Saukania

Confederation of the Saukanians Kuchaxa ka Saghandan
Seal of the Confederation
Location of Saukania in Thrismari
Capital and largest city	Kula
Official languages	Eastern Saukanian (Kulanian) Western Saukanian (Khodanian)
Ethnic groups (2020)	93.6% Saukanian 6.4% Other
Religion (2020)	79.4% Saukanian paganism 10.2% Christianity 6.6% Islam 3.8% Other
Demonym(s)	Saukanian Saukan
Government	Confederation
Legislature	Confederation Council
Area
• Total	1,116,863 km2 (431,223 sq mi)
Population
• 2020 estimate	27,214,000
• Density	24.3/km2 (62.9/sq mi)
Date format	dd-mm-yyyy
Driving side	left
Internet TLD	.sg

Saukania, formally the Saukanian Confederation or the Four Nation Alliance, is a country in northern and western Thrismari. A landlocked country, most of Saukania lies within the Western Thrismari Desert of northern Saukania, bounded on the south-western side by a mountainous region. Saukania shares borders with Bezuria and Shirua to its south and south-west, completely and partially through the mountains respectively. Saukania's northern neighbour is Sarocca. At 1,116,863 million square kilometers, Saukania is one of the largest countries in Thrismari, though very sparsely populated. Its population of 27.2 million people live primarily in the fertile river valleys of the south-western mountains or in the river-fed oases throughout the arid landscape. The seat of the confederation is Kula.

Human habitation in Saukania began in the Palaeolithic. During the Neolithic and Chalcolithic, Saukania was home to an indigenous archaeological culture, replaced by Oskuri-speaking invaders. The Saukan tribes slowly conquered and assimilated their rival Oskuri kinsmen over the early 1st millennium, forming a short-lived domain based in the mountains. With the collapse of this power, four rival Saukan federations established themselves as successor states, periodically united but often at odds.

The modern confederation established itself in the 18th and 19th centuries in response to significant foreign pressure and the risk of influence, due to the competing colonial interests of Nyalan and Riamo. Attempts by outsiders to conquer or establish authority over the Saukanians were met with a fierce resistance that has become the reputation and national character of the tribes. The government of the confederation is comprised of a council of leaders of the four tribes, and is relatively decentralised, with the constituent polities possessing their own governments and laws.

Saukania is a heavily agrarian country with a largely rural population. Organised at the basic level into city-states, urban centres are the location of industry. Exports of fruits, vegetables, and other cash crops are a major source of revenue, as is the export of material goods such as textiles, with Saukanian carpets being famed. Tourism to Saukania is common for its historic archaeological sites and unique, traditional culture, expressed through its cuisine, art, music, and entertainment.

Name

Main article: Names of the Saukanians

Saukania takes its name from the Saukan or Saukani, an ancient Oskuri people who established their control over the region in the 7th and 8th centuries. The demonym 'Saukanian' in turn comes from Saukania. Proposed etymologies for Saukan itself are found in ancient legend and myth, though several accounts exist. Among the most widely accepted by the Saukanians themselves is a patronymic founding ancestor by the name of Saukan, son of the Oskuri war god.

A common pre-Saukan Oskuri ethnonym for the territory of modern Saukania is Laxadia, coming from the Laxad River which flows from the mountains.

Due to the historically disunited nature of the Saukanians, the names of constituent tribes of their nation have often been applied by foreigners to the entire group. Prior to Saukan rule over the rest of the Oskuri, these exonyms were far more varied, as different Oskuri tribes and peoples interacted with neighbouring communities. The Saukan are recorded in one Shiruan source prior to the 7th century, proving their existence at least as early as the 2nd century AD, and describing them as a warlike mountain people who regularly made war on their neighbours.

Geography and climate

Main article: Geography of Saukania

The village of Isuk in the uplands of Sakbia.

At just over 1.1 million square kilometers, Saukania is one of the largest countries in Thrismari by total land area. It is however sparsely populated. Landlocked, and comprised entirely of desert and xeric shrubland, it is a very arid region of Thrismari, with most of its territory located in the vast West Thrismari Desert, locally called the Shana Amaxina.

The bulk of Saukania's population of [NUMBER] lives in the oasis-rich regions of the south and along the fertile springs of the banks of the Laxad and Jagartes rivers. The desert grows more inhospitable trending from south to north, with a belt of rock and gravel desert giving way to open sand dunes. Though many settlements are found in this northern expanse, few are populated by more than a few thousand people at a time, with a significant proportion of these being semi-nomadic peoples moving from oasis to oasis.

The southwest region of Ghuran or Ghoran is quite fertile, comprised of a number of large river valleys nestled near the base of the Kedash, a mountain range forming a curved shield along the southwest border with Shirua and Bezuria. The four largest of these valleys — Ghar, Karshan, Sakbia, and Takhren — boast some of the largest populations in Saukania. This region forms the highest elevation in Saukania, inhabited by a small population of higher altitude mountain-dwelling pastoralists and a greater number of rural and urban peoples further down. The rest of Saukania trends to flatland, though with lower elevation to the southeast, towards which the rivers of Saukania flow.

A photo of the Western Thrismari Desert at sunrise

The semi-arid belt of shrubland in the south, where the capital of Kula resides, is also more fertile, receiving greater amounts of rain than the desert, and is capable of supporting a larger number of people. Irrigation here has been far more extensive than anywhere else, save for the Ghuranian valleys, and the two regions combined are near enough the totality of all crop-producing land in Saukania. The aridity of the rest of the country leaves it suitable only for pasture of herd animals.

The Laxad and Jagartes, commonly nicknamed the Saukanian Arteries, empty into Arugal, the Saukanian name for the Khizuz Sea, the inland body of water shared with neighbouring Encessia. They are fed by mountains meltwater (the Laxad from the Kedash, and the Jagartes from Sarocca), flowing more in the summer and reducing in winter. Many fertile oases are found along their banks, and this region has had as much claim as the south to significance, with the ancient and powerful principality of Sardasar being located on the west bank of the Jagartes in the region of Vakhat. Of the two rivers, the Laxad is the largest, fed not only from its direct source in the northern Kedash but being joined (at least in summer) by the rivers of the Ghuranian valleys.

History

Main article: History of Saukania

Prehistory (Palaeolithic - c. 4th century BC)

Main article: Prehistory of Saukania

Anatomically modern Homo sapiens are known to have arrived in what is now Saukania as recently as 32,000 years ago, with inconclusive evidence of earlier H. sapien and other Homo genus habitation stretching back many more thousands of years. Most of this evidence comes from southern Saukania, as the sand dunes of the northern desert leave little trace. Agriculture is thought to have begun at a limited level around 8,000 years ago, giving rise to sedentary communities who eventually developed metallurgy, producing copper and later bronze artefacts, known as the Geometric Band Culture (GBC).

Genealogical evidence suggests that the bearers of the Oskuri material culture and language were an immigrant population who arrived in the area c. 2500 BC and established themselves as the dominant group over the existing GBC population. This influx of people may have involved a significant degree of violence, as indigenous Y-DNA almost completely disappears in the subsequent centuries, replaced by the male lineage of the Oskuri. The mt-DNA of both ancient and modern Saukanians is highly varied, including markers that immigrated to the region around the same time as the corresponding male lineages, indicating interbreeding between Oskuri males and both Oskuri and indigenous GBC females. An alternative theory argues against a violent takeover, interpreting the genetic evidence as the result of a largely peaceful integration of an Oskuri immigrant population which for unclear reasons maintained an advantage in subsequent intermarriage events. It is likely that the polygynous tradition of the Saukanian male elite was already present in Oskuri culture at this time, with a small number of high status males monopolising access to females, at a ratio potentially as high as 10:1.

Sedentary life continued as previously established under the Oskuri, with particular population centres growing to significant sizes on the back of both crop farming and herd pastoralism. It is likely that many of the Oskuri arrivals practised nomadic pastoralism around this time, albeit impossible to prove with any certainty, due to the limitation of their oral histories and the lack of material evidence.

Though the exact founding date of what would become the Oskuri city-states is largely unclear, it is known that sites that would become Kula, Khodan, Sardasar, and many others were inhabited at this time.

Ancient history (4th century BC - 7th century AD)

Main article: Ancient history of Saukania

With domestic records extremely limited in this time, it is from neighbouring lands that the first sources on the Oskuri are known. The earliest surviving documentations are from Shirua, dating back to the early 4th century BC. From these documents and their successors, it is understood that the Oskuri were organised as city-states belonging to independent tribes, comprised of several cantons with a number of cities each, a model that has persisted for their whole history.

The best documented of these tribes by the Shiruans are the Bartari, the Kossines, and the Saulani, closest to the Shiruan Miryar Confederation, which was often attacked by raiders from these tribes. At other times however, diplomatic relations of a kind were clearly established, as the Miryar period contains other documents about tribes and cities more distant from their territory, including a city conclusively identified with Kula, a town of the Sarkares. Other sites of importance known to have existed at this time include Acha, largest town and capital of the Saulani; Khodan, a town of the Arsalines; and Turshor, belonging to the Akkasenes. The Saukan themselves are also documented by the Shiruan records in the early 1st millennium.

A warrior elite prevailed in the cities and tribes, noble clans that dominated the politics and the religious spheres of Oskuri culture. Sources describe the Oskuri as a "bellicose and rude race", conditioned by the desert lifestyle into a hardy and tough people. They are noted as engaging in fierce internecine wars over land and livestock, with a small and sparse population that gathers only to celebrate shared festivals or to form an army.

At the end of this period, a second wave of migration transpired. The Saukan and tribes closely connected to them began a series of military migrations and conquests in the 7th century, conquering rival Oskuri tribes, and eventually assimilating them under an enlarged Saukan identity.

Feudal Saukania (7th - 15th centuries)

Main article: Saukanian Medieval Age

The Saukan migration of the 7th and 8th centuries changed the political landscape of Saukania. Despite the spontaneity and apparent cohesion of the invasion, no permanent unifying polity emerged from this great conquest, and the Saukan identity itself was lost as it became transferred not only to their initial allies but the peoples they conquered. The tribal names of the conquered Oskuri survived as regional units, cantons, and tribes that now branded themselves as Saukan as opposed to Oskuri.

A result of the conquest was the formation of four dominant tribes: the Arimazi, the Kanthali, the Lukarani, and the Tukari. By the 10th century, a handful of smaller tribes that had remained separate from the four began to be counted within it as cantons. These tribes acted as confederations in their own right, as the leaders of cantons and their cities could gather to elect a supreme commander in times of war. When faced with significant foreign adversaries, all four tribes, which became known as the Four Banners, could unite under a single leader for the sake of common defence.

More often than not, however, the Saukan tribes fought each other in competition for the rare oases of fertile land to support their population, and control over the trade routes that passed through them.

Early modern history (15th - 18th centuries)

Main article: Early modern period of Saukania

Modern history (18th century - present day)

Main article: Contemporary Saukania

Demographics

Main article: Demographics of Saukania

Ethnicity

Main articles: Ethnic groups in Saukania, Saukanians, and Nomads in Saukania

Ethnic Saukanians are the largest group in Saukania, representing over 93% of its total population. Minority groups include Shiruans, Saroccans, and Bezurians. Ethnic Saukanians identify themselves and one another by use of the Saukanian language, through common bloodline and heritage, and, to a lesser extent, participation in their polytheistic and animistic religion.

Saukanian identity is divided, however, as members of its four constituent polities identify more strongly with their regional identity. There are cultural and linguistic differences between the Arimazi, Kanthali, Lukarani, and Tukari, though they are conscious of and accept a shared Saukanian heritage. Nevertheless, some observers have considered the four groups to be ethnic groups in their own right.

Language

Main article: Saukanian language

Religion

Main article: Religion in Saukania

Religion in Saukania (2020 est.)

  Saukanian paganism (79.4%)

  Christianity (10.2%)

  Islam (6.6%)

  Other (3.8%)

Major cities

Main article: List of major cities in Saukania

Government and politics

Main article: Government of Saukania

Administrative divisions

Main article: Administrative divisions of Saukania

Military

Main article: The Saukanian Army

Society

Saukanian society is highly conservative, as Saukanians are suspicious of foreigners and foreign ideas. Tradition is central to their religion and way of life. The traditional code of conduct, Saghandadret, is fundamental to Saukanian society. Its basic tenets include hospitality for guests, bravery for men, modesty for women, and the necessity of vengeance. Family is a pillar of their society, and Saukanians have a great concern for personal and familial honour. They are strictly patriarchal, and women adhere to an ideal of seclusion called karsaiva.

Rural and urban Saukania differ in their particular customs, as rural Saukanians live a harder life in the desert, steppe, and mountains closer to their traditional roots. Customs also vary between regions of Saukania. Sedentary Saukanians again differ from nomads, whose pastoralist lifestyle herding sheep, goats, and camels from oasis to oasis has resulted in a unique expression of Saukanian identity.

Social structure

Main articles: Social structure and class in Saukania and Walantacha

Family and kinship

Ancestry is supremely important to Saukanian identity, and intergenerational extended families and clans are the backbone of the broader social relationship between individual Saukanians. The Saukanian family dynamic is comprised of three hierarchical units: the dast, the hal, and the oska. The oska is the nuclear household comprised of a male head, his wife or wives, and all their unmarried children. Sons found their own oska when they marry, and daughters join the newly founded household of their husbands. Related oskanan form a hal, the basic patriarchal family unit. Oskanan associate in a hal based on patrilineal descent from the ancestor of the last four generations. The hal is led by the patriarch of the skut oska, the first household. This first household is determined by the line of descent from eldest son to eldest son from the founding ancestor.

Encompassing any number of halan is the dast. The dast is an even broader extended unit, approximate to a clan. Traditionally, a dast is reckoned from the ancestor of the three generations preceding the founder of the constituent halan, though this can vary from region to region. Each of these units is named for the founding ancestor, e.g, the Targan Oska, the Sorosh Hal, and the Khuran Dast. Among noble houses, a clan name may just as likely be taken from the most significant recent ancestor, rather than strictly following the traditional formation, as is more common in rural areas and among the hill men of the southwest. As with the hal, the dast is led by the skut oska of the skut hal, forming an overall clan chief. Often, however, even in nobility and royalty, the influence of the head of the dast is rarely felt beyond his own hal, and all subordinate units have a strong degree of autonomy.

The right of the head of an oska, a hal, and to a lesser extent a dast, to govern his relatives as he sees fit, is effectively unchallenged by state law. A remnant of the tribal system that supported the very legitimacy of the emerging noble clans, the right of the patriarch is considered not just social, but religious. Each family maintains a sacred hearth in the primary home of the hal, devoted to the ancestors, and the male head of the family officiates as its priest, performing rites that are the secret knowledge of each clan. No authority or precedent exists which can revoke this authority and responsibility, and no laklan has ever dared try.

Though essentially collectivist in terms of its genealogical structure, Saukanians strive a great deal towards self-sufficiency at the basic unit, that of the adult man himself, and his oska. A soft form of segmentary opposition prevails in clan politics. These units behave autonomously at their lowest levels in competition with other segments at the same level. However, if one oska has an issue with an oska from a different hal, it becomes a problem for the whole hal, and the same is true for the halan and the dastya. Nevertheless, they are not completely detached from one another in the absence of external opposition, as they were in their completely tribal days. Oskanan of the same hal often live in close proximity to one another, and may regularly associate.

Class and status

The old tribal system of the Sauka was replaced in the unwritten depths of antiquity with the emergence of the city-states that have defined Saukanian culture for centuries. With these city-states came entrenched social hierarchies centred on clan loyalty and the owning of land. These hierarchies continue into the present day in a system which the Saukanians call the walantacha.

Dominating this hierarchy is the class of hereditary warrior nobility, the kishenya. The kishenya are divided into sub-groups, an upper and a lower nobility. In addition to a history of elite warfare, the chief religious offices of the Saukanian city-states are held by these nobles. At the head of the kishenya of every city-state is the royal family. The patriarch of this family is the laklan, the lord of the city-state and first-among-equals of the kishenya. This title is often translated as a prince (as in principality) or as king.

Beneath the kishenya, a class of land-owning clients who filled out the Sauka armies, lower government, bureaucracies, lower religious offices, and artisan craft industries served as the will of the nobles. This second rank are called the lewalan.

Finally, underneath the lewalan, are the tutallya, the free labourers whose holdings were minimal and who typically worked for their income. A clear distinction has always been made between this lower class and slaves, who are unfree. Lewalan have always had the privilege of free assemblies to make their voices known on matters of importance, and to greater or lesser degrees are consulted in the running of government.

Mobility in this class sytem is possible, with tutallya rising to become lewalan and, though rarer, lewalan distinguishing themselves and being made into kishenya. The distance between the classes is bridged by the patronage system, a reciprocal exchange network that is as essential to the walantacha as the classes themselves. The lewalan seek the patronage of the kishenya for their business and political ventures or securing beneficial marriages, and repay their patron with public displays of allegiance to reflect the status and power of their noble benefactor. Using the resources he gains from this relationship, a lewal may serve as patron to a number of lower-ranking lewalan or directly to tutallya.

Culture

Main article: Culture of Saukania

Clothing

Main article: Clothing in Saukania

Architecture and art

Main articles: Architecture of Saukania and Art in Saukania

Music

Main article: Music of Saukania

Cuisine

Main article: Cuisine of Saukania

Sport

Main article: Sport in Saukania