The Sun and the Lion

"Gunpowder?" Ibrahim, who was listening to the report, interrupted Mustafa's report in front of him.

"Sheikh, what's wrong?" Mustafa, who was suddenly interrupted, felt a little strange. Some people present wanted to look at Ibrahim but did not dare to look at him like a country bumpkin.

Although Turkmen nomads do not attach much importance to gunpowder weapons, they still know what gunpowder is.

After Mustafa's explanation, Ibrahim understood that these gunpowder was added to the kerosene jar to increase its power, and the amount of each jar was relatively small, but after all, Baku City is the largest kerosene in the Caucasus. At the processing site, some gunpowder was also stored.

"Save this gunpowder for now, and the craftsmen who make the gunpowder must control it."

"Those prisoners of war, if they are willing to convert, will be restored to freedom. If not, they will be sent to various tribes as slaves. Shirwanshah's harem will also be used as a spoil of war for the tribe." After speaking, Ibrahim glanced around Meet the leaders present.

None of the leaders had any objections.

"As for the ordinary people." Ibrahim looked at the monk Shayan who was present and the former Grand Vizier of Shirvan, now Shirvan Province, who took the initiative to convert and presented tax books and other documents to help the religious group successfully take over power. The high official - Ibrahim divided the territory of Shirvan Shah into two provinces: Shirvan Province centered on Baku and Shamakhi Province centered on Shamakhi.

“Those who do not convert will be liable to the Jiziya tax just like the infidels.”

The monks and bureaucrats nodded.

Ibrahim then appointed two tribal leaders as emirs to be responsible for the military affairs of the two provinces. He also transferred two military judges to be responsible for the judiciary of the two provinces. Together with the bureaucratic assistants who were willing to join the sect, he allowed the sect to have a strong presence in Shirwan. ’s rule is on the right track. Although the degree of desolation in the Sylvan region is not low, forced conversion will also cause some unpredictable things.

The next day, Baku city

The streets were stained with blood, and dozens of corpses lay scattered on the ground. The corpses ranged from young to strong, old and weak, and most of them were civilians based on their clothing. They also held various weapons and died in different ways. The red heads held swords in their hands, stepping on the blood and broken meat on the ground, and moved forward ruthlessly, killing all the thugs in front of them. In the innermost part of the mob team, you can see some clergymen dressed up as giving orders.

These revolted mobs had no armor, no sharp blades, and no organization. How could they fight against the Qizilbashi who were armed, strong, and battle-hardened?

These thugs who were originally scattered in various streets and suddenly attacked the red-headed thugs on the street were compressed to death in less than two hours. Some thugs were shaken and wanted to lay down their weapons and surrender, but the weapons coming from behind and the arrows fired from the front showed the attitudes of both sides.

The rebels were quickly slaughtered, and even those who did not die on the spot were all executed.

As soon as the decree on forced conversion was issued, bloody conflicts broke out in Baku.

But this will not change anything except ending the lives of the rebels. The rabble cannot stop the trend of conversion.

More than a thousand corpses were thrown into the Caspian Sea and fed to the fish. The severed heads were piled into piles. Residents who were not involved cleaned up the blood on the streets under the supervision of the red heads.

The ulema in Baku - regardless of whether they participated in the riots - were tricked and killed by the red heads outside Baku. Ibrahim also ordered the elimination of all Sunni clergy in the Shirwan area. All temple properties were confiscated, and the monks of the order took over and became the new local Ulama.

His title was taken away, and Ghazi, who refused to convert, was sent to the Gulustan Fortress of Shamakhi under house arrest. The ending was not bad.

However, these orders can only be implemented in Baku and surrounding areas for the time being. Implementation in the entire Shirvan will have to wait for Hussein to bring members of the order.

The dilapidated city of Ardabil is not suitable to be the current political center of the Order. If there are changes in the south, this protrusion embedded in Azerbaijan will be the first to bear the brunt.

Ahmed's letter was still on its way, and Ibrahim did not yet know the attitude of his neighbors to the south. Although the Aries Dynasty was divided into three, it was still a giant compared to the religious order. Ibrahim also knew himself and knew that his military ability was not as good as that of his third brother Ismail, who was not yet an adult, so he had to wait and see what would happen. Let's see if these three big white sheep will hit the tree stump by themselves.

In his spare time, Ibrahim planned to launch a wave of jihad sanctions and grab something from the Georgian countries in the west and Circassia in the north. It can be regarded as completing the work that his father and grandfather failed to accomplish because of Shirvan Shah's interference.

However, the losses of the red heads were quite heavy, and it would take a long time to replenish them. In addition, Ibrahim wanted to check and balance the red heads, so two standing armies were established in the city of Baku in the winter.

The first is his own soldiers. The number of Ibrahim's soldiers is not fixed. Basically, they are all fanatics from various tribes who take the initiative to join. After the Battle of the Piersat River, although many people were beheaded, more than half of the soldiers were also lost. After all, fanatics are rare and hard to find. It is unrealistic to expect a large number of people to work for you in vain.

Therefore, Ibrahim plans to expand his guard first. Due to the current manpower and financial conditions, this guard will now only have 500 people. They will be called qurchi, meaning bow bearers.

These young men from various tribes who were recruited serve for life and receive a fixed salary-the salary is paid once a season. The equipment is in charge of the future King of Kings. They only obey the orders of Ibrahim and will not be like other red heads. Affected by the leaders, the discipline requirements are also stricter than ordinary tribal cavalry.

Ibrahim first promoted all his existing guards to officers. Among them, the one who had the most beheaded, an Iranian Qizilbash named Hashayar who did not belong to any Turkmen tribe, was appointed as a bow bearer. commander.

Then these officers took Ibrahim's orders to poach various ministries, and the people they recruited were generally of high quality. Find the Book Garden www.zhaoshuyuan.com Although the leaders of various ministries were dissatisfied with the poaching behavior, they did not say anything after seeing the amount of loot they obtained after marching into Sylvan and the small number of recruits.

The bow-wielders became an army, but the manpower was still from the tribe. In addition to protecting their own safety, the role of this army was to check and balance the tribal power.

Immediately afterwards, Ibrahim ordered to recruit soldiers from prisoners of war to form the Gulam Legion. As an affiliated force of the bow holders, it was mainly infantry and engineers. As a supplement to the current pure cavalry troops, the salary was also the same as that of the bow holders. The same is done once a season, but the number will be smaller.

Under the supervision of the bow holders, a group of trustworthy surrendering officers first set up the troops, and then began to slowly recruit troops. Due to financial conditions, the number of gulams was first fixed at two thousand.

In this way, in the spring combat operations of the next year (1495), in addition to thousands of tribal cavalry, he also had 2,500 direct troops.

In addition to the combat troops, support is also very important. Ibrahim needs enough craftsmen, doctors and other tools to ensure the logistics of the troops directly under him. When commanding operations in the military tent, he also needs a large number of staff to help him handle the situation. Writing documents, collecting intelligence, managing logistics personnel, advising on operations, etc., which is equivalent to the general staff of later generations.

Other generals only have a few staffs, but I have dozens of staffs. All the basic work is handled by the staff, so I don't have to do everything myself.

Of course, it costs money to support these staff officers, and there is no systematic training in military schools, so the level of staff is completely up to chance.

After an operation and after listening to an embarrassing financial report on the status of the treasury, Ibrahim found that he was poor again.

Thinking of this, Ibrahim's writing of blackmail letters to the princes of Georgia accelerated.