Talk:Qedik

Origins

Cedh and I worked out the probable origins of the Qedik with a short backstory, which I document (and expand on) here, lest it be forgotten:

1. Bronze's rarer component is tin - copper is everywhere - and though the Gezoro had good tin sources, the pre-Tsinakan Ndak had poor access to them due to long-standing animosity between the two groups.
2. There were few sources for tin in Ndak lands, and the Akan dynasty's expansionism required a lot of bronze to keep the armies well equipped. Most of it they got by trading with the Faraghin, who had access to other tin deposits in the mountain passes north of the Oltu valley.
3. Tsinakan got into a trading spat with the Faraghin early in his reign, probably when they refused to honor the prices they had agreed on with his father Terakan. Thus the tin trade is a probable source of some of the "insults" to which the Tsinakan text refers, and the Faraghin are virtually certain to have been among the "foreign countries who were hostile against me".
4. Meanwhile the wars with the Gezoro were heating up again, and demand for bronze was higher than ever. So Tsinakan invaded the Oltu valley and adjacent mountain passes, taking over and then expanding the tin mines there.
5. But the Faraghin were not subjected in a day - and with priority on securing the mines, the Ndak had to ignore a lot of peripheral Faraghin land at first, so they posed a great threat to Ndak control. Heavily fortified garrisons were quickly built to protect their tin access. These were probably in place within the first few years of Tsinakan's reign.
6. His hold on the area proved successful, and the Faraghin were gradually cowed, while the great influx of new tin proved a major boon to the Ndak armies - this probably contributed a great deal to their victory over the Gezoro a few years later.
7. Thus began the Ndak control of the inland Oltu valley, followed by the Rathedān. Very probably it is these two countries Tsinakan "defeated ... in ten years".
8. The mines themselves remained valuable after acquiring the Rathedān, despite it also having tin sources. Small but well-armed towns arose around them.
9. It is probable that tribes from the northern side of the passes attacked from time to time - perhaps for tin, perhaps just because the Ndak were there at all, but in any case the Ndak sent periodic armed patrols through the adjacent northern lands to help keep a lid on trouble. It thus became a de facto hinterland of the Empire.
10. In later centuries, perhaps the mines ran out, or perhaps their tin had become uneconomical to transport, but the Empire gradually let go of the mines and northern lands. But the local Ndak-ized population remained and spread, and it is from them that Qedik arose.

Radius 13:12, 25 November 2009 (UTC)