The Mandarese are an ethnic group in the Indonesian province of West Sulawesi in Sulawesi. The Mandar language belongs to the Northern subgroup of the South Sulawesi languages group of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family. The closest language to Mandar is the Toraja-Sa'dan language. Before there was a regional expansion, the Mandarese along with the Bugis people, Makassar people and Toraja people formed a cultural diversity in South Sulawesi. Although politically West Sulawesi and South Sulawesi are divided by a border, the Mandarese are historically and culturally close knitted to their cognate relatives in South Sulawesi. The term "Mandar" is actually a unified name among the seven coastal kingdoms (Pitu Ba'ba'na Binanga) and seven mountain kingdoms (Pitu Ulu