The docks of Damietta smelled of salt and opportunity. Taimur stood before a row of abandoned Fatimid warehouses, their doors hanging crooked on rusty hinges. Behind him, a caravan of donkeys carried strange cargo—heavy wooden crates from Damascus, bundles of flax from Upper Egypt, and clay pots filled with precious dyes.
He turned to the crowd of curious onlookers—former fishermen, unemployed laborers, widows with clever fingers. "Today," he announced, "we stop selling our wealth to foreigners for pennies."
The Damascus looms arrived in pieces, their polished wood gleaming even in the dim warehouse light. Syrian craftsmen, lured by good wages, assembled them with practiced hands.
A young Egyptian woman named Zahra watched intently as a master weaver threaded the first warp. "My mother taught me to spin," she said, her fingers hovering near the intricate mechanism.
The Syrian smiled. "This is how empires clothe the world."
By week's end, twenty looms stood ready, their shuttles loaded with fine Egyptian flax.
In the dyeing sheds, the air hung heavy with the scent of fermenting indigo. Taimur had brought dyers from as far as Baghdad, their hands permanently stained blue from their craft.
A Venetian trader, sniffing around for bargains, wrinkled his nose at the vats. "We have better dyes in Venice," he lied.
The Brothel Mistress, now supervisor of dye operations, dipped a scrap of linen into a vat. When she pulled it out, the fabric shone with a blue so deep it seemed to swallow light. The Venetian's eyes bulged.
"How much for exclusive rights?" he asked.
She named a price that made him choke.
The weavers came at dawn, their children in tow. Unlike the Fatimid workshops—dark places where overseers carried whips—these mills had windows facing the sea. Workers were paid every Friday, silver coins counted out onto wooden tables.
An old man, his back bent from decades at inferior looms, wept when he received his first wages. "I can buy medicine for my wife," he whispered.
Taimur made a note: increase production. Train more apprentices. The System's projections scrolled past his vision—Textile exports: +200% by next harvest.
The first shipment of finished linens hit the markets like a storm. Venetian merchants who had grown fat buying raw Egyptian flax now found themselves outbid at every turn.
In a dockside tavern, two traders argued over their dwindling profits. "How are they producing so much?" one hissed.
His companion, wiser and drunker, sighed. "We taught them to sell us the wool. Now they're selling us the cloak—at triple the price."
Salahuddin walked through the bustling workshop, his fingers trailing over bolts of fabric softer than a breeze. A child no older than ten expertly guided a shuttle between threads, her small hands moving with surprising skill.
"You employ children?" he asked quietly.
Taimur shook his head. "We educate them. Three hours at the loom, three hours with the Quran and numbers." He gestured toward a corner where a scholar taught arithmetic using dyed threads as counters. "In five years, they'll be master weavers—and literate ones."
The Sultan's gaze swept across the humming looms, the stacks of finished cloth, the workers singing as they worked. For the first time in memory, Egypt wasn't being plundered—it was prospering.
"Allah has given me a rare gift in you, Taimur al-Kurdi," he said at last.
Outside, the Mediterranean sparkled, carrying Egyptian linen to distant shores—and Egyptian silver back home.
The Faiyum Oasis shimmered in the midday heat, its palm trees standing like silent sentinels around the water's edge. Taimur knelt and pressed his hand into the rich, dark soil. This land had once fed Roman emperors with its bounty. Now, it would fill Egypt's coffers with something sweeter than grain.
He stood and unrolled a set of schematics. Around him, engineers from Baghdad and farmers from the Nile Delta leaned in to see. "We plant sugarcane here," he said, pointing to the irrigation channels his teams had spent months building. "Enough to turn this oasis into a fortress of white gold."
The first cane cuttings went into the ground at dawn. Farmers who had spent their lives growing wheat and dates hesitated before the strange, jointed stalks.
An old man with sun-weathered skin rubbed a piece of cane between his fingers. "We feed this to the animals where I'm from," he muttered.
Taimur smiled. "In six months, you'll feed it to kings."
The System's projections flickered at the edge of his vision—Yield estimate: 4 tons per acre.
By nightfall, the first fields were planted, the young cane shoots standing in perfect rows like an army awaiting orders.
The Indian vertical mills rose along the oasis' edge, their great stone rollers waiting to crush the coming harvest. Oxen lowered in their pens, ready to power the mechanisms.
A Baghdad engineer supervised the final adjustments. "The secret," he told the Egyptian workers, "is in the spacing." He demonstrated how the rollers should be just far enough apart to squeeze every drop of juice without crushing the fibers.
Taimur watched as the first test run sent streams of pale green liquid gushing into collection vats. The smell—thick and vegetal with a hint of coming sweetness—filled the air.
In the refining house, the real magic happened. The cloudy cane juice boiled in wide copper pans, tended by Persian sugar masters whose families had practiced the art for generations.
When the syrup reached the perfect consistency, a Baghdadi craftsman added the secret ingredient—a precise measure of slaked lime.
"The calcium binds the impurities," he explained as he stirred the mixture. "What rises, we skim. What sinks, we discard. What remains..." He lifted a wooden paddle, trailing strands of golden syrup that caught the light like honey. "What remains is worth its weight in silver."
The workers watched in awe as the liquid slowly crystallized in cone-shaped molds. Days later, when the molds were cracked open, they revealed sugar so white it hurt the eyes.
News of Egypt's sugar reached Venice faster than a galloping horse. Traders descended on Faiyum like flies to honey, their purses heavy with coins.
At the first auction, a Venetian merchant gasped at the quality. "This rivals the best Sicilian sugar!" He reached for a sample.
The 'Merchant' slapped his hand away. "This surpasses Sicilian sugar. And the price reflects that."
By the end of the bidding, the Venetians left with lighter purses and heavier cargo holds. Back in Cairo, Salahuddin's treasury swelled.
The Sultan himself came to inspect the operation. Inside the refining house, a sugar master presented a cake of pure white crystals.
Salahuddin let it dissolve on his tongue, eyes closing at the unfamiliar sweetness. "The Christians call this 'white gold,'" he murmured. "Now I understand why."
Taimur nodded. "And soon, all of Europe will know it comes only from Egypt."
Outside, the cane fields whispered in the wind, stretching toward the horizon. The harvest had only just begun.
The caravan to Siwa Oasis stretched across the desert like a slow-moving serpent. Taimur rode at its head, robes fluttering in the hot wind. Before him, the salt mountains shimmered—piles of crystalline white, ancient and untouched. Behind him came engineers from Alexandria, stonemasons from Cairo, and a dozen young scholars eager to document every step.
He dismounted, boots crunching through the crusted salt plain, and knelt to examine the grains. The System's scan blinked across his vision: 98.7% sodium chloride. Minimal contaminants. Perfect.
Construction began at dawn. Workers carved three tiers of shallow basins into the hardened earth, each one lower than the last.
A weathered Bedouin overseer watched skeptically as the masons lined the first pond with limestone. "My people have gathered salt here for generations," he said. "We take what the land gives."
Taimur plucked a handful of dirty crystals from the man's pouch. "And leave half the profit in the dirt." He tossed them into the newly built basin, where murky water already pooled. "Watch."
Days passed. The sun beat down as brine trickled from pond to pond. In the first, leaves and sand settled. In the second, iron and magnesium sank like stars. By the third, the water mirrored the sky—until evaporation left behind salt whiter than the old man had ever seen.
He touched a crystal to his tongue and shivered. "This tastes like moonlight."
Along the Mediterranean coast, another operation stirred. Seawater flowed through clay pipes packed with bamboo charcoal—an innovation from the System's designs. A young Persian chemist, once jailed in Damascus for alchemy, now monitored every batch.
"See here," he said, holding two vials. One swirled with sediment; the other gleamed like glass. "The charcoal traps everything—even the bitterness."
The final product bore Salahuddin's seal: Malh al-Sultan. Sultan's Salt.
Its first shipment to Mecca caused a stir. Pilgrims paid triple for salt pure enough to preserve sacrificial meat. A Hospitaller knight in Cairo, under the guise of diplomacy, quietly purchased an entire chest for his order's infirmary.
At Siwa's edge, Persian windmills rose like sentinels. Their sails caught the desert winds, powering gears that ground salt into powder as fine as silk.
A miller from Isfahan adjusted the stones with care. "At home, we grind wheat this way," he said. "But this…" He let the powder fall through his fingers. "This is art."
Taimur's schematics had doubled the mills' output. Now, they produced not just common salt, but refined grades: coarse for preservation, medium for cooking, and dust-fine for the tables of kings.
The Venetians noticed first. Their salt from Cyprus sat unsold in Alexandria's docks while Egyptian salt flooded the market.
In a smoke-filled tavern, three merchants examined a sample of Sultan's Salt. "How?" one whispered. "No one purifies salt this cheaply."
They didn't notice the Muezzin's Daughter in the corner, face half-hidden behind a cup of spiced wine. By dawn, Salahuddin knew every word.
In the palace courtyard, chests of salt lay open—white crystals, pink flakes, and powder fine as sugar. Salahuddin dipped a finger into the finest grade and tasted.
"No grit," he murmured. "No bitterness."
Taimur stood beside him. "The Crusaders will pay gold for this. Their nobles will crave it. Their armies will need it to preserve food." He smiled. "Let them buy their enemy's strength."
The Sultan laughed, deep and unguarded, echoing off the stone walls. "Allah has made you a dangerous man, Taimur al-Kurdi."
[System Notification: Primary Objective Complete]
[+1,000 MP: Agricultural Development of Egypt]
[+2,000 MP: Economic Development of Egypt]
[Total MP: 18,800 / 100,000]
Outside, the wind carried the scent of salt from distant shores.
The tide was turning.