Sanjar
Sanjar is one of the seven member states of the Federated Eastern Sarbanates. The territory of Sanjar lies mainly in the south of the Federation along the Bay of Tire, and has a western border with the free city of that name; it also has an internal land border with Mihran in the north-east. The city of Qumi on the territory’s central coast is the Sanjari capital, as well as holding that status jointly with Taqarud for the FES.
The derivation of the name Sanjar is uncertain, but may be from Humâyuni sangi, “stony”, as a reference to the poor quality of the soil in much of inland Sanjar. It may also be derived from a Saganic personal name, roughly meaning 'piercing', though the identity of any possible namesakes have yet to be uncovered. Its application to the region as a whole stems from its use as the name for a river in the central coastal region, at the mouth of which Qumi stands today, and to its wider valley.
History
Early history
The name Sanjar has been applied to several different states which emerged in the region along the north coast of the Bay of Tire, although these have in most cases been subordinated to or absorbed by larger and more powerful neighbours. Sanjar was colonised by the Sagan civilisation, and in the early first millennium BCE from these colonies emerged the Bastani Kingdom, which had its beginnings in the Sanjar river valley before expanding onto the southern coast of the bay, directly south of modern Sanjar, and establishing a new capital there. The break-up of the Bastani polity saw Tire emerge as a dominant state in the region, but it was targeted by an alliance of forces under the Sanjari warlord Ustuman. This first iteration of a kingdom of Sanjar conquered Tire in 282 BCE, with Ustuman and the leaders of the two other main factions creating the city’s first Triune Council. However, this did little to improve conditions in Sanjar, with the region still largely subordinated to Tire and, later, to the expanding might of Homâyun to the north. By the seventh century CE, Homâyuni rule had assimilated the formerly distinct Saganic culture and religion of the region, leaving the Sanjari's use of Saganic languages as their main identity marker (itself progressively less meaningful, with the proliferation of Saganic use as a part of regional maritime trade).
With the final division of the Homâyuni realm after the death of Ostigan in 960, Sanjar came under the wing of the successor state of Khorshidan; but, after increasingly slipping the leash in the early twelfth century, it was largely allowed to go its own way as Farzad, the last king of Khorshidan, was forced from his throne by a resurgent Triune Council in 1117. For much of the next few centuries the merchant city of Tire made little effort to exert rule over Sanjar, viewing it more as a resource base as it expanded its power across a constellation of ports and islands in the Medius Sea and around the Strait of Calcar.
With the emergence of the Tionastrian Empire in the late 17th century, Sanjar once again scuttled under the wing of the Tirenes and, to some degree, Messenian states whose own activity in the region was seen as being threatened by Tionastria. While the Empire never directly ruled the southern shores of the Bay of Tire, it nonetheless lowered over the region, with Tire coming under direct attack several times in the 1720s. A cautious peace was restored by the 1733 Tirene Covenant; for the Sanjari, though, this served only to replace the hovering menace of Tionastria with more overt and direct Tirene interference over the rest of the century, and extending into the early 19th.
The Protectorate
The heavier hand laid down by the Triune City process was tacitly – and in some cases actively – supported by Messenian states, on the basis that Tire represented a node of stability in what was a markedly unstable region, and should thus be encouraged and supported. Tirene authorities were all too ready to accept the backing, and several “police actions” by the Triune City’s forces against local “instability” degenerated into out-and-out butchery during the period 1800–1830. In the case of Sanjar, this subjugation became official in Animare 1832 with the foundation of the Protectorate of Sanjar under Tirene “guidance”; a capital was established at Qumi, which had been the largest town in the Sanjar region for more than a century. However, Tire’s grip on the protectorate was always uncertain, and the territory simmered with resentment well after the Protectorate became a reality. Several of the most serious threats to Sanjar’s stability hid across the border in Mihran, much to the anger of successive Triune Councils; protests to prince Zorvan of Mihran were routinely turned aside with bland platitudes where they were not simply ignored. In truth, Zorvan and his advisors viewed the position just as poorly, but lacked the capacity to properly deal with it.
The boil of resentment was eventually lanced in the spring of 1838, with the beginning of the Black Circle Rebellion. The uprising takes its name from the personal sigil of its leader Tassehdar, although for the first two years the Rebellion was entirely confined to Sanjar, with Tassehdar’s group being only one of at least five which disputed control of the country while a weak central government cowered timidly in Qumi. It was not until late 1840 that Tassehdar was able to claim overall control of Sanjar and redirect much of the internally-focused hatred onto their “puppet-masters” in Tire; and this led ultimately to a full-scale attack on the Triune City in Metrial 1841.
Tire weathered the storm, but only barely; the Black Circle forces were eventually dispersed by cannon-fire at the direction of Tirene commander Levent Erkul. While Tassehdar and his army fell back in disarray and his internal coalition crumbled in on itself, Tire itself collapsed internally, with Erkul mounting a successful coup against the Triune Council and declaring himself “Sword of the Truth” and dictator of the city. Tassehdar instead sought to slake his soldiers’ fury by diverting them northward, where they captured significant lands in southern Mihran before the Rebellion stumbled to an untidy close towards the end of 1842. Tassehdar was able to retain enough control over part of Sanjar that he could declare the parts of the country under his rule the “Kingdom of Sanjar” and make it stick; but, without his ironbound control, the Kingdom was always an artificial construct, and, after his death early in 1860, the Protectorate was able to reabsorb it in spite of loud Tirene protests, including an only vaguely credible threat of military intervention.
The Siursk supervision
While Siurskeyti had wielded some sizeable influence in the region for more than two centuries, their own geopolitical concerns – and fears of fallout from the cold war between Odann and Savam – prompted them to invest more effort into eastern Serrinea from early in the 20th century; and Sanjar was one of the seven sarbanates which put their names to the Agreement on Exclusive Status in 1925. Under the agreement, Sanjar agreed not to yield territory to any state other than Siurskeyti, and the Siursk agreed in turn to defend the territory by sea and, as far as possible, by land also.
Although Sanjar had its fair share of persons of influence who had been educated in Siursk-run schools – or even in Siurskeyti itself – and had taken on something of the Siursk mindset, many Sanjari still saw the Agreement as their country being functionally neutered, and took action against it. While Sanjar was not as much as a problem for the Siursk as they faced elsewhere in keeping the peace in the region, its proximity to Tire made it more significant when such instances did occur; and the principality was proportionately less represented in the Sarbanate Levy Force, an indigenous military under largely Siursk command, than Sanjar’s population at the time would have indicated.
With the Long War in Messenia over and the devastation in northern latitudes caused by the years without summers past its worst, Siurskeyti could pay greater attention to its interordinate protégés; and in Serrinea this focused on getting its “seven kittens” into line and encouraging them into a more formalised union. Although this was popular – with certain caveats – in most of the region, the Sanjari government resented what it saw as strong-arming from Ostari; and the disputes between them reached such a high pitch that the Sanjari delegation walked out on discussions which would lead to the establishment of the FES in 1962. The “seventh kitten” had, not for the first time, chosen to unsheathe its claws.
Post-war Sanjar
While not comfortable with Siursk influence, Sanjar still maintained friendly relations with the FES. One Sanjari leader explained it in familiar domestic terms: “we have to live next door to them, so we should do our best to be neighbourly. They may complain when we don’t trim our hedges properly; we may complain when they have loud parties. But when we have arguments, we argue calmly and civilly, like good neighbours should.” While still prickly over its independence, Sanjar mostly co-operated with the FES and with Tire on regional initiatives.
Sanjar’s opinion of the FES as good neighbours advanced several notches in 1997, as the Sarbanates weighed in on Sanjar’s side during the latter’s dispute with Busar over the Suza Islands, a small island group just off the western coast of Sanjar. Although the Sanjari naval effort to reclaim the islands in the 1997 Suza War failed, public opinion of the FES rose dramatically in the country, and encouraged officials in both countries over a mending of a rift that had lain open for almost fifty years. Negotiations went remarkably smoothly, and brought about Sanjar’s long-delayed signing of the Taqarud Accords and its acceptance as a member state of the FES on 1 Animare 2001. As part of the agreement, Qumi was designated as capital of the expanded federation – jointly with its existing capital Taqarud, with the functions of government to be transferred between them every six months.
Modern Sanjar
Almost twenty years after the unification, it is probably fair to say that Sanjar has substantially benefited from the decision, with Qumi and its surrounding districts expanding as a trading centre on the back of regional trade. While not the commercial dynamo that Tire continues to be, Qumi is now among the ten largest ports in Serrinea in terms of freight volume handled (and has overtaken Taqarud in that respect).
A continuing issue for Sanjar, as for some other member states of the FES, is the drain of labour to Tire, as Sanjari are drawn to the city’s greater economic opportunities. This has had some mixed results for the Tirenes themselves, in that it accepts the incomers as a labour force without automatically extending to them citizenship or permanent residency rights. (Even the name used to describe them in Tire, geçicilikler, derives from a Sularin word meaning “temporary”.) This has caused some ongoing friction between Tire and Sanjar over the situation of a migrant community which Tire too often sees as not properly its concern.
Government
Although the FES deals with some matters at the state level, Sanjar and the other member states retain sizeable autonomy. The prince of Sanjar is one of the seven members of the FES’ Council of State, and the territory contributes ten members to the subsidiary Sarbanatic Council, which has fifty members allocated to the member states in proportion to population. This does not diminish the power of the prince within Sanjar itself; all organs of government within the FES are appointive, rather than elective, and a retention of this position was a sine qua non in gaining Sanjar’s acceptance of membership.