History of Istalia

Alaria
Historians find evidence of habitation of the Quanzaran region from as early as 4000 BCE. A hunter-gatherer neolithic civilation known as the Araghe inhabited the south of the Alarian island and produced fantastic cave paintings and stone tools until c. 3500, when a rapid cooling trend drove the herds of wild game north. Agriculture came to the island with immigrants from the mainland in 2000; several distinct new cultures flourished on the island throughout the first half of the second millennium. By 1200, a form of logographic writing was used across the island to represent various dialects of the Alarian language, which is an isolate, unrelated to any known languages. In the South, the rich soils of Nicoma supported tremendous growth, and some of the largest cities in eastern Majatra, some with nearly 50,000 inhabitants, dominated the culture and politics of the island. These city-states were ruled by councils of the landed elite, on whose vast holdings most of the population lived and worked as tenant farmers. In northern Alaria, where the climate is drier and more mountainous, small cities emerged side-by-side nomadic pastoral tribes. The cities were ruled by kings and often grouped into regional defensive alliances. By 800, these alliances had transformed into nation-states, and so centralization was accelerated in the north. By 650, most of the North was under the tenuous sway of the kings of Sokyill. The unified north then began a long and violent expansion south, into the rich cities of Nicoma.

The Mainland
On the mainland, Ingris and southern Pheykran, being a mix of semi-arid plains and outright desert, remained occupied by nomadic bedouins from the earliest recorded history until the early modern era. They wrote a Semitic language in an abjad script, preserved mostly on large monolithic monuments near oases. In northern Pheykran and Therak, agriculture was established by 2500 BCE along the rivers Sallar and Yohrail and various smaller tributaries by a race that had been present in the region since prehistoric times. The mountainous and rugged terrain created a patchwork of isolated and fiercely independent states, most of which were ruled by warlords and autocrats who lived in palace-fortifications that were the center of the local economies. Like their southern neighbors, these peoples spoke a Semitic language known as Therakian, but this language came from the northern rather than the southern branch; unlike those in the south, the northerners wrote their language in the Alarian script. By 750 BCE, parallel to the developments in northern Alaria, the city of Qolshamih had consolidated its power over the entire North, spreading the rule of the native dynasty along the coastal regions of Ingris, where marginal agriculture and fishing supported small towns.

Consolidation, 612-564
Pre-612 BCE marks the beginning of the Classical Period. By now, the entirety of the mainland, save the desert wastes controlled by the nomads, was under the sway of Qolshamih. The defining event, however, was the capture of the city of Lombash by the armies of the king Hanggadhe of Sokyill. The last obstacle to a united Alaria, the fall of Lombash marked the definitive beginning of a new power struggle, that between the island and the mainland. The new-found unity allowed for and required the creation of efficient bureaucracies and internal pacification. The Kingdoms of Qolshamih and Sokyill each fostered economic and cultural growth within their respective territories. While the arts of architecture and literature flourished, so too did the art of war. After an initial period of mutual wariness, the two kingdoms realized the inevitable power struggle that loomed large on the horizon. In 565, the King (the "Sharru") Malkkart of Qolshamih dispatched an expeditionary force from his harbors in southern Therak to aid a rebellion of subjected cities in Nicoma against Sokyill. The rebellion succeeded in capturing all of southern Nicoma before the armies of Sokyill crushed it with devastating cruelty. Nicoma's great cities, spared during the first conquest, were looted and pillaged for all material wealth. Lombash and Pakhne, the largest urban centers in Quanzar at the time, were reduced to dust.

Reversal and Prolonged Conflict, 564-498
Thus, Alaria avoided rebellion for another one and a half centuries. Meanwhile, they sent retaliatory raids against the ports ruled by Qolshamih, effectively destroying that kingdom's nascent naval power. Until 530 BCE, Sokyill made headway against the kings of Qolshamih, effectively asserting its suzerainty over the coastal mainland and sending expeditions deep into the center of the Kingdom. But in this year, a palace coup overthrew the old dynasty of Qolshamih and established a new line descended from the lords of northern Pheykran. The new dynasty reorganized the failing bureaucracy and instituted much needed social, economic, and political reforms. In 518, the second King of this new dynasty, Mar-Ili III, retook that last of the Sokyillan fortresses on the mainland. With its territory secured, the reformed Kingdom furthered internal reform, consolidating central authority and wiping out several claimants to the throne.

In Sokyill, the opposite political process was underway. The loss of the mainland holdings fell harshly upon the subjected southern cities, which had provided most of the troop levies, and the prospect of continued war with Qolshamih drove them to disaffection. The war turned to naval conflict and expeditionary skirmishes by 518, and a stalemate developed over the course of the following decade that severely strained the bonds of vassalship that bound the kingdom of Sokyill together. Several small rebellions failed in the 510s, but in 498 BCE, the south rebelled in unison, defeating the royal armies and capturing most of the royal family during a surprise raid on the capital. The southern cities were not politically united, and their attempt to take the remainder of the royal territories in Kisuwali. However, local rulers in the north, long suppressed, rose once more and the whole of the region fragmented into petty principalities.

The First Conquest 497-490
As part of a broader policy of securing trade routes against piracy and enemy navies, Qolshamih established several fort and captured coastal cities in western Alaria in the year immediately following the fall of Sokyill. These military actions soon expanded, and by 496, royal armies had taken much of western Nicoma. Justifying further expansion on the ground of aiding tributary cities in the south, the King of Qolshamih then took all of the city states in 495 and 494 BCE. Disunited Alarian military power paled next to the professional and institutionalized armies of the mainland. In 493, the southern plains of Kisuwali fell to the crown. The following three years were spent in a grueling campaign to conquer the northern plateau and mountain passes. And so, by August of 490, the King of Qolshamih could claim to be, among other titles applicable to the mainland, the "Lord of the Lands Beyond the Channel, Lord Protector of Lombash, Isiall, Maktar, Toltor, and Bagh, Arch-Regent of Pali, Eshhar, Mag, and Bolan (i.e. the southern Nicomese cities) King of Ephrai and Salajf, King of the Realms of Shayid, King of the lands formerly comprising Sokyill, and Supreme Arbiter of Justice over all Alaria."

The Rise, 490-265
The unification of most of modern day Quanzar under the rule of Qolshamih allowed for a flourishing of culture and science over the next three hundred years. With few external threats, internal development and progress became the focus of the royal governments. In 445, a new capital, Tuffad, was founded at the effluence of the river Shipol along the coast of Therak near the modern-day city of Oxfolk. With this move, the Kingdom became known by the name of the dynasty, Karron, rather than its original capital. The Karronian state was highly centralized and contained well-trained and extensive bureaucracy that had numerous internal anti-corruption mechanisms; this, combined with a culture that absolutely despised theft and lawlessness, created a system of administration that was remarkably efficient and interested in the common welfare.

Military Concerns
The primary martial concern of the period was the conquest of the southern deserts in Ingris and Pheykran. Here, new militant nomads had overrun their more peaceful predecessors nearly a century before. They spoke an early form of Arabic and were desirous of the riches of the northern plain. Four decades of wetter-than-usual conditions in the arid wastes nurtured their numbers to the point that the desert could no longer sustain them and made expansion north not only a desire, but a necessity of survival. Raids against the marginal farm lands in southern Pheykran first occurred in 420 and gradually increased in violence and severity until in 415 the Karronian king sent a small army west to deal with the problem. New fortresses were built, but, faced with greater obstacles to survival, the tribes sent forth much vaster forces against the fresh defenses. The palisades fell quickly, and soon the whole of southern Pheykran was overrun with the so-called "tribes of 'Ayadd." The king met the disaster with resolution, and the best of the royal military might swiftly brought the region back into Karronian control. They heavily fortified the border region and sent expeditions into the heart of the desert, contributing to some of the first maps of the southern wastes. The local governor hired native nomadic mercenaries to fight the 'Ayaddans on their own turf, but the attempt at an offensive war were largely fruitless. So long as the dynasty remained strong, its military was aptly able to defend the frontiers from the 'Ayaddan menace; raids continued intermittently throughout the kingdom's later history, but only in the last several decades did they spell real trouble.

Apogee and Fall, 265-123
The kingdom reached its peak in the middle of the third century. A series of brilliant and just monarchs secured domestic prosperity and foreign tranquility. Diplomats were sent to the far reaches of Majatra and beyond, and colonies were founded across the southern coasts. At the death of great King Alsemet in 239, his son Shakyu came to power and, combined with an economic downturn caused by hyperinflation and the plague, his bad policies led to a marked reversal in the fortunes of the previous thirty years. Matters became worse after his death. The integrity and professionalism of the bureaucracy and administration was compromised by a growing culture of graft and extortion, and the court increasingly neglected the matters of state and turned to vacuous pleasures instead. As a result of the court's impotence, the Master of Arms, the King's traditional chief military advisor, became de facto ruler, but the need to fund court extravagances and secure military loyalty with gold weakened the treasury. Civil chaos spread further in the first two decades of the second century when civil war broke out between two puppet kings and their respective Masters of Arms. Civil wars, always about succession, had occurred five times before in Karronian history, but they were always brief and relatively light. This war, however, was intensified by the underlying societal and political instability. By its end in 178 BCE, both of the original royal claimants were dead, and the victorious Master at Arms selected a new puppet king just as a courtesy to tradition.

The weakened state, which boiled over into civil conflict between rival generals almost every five years, was unable to secure the frontiers. After nearly three hundred years of confinement to the desert, the 'Ayaddans trickled forth into southern Pheykran beginning in 180. After several attempts failed to dislodge them, the rulers in Tuffad granted them the status of vassal state, a caretaker nation within the royal fold. This first wave partially settled into an agrarian life, but another, more aggressive coalition of tribes moved into the region in 146. The displaced tribes pushed north in that year but were halted, first by force and then with bribes, but the peace was only temporary. Other nomads then moved in as well, and by 140, they had settled over all of the southern half of the kingdom. The commanders in Tuffad allowed this obvious breech of the kingdom's territorial integrity in order to prevent a costly outright war. In 138, a last of the royal armies were crushed when they tried to reclaim part of Pheykran. For the next six years, the tribes stopped expanding as a chieftain named Harun conquered his rivals. By 132, he had succeeded in dominating all of the tribes residing in royal territory, and so he marched through northern and eastern Karronia to finalize his ascent. On the pretense of being the new Master of Arms in the service of the ineffectual King in Tuffad, when the capital itself was finally captured in 129, the King was kept alive as a captive icon of continuity with the old order. However, this pretense was dropped in 123 after the King attempted to invite Solentia to invade and drive off the 'Ayaddans. The monarch himself and all of his line was killed off, thereby ending the Kingdom of Karron.

Alaria
The island of Alaria, which was never invaded, developed separately from the mainland during this period. Three new states, based on the administrative boundaries of the old Karronian provinces, emerged after 123. In the south, the Kingdom of Nicoma was ruled by a junior branch of the House of Karron. In Kisuwali, the Republic of Lepprios ruled the east and the Kingdom of Sahan ruled the west. The Republic, comprised of several small cities in the isolated mountains along the coast, preserved the old Alarian language and culture. The Kingdom of Sahan claimed to be the successor to the Kingdom of Sokyill, although this was most probably propaganda. In 230 CE, Nicoma converted to Christianity, but the two northern states remained pagan. All of the Alaria except Lepprios spoke Therakan at this point, and Karronian culture lived on here throughout the Post-Classical period. The island benefited from uninterrupted trade with western Majatra, and although it was often wrenched by wars between the three states, there was little interaction with the mainland.

The Mainland
Harun's rule was tenuous, and within a decade of his ascension to the kingship of 'Ayadda, which he had claimed for himself in 122, the entire domain was split between rival petty lords and weak dynasts. The new cultural and political environment was a mixture of 'Ayaddan and Karronian; the most powerful of the natives had fortified themselves into rural estates as early as 150, but as the tribes settled, the old and new peoples mixed both politically and genetically, eventually becoming indistinguishable except in the mountainous north, where most were purely Karronian, and in the south, where most were purely 'Ayaddan.

The fragmentation on the mainland, devoid of cultural and scientific progress, continued for nearly six-hundred years. However, important social and political developments did occur during this period. Following the chaos following the 'Ayaddan invasion, the realm was divided into hundreds of small domains, known as bēlūtī (lordships) in the Therakan language, which for a time were self-governing. However, over the course of five centuries, a process of consolidation came to fruition by which lordships were organized under the rule of local dukes (Shakrū); thus, the number of sovereign states fell from many hundreds to only approximately twenty-three by 450 CE (see List of Dukedoms of Quanzar).

Socially, the Feudal system was the norm until nationalization accelerated in the seventh century. New monotheist religions took root over specific geographic sectors. Christianity was strong in north Therak, in western Pheykran, and along the rivers that flow through southern Therak. Islam took hold in central and southern Therak and in the central regions of Pheykran. Various forms of Gnosticism, including Manichaeism, thrived along the coastal areas of Therak. In general, Christianity was popular amongst the descendants of the pure Karronians and the southern 'Ayaddans, Islam was popular amongst the descendants of the northern 'Ayaddans, and Gnosticism flourished in regions that relied on trade. These religious divides were to have a profound and violent effect during the Early Modern period.

The Southern Waste
After the tribal invasions in the second century BCE, the South was still populated by nomads, and the full effects of events in the North took nearly a century to come into effect. The conquest essentially led to the North and South, once entirely different worlds, to become much closer culturally and politically. Several cities were founded in the first century CE along the rivers that flow through southern Pheykran and along the coast of Ingris, northern goods became more prevalent in the region, and when the monotheistic religions began to drift into the North, they soon after penetrated the south as well. Christianity was almost unexceptionally dominant by 200 CE, especially in the new cities. However, the nomadic way of life necessarily remained unchanged, as it would until the discovery of oil in the twentieth century.

The Estalian Kingdoms
After years of turbulence, on 520 AD the first Estalian kingdom was created. Lorenzo I took the power on Palerno and expanded his influence throughout the entire region. The famous Estalian galees allowed complete dominance over the Sea of Souls, thus giving a strong boost towards the development of a healthy trading economy. In the same time, the first colonization of the peninsula started with the foundation of the cities of Reggio Ingris and Barri.

On the subsequent century, the Estaliani continued to colonize the peninsula, but the growing distance from the kingdom capital situated on the island and its influence became an excuse for local lords of the peninsula to gain more power and autonomy, as the central government progressively lost authority over these lands. The internal division was explicit when, on 1434, the duke of Milona Ambrogio Negroni proclaimed himself re di Padagna, causing a political fragmentation that would endure for the next three centuries. Therefore, at this stage there were two kingdoms possessing the same cultural roots: the Estalian Kingdom, whose inhabitants were the former and first Estalians, and the Padagna Kingdom, as a result of the declaration of independence carried out by Negroni.

Many were the reasons of this division: cultural, because the inhabitants of the peninsula started to differ from those of the isle as in language and common habits; political, since the central government had an oppressive tax policy over their colonies; economical, as the isle was slowly becoming dependant on these colonies that were growing and becoming quite productive: the presence of such government was perceived only as a heavy toll suffucating their possibilities of development.

Rise of the Quanzari Emirate
The fledging kingdom of Padagna held a territory rich of raw materials. It had a wide capability of supporting a strong economy and a flourishing society, although it was very poor at start. Things started out well however for the newborn kingdom, while the originary Estalian kingdom faced trouble on struggling to maintain economical growth and avoid a depression, as the government had maintained throughout years of well-being very lax economical policies, having been semi-dependant from the colonies until their indipendence. This state of transitory weakness of both kingdoms led the emergent Q'nzars, an ethnicity originary from east of the continent, to set their aim upon the Istalian region (the corruption of the name Estalia). The Padagna army, formed principally by reservists and volunteers was defeated in four months, as the kingdom spent two centuries in raising from scratch a good economy: military was neither an issue nor a priority nor they could afford such an expense in those times of relative peace. Continuing its offensive campaign, the foreigners took, on 1771, the entire control of the peninsula, with the decisive battle at the gates of Reggio Ingris. Resistants fled the country asking for political asylum to the old Nicomese kingdom, which accepts them in name of their traditional national brotherhood.

Ended the war, the Q'nzars created the Quanzari Emirate (ar: كانزاري الامار), an oligarchy ruled by the emir Muhammad Al'Bner.

Istalian resistance
The occupation of the peninsula triggered the formation of unresting movements, as, among the others, intellectual manifestos like the works of Emanuele Terenzi, one of the most known authors of the 19th century. After the boycottage of Quanzar monopolies (like tobacco), the Istalians started to create secret societies as Istalia Libera and Resistenza Nicomese. The Quanzari Emirate tried to counter the uprising Istalian majority by giving the military the order to control the nation as a de-facto police force. Exiled refugees, principally on Solentia, started to support the resistance with donations. Famous is the creation of the Istalian Liberation Grant.

The Istalian kingdom (this is how the Nicomese one was renamed after the invasion), now alone in fighting the Quanzarians, was formerly taken by the emirate on 1956. Also if the island was defined as Quanzari Dominion of Estalia (ar: كانزاري السياده من ستاليا), de facto it remained an independent state, where the Muslims did not take part. Several times the peninsular Istalians asked them to lead the resistance, but the kingdom was too weak to support these pleas.

The collapse of the Emirate
The situation tended to collapse in the following 50 years. Most of the Quanzars, finally integrated with Istalians, decided that the old Emirate should end, also because the civil liberties were very little, since the Sharia was bound as national law soonly after the ultimation of the Quanzari military campaign. In this period communists forces surges in the entire nation, and finally, on 2110, a revolution starts against the ruling class but also against the Istalian king.

The compromise: the Soviet Union
Created on 2118, the Union of Quanzari Soviets was an experiment of convivence between the Istalian majority and the Quanzar minority. After the overpower of the orthodox Muslims, the creation of a complete atheist state was the idea about a possibility to forget the precedent history of oppression.

It works and for about 100 yeara the nation continues to maintain its integrity. But the nationalized economy and the lack of civil liberties start to make citizens unhappy. This is why the People's Assembly divided itself in different wings, but in the last years the more democratic forces taken the control of the country and start to change it in a more liberal state. It was in this times that the founders of Partito Social-liberista and Alleanza delle Libertà (also if this parties was not yet formally recognized) started to think about possible institutional changes.

Transitional times: the Repubblica Quanzariana
On July 26, 2233 the Parliament of the Union of Quanzari Soviets solemnly proclaim the creation of the Repubblica Quanzariana. The name was chosen on Quanzaria because the old Nicomese real dynasty, after the collapse of the Union, start a small insurgence on the Eastalian island, in order to restore the old kingdom. The disputed was resolved by a referendum in the island: the majority (87%) of citizens decide to become part of the republic. The Parlamento Quanzariano transform then Kisawuli and Nicoma in two semi-independent regions.

It is in this transitional period that most of the current parties was founded: the Partito Social-liberista (formally recognized but active also on the Union), the Partito Borisista, the Partito Laico Riformista and the Partito Collettivista Internazionalista. On formerly ones, the most important were Alleanza per le Libertà (co-founder with PSLI) and the Partito Libertario. The first Presidente della Repubblica was Marco Guadagnini (PSL).

The national restoration: the Repubblica Istaliana
After 30 years of democratic government, the PSLI decides to start a constitutional, historical change: formally recognize the Istalianity of the nation and change its name to Repubblica Istaliana. Followed by all parties on the parliament, the constitutional law passed with unanimity. Then, on May 2 2263, the Presidente della Repubblica Carlo Aurelio Gianti proclaims the creation of the Repubblica Istaliana with this speech:

"Dear Istalian citizens, it's with extreme pleasure that I'm here, in the Parliament, now the Istalian Parliament, to proclaim our republic, the Istalian Republic. After centuries of divisions our nation is now one, free and indivisible. The old dream of our fathers is now reality: Istalians are free and they have a country where democracy is sacred and untouchable. Long live the Republic! Long live Istalia!"

- Carlo Aurelio Gianti, Extract from the Speech for the Proclamation of the Istalian Republic