Mount and Blade Central Asia

This respect was specifically demonstrated when Malim met Li Rufeng. The young knight, who had changed into formal attire, bowed respectfully to Li Rufeng and presented him with a gift from Anis.

A dagger that is said to have been inherited from the last caliph Mustasim. Although it is not embellished with bright gems, the handle of the dagger is made of quite gorgeous gold thread and silver rope as protective fabric, which has a low-key but majestic beauty.

This made Li Rufeng a little embarrassed, because he did not prepare any gift for the Emir of Anis. After all, there were actually many potential territorial division issues between them.

Although the emir's army withdrew, they only withdrew less than 50 kilometers and rested near the water source. Li Rufeng was unable to determine whether the Iranians gave up the siege of Erbil Castle to give him face or because their logistics could not keep up and they had to withdraw temporarily.

But since the other party gave him so much face, Li Rufeng could only hesitate for a moment and gave his favorite scimitar to the messenger in front of him as a return gift, as a gift to the Emir whom he had never met before.

That scimitar was a fine piece that Li Rufeng had carefully selected from the dark wizard's treasures. It could be used in battle, not just to be put on a shelf for collection.

"On behalf of my brother, I thank you for your kindness. This is the letter he wrote to you. The Alawi family has no ill will towards you. We are still willing to be loyal to the bloodline of the Great Conqueror." Malim stated their political stance directly.

His brother had specifically reminded him to make this clear to Li Rufeng.

After all, the Alawite family's loyalty to Timur and their betrayal of the previous ruler during the siege of Hamadan have never been recognized by others. Their ruling status comes entirely from the residual power of the Timurid Khanate.

However, the Alawite family did not expect that a potential "heir" like Li Rufeng would suddenly appear from the distant west, carrying with him the might to suppress the rebellion of the Black Sheep People, and so he conquered the vast mountains and rivers and fought all the way from the westernmost border of the Khanate to their front.

They have not yet made a final decision on which successor to support. The reason they are more inclined towards Shah Rukh is that Khalil in Transoxiana is too far away from them, while Shah Rukh in Hitla is much closer.

But obviously, Li Rufeng is closer to them now...

Chapter 618 Cooperation

At Li Rufeng's current level of status, meetings between leaders of various factions are extremely cautious, because if they disagree, it may lead to a war and cause a faction to decline.

If the conversation between Bayezid and the Great Conqueror had not been so arrogant, perhaps the history of the entire world would have gone in another direction. Of course, Li Rufeng was more inclined to believe that Timur deliberately chose such a critical moment to lift the siege of Constantinople under the guise of a dispute of personal pride.

After all, if Bayezid successfully captured the thousand-year-old city, his personal reputation would reach its peak and he would truly become the leader of the Islamic world, which the great conqueror could not allow.

But spanning thousands of kilometers, through a minor friction on the border, to exert influence on another king in a few months, with so many variables in between, were all calculated by the great conqueror?

That's a bit too scary...

After meeting with the envoys of the Alawite family, exchanging gifts and letters, Li Rufeng and Anis had already reached a basic understanding.

Anis was unwilling to become Li Rufeng's enemy. He did not want to take sides in the War of Succession because of this matter. On the other hand, he did not want to become a blade used by other Iranian emirs to test Li Rufeng.

Therefore, Anis was willing to maintain peace with Li Rufeng, and both sides divided their respective borders based on their current actual occupied areas.

In addition, Anis also expressed his hope that trade routes could be opened to each other. The destruction of commerce by the war not only made Li Rufeng feel painful, but also the Iranians.

Anis and the Alawite family behind him have long been like hungry chicks, waiting for the trade routes to be unblocked so that they can profit from it and rebuild Hamadan.

In his reply, Li Rufeng also expressed his desire for peace and support for commercial order.

In addition, he also wrote some simple suggestions to promote the recovery of trade, such as tax reduction on the trade route between Hamadan and Mosul, joint actions by both sides to eliminate potential hidden dangers around the trade route, and joint repair and maintenance of the post station system of that year to fully ensure the safety of the trade route, etc.

As the saying goes, avoid talking too much with people you just met, so Li Rufeng just roughly wrote down a few "small things" that are easiest to do and don't cost much money.

Li Rufeng estimated that the Emir might be staying with his army at this time, less than a hundred kilometers away from Erbil Castle, just waiting for Li Rufeng to respond to his attitude to decide whether to fight or make peace.

The speed at which Anis arrived also confirmed this. Almost two days after the envoy Malim left Erbil Castle, the new envoy arrived outside the city wall, indicating that Anis was already waiting for a meeting with Li Rufeng on a plain five kilometers outside the city.

In order to show his sincerity, Anis's messenger promised his master to wait there until tomorrow morning. Anis chose the location, and now it was Li Rufeng's turn to choose the time.

The emir gave him enough time to conduct reconnaissance to ensure that there were no secretly ambushed troops nearby.

But in fact, for Li Rufeng, the range of five kilometers was exactly the range he could see on the strategic map. He only needed to take a few more steps in the direction of Anis to be able to see their location.

From the perspective of the strategic map, Anis brought a total of 200 cavalrymen to this meeting, and no other soldiers were seen around, so Li Rufeng also brought 200 cavalrymen out of the city to attend the meeting.

Chapter 619: Money

When the top leaders of the two forces have reached an agreement in private, the efficiency of their subordinates will be much higher.

Although the war with the Black Sheep had not yet ended, it was clear that facing pressure from all sides, the Black Sheep no longer had any more energy to spare and had to engage in a long-term military standoff with Li Rufeng on the northern border.

In this way, Li Rufeng ensured that at least the trade route in Mosul could be open to traffic. Sarah Shahi captured the daggers and scabbards of the Muqiyi faction and dug out several strongholds of the Muqiyi faction along the way.

In this regard, the Eagle of Order organization rarely provided some help in private. Although Haishar himself did not go out, other knights went out everywhere to eliminate all the strongholds of the Muqi faction dug out by Sarah Xiaxi.

Although this assassin group had never caused any trouble to Li Rufeng, he still felt a little unhappy about the existence of such a foreign violent organization in his territory. The sooner they were eradicated, the sooner he would feel at ease.

On August 10, 1409, Li Rufeng, who had returned to Mosul to rectify internal affairs and revitalize Mosul, met the Jinyiwei spy Weng Guo again.

"Our people have landed in a small fishing village called Abadan. You'd better send someone to pick up the crew members. We don't have enough manpower." Sure enough, Weng Guo brought good news to Li Rufeng.

"So fast?" Although Li Rufeng had a rough model of the world map in his mind, to be honest, the error in the specific dimensions was too large.

For example, he knew the general direction of the Persian Gulf, but he didn't know how big the entire Persian Gulf was or how deep it was.

If he had not traveled to this land and actually measured its dimensions, he probably would not have known until now the distance from Aleppo to Mosul, which takes more than 20 days to travel by horse.

Judging from the map, the territory currently controlled by Li Rufeng is actually a long and narrow strip of territory. Including the outlet to the Mediterranean Sea, the port of Alexandria, it is nearly 700 kilometers long from east to west, and only 150 kilometers wide from north to south.

The entire territory spreads along the route of Alexandretta Port, Aleppo, Mardin, Qamishli, Abu Zahir, and Mosul. Rather than being a "feudal state", it is actually closer to a commercial city-state alliance.

However, all the major city-states along this trade route were in decline due to the looting by the great conqueror. There were neither powerful enough nobles to act as a fulcrum nor chambers of commerce large enough to challenge Li Rufeng.

These special conditions ultimately made it so easy for Li Rufeng to become the true power controller.

According to Weng Guo, the landing personnel of the advance ship of the ocean-going fleet had already arrived in Abadan. Li Rufeng even had to look at the map provided by the Jinyiwei to find this small fishing village of Abadan.

This small fishing village is located about 40 kilometers south of Basra. It is said that it was a village on an island when it was first established. However, due to the arid climate in the southern region for hundreds of years, it has become landlocked. It only relies on a river that leads directly to the Persian Gulf to barely retain the name of the fishing village.

The straight-line distance from Mosul to Basra is nearly 700 kilometers. Even if Li Rufeng's troops set out now, they will not arrive until this time next month.

During this process, they also have to pass through the area controlled by the Baghdad people. Although Li Rufeng has prepared manpower to wait for Xiao Walad's plan to begin and has taken the opportunity to control Baghdad, the entire plan is still in the preparation stage.

Chapter 620 New Legion

Mosul is a mess, bad enough to make a "wise ruler" like Li Rufeng lose his hair.

The dark wizards were given half a year, and it swallowed up all the caravans trying to approach Mosul like a black hole, turning this once famous commercial city into a real "black zone". Now the entire city is facing a sharp drop in revenue.

Apart from the small-scale commercial connections between Mosul and the cities controlled by Li Rufeng, and potential caravans from the Hamedan region, Mosul has no commercial income from other directions.

In contrast, the population in Mosul did not experience a cliff-like decline. Li Rufeng had to face a century-old problem, that is, he had a large number of idle people with nothing to do.

And these people cannot live without food, or they can simply feed them with kvass like the black wizards do.

If it were the era of the great conqueror, the great conqueror would probably have killed these completely useless people with a wave of his hand, but Li Rufeng would definitely not do that.

After mobilizing a part of the population to move to the "rear" and fill Aleppo, Mardin and other places, Li Rufeng once again activated the ancient Eastern wisdom and decided to follow the example of the Song Dynasty and establish an imperial army.

He recruited two thousand men at one time and established the Mosul 1,000-man team and the Mosul 2,000-man team.

The benefit of doing so is that on the one hand it fills the stretched military force, and on the other hand it also eases the pressure on the city of Mosul. The soldiers' salaries are calculated separately.

Whether Mr. Li spends money to borrow food from outside or directly draws food from various places, it sounds much better in name than providing aid to the city of Mosul.

If Li Rufeng continued to pay to support the Mosel people, what would the citizens of those cities that had previously occupied think? What would the people of Aleppo, where Li Rufeng had started his career, think?

However, these two thousand-man teams in Mosul City obviously cannot form combat effectiveness in a short period of time. According to Li Rufeng's estimation, these people still need good food and drink and rest for at least two months before they can recover their physical health.

After that, Li Rufeng will have to train them and build equipment.

However, a blank sheet of paper also has its advantages. Compared with the Mongols, Kurds, and Armenians who have already formed their own fighting styles, these urban class soldiers, like the Malikiya City League, have greater plasticity.

Li Rufeng planned to train them separately into the so-called "new army". In the transfer order just signed, Li Rufeng asked the Malikiya City League to reduce its number to one thousand people.

Li Rufeng will train these three teams of 1,000 people according to his own ideas.

Compared with the system of Janissaries trained by the Ottomans back then, these people were obviously far inferior in terms of training and loyalty.

Fortunately, in addition to the Janissary Guards, there are other examples in history that Li Rufeng can use as reference.

If the quality of the troops cannot be improved, then change the tactics and the way of warfare.

In addition to rapidly expanding the scale of the artillery, Li Rufeng also planned to start manufacturing his own gunpowder weapons. The blacksmith district in Aleppo developed rapidly due to the influence of the Brotherhood members.

Although it was not yet possible to cast cannons, the manufacturing foundation for matchlock guns, which were much smaller in size, had already been laid.

Before this series of wars, as a time traveler, Li Rufeng had been dismissive of the current small-caliber, single-person gunpowder weapons.

After all, when he first crossed over, he came into contact with a Mongolian tribe with a strong martial spirit. Here, a child could also play with bows and arrows. Whether in terms of accuracy or frequency, the efficiency of the bow and arrow far exceeded that of the simple and crude gunpowder weapons.

This gave Li Rufeng an illusion that at this stage, only artillery was the only thing worth looking at among gunpowder weapons, and that individual gunpowder weapons still needed to wait for the development of the times and would take several decades to come to the fore.

But after this period of actual combat, especially after witnessing the poor performance of the Malikiya City United Team, Li Rufeng finally realized one thing, that is, gunpowder weapons can at least allow farmers and small citizens to have the capital to compete with the samurai class.

Even if these people were willing to take up arms for the sake of their rulers and military pay, they could still achieve much more efficient results than they do now.

Mr. Li plans to use the chariot formation from the Hussite War for the Malikiyah City League and the 1,000th and 2,000th Man Teams of Mosul.

Even if these people are just monkey-like Hussite chariot formations after training, they can still be used as qualified soldiers in future wars.

He didn't need these people to confront the enemy cavalry head-on. He just needed them to play their due role.

As Li Rufeng issued one order after another, kilograms of gold were spent again and turned into orders sent to the Venetian and Genoese merchants who were starving in Aleppo.

Mr. Li's order included the most basic armor and swords, metal parts for making carriages, more cannons, and a large amount of gunpowder.

If everything goes well, these three thousand-man teams will be combat-ready in about half a year, and will greatly solve the problem of insufficient troops at Li Rufeng's disposal, and at the same time balance the problem of the Mongolian group accounting for too high a proportion in the army.

By the way, after winning consecutive victories and successfully capturing Mosul, the Mughal tribes not only fully recognized the fact that Li Rufeng replaced Qinggelinayan as the new leader of the tribe, but also carried out a second mobilization, and it is expected that they will be able to put together a whole cavalry team of a thousand people next month.

Even this was not the limit of the Mughals, because they did not mobilize children under the age of fourteen, nor did they allow "veterans" over the age of forty-five to re-enlist.

Considering the living customs of the Mongol people, the medical conditions of that era, and the average life expectancy, veterans over 45 years old basically no longer have the ability to ride horses and fight. Habashibuhua is already considered to be among the best physically fit among them.

Moreover, after being trampled upon by Mongke's troops, the Mongol warlords further west also expressed their willingness to submit and become Li Rufeng's sharp blades...

This was also the reason that prompted Li Rufeng to organize the first and second thousand-man teams in Mosul City. Perhaps the Mongolian generals under his command did not realize that they were intentionally balancing the weight in the army, but they were already accustomed to the way of survival by gaining status in war.

If Li Rufeng allowed his forces to develop freely, it wouldn't be long before all his men would be Mongols...

When the time comes, those Mughal chiefs will sit together and demand more privileges and larger pastures, staging a sheep-eating-man movement for him, and he will be in trouble.

Chapter 621 Expansion

"This thing is called cement?" Fahr Bawari stood in front of a construction site, looking at several workers with a confused look on his face as they skillfully piled a mixture of cement and sand into a small pit and began to pour water into it.

"Yes, sir, this is cement." The prisoner who used to work as a construction worker for the dark wizard was wearing shackles and had a flattering smile on his face.

With the complete collapse of the dark wizard regime, those "lackeys" who had volunteered to work for the dark wizards were in big trouble.

But fortunately, Li Rufeng at least did not take their lives. At that time, in order to facilitate management and increase the efficiency of the project progress, the black wizard directly instilled a lot of knowledge about the use of cement into their heads through the method of instilling knowledge in the dreamland.

The irony is that even the dark wizards probably don't have this knowledge, because in the eyes of those dark wizards, this knowledge is useless.

Just like they eat every day, but they don’t care where the food comes from or how it is grown. This knowledge is what the grassroots people need to master.

Now, the dark wizards who possessed the so-called high-end knowledge had their lairs wiped out by Li Rufeng, and few of them survived. On the contrary, the supervisors, although nominally prisoners and had to wear shackles every time they appeared in front of the workers, actually lived quite freely.

Li Rufeng guaranteed their living standards. Everyone, including their families, had enough food and drink. All they needed to do was the same as when the dark wizards ruled Mosul.

They had to ensure the workers used the cement correctly, but this time they had to remain friendly and leave the whipping to Li Rufeng's soldiers...

Of course, since Mr. Li now buys food from all over the place out of his own pocket and imports it to Mosul to feed the people in the whole city, and the workers who come out to work are also paid at a normal level, no worker has the intention of slacking off.

Naturally, the soldiers could not whip the whips in their hands, and for a short period of time, both sides were still in a honeymoon period of liberators and liberated people.

Fakhr Bavari watched the workers coating the pre-shaped stones with prepared cement and then piling them together. It didn't take long for a low wall to be built on the spot. He felt from the bottom of his heart that these black wizards' things were indeed weird and useful.

What these people are building now is the base and training camp for the 1,000-man and 2,000-man teams in Mosul, as well as the Malikiyah City Brigade.

This base is not far from Mosul, less than five kilometers north of the city. On the one hand, Li Rufeng wants to test the effectiveness of crude cement, and on the other hand, he also intends to use it to guard against possible harassment from the Black Sheep People.

The eastern part of Mosul is guarded by the Erbil Fortress. Due to the natural environment in the south, although there is no Acropolis, the army can only advance along the river when crossing the border. It is impossible to hide their movements. Only a few scouts are needed to patrol the river to guard against everything.

The west is Li Rufeng's own territory, so there is no need to worry. Only the north lacks defense.

Fakhr Bavari had a very high reputation because he had been leading the Uncrowned to fight against the dark wizards during the rule of the dark wizards. This time, Li Rufeng assigned him the task of recruiting new soldiers.

For Fakhr, the difficulty was not how to select a full two thousand people to serve in the army, but how to select only two thousand people from all the people to hold this iron rice bowl.

Not every ruler is willing to spend money to feed a city's people for free, and Li Rufeng has persisted for nearly a month, and no one knows how long he can hold on.

For most people in Mosul, Li Rufeng's behavior is more like a blessing from God and a gift from heaven.

If it weren't for Li Rufeng, the fate of Mosul would have been exactly the same as that of Aleppo after the massacre. The surviving citizens were all scattered to the surrounding settlements, and some even ended their lives in poverty.

Now the appearance of these two thousand-man teams has at least given the people of Mosul a sense of security, as all men who meet the age requirements are actively signing up to join the army.

The barracks they are currently building is enough to make people realize that Li Rufeng is recruiting a standing army this time.

If the people who have experienced countless wars and struggled to survive in this land were asked to choose, then becoming a member of the standing army under a lord or emir would definitely be among the top three most ideal careers.

Although Fahr has tried his best to be fair and just, there are still many people who are angry and dissatisfied because they were not selected, some of whom were even members of the Sleepless.

But Fakhr cannot allow people who are obviously inferior to others to be selected because of personal relationships, not to mention that he also has to consider the family situation of some people.

For example, Masood, his assistant when he led the Sleepless. Masood had four sons in his family. Although the eldest and second sons had met the requirements for joining the army, he could only choose one because Masood himself had also signed up for the army.

Fakhr couldn't allow five men from his family to be selected in three...