Bastani Kingdom
The Bastani Kingdom was an early Ascesian and late Sagan polity, extant in the first millennium BCE in the Serrinean peninsula, in the area now largely the eastern part of the Federated Eastern Sarbanates and the Bizar peninsula of Busar. The name Bastani is taken from Humâyuni bāstān, “ancient”, a native term in reference to their antiquity; the Bastani considered themselves to be Sagans, and the state referred to itself as Ügün, of unclear etymology.
The Bastani represented a continuation and evolution of the Sagan civilisation, which had colonised Serrinea; they appeared to have originated in the Sanjar river valley before spreading across the Bay of Tire to a larger and more permanent foothold in the vicinity of Korit, in present-day Busar, based on the presence there of a large temple complex (the first excavations in the vicinity being as early as 1954) and substantial evidence of land cultivation in the area. Metallurgically competent and agriculturally abundant, they had developed a considerable seafaring capacity by at least the middle seventh century BCE, and the Kingdom formed a significant part (both in tonnage and trade-weighted value) of seaborne commerce around the Medius Sea rim in this period. The city of Tire – probably founded by the Bastani around 600 BCE – became a key seaport and trading centre in the region, even before its more defensible position saw it become the Bastani capital at some point before 430 BCE.
At the height of their capabilities the Bastani had established trading relations, and in substantial areas their own settlements, along the north-western Lestrian coast in the area around the Strait of Calcar, as well as in the west of present-day Tisceron and in the western Median Islands. Tebelin (floruit 480 BCE), one of the few Bastani kings whose name is known with any certainty, is recorded as mounting an expedition to settle the island of Yarin, in the process driving almost to extinction the small indigenous population which survived following the Hilima Eruption of 855 BCE; little is known of the indigenes beyond their small numbers, their association with the Neolithic post-Dranganes culture, and an attested practice of anthropophagy.
The Bastani Kingdom probably began to enter its terminal decline around the middle fourth century BCE, and had effectively ceased to exist by 320 BCE, breaking up into a number of smaller states; its mainland territories in Ascesia remained in foment for almost half a century before the emergence of a loosely-organised confederacy centred on the Sanjar valley. This entity ultimately recaptured Tire, which had effectively been an independent city-state since the fall of Bastani, and established the first Tirene Respublic.