Stories of the East

[The FSM]

(OOC: This initial post takes place roughly two months ago)

The Emir sat on the balcony of his sleeping quarters, admiring the skyline of Basra as the burning sun sank into the swirling waters of the Shatt Al-Arab. He sipped from a small cup of scented Arabic tea, a cooling breeze rolled up from the South as he read the papers before him. The latest reports from the front were promising, though distance meant that the reports in his hand were at least a week old. Still, the turkmen had been driven from the villages around Baghdad and the city was entirely surrounded. To the East he read reports of skirmishes with roaming bands of Mongols, apparently they had not all left after the death of Timur.

A messenger came running out on to the balcony, disturbing the silence.

"Emir, word from your brother. He says the Turkmen have surrendered without a fight, Baghdad has fallen."

Excellent, he thought, for the first time in a hundred years an Arab banner now flies over Baghdad. "Very good, send word to my brother that he is in charge of administering Baghdad and its environs as the Sultanate of Iraq. I will be visiting the city personally in a few weeks, in the meantime tell him to set about restoring as much of teh existing infrastructure as possible.