27.9%

The population of the Ninva Desert grew very slowly over the centuries if at all due to the wide dispersal of the largely nomadic population, impossibility of agriculture in most of the region and general hostility of the environment inhibiting growth of the human population in the desert. In the early 19th century, a population decline was recorded between censuses for the first and only time in the history of the region, and the total population increased by only one quarter by the end of the century. Two events in the late 19th century led to a gradual rise in the rate of population growth, these being the reformation of the Awakari Empire into the State of the Ninva in 1862 and the discovery of gold in the Agala highlands in 1877. Mining and later oil extraction fueled the economic growth and urbanization in the Ninva, producing numerous boomtowns around the mining sector deep in the desert, connected to the outside world by rail lines and in 1898, the Great Scipian Railway. It was the 20th century that saw a major explosion in the Ninvite population, this time preceded by the adoption of highly interventionist state capitalist development model by the Ninvite regime in the 1920s and the subsequent development of the manufacturing sector in the great cities of the desert. The latter half of the 20th century in particular saw meteoric population growth which the economy and the government struggled to control, resulting in crisis in the late 1970s and early 1980s provoked in part by external factors such as the upheaval brought by the Ninvite War. Although the rate of population growth has cooled off significantly in recent decades, the Ninva nevertheless has grown by approximately 44 million people or an increase of over 1000% since 1900. This dramatic demographic explosion has all but revolutionized every aspect of life in the Ninva and permanently changed the character of the country.

The question of ethnicity in the Ninva can at times be complicated. As the crossroads of the Scipian continent, the region of the Ninva Desert is extremely diverse both religiously and culturally, remaining divided on ethnoreligious grounds into the modern day. Even whole ethnic groups such as the Tenerians are themselves amalgamations of many different sub-groups and peoples, united by historical circumstance and later a common language and cultural touchstones based on the realities of desert life. The Kel Tenere are the dominant ethnic group of the Ninva, making up 40% of the population at 20 million. The Tebu are the second largest group, with just under 10 million persons, and are a closely related desert dwelling pastoralist group with historical ties to the Tenerians and commonalities of culture yet distinct due to an unrelated language. Zarma inhabit the south of the country, having historically formed sedentary states in the Agala highlands and the sahel, along with the ancient Deshrians who inhabited the eastern Ninva and dispersed into the desert, persisting in oasis towns within the Ninva long after the fall of their bronze age civilization. These four ethnic groups, while less than half of the total number of ethnicities present in the Ninva, make up over 90% of the Ninvite population. Part of the reason for this is the two centuries old peace treaty known as the Rastagla between these four ethnicities and their many respective clans and tribes, which was reaffirmed upon the foundation of the State of the Ninva, the basis of which was cooperation between the elites of the big four ethnic groups within the state, previously dominated only by Tenerian clans. At the time, what are now the big four ethnicities made up less than 40% of the population of the whole region, but experienced demographic expansion and assimilated many outside groups as a result of these groups exaggerated political representation in the State of the Ninva as a result of the Rastagla. Only certain minority groups, specifically the Tichkans and the Gharibs of the Ninva, have remained in numbers exceeding 1 million persons, having partially benefitted from the population expansion to a lesser extent than the big four. Many other native groups, as well as immigrant groups, exist in the State of the Ninva numbering in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

The Ninva was for most of its history an extremely undeveloped and low density region inhabited mainly by small tribes made up of a few family groups migrating across the desert from place to place, seldom staying in one place for longer than a few months. The demographic exposition of the so called Three Strides turned this dynamic on its head, leading to a sweeping urbanization of the Ninvite population into densely populated boomtowns in the late 19th and early 20th century, urban centers which were transformed into industrial centers of increasingly complex manufacturing as the 20th century went on. The process of urbanization was catalyzed by subsistence pastoralists of the desert generally living very hard lives and pursuing unlucrative careers migrating into the nascent urban centers lured by the promise of great wealth of the gold rush and other mining expansion, and later the promise of a better life and a steady factory job compared to the relative poverty and uncertainty of survival experienced by pre-modern desert pastoralists. The further these cities developed, the more the outlying tribes migrated into them, promoting their growth and demographic explosion further, until even groups beyond the Ninva were drawn to the promise of prosperity associated with the Ninvite cities. Today, the State of the Ninva has a population that is over 95% urban. Since the decline of mining towns and increasingly concentrated industrial centers, the population has likewise become increasingly consolidated in a small number of large cities, with the top ten cities accounting for roughly 80% of the entire country's population.

Religion

Religion in the Ninva
Religion			Percent
Tamddaism			71%
Neterism			8%
Amanist Judaism			2%
Timal Ibaran			12%
Other			2%

Sitting at the confluence of the Scipian interior, the Ninva is and has always been a religiously diverse place. The oldest faith of the Ninva is Neterism, the modern from of the ancient Deshrian pantheon. Temples of the Neterist religion are among the oldest surviving manmade structuctures in the Ninva, and indeed the entire world. The earliest recognizable form of this faith can be dated to aproximately 3,200 BCE, and has been observed continuously since that time in various forms and variations evolving through the centuries, featuring altered or expanded versions of the same original pantheon and sets of customs. An estimated 4 million Neterists continue to uphold this tradition, the overwhelming majority of these being ethnic Deshrians. Judaism first appeared in the lands of the Ninva some time during the reign of Queen Kaharna in the 5th century BCE, in the form of exiles fleeing the land today known as Yisrael. According to surviving jewish texts from this era, the exiles were welcomed by the Amazigh Queen and granted refuge in the desert cities of old Tamazgha. These Ninvite jews would, over the ensuing millenia, develop into the Amanist sect of Judaism which is today observed by over 1 million Ninvites, many of them ethnic Tichkans or Tenerians and many of them concentrated in the city of Tiernyah in eastern Ninva. A comparatively much more recent religious introduction but one no less relevant than its ancient counterparts was the first appearance of the White Path, a Mutulese religion propagated in the Ninva by a semi-mythical figure known as the Desert Oracle in the 17th century. The White Path, or Timal Ibaran as it is known in Tamashek, experienced a rapid increase in popularity, secretly encouraged by the rulers of the Awakari Empire and the shadowy Tenerian cult known as the 300 Arms, today becoming the second largest religion in the Ninva and fostering close cultural ties to otherwise distant Mutul. The final, largest and newest Ninvite religion is Tamddaism, the "Vulture Cult", seeing its origin in the early 18th century as a syncretic religious movement of White Pilgrim Tenerians. Tamddaism combines cosmological, philosophical and theological aspects primarily of the White path and Neterism, but also influences of Amanist Judaism and Azdarin and even ancient Tenerian folk religion. It grew extremely quickly amongst the Tenerian and later Tebu and Zarma populations in the Ninva, rapidly becoming the majority religion by the end of the 18th and begining of the 19th centuries and retaining this title to the present day, having even converted portions of the Tichkan and Deshrian populace from their traditional ethnic religions.