By evening, Alexandria, the pearl of the eastern Mediterranean, had welcomed back its master.
Although Alexandria's location made it unsuitable as the capital of all Egypt, in Lothar's eyes, this city was even more important than Cairo.
In the governor's palace west of the city, Lothar, having just extricated himself from a banquet held for Duke Leopold, sat on silk cushions in his chambers, leafing through the account books laid out on the table.
By now, trade in the port of Alexandria had gradually returned to normal. Once the merchants disturbed by the war realized that the city's new master welcomed them just as readily, they returned.
According to the customs ledgers, Alexandria's trade volume had reached an astonishing 350,000 gold Dinars this month alone.
At an average tariff rate of ten percent, he could collect a full 35,000 gold Dinars.
At 4.25 grams per gold Dinar, Alexandria's customs revenue for this month alone amounted to 0.15 tons of gold, with immense room for further growth.
After all, the war had ended only recently. Under the Ayyubids, Alexandria's tariffs had long remained at the high rate of fifteen percent. After Saladin suffered two consecutive defeats and appointed Adil to rule Egypt, they had climbed as high as twenty percent.
For certain goods such as spices, the figure was much higher still.
No wonder Saladin had been able to raise such enormous armies so quickly after suffering defeat after defeat.
At this time, Philip the Fox, King of Gaul, earned only 200,000 silver livres annually in total, including royal estates, vassal taxes, commercial taxes, and the like.
Converted over, that was merely equivalent to Alexandria's customs revenue for a single month!
His annual military expenditures did not even amount to a fraction of what Saladin spent on one large-scale campaign.
In