For once it helps to recall that the theater on which the Little Ocean stories occur, which in the modern day is called the Taymyrsky Dolgano-Nenetsky District, is roughly similar in size to George Orwell's dear old Spain. The timeline of the stories span the process in which the old Sultanate of Qarataimir (covering the entire area of the district) dissolves into chaos and slowly separates into three entities, and by its end the distinction would be as irreconcilable and permanent as what we see between the two Koreas. These are, in turn:
The North Coast, or Karadeniz. This is the northern third of the Sultanate of Qarataimir, bordering the Kara Sea. The people of the North Coast identify variously as Muslim and Turkish, but in fact trace their ancestry to Central Asian peoples such as the Kyrgyz and the Uzbek. By a coincidence, this region is sometimes referred to as Karadeniz by its inhabitants, alluding both to the old Nenets name for the sea and to its northerly location (1). The capital of Karadeniz is called Ustanashehir and lies somewhere at the Ob-Irtysh estuary and owes its prominence from being the western terminus of the main land trade route through Qarataimir. Unfortunately, the city is wiped out in a flood triggered by the collapse of the Krasnoyarsk High Dam, killing most of the Qarataimir ruling class, and triggering societal collapse across the sultanate.
The leadership structure of Karadeniz during the events of the civil war is not clear. It is rumored that the Islamic factions are headed by a "Sultan" distantly related to the ruling line. If such a sultan would exist, his legitimacy would find very limited recognition and would make an organized war effort improbable. For this reason, the civil war is fielded in the north side mainly by large roving revanchist gangs who conducted pogroms against Christian civilians in the marches, whom they blamed for the tragedy of Ustanashehir.
It is alluded that the Karadeniz people follow a special variety of Islam which is closer to folk belief and Pan-Turkish nationalism than to what the modern observer would recognize as Islamic doctrine. This is a persistent source of embarrassment and frustration to the Larabin Hafiz, a roving scholar of the Qu'ran and champion of Orthodox Islam who stayed for a time in the abbey of Amatodate.
Taimiria, or Rumelia. The southern third of Qarataimir is dominated by the Khatanga sea channel, which was formed from the Khatanga River. Over centuries, rising sea levels continually encroached on the river basin, gradually turning it from a river to a wide sea channel (2). The sea channel is unique among Siberian rivers as one that flows west-east instead of south-north (3), and its widening greatly facilitated trade across the Eurasian continent. The inland location of the channel protected merchant ships from piracy and made it the preferred route over the more exposed Arctic Ocean route.
The land bordering the sea channel is controlled by a conglomerate of prince-satraps. They are so named because while these power centers started out as governorates, on authority divested from the Sultan, they mutated over time into hereditary positions and have become very much akin to oligarch clans. At the start of the events of our story, the prince-satraps would use the destruction of Ustanashehir to their own advantage, staging an war and attempting to take over the entire country. Ironically, by declaring war and closing themselves to the outside world, the Taimirians would inadvertently force trade routes to move back into the Arctic Ocean, and consign themselves to irrelevance.
Taimiria is sometimes called Rumelia, as an effort in branding on the part of the prince-satraps to posture as the "Christian faction" (4). The south has a diverse population and solidly Christian populations as a result of immigration and trade, among which included the Sarmyaks (Koreans), Dungans, Muranids (both Chinese), Karagandines (Volga Germans, some Ukrainians), and others.
The Taimirian polity is led by the charismatic prince-satrap Jaromil of Toyogarov, who is known for his pious fervor, claims of being the brother to Jesus (5), and hatred towards northern hegemony. The majority share of military power, and therefore the actual power, falls into the control of General Tansukchin, who governs the industrious far-eastern satrapy of Totte Muran or Töçmuran. The Bishop Sikander, from the Sarmyak clan of Yasin, is Irannika's father and serves to lend legitimacy to the regime with his position. During the story, Sikander Yasin's position is greatly threatened by the arrival of Makarios, who was in fact an atheist, but who was nevertheless elected to the position of "bishop" by an enthusiastic mob after a freak accident involving a sword in a stone.
The third region is variously called Midlands, the Griadines, or the Mesogriadines in the stories. The name "Griadine" is derived from the Russian гряда, meaning "highland" because the area includes the Byrranga Mountains. However, the flat, relatively poor areas south of the Byrranga Mountains which are not under the control of the Christian prince-satraps can also be counted in this area.
The Griadines fill the role of the "marches" between Muslim- and Christian-controlled lands and sees the worst of the conflict throughout the story. The population in itself is a mixture of both Muslim and Christians, with Muslim and Christian villages built in a patchwork fashion across the region (6), sometimes right next to one another. Unable to neatly categorize the Griadines as a majority-Muslim or Christian region, the Karadeniz and the prince-satraps consider the area to be up-for-grabs. By the strategic view of Tansukchin, it is considered advantageous for Taimirian frontiers to advance into the Griadines for two reasons: one, that the hills make this frontier more easily defensible; and two, that the water of Lake Taymyr can be diverted to replace the Khatanga river, which has over the centuries become less viable as a source of drinking water.
The people groups populating the Griadines tend to retain a vestigial identity to people groups of our age, among them Poles, Greeks, and Assyrians. A portion of the people are resettled Permyaks, refugees from an earlier (as yet unspecified) ecological disaster who also form a permanent underclass in Qarataimir. Their ancestry is unclear, but they are likely to be of diverse origins (7).
In the events of the story, the ex-brigand Musa Abisheganaden would build his iteration of Amatodate Abbey on the shores of Lake Taymyr, and turn it into as a base for civic activity and relief efforts in the Griadines. The end of this iteration is guaranteed after a series of events: one, when Musa stubbornly refuses to side with the prince-satraps or to give preferential treatment to Christian troops over Muslims and local Griadine civilians (who they consider barely Christian); two, when Irannika, the daughter of Bishop Sikander and the betrothed of Prince Jaromil, runs away from Toyogarov to join the abbey; and three, when a rumor is spread that an actual Sultan somehow exists, secretly leads the Karadeniz war effort, and was granted sanctuary at Amatodate. For these three travesties, the abbey would be mowed to the ground by a powerful, triumphant, and impeccably "Christian" army. What comes after this sad and tragic event, I have not decided.
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| A scene from the Battle of Anqing 安慶之戰, 1860 [source] |
(1) The color black refers to the north in the Turkish system of codifying cardinal directions. The same name Karadeniz is used in modern Turkish to refer to the Black Sea.
(2) See: St. Lawrence River
(3) This is one of the key reasons, from geography, why today's Siberia remains underdeveloped.
(4) The same name has been used in the Ottoman Empire to denote the regions of Bulgaria and Thrace, and alludes to the Byzantine Roman Empire.
(5) See: Hong Xiuquan 洪秀全; Taiping Rebellion 太平天國, 1850-1864.
(6) See: modern Bosnia and Herzegovina, modern Caucasus.
(7) For example, the family name Hutanonoyong is speculated to be of Chinese and Japanese etymology.
