While the various factions in Anatolia were openly and secretly disputing each other for their own interests, new intelligence regarding Asia Minor, along with the rising sun, appeared before the ruler of Herat, a city on the distant Iranian Plateau.
After reviewing this relatively new intelligence, the monarch, an old man named Shah Rukh, narrowed his hawk-like dark eyes and nodded subtly.
Herat was the capital of a great empire that currently ruled Iran and Central Asia.
Although it was ruled by a world-renowned empire, this empire actually had no official name.
However, it did have other appellations: its founder liked to call himself Gurkānī (گوركانى Gurkānī, meaning'Son-in-law State'); Easterners generally referred to it by its famous cities, calling it Herat or Samarkand; while Westerners usually named this vast empire after its founder: the Timurid Empire.
The current ruler of the Timurid Empire was Shah Rukh, the fourth son of its founder, Timur the Lame.
Although Shah Rukh, born in the last century, was now nearly 60 years old, he still possessed considerable energy to maintain the empire's stability and unity.
To sustain the empire's rule, Shah Rukh often made various decisions, in his view, based on domestic and international situations.
For example, he moved the capital south to Herat, shifting the empire's administrative focus to Persia; gradually diluted the Mongol influence from his father Timur's era, instead fully Islamizing, elevating the monarch's title from the somewhat awkward and humble Emir and'Shah of Khorasan and the Two Rivers' to Sultan and Padishah of all Iran and Turan; and encouraged commerce, improving the people's livelihood to some extent.
Of course, Shah Rukh's governance was not entirely effective.
For instance, after the rise of the Black Sheep Dynasty, even with the assistance of the White Sheep Dynasty, a Sunni Turkmen vassal state personally enfeoffed by his father, he repeatedly met with setbacks against the Black Sheep Turkmen.
The most recent instance was after Kara Iskander's death, when he enfeoffed his successor, the current Black Sheep Sultan Jahan Shah, as the Governor of Azerbaijan.
He hoped these Shia heretics would no longer act unpredictably as before, causing him high blood pressure by respectfully sending off his envoy one moment and then continuing to ruthlessly attack his empire the next.
It was precisely due to the existence of the Black Sheep Dynasty that Shah Rukh was unable to project the empire's military power into Asia Minor.
Consequently, the long-standing feud accumulated with the Mamluk Sultanate since his father's time also seemed to become somewhat awkward.
If it weren't for the current Mamluk Sultan Barsbay acting overly aggressive and unyielding, he would truly consider abandoning this unprofitable hostile relationship and reconciling with the Mamluks.
If the Mamluks were a temporarily hostile potential partner in Shah Rukh's eyes, then the Ottoman was something he found particularly repulsive.
Although strictly speaking, Timur now had no serious geopolitical conflicts with the Ottoman, the Ottoman's swift annexation of the various Anatolian Turkish Beyliks, which Timur had released, immediately after recovering from their civil war, greatly annoyed Shah Rukh, who considered himself to have inherited his father's great legacy.
Not to mention the Ottoman even extended its reach to the Karaman Beylik, an 'Emir of Asia Minor' personally appointed by Timur, while the Timurid Empire still had strength to spare.
This made Shah Rukh quite angry; he could ignore the Ottoman encroachment when the previous Karaman Bey Ibrahim II was supported by the Ottoman, but now this new Bey named Suleiman could very well enter his sphere of influence!
This was intolerable; upon learning that the Ottoman had, unsurprisingly, engaged in conflict with Karaman again, Shah Rukh, as the Padishah of Khorasan and Persia, even momentarily considered intervening to provide Karaman with all aid except direct military support.
However, at the same time, Shah Rukh also noticed the emerging Bosphorus Despotate.
This Roman state, which had evolved from the Principality of Theodoro, once plundered by his father's forces, had miraculously risen recently and even achieved a small victory against the rising Ottoman, a piece of information that greatly interested him.
But considering that Trabzon, which was in a similar position, was willing to nominally submit to Timur's authority, then the Bosphorus, which took its place, should also not act to obstruct the empire.
Setting aside the Bosphorus, which should currently be in a state of recuperation, Shah Rukh carefully considered the current status of other forces in Anatolia revealed in the intelligence, and conceived an excellent method of intervention that would allow Timur's influence to nominally return to Asia Minor: mediation.
However, it was not yet the right time; Shah Rukh, having largely understood the current state of the warring parties, decided to prepare first, temporarily concealing Timur's presence until the most opportune moment for him to appear.
The thoughts of the Timurid Empire's Padishah were not yet known to the various factions in Anatolia, as it was not only the Ottoman and Karaman and other Turkic states that were fighting tooth and nail for land and prestige.
The White Sheep Dynasty was on the verge of a succession war due to Sultan Kara Yoluk's critical condition; the Black Sheep Dynasty under Jahan Shah, who had to rely on Timur's influence to consolidate his position as Sultan due to the unexpected death of the former Sultan Kara Iskander, was also at war with Georgia.
It could be said that, except for the Bosphorus Despotate under Manuel, all other Anatolian forces were embroiled in common but unprofitable states of war.
And this was precisely what Bosporus Caesar Manuel was pleased to see; at this time, he was leveraging his high prestige and comfortable diplomatic environment to restore the severely damaged economy and administration from the previous war, and was pressing ahead to complete the final step of establishing the Bosphorus administrative system by the end of the year.
Soon, in a few more months, whether Tauris or Pontus, the entire Bosphorus would undergo a radical transformation under his rule.
"A new letter from Serenus?" Manuel received a new reply from his Foreign Minister, who was also his Chief Secretary, as October approached.
"He must have encountered something unexpected to specifically write back to me. Let me see."
After reading it, Manuel frowned slightly, then nodded and muttered to himself, "I didn't get to see King Jogaila of Poland in person; that's truly a pity.
But then again, a Polish king who established his capital in Kraków, a major commercial hub, and allowed the city to participate in the Hanseatic League's commercial activities, would indeed be unlikely to be enthusiastic about my proposed construction of a new 'Vlach Trade Route'."