MINBARI

Planet of Origin: Minbar, the seventh  planet orbiting Chi Draconis — a binary star system just over 25 light years from Earth. It has two moons. Its day is shorter than Earth's, at 20 hours and 47 minutes, and its year is about 1.5 Earth years. Its atmosphere is oxygen/nitrogen with larger polar caps than Earth; the northern cap covers 23% of the planet's surface and, on the whole, Minbar's climate is colder than that of Earth. The planet is noted for vast crystalline structures; many cities are carved directly from crystal. The population of the planet is about 4 billion, and the capital city is located at Yedor.

The Minbari are a humanoids species that developed an advenced space faring civilisation. Their space age began more than a thousand years before the humans's.

Minabi are sexuate and reproduce in a manner similar to that of humans, with sex organs placed similarly. They are bald with light-toned skin and a large external bone crest on the back of their heads which is in fact an extention of their skull which is not present ar birth but grows over time. Female Minbari have a smooth crest which tapers to a single point at the back of the head while males typically have headbones which taper to several points along the bone. The Minbari  live longer than humans, have high stamina and can sustain graver injuries and blood loss. A small percentage of the population are telepaths and as such are highly honored. Some male are known to have facial hair due to the input of human DNA more than a  thousand years ago in their gene pool which was brought by the minbari-human hybrid prophet Valen.

The Minbari society is structured around three quasi-ethnic castes. These castes are called Worker, Warrior, and Religious. Membership in a caste appears to be a hereditary matter - children of parents from one caste will usually follow their parents. If the parents are of different castes, the mother's caste takes precedence - any children belongs to the mother's caste. Sometimes Minbari who have a deep feeling for one caste - which they refer to as the calling of their heart - will join a different caste. The castes are not as limited as their titles would suggest, and to some degree try to be self-sufficient. For instance, all three castes maintain armed security forces. 

Based on Minbar, the Minbari Federation is the government of the Minbari worlds and colonies. The Federation is an oligarchy ruled by the Grey Council which is made up of nine individuals, Initially, it was divided equally between the three social classes, Warrior, Religious, and Worker but after the civil war that occrure in the late 23rd century, membership division was revised to comprise two Warriors, two Religious, and five Workers. This gave the long-overlooked Worker caste a majority voice. Members of the council are addressed by other Minbari with the honorific title "Satai".

The Minbari are a very religious people. Their belief is that the universe itself is sentient, and that the universe has the ability to break itself into many pieces and invests itself in every form of life. Consequently, every being is a projection of a part of the universal soul which uses individual sentient beings in a process of self-examination and a search for meaning. Minbari people believe in reincarnation. After an individual has died, its soul joins with all the other departed. The souls then all meld together becoming one. Then the souls are reborn into the next generation of Minbari. They stopped their genocidal war with the humans in the 23rd century upon realizing that "that Minbari souls were reborn in human bodies" as they had found as well as the fact that the Minbari have some human DNA. Since the Minbari find concept of killing fellow members of their species horrifically unacceptable, the sudden revelation that their young enemy had this unexpected link to themselves put them under the same consideration.

Their link to the humans came from Valen, a central figure in their religion. A "Minbari not born of Minbar". About AD 1260, a fortress suddenly appeared in Minbari space, on which resided Valen flanked by Vorlons, who then led the Minbari people against the Shadows. After the war, Valen helped restructure Minbari society, organizing the Grey Council to lead it. These nine individuals came from each of the three castes. This form of government remained stable for a thousand years until the next Shadow War. Valen knew the Shadows would return and wrote prophecies to warn the Minbari when the next war was starting. After these tasks were completed, Valen left Minbar; the remainder of his life and eventual fate is still a mystery, though it has since been kept a secret by the Grey Council that he did have a wife and children in self-imposed exile, most of whom returned to Minbari society in secret, had families of their own, and added human DNA to the Minbari gene pool. Minbari with human DNA are consequently called "children of Valen". 

Source: Babylon 5 universe