Hama lies in the heart of Syria, in the transitional zone between the Syrian Plateau and the Mediterranean Sea coast. It is a vital commercial city, controlling the roads and waterways that connect the various regions of Syria.
Hama is renowned for its hydraulic irrigation. Its waterwheels, famous even in the Roman Era, draw from the Euphrates River to irrigate the farmlands, ensuring that famine is a concept forever foreign to this place.
Yajisiyan was the lord of Hama, one of the many Turkic adventurers who had come to the West in the wake of Tughrul's conquests.
The glory of the other Turkic adventurers who had arrived in Syria in his time, along with the lands they once conquered, had all but vanished.
Yajisiyan was old and learned. At sixty-five, he would spend his days boasting of the glory he had won over the past forty years. But in the dead of night, he fretted over his failing body and the uncertainties of tomorrow.
