Saukania
 | This article is incomplete because it is pending further input from participants, or it is a work-in-progress by one author. Please comment on this article's talk page to share your input, comments and questions. Note: To contribute to this article, you may need to seek help from the author(s) of this page. |
Confederation of the Saukanians Kuchaxa ka Saghandan | |
|---|---|
 Seal of the Confederation
| |
 Location of Saukania in Thrismari | |
| Capital and largest city | Kula |
| Official languages |
|
| 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 Sauka Saukans Saghans |
| Government | Feudal confederation under Kulanian suzerainty |
• Saghand Wushrun | Shadaghar II Ghurdalghal Farukhid |
| 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 known as the Geometric Band Culture. In the late Chalcolithic Saukania was invaded by Oskuri-speaking tribes who have remained ever since. In the 7th century the Saukan, Oskuri tribes from the southwest, expanded and conquered nearly all of the other Oskuri peoples and eventually assimilated them. The four Saukan tribes have subsequently ruled the land of Saukania, which takes its name from their people, as an intermittent religio-cultural confederation.
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.
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
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
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.
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
Prehistory (Palaeolithic - c. 4th century BC)
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, shortly before the concrete emergence of a distinctly Saukanian material culture in modern Vakhat.
Genealogical evidence suggests that the bearers of the Saukanian 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 Chalcolithic 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 proto-Saukanians. 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 Saukanian males and both Saukanian and indigenous Chalcolithic females. An alternative theory argues against a violent takeover, interpreting the genetic evidence as the result of a largely peaceful integration of a Saukanian immigrant population which for unclear reasons maintained an advantage in subsequent intermarriage events. It is thought likely that the polygynous tradition of the Saukanian male elite was already present in their 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 proto-Saukanian culture, with particular population centres growing to significant sizes on the back of both crop farming and herd pasture agriculture. It is likely that some of the proto-Saukanian arrivals took up 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 Saukanian city-states is largely unclear, it is known that sites that would become Kula, Khodan, Sardasar, and others were inhabited at this time.
Ancient history (4th century BC - 7th century AD)
With domestic records non-existent in this time, it is from neighbouring lands that the first sources on the emerging Saukanian statelets are known. The earliest surviving documentation of the Saukanians are from Shirua, dating back to the early 4th century BC. From these documents and their successors, it is understood that the ancient Saukanians were organised as early city-states, functionally independent from one another, but frequently allied by tribe. Already by this time, Acha, Dathan, Khodan, Kula, Sardasar, and Turshor are listed as among the most populous and influential states in the area, and most prominent within their respective tribes. Potentially two dozen tribes or even more are mentioned as inhabiting Saukania at around the 3rd century AD.
The best documented of these tribes by the Shiruans are the Bartari, the Kossi, 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 Sarkari. 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 Arsali; and Turshor, belonging to the Akkasi.
A warrior elite prevailed in the cities and tribes, noble clans that dominated the politics and the religious spheres of Saukanian culture. Sources describe the Saukanians 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.
Towards the end of this ancient period, records become more sparse again, and something of a 'dark age' in Saukanian history transpires before the beginning of native documentation in the later medieval period.
Feudal Saukania (7th - 15th centuries)
After the brief absence of both domestic and foreign sources, Saukanian records emerge in their own writing in the late 7th century AD. Immediately, a picture of a more cohesive and organised set of polities arises. While the Saukanians still, and as they remain, organised by city-state and local tribe, four large groupings of their kind had emerged which endure into the present day: the Arimazi, the Canthali, the Lucarani, and the Tucari. The four, known from sources as the Four Banners, were understood by Saukanians themselves to be a collective grouping of their ethnic identity, and each Saukanian considered himself to be a member of one of the Banners.
The older and more varied tribal identities continued under this system, and were themselves identified as belonging to a Banner. The Bartari, Kossi, and Saulani, mentioned by the Shiruan Miryar, for example, are known to have been grouped under the Arimazi (though in modern times their names have changed).
Though the Banners recognised each other as an effectively equal expression of Saukanian identity, this rarely amounted to alliance. The Four Banners fought one another often for control of trade, to establish colonies, and for winning renown and prestige. Just as often, the cantons that comprised each Banner would be at each others' throats for the same reasons, though on a lesser scale. In the face of a common enemy, however, a Banner could call upon all of its cantons and their cities, either for war against another Banner or against a non-Saukanian enemy.
Socially, the hierarchies that had emerged in the ancient period became more entrenched. The warrior aristocracy which consolidated power in the ancient cities wielded the same power in the cantons and the Banners themselves, dominating the political and priestly positions. A wealth class system based on land ownership prevailed underneath them, the class of clients. In all likelihood (given the value of fertile land in an arid environment), this class existed in the ancient period as well, though they are unattested. Based on their ranking in this system, men filled out different roles in the armies of the Banners. The nobility comprised the heavy cavalry, while the wealthiest orders of citizens were fielded as heavy infantry, and the poorer ranks as light infantry and skirmishers.
The Crusader War
Early modern history (15th - 18th centuries)
Modern history (18th century - present day)
Demographics
Ethnicity
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 either the West or East Saukanian languages, through common bloodline and heritage (reckoned patrilineally as per the custom of Saukanian clans), and, to a lesser extent, participation in their polytheistic and animistic religion. Observation of Saghandadret, the Saukanian code of honour and body of customary laws, is arguably most essential to Saukanian ethnic identity.
To a large extent, Saukanians identify more with the historical sub-region of Saukania to which their clan is native, with Saukanian being more of a geopolitical identity than consistently ethnic. Though all these Saukanian regions have broader customs in common, such as the Saghandadret, they differ significantly enough in local customs and practises to give rise to entrenched regional identities.
More commonly expressed than ethnic identity in Saukanian history into the present day has been the distinction between a settled and nomadic lifestyle. Both the desert and the shrublands regions of Saukania are home to semi-nomadic pastoralists who either never settled or abandoned settled lifestyles in favour of regular migration between oases to graze their herds. These populations are still considered Saukanian, and speak Saukanian languages (albeit in their own localised dialects), but, as with the settled groups, identify much more strongly with their own clans and tribal associations.
Language
Religion
Religion in Saukania (2020 est.)
Major cities
Government and politics
Kula suzerainty
Administrative divisions
Military
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
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.
Women in Saukanian culture
The Saukanians are a strictly patriarchal culture, led by men in domestic and public life. Women are expected to be obedient without question, as control over women is essential to male honour and the perception of a man and his family's ability to protect women from harm. Female loyalty is first to her father and then to her husband, whose family she joins when she marries him. This transfer of allegiance is total, and her father ceases to have any legal control or say in her affairs once she has been given to her husband, who becomes her legal guardian and representative. Women then are thought of essentially as extensions of the male and his honour, and they do not have an independent existence or status of their own.
Marriage for women is the most significant event of their lives, not only for this transfer of allegiance and belonging, but also as it marks the proper transition between girl and woman. Marriage to a man in the same hal is prohibited as incest, though marriage to a man of the same dast is both accepted and preferred. Therefore even though these marriages are arranged, it is common that a husband and wife know each other prior to marriage. Marriage between different dastya however is common for the sake of forging alliances, mending rifts, or for purely economic purposes. Once married, a woman's job is largely the continuation of the duties she had as a girl: working with the other women of the family to maintain the domestic space and run the household. Polygyny is common for high ranking males, and so women may have a number of co-wives with whom to share duties. Typically it is the first-wed of these wives who has seniority. Nevertheless, status for women does not come from the performance of their work but rather their liberation from it. High-status women are tended to by servants, a lifestyle that women tend to softly pressure their husbands to provide for them.
Female honour demands their obedience and their absolute chastity. Even the suggestion of infidelity is intolerable to a family. Women are jealously guarded by their men against the very real threat of their kidnap or sexual assault. This often means they are kept indoors when possible, and conceal their bodies when out of doors, both to disguise their identity and their physical appearance, as beautiful women are far more likely to be targeted for abduction. Noblewomen may spend much of their lives inside lavish apartments reserved solely for their sex, their comfort and luxury envied by lower class women.
In all other areas of life, women are represented by their male guardians. Women may sit in the councils called by a hal or a dast, but only to listen, and may not speak in their own voice. Often, however, a man may speak issues that his wife has discussed with him in private, though he will not reveal if this is so. Women then are capable of exercising a more indirect but significant influence on clan affairs if they have the trust and confidence of their husbands, which is gained by serving him faithfully. Beyond then the sufficiency of the fact that, being raised in their own culture, Saukanian women defend and revere the principles of the Saghandadrat that demands their obedience, their patriarchal culture affords them a significant degree of soft power that they would lack if permitted to express their views openly.
Mothers are instrumental in the raising of children with the cultural qualities and virtues they themselves grew up with, inspiring their sons with examples of their ancestors and of legend to be brave, strong, and protective of his female kin, and educating their daughters to be skilled in the running of the household and faithfully obedient to their husbands. A woman with many sons earns greater prestige than those who bear daughters, as more sons means a stronger family. Age also brings respect and authority to a woman, both from other women and from men.
Code of honour
Saghandadret is the male-centred code of conduct and honour that is regarded as essential to Saukanian identity, and its keeping is seen to separate the Saukanians from foreigners. Meaning approximately "custom of the Saukanians", it is an uncodified assembly of various virtues, responsibilities, and concepts that are components of the broader Saukanian ideal of honour.
Honour for Saukanians is not the romantic chivalric ideal, but the concern for 'face', reputation, and status, suited to its history of feudal and clan warfare. A man and his family have honour when none dare to cheat, insult, or attack him, and if any do dare, he keeps or restores his honour by pursuing vengeance without delay.
Vengeance is core to Saghandadret. Blood must be paid with blood, and a man must defend his land, wealth, and women to keep his honour. Feuds between rival clans are common, especially in more remote areas where access to non-violent arbitration is both unsought and unavailable. Brothers, fathers and sons, uncles and nephews, and patrilineal cousins all take up the feud together, and unite around an injured party. Feeding the cycle of retaliation is that a man and his family may gain honour through the perpetration of these attacks to begin with, and proving superiority over an enemy group through the theft of their livestock or women. Honour is a finite currency, and gaining it almost certainly means someone else has lost theirs.
Sanghandadret however provides for hospitality, a reflection of the ancient days in the desert where turning away a stranger could mean their death. Saukanians pride themselves on their hospitality, and are gravely insulted if it is rejected. Saukanian legends are known for their theme of the virtuous host who dies to protect a guest he hardly knows from harm, demonstrating the centrality of hospitality to their expected conduct. Many stories of their gods likewise involve them taking a disguise as a poor traveller, testing the piety of the people.
The code of honour calls upon Saukanian men to be brave and zealous in the discharging of their duties for their clan, even in the face of death, and commands women to be faithful and obedient, to help their fathers and brothers in keeping the honour of their family and not to compromise it with infidelity or immodest display of the body.
Culture
Clothing
Architecture and art
Music
Cuisine
Sport
Currently, there are 921 pages associated to Anteria | |||||||||||
| History |
| ||||||||||
| Legal status of | |||||||||||
| Culture | |||||||||||
| Society and Demographics | |||||||||||
| Economics | |||||||||||
| Geography |
| ||||||||||
| Government | |||||||||||
| International organizations |
| ||||||||||
| Sporting Unions | |||||||||||
