Sabaristan National Summary

The Khanate of Sabaristan (Sabari: Sabari Khaan Ulus, Jušen: Sabari han gurun), formally Imperial Khanate of Sabaristan is a landlocked unitary sovereign state in the Western Atlantic, bordering Hapalla and Seha to the north, Ostmark and Nordmark in the west Kasakia to the south and Leagran to the east. The capital city is Yangikent.

Formerly a suzerain state of the Empire of Urgench, Sabaristan is an absolute monarchy ruled by the Sabaristankhan, Tayisung Golgatai Bunyashiri Timur (Tayisung I) of the House of Borjigin-Ingizd-Soyoongol, but practices a severe form of "guided democracy;" elections are held for the State Diet, the national deliberative body, which can originate legislation but functions more as a forum for discussion and advice and cannot dissolve or appoint governments and has no budgetary authority. The government is composed of a Great Council of State and Eight Ministries, led by a Chancellor of State appointed by the Khan.

There is a second deliberative body, the Great Kurultai, comprised of peers and nobles of sufficient standing and lineage, which handles suits of succession, aristocratic law, disputes between clans, and other such concerns.

Since 2015, Borussgya Nera has been under the military protection of the Sabaristani armed forces, following the war between Ostmark and Nordmark, Daytanistan, and Brasland. Nominally an independent state owing homage to the Ostmarkgraf, Borussgya Nera is effectively controlled by the Sabari government. Territory now part of Borussgya Nera was historically controlled by Sabaristan before its loss to Ostmark in the Daytan War of 1845, a history invoked by Sabari officials as precedent for its present orientation, and disputed by critics as a convenient gloss on contemporary policy.

History

The First Sabari Empire was formed around 1100, stretching at its height from the shores of the Mittelmeer to the eastern mountains and encompassing territory now belonging to Kasakia, Daytanistan, Ostmark and Nordmark, Brasland, and Laneria. Sabari expansion was checked from 1250 by the Holy Crusade launched by the Holy Western Empire, which established Crusader states in Ostmark and Nordmark and was halted short of Herzenland by Brasland at the battle remembered as the "Miracle on the River Oller." Sabari power was further curtailed in 1342 when the Great Kasak Host killed Bortë Khan at the Battle of Kasev, costing Sabaristan its southern territories to the Host, and the First Empire ended outright in 1373 when Sarangerel Khatun was deposed by her own sons, who divided the realm between them.

Chuluubold Khan reunited the empire following the Five Pecks of Rice War (1460-1463), but in 1500 Taisun Khan submitted to the Urgenchi Empire, a submission his own sons rebelled against unsuccessfully in the War of the Five Princes of 1540. From 1502 the Jušen peoples to the east asserted their own dominance in a period of suzerain or tributary ascendancy over an independent Sabaristan, a reversal only overturned in 1602, when Höyök Khan forced the submission of the Jušen kingdom east of the Sahaliyan River as a Sabari tributary in turn; Jušen political independence was not formally extinguished until 1725, following the Jušens' defeat by the Leagrani and the movement of many of their banners into Sabaristan proper. In 1620, some 100,000 Han Chinese merchants, scholars, and farmers were forcibly deported from Urgench into Sabaristan, many entering the Sabari bureaucracy or the Imperial household.

The Emperor of Urgench granted Khayishan Khan autonomy as a Principality under the Golden Edict of 1700, with the rulers of Sabaristan formally given the title of Sobornoyan. Khayishan founded Yangikent as a permanent capital on the eastern shore of the Khövsgöl Dalai in 1702, laid out on Chinese geomantic principles by the exiled architect Song Qing, whose Great Palace of the Khan was completed in 1707 in the Tang and Song manner with Sabari and Urgenchi influences. Qutuqa Khan, ascending in 1710, adopted literary Chinese as a second court language and employed Han bureaucrats as a counterweight to Sabari clan politics; Jušen was adopted as a further court language in 1820.

Leagran was founded by Caldan exiles in conquered Jušen territory in 1720, and defeated Jušen forces decisively at the First Battle of Kulun in 1725, absorbing many of their banners into Sabaristan as noted above. A Sabari attempt to reconquer the Leagrani dominions east of the Leman in the First Leagran War of 1750 ended in disaster at the Second Battle of Kulun, and a further defeat in the Second Leagran War of 1799 cost Sabaristan the territory west of the Leman under the Tumu Fortress Treaty; an earlier defeat had already cost Sabaristan territory to Kasakia in the 1760 Treaty of Choghtu Khong, for which the Han general Ouyang Kuan was blamed by his Mongol subordinates. Ouyang Kuan was killed later in the Xinsi Year Massacre of 1761, in which Han Chinese residents of Yangikent were killed on the orders of a conservative court faction on the traditional Chinese New Year, an atrocity that provoked a subsequent purge of ultraconservatives from court.

The death of the reigning Sobornoyan without issue in 1800 prompted a succession crisis resolved by the Sabari Kurultai's appeal to Urgench, which supplied a member of the Imperial Clan of Borjigin-Ingizd-Sooyongol as Khan, establishing the precedent later repeated in 2011. Sabaristan lost the southern territory of Borussgya Nera to Ostmark in the Daytan War of 1845, though the Khan's gratitude toward eastern-trained troops serving under a commander of a Latturian noble family led to a court title being granted to their leader. Sabaristan entered the Great War in 1915 in opposition to the Williamsburg Pact.

Ruler of the then-Principality of Sabaristan, Nuruumtash the Sobornoyan, died suddenly and without an heir in 2011. The Urgenchi Kurultai selected Tayisung Golgatai Bunyashiri Timur, a member of the Imperial Clan of Borjigin-Ingizd-Sooyongol and Khan of Turan-Sibir, as hereditary Noyan of Sobor. War broke out shortly after his accession between Ostmark and Nordmark and Daytanistan, a conflict Sabaristan was drawn into through the marriage of Tayisung's niece, Elaybhanat, an Urgenchi princess of the Imperial House, to the Ostmark Markgraf. The war ended indecisively following the intervention of Excalbia and an armistice establishing the Daytan-aligned state of Narvasar and the Sabari-aligned state of Borussgya Nera.

The Imperial Khanate was proclaimed in 2013, elevating Sabaristan from its former status as a Principality of the Confederated Sublime Khanate of Urgench and the title of "Sabaristankhan" was formally promulgated, though "Khan" had always been the customary title for the ruler of the territory. In 2018, Sabaristan held discussions with neighbouring Leagran concerning that Protestant theocracy's treatment of its Nüzhen ethnoreligious minority, kin to Sabaristan's own Jušen population. Sabaristan's landlocked geography, possessing no deepwater port of its own, has remained a persistent constraint on its regional ambitions throughout this period.

Demographics

The population is dominated by the Sabari ethnic group, a Mongolic people, which comprises 60% of the country. 25% are Jušens, a Tungusic people, 15% are Han, and the remaining 5% are a mixture of Khitans, Minyaks (a Tangutic people), Sogdians, Kasakians, Borussgyans, and Germanic peoples originating in Ostmark and Nordmark. Although it primarily refers to the dominant ethnic group, the term "Sabari" is commonly used to refer to all people within Sabaristan, and over the decades there has been significant intermixing between Sabari, Jušen, and other groups. The Jušen people are the same as the Nüzhen of Leagran.

Approximately 30% of the population is nomadic or semi-nomadic; horse culture is still integral to Sabari society. The majority of Sabari practice Turco-Mongol Shamanism, with minorities of Buddhists, Palaamian Mazdaists, Muslims, and Christians. Aatem Nal, a native religion of Snefaldia, is also present. 95% of the population speak Sabari Mongol, a Mongolic language with strong Tungusic layers owing to the historical influence of the Jušen language. There are regional dialects of Sabari, but the Yangikent variety is the standard form of the language used in court and for government. At least 30% of the population also speaks the Jušen tongue, which is prevalent in the south.

Most Sabaris have a single name by which they are identified, and use a patronymic (e.g. Tögs-Ochiryn Namnansüren; his given name is Namnansüren and his father's name is Tögs-Ochir). House or clan names are not considered surnames except in rare circumstances. Many Sabaris also have cognomens. The Jušen people are usually identified by their clan name and given name, e.g. Niuhuru Fiyanggu; Fiyanggu of the Niuhuru clan.

Women participate extensively in higher education and the pharmaceutical sciences, and the technocratic sector approaches gender parity, though banner military command remains male-dominated. Aristocratic marriages remain a matter of state strategy, while interethnic marriage is increasingly common within the urban professional classes.

Government & Administration

Although Sabaristan is an absolute monarchy, the Khan appoints government ministers of the Great Council of State and the Eight Ministries, usually with the input of an advisory legislature called the State Diet (Mongol: Khural), for which elections are held. In legal terms, the Khan is both head of state and government, but the government is administered by the Council of State in most affairs.

The Cabinet Ministers all bear the title Great Official (Mongol: ikh basqaq). The cabinet is led by the Chancellor of State (Mongol: Yerönkhii Said), currently Tögs-Ochiryn Namnansüren. The Presiding Chairman of the State Diet is Toghtogha. The Great Council of State oversees the administration of the Eight Ministries that administer the nation in the name of the Khan; metonymically, the government is often called "the court" or (due to Urgenchi influence) "the Divan" in reference to ministers and their attendance upon the Khan as his courtly officers.

Great Council of State
Chancellor of the Realm (often concurrently with another post)
Minister of the Left
Minister of the Right
Minister of the Center
Major Counselor (three)
Middle Counselor (three)
Minor Counselor (three)
Major Controller of the Right (supervisor of Ministries of the Center, Civil Service, Ceremonies & Rites, and Populace)
Major Controller of the Left (supervisor of the Ministries of War, Justice, Treasury, and the Imperial Household)

Eight Ministries
Ministry of the Center
Ministry of Civil Service
Ministry of Ceremonies & Rites
Ministry of the Populace
Ministry of War
Ministry of Justice
Ministry of the Treasury
Ministry of the Imperial Household

Affairs of the Imperial Family are managed by separate institutions, including:

Imperial Clan Court, a court separate from the Ministry of Justice for cases involving Imperial clan members.

Administrative Divisions
Sabaristan is divided into 21 provinces (aimags), which are in turn divided into 329 districts (sums). The capital Yangikent is administrated separately as a capital city (municipality) with provincial status. Governors of aimags are appointed directly by the court, who then appoints district administrators upon the recommendations of the Ministry of Civil Service. The aimags are:

Arkhangai
Bayan-Ölgii
Bayankhongor
Bulgan
Darkhan-Uul
Dornod
Dornogovi
Dundgovi
Govi-Altai
Govisümber
Khentii
Khovd
Khövsgöl
Ömnögovi
Orkhon
Övörkhangai
Selenge
Sükhbaatar
Töv
Uvs
Zavkhan

Society & Estates

Sabari society is officially described as hierarchical, hereditary, and functionally organised beneath the Khan under a doctrine promoted in state media as "Golden Harmony," blending dynastic legitimacy, managed multi-ethnic unity grounded in ritual and institutional cohesion, and state-directed scientific and economic development.

Beneath the Golden Lineage, the ruling house itself, a Banner Aristocracy governs provinces, commands military formations, and chairs state-chartered industrial conglomerates, particularly in pharmaceuticals, mining, and energy, while being formally barred from private commerce. A scholar-technocrat class, produced through a modernised civil examination system combining Sabari imperial history, Confucian administrative philosophy, law, and biotechnology and chemistry, staffs the bureaucracy and the state's scientific institutions. An industrial and commercial stratum of engineers, researchers, and export merchants wields growing economic, if limited political, influence, while rural and pastoral communities, still central to Sabari cultural identity, retain communal pasture rights and state subsidy.

Nobility is distributed across three parallel tracks rather than a single ladder: the Golden Lineage, the genealogical blood nobility of the reigning House itself, graded from Chin Wang down through four classes of Taiji; the Banner Peerage, a territorial and administrative nobility open to Mongol, Jušen, and Han houses alike and tied to the twenty-one aimags; and a five-rank Meritorious Service ladder, from Gong to Nan, open to any subject the crown wishes to reward regardless of clan or ethnicity. Beneath and alongside these runs the Banner system proper, a set of twenty-four hereditary military and legal registrations divided among three ethnic corps, Sabari, Jušen, and Hanjun, that determines a family's legal standing independently of any peerage it may also hold. A minority of Banner companies in every corps hold Upper registration, answering to the Khan's household directly; in practice, Upper registration rather than formal rank is what actually gates admission to the sovereign industrial conglomerate chairmanships, senior ministry office, and military high command, so that an old titled house outside the Upper Banners can remain genuinely marginal to state power while a comparatively recent Upper Banner family holds little formal rank and a great deal of real influence.

Biomedical and pharmaceutical development has been designated a strategic national priority, encompassing vaccine research, antiviral and antimicrobial development, and the modernisation of traditional herbal compounds for export, framed officially as an extension of the Khan's paternal responsibility for the health of his subjects. Ethnic representation quotas are applied across the bureaucracy and armed forces with the stated aim of preventing any single group's monopolisation of office while preserving Sabari primacy, and a Ministry of Harmony oversees media licensing, digital communications, and ethnic affairs.

International Relations

Sabaristan has generally maintained a middle-way approach to international diplomacy in terms of alliances, avoiding close alliances but demonstrating affinities for some regional partners, especially Snefaldia, and coordinated with Knootian and Excalbian forces during the 2012 war in Ostmark and Nordmark.

Governance, Human Rights, and International Perception

Sabaristan is widely characterised as an authoritarian state exercising a high degree of direct command over political, economic, and social life, a description Sabari officials do not generally dispute but nevertheless reject the negative connotation attached to it abroad. The death penalty remains in active use for a range of offences, including certain political crimes, and the palace household continues to employ eunuchs in personal and ceremonial service to the Golden Lineage, a practice stretching back centuries. Strict lèse-majesté provisions criminalise insult to the Khan and (to a lesser degree, senior members of the Golden Lineage) and are enforced with some regularity; political falls from favour have on occasion resulted in the deaths of senior ministers or, more commonly, the internal exile of the minister's family or clan from court and capital.

Sabari officials, and a substantial body of domestic popular opinion, characterise foreign criticism of these practices as a form of cultural imperialism, arguing that they reflect longstanding and legitimately held Sabari cultural and political values rather than arbitrary repression, and some Sabari commentary has gone further, characterising such criticism as racially motivated. Popular reverence for the person of the Khan and the Golden Lineage more broadly is frequently described by outside analysts as running considerably deeper than mere political deference, amounting in practice to genuine personal devotion across much of the Sabari population. This sentiment coexists with a strong current of state-aligned nationalist and patriotic feeling that rejects external criticism of the social and political order, but there are dissident movements rejecting these narratives.

Domestic political dissent is managed rather than uniformly suppressed, and the state distinguishes in practice between different currents of opposition. Advocates of liberal democratic reform operate under close and continuous state surveillance and are subject to periodic restriction, but are generally tolerated as a managed feature of public life rather than eliminated outright. Movements identifying as communist or otherwise seeking to abolish the monarchy and the estate system entirely are treated with considerably greater severity and are subject to active and sustained persecution.

Military

The Sabaristankhan is by law the Supreme Commander of the armed forces. The Sabari military is a unified command, with no divisions between air force, army, or navy. Sabaristan still uses traditional Mongol terminology for units and ranks. The largest formation in the Sabaristani army is the tumen, of between 10,000-25,000 troops (equivalent to a division), with several tumen making up a Banner (equivalent to a Corps or Army Group).

Domestic Development Priorities

Since the end of the Ostmark and Nordmark War, the Sabari state has directed substantial public investment into its southern aimags, most visibly Sükhbaatar Aimag and its capital, Novoorqendi, which has grown from a provincial administrative centre into a major transit and commercial hub. State media and the Ministry of Works describe the programme as regional development consistent with the broader liberalisation of household registration pursued over the course of Tayisung I's reign; independent economic observers have characterised it instead as a deliberate strategy of demographic and infrastructural consolidation along the state's western approaches. Subsidised migration has been a central instrument of this policy, with the great majority of new long-term residents and dual citizens registered in Borussgya Nera over the past decade being recent migrants from Sabaristan proper.

The Ministry of Culture has expanded its involvement in the tourism sector considerably since the war, most notably through its financial relationship with independent business concerns like Golden Horse Luxury Tours, nominally private operators offering steppe excursions out of Novoorqendi to a largely Western Atlantic clientele. Sabari officials have described the initiative as an effort to broaden international understanding of the Khanate beyond its historical reputation as a closed and traditionalist state; some outside commentators have characterised it instead as a deliberate soft-power and reputation-management exercise aimed at a younger foreign audience unfamiliar with the region. Critics of the campaign label it propaganda whitewashing of Sabari human rights abuses, labor violations, and campaigns of forced resettlement.

The Prussai Question

Since 2012, Sabari cultural and religious policy in the west has centred on the promotion of a "Prussai" identity among the historically Baltic-Mongol syncretic populations of Ostmark, Borussgya Nera, and, to a lesser extent, the Nordmark. Official Sabari and Ostmark-aligned sources describe the Prussai as a people separated from their eastern kin by centuries of migration, whose religious and cultural reunification with the steppe represents the restoration of a suppressed historical continuity, drawing on a documented pre-modern syncretism between the local Romāwe faith and Tengriist steppe religion present in the region for centuries prior to any modern political initiative.

Critics, most prominently the governments of Daytanistan and Narvasar, characterise the Prussai identity as a substantially manufactured political construct, centrally engineered since 2012 through the institutionalisation of a previously diffuse and locally-administered religious practice and the Ostmarker creation of a unified priestly office (the Kriwis) with no clear historical precedent at that scale. Some Narvasari officials have characterised the programme (and Sabari migration policies) as a form of cultural genocide, a claim Sabari officials reject.

Independent assessment of the question is complicated by a centuries-old religious syncretism predating any modern political project; documented economic incentives, including tax avoidance and cross-border trade opportunities, that have independently encouraged frontier populations to orient themselves toward Sabaristan; and a demonstrably centralised and well-funded institutional programme coordinated through Yangikent since 2012 that has actively shaped how that syncretism and that economic drift are understood and mobilised politically. International watchdog organisations attempting to conduct independent survey work on religious self-identification within Borussgya Nera have reported repeated administrative delay and, in several documented instances, direct interference from provincial officials, complicating efforts to establish reliable independent figures on the extent of genuine popular identification with the Prussai movement as distinct from centrally promoted affiliation.

The Western Settlements: Divergent Outcomes

Sabari policy toward the three principal western territories, Borussgya Nera, the Nordmark, and Ostmark, has produced markedly different results, a divergence generally attributed by regional analysts to differences in geography and market access rather than to any difference in Sabari intent.

Borussgya Nera shares a direct land border with Sabaristan and has been the principal beneficiary of the westward development programme. The Nordmark also borders Sabaristan directly and possesses a coastline that has repeatedly attracted Sabari commercial interest, most notably a longstanding proposal to construct a deepwater port and associated pipeline, which would have supplied Sabaristan with maritime access it otherwise lacks; the proposal was declined by the late Margrave Ehrenfried I and has not been formally renewed or withdrawn. In the absence of a formalised relationship, Sabari influence in the Nordmark has instead developed through informal channels, including stipends to local steppe leaders and unlicensed settlement in marginal western districts.

Ostmark shares no land border with Sabaristan, being separated from it by the territories of Narvasar and Daytanistan, and Sabari access to Heldenburg has consequently been limited to air and maritime routes, the latter increasingly constrained by international sanctions imposed in response to the domestic policies of Markgraf Dietrich Burchard. A substantial share of remaining Sabari-Ostmark trade is understood to move through informal or illicit channels. This structural limitation is generally cited, alongside the Markgraf's own conduct, as the principal reason Ostmark has not replicated the developmental trajectory observed in Borussgya Nera.

The Ostmark Relationship

Sabaristan's alliance with Ostmark, formalised in 2012 through the marriage of the Khan's niece, Imperial Princess Elaybhanat, to the Margrave Dietrich Burchard, remains formally intact but has become an increasing source of difficulty for Sabari policy. Markgraf Dietrich's government has been marked by recurring purges connected to his programme of religious restoration, international sanction, and a marked decline in administrative capacity, developments regional analysts generally agree have left Sabaristan's westward policy toward Ostmark specifically as its least successful component. Sabari officials have not publicly commented on the state of the relationship in recent years, and no formal reassessment of the 2012 alliance has been published.

Attention among regional observers has increasingly turned to the Margravine's son, Warg Ulaan-Temür Tayiji, holder of a personally-granted rank within the Sabari Golden Lineage, as a potential alternative figure around whom a more stable Sabari-Ostmark relationship might eventually be organised, though no official statement from Yangikent has confirmed such a policy.

Recent Developments: The Mealdegarben Incident

In August 2026, an attack by irregular forces loyal to Markgraf Dietrich Burchard on the funeral procession of Nordmarkraf Ehrenfried I resulted in the deaths of several attendees and the abduction of members of the Xirniumite and Ernestrian delegations. The Sabari Amban to the Nordmark court, Barsgal Yolu, present at the funeral, publicly offered the deployment of Sabari special forces and air support into Nordmark territory to assist in recovering the hostages.

Narvasari officials characterised the offer as an attempt to use the crisis as pretext for renewed Sabari military presence in the Nordmark, drawing an explicit comparison to the earlier absorption of Borussgya Nera. Sabari officials have not issued a public response to this characterisation.