Your point about the Ottoman grand viziers is well taken.
However, I don't agree with some of the distinctions you're making. Tribes are nations. Like, literally, "nation" is the Latin word for tribes that weren't one of the the three tribes of Rome. "Race" is another synonym; Webster defines "nation" as "A part, or division, of the people of the earth, distinguished from the rest by common descent, language, or institutions; a race; a stock." If a tribe or a race is roughly coextensive with a state, that state is a nation-state. So race has everything to do with nation-states; this is one of the main reasons I think it's important to point out that countries like the United States are not nation-states, despite the efforts of groups like the Ku Klux Klan, and that nation-states are something we can do away with.
Consider ancient Greece. Classical Athens was considered to consist of four tribes, and the state of Athens only governed a tiny minority of Greeks, so the political division into states just didn't coincide with a division by common descent, language, or institutions even very roughly; and Greece remained divided into such city-states until being conquered by the Romans. Mycenaean Greece was far more politically unified, but much more diverse in terms of ethnicity, language, and institutions; archaeological evidence confirms Homer's hearsay on this count. Biblical Israel was classically divided into twelve tribes, and the myths of Abraham and the Exodus was used to falsely claim a common descent for what archaeological evidence tells us were Canaanite people who spoke the same Semitic language as their neighbors but began to distinguish themselves by the cult of Yahweh; and we have both documentary and archaeological evidence of their subsequent divisions and reunions, continuing through the intertestamental period.
However, I don't agree with some of the distinctions you're making. Tribes are nations. Like, literally, "nation" is the Latin word for tribes that weren't one of the the three tribes of Rome. "Race" is another synonym; Webster defines "nation" as "A part, or division, of the people of the earth, distinguished from the rest by common descent, language, or institutions; a race; a stock." If a tribe or a race is roughly coextensive with a state, that state is a nation-state. So race has everything to do with nation-states; this is one of the main reasons I think it's important to point out that countries like the United States are not nation-states, despite the efforts of groups like the Ku Klux Klan, and that nation-states are something we can do away with.
Consider ancient Greece. Classical Athens was considered to consist of four tribes, and the state of Athens only governed a tiny minority of Greeks, so the political division into states just didn't coincide with a division by common descent, language, or institutions even very roughly; and Greece remained divided into such city-states until being conquered by the Romans. Mycenaean Greece was far more politically unified, but much more diverse in terms of ethnicity, language, and institutions; archaeological evidence confirms Homer's hearsay on this count. Biblical Israel was classically divided into twelve tribes, and the myths of Abraham and the Exodus was used to falsely claim a common descent for what archaeological evidence tells us were Canaanite people who spoke the same Semitic language as their neighbors but began to distinguish themselves by the cult of Yahweh; and we have both documentary and archaeological evidence of their subsequent divisions and reunions, continuing through the intertestamental period.