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<h3>1525 — Babur speaks</h3>
<h4>Enlightenment on the steppe</h4>
The Tžuro were now troubled by a new doctrine, <b><a href="Javascript:parent.al('Jippirasti');">Jippirasti</a></b>, monotheistic, demanding, and ferocious. Jippirasti means “listening to Jippir”; what the converts heard Jippir saying was to convert their pagan brothers, and after that the wide world, to the path of righteousness. His prophet <b>Babur</b> died in 1510.
<p>Babur’s idea of morality was suited to a nomadic society: it was heavy on unity, lineages, property rights, honor, and sexual propriety, while having little to say about land, government, or any common enterprise beyond war. Jippir himself was imperious, jealous of the pagan idols, and loquacious— Babur reported Jippir’s long harangues, his poetic delight in the beauty of the plateau and its big sky, and his extravagant promises to Babur and his people.
<p>Tžuro society was organized for warfare: men spent as much as half the year travelling far from their homes, fighting and trading; the rest of the time they lived with their wife’s family. Under paganism, the raids were as often as not against rival clans, each of which had its own god; Babur, stressing unity and monotheism, freed the Tžuro for external conquest.
<p>The wealth of a lineage (animals, grazing rights, gold, etc.) was managed by its women. This can be seen as an adaptation to the males’ long absences: they entrusted their wealth not to wives, whose loyalty might be to their own lineage, but to their sisters. What a man received from war, trade, and hunting (excepting a portion distributed to build relationships with other lineages) he gave not to his children but to his lineage— in effect, to his sister and her children.
<p>As a corollary, infidelity, though disapproved of, was not very serious. A man couldn’t be certain that his wife’s children were his, but it didn’t much matter— they belonged to the wife’s lineage, and it would take care of them. There could be no doubt, however, that his sister’s children were hers, and thus part of his own lineage.
<p>Their recent invention of the <b>stirrup</b> would prove momentous.
<h4>Elsewhere in the south</h4>
The reappearance of a united <b>Axunai</b> does not indicate that Čejiras’s hard work dividing the empire was in vain; his true heirs were the <a href="Javascript:parent.al('Bucair');">Bucair</a>, who had learned from him not only Axunašin military tactics but writing and statecraft; they made western Axunai into a kingdom of their own, <b>Bukanel</b>, proclaimed by Ašives in 1419.
<p>Ašives had two kingly titles, <i>narwōs</i> of his own people and <i>nive </i>of the settled Axunemi under his rule. Separate institutions were maintained for each people. The Bucair lords were raised in camps, not towns; but they were also required to learn Axunašin in order to actually run and not simply preside over Axunemi institutions. Perhaps better than any other nomadic people, the Bucair expertly balanced their two roles, maintaining their nomadic identity and toughness while serving as legitimate governors of the agriculturalists. War with Axunai was frequent, but limited; the Axunemi could not effectively conquer the highlands, and the Bucair perhaps realized that ruling too many Axunemi would overload their dual institutions.
<p>The farther provinces, such as Čiqay and Bolon, have again drifted off on their own.
<p>Čeiy was turning out to be a very different land than Axunai. Axunemi civilization had been built by taking over Wede:i and Jeori cities; Čeiy was built from near nothing by colonists. Where the metropole was imperial and bureaucratic, it was egalitarian and pragmatic. Axunai was a command economy; Čeiy developed markets. The Skourenes got along very well there. Indeed, not a few Skourenes helped settle Čeiy, especially in its southern half, <b>Tandau</b>. Tandau was effectively independent by 1380, and it set up a senate on the Skourene model; in 1427 it conquered Mura.
<p>Trade with Čeiy helped perk up the Skourene economy, and the mariners of <b>Kolatimand</b> rediscovered old routes and pioneered new ones along the eastern coast of Ereláe. On one of these, around 1400, they made it to <b><a href="Javascript:parent.al('Arc%C3%A9l');">Arcél</a></b>; later expeditions (joined by Peligi and Gurdago) reached the rich southern realmof Uytai. The Skourenes brought spices, iron weapons, and manufactures, and brought back gold, in sufficient quantities to spark inflation.
<p>They also imported <b>millet</b> (<i>krek</i>), a hardy crop which was perfect fo the damp, windswept littoral, helping to resist soil erosion.
<p>The organization of an Eynleyni state in <b>Tyellakh</b> was taken at the time, if it was remarked at all, as a confirmation of Munkhâshi decline. This was short-sighted, even if the only immediate effect was to make it harder for the barbarians to raid.
<h4>In Eretald</h4>
Overland trade between <b>Caďinas</b> and Axunai was growing increasingly important; and it was monopolized by the <b>Arániceri</b>, who made a pretty penny off their Caďinorian brothers. That was one source of tension; another was that the Arániceri were no longer contributing to the crusade against Munkhâsh; another was their tolerance for Caďinorian dissidents, rebel princes, Arašei, and other rabble. The Arániceri shifted from appeasement to defiance as circumstances permitted.
<p>The emperor <b><a href="Javascript:parent.al('Decanos');">Decanos</a></b> proposed a peaceful union. The Arániceri king Durririȟ made a counter-proposal intended as a deal-killer: Caďinas should begin to worship the Arániceri gods. Decanos called his bluff: he built grand temples to the ‘<b>First Pantheon</b>’ and returned in two years with a hundred priests dedicated to them. When Durririȟ refused to honor the deal, Decanos occupied the country (1497-99). Durririȟ was named co-emperor, a formality that allowed Decanos to depose resisting Arániceri nobles in the name of their own lord.
<p>Two things were expected of a Caďinorian emperor: crusading against Munkhâsh, and public service. Thus <b>Ceornactec</b> (V. Sernažec, 1238-1261) issued the first law codes, <b>Tevorandos</b> (<i>Tevorad</i>, 1345-79) built theaters, temples, and roads; <b>Benoras</b> (<i>Bendra</i>, 1392-1424) rationalized the system of conscription (which had fallen heaviest on people of the middle Svetla, the core of the empire), and took the advice of the philosopher <b>Genremos</b> (<i>Žendrom</i>) to abolish hereditary positions in government and appoint officials based on merit; and <b>Keadau II</b> (1462-80) established the Council of Lords, the <b>Sannora</b>, and removed the ban on the Arašei (Cuzeian) religion, though he did not remove all obstacles to its free practice.
<p><b>Kenand</b> is the first Naviu state, growing out of the trading post of the same name on the upper Eärdur. <b>Mei Ros</b>, by contrast, was organized for defense; too many powerful neighbors were now interested in its territory.
<p>Caďinorian traders also made contact with <b>Nan</b>, and traded manufactures and cloth for tropical rice, gold, hides, timber, fruits, and spices. The Nanese, whose men had worn only penis sheaths and their women nothing at all, imitated Caďinorian clothing with local or traded materials.
<p>Around 1400, a small group of Nanese crossed the Zone of Fire, perhaps during a latent period of the Zone, and began to colonize the <b><a href="Javascript:parent.al('Bekkai);">Bekkai</a></b>.
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