qadun

Qadun is a fictional language and culture created for speculative world-building. It centers on the ancient city-state of Qadun and the surrounding hinterland, imagined to have flourished on a coastal desert trade corridor during the late Bronze Age.

Name and etymology: The term Qadun is a constructed root in the civilization’s language, with scholars describing it as related to concepts such as foundation, harbor, or gathering across different dialects of Qadun. The name is used both for the city and for the language that purportedly spread through its networks.

Geography and chronology: The Qadun heartland is placed along a coastal plain with inland oases, linking caravans and seafaring fleets. The civilization is depicted as building fortified urban centers, granaries, and markets that facilitated long-distance exchange. Chronology commonly places its prominence roughly between 1400 and 1100 BCE, followed by later cultural layers reflecting post-Bronze Age transitions.

Language: Qadun is described as an agglutinative, subject–object–verb language with an extensive system of affixes. It features a consonant inventory that permits emphatic or glottalized notes and a five-vowel system. Noun morphology includes case marking (nominative, accusative, genitive), while verbs encode tense, aspect, mood, and evidentiality through prefixes and suffixes. Basic word order tends toward SOV in simple clauses, with pronouns and clitics attaching to nouns or verbs.

Writing: The Qadunite script is an abjad-derived system used on clay tablets and seals. It comprises about 22 core consonants; vowels are typically omitted in everyday inscriptions but indicated in liturgical or scholarly texts. Inscriptions cover trade records, legal texts, and mythic narratives.

Culture and legacy: In its fictional canon, Qadun features a mercantile legal tradition, ceremonial architecture, and a pantheon with a storm deity and a grain goddess. The civilization serves as a common setting in novels and games, illustrating approaches to urban planning, law, and intercultural exchange.