112 chapter three
father’s achievements at a stroke. foreigners no longer circulated on the
highways of the Jochid ulus, causing great losses to those steppe-dwellers
involved in commerce and to the mongol state itself. it is certainly not a
coincidence that Janibek provoked commercial stagnation just at the time
that the golden horde began its decline.225
the subsequent unravelling of the state was driven by the deep forces
in these laws, the inevitable consequence of the central powers’ inability
to promote and cultivate commerce, and consequently to reap the ben-
efits: the insecurity continued for almost two decades, marked by inter-
nal strife (1361–1380)226—pegolotti warns merchants of the dangers of the
interregnum, and also knows its causes—with undeniably grave effects
at the level of trade. an indication of the troubled times is that no docu-
mentary evidence survives from this whole stretch of time to attest to
the Jochid route being used, although it was so heavily frequented, and
consequently well-documented, in Özbek’s day.
seen from the wider perspective, toqtamïsh Khan’s success in reunit-
ing the state from 1380 to 1396 was simply an interlude in a general, and
inexorable, decline. it was in the nature of things that his stubborn efforts
to restore the golden horde’s internal structures and external position
would necessarily have a strong commercial element, shown primarily
in the treaty concluded with the caffan genoese227 and in the war with
timur lenk, lord of central asia and iran. in the final analysis this was
a struggle for control of eurasian commerce, a conflict between the ruler
over the Western half of the silk road and the ruler of its branch routes on
the cuman steppe. the final act of this epic rivalry came with the timurid
campaign in the golden horde’s lands in 1395/6: the commercial centres
of the ulus of Jochi were systematically destroyed, leading—as intended—
to the abandonment of the route linking central asia to the Black sea via
the cuman steppe.
it is an irony of fate that timur’s apologist aḥmad ibn ‛arabshāh
(d. 1450) should express regret for the disappearance of this great route,
once so well-trodden that caravans could travel from Khwarezm to the
crimea in about three months in complete security, “without fear and
without danger.”228
225 see chapter 4.2.5.
226 see chapter 4.2.6.
227 see chapter 4.2.7.
228 tiesenhausen, Sbornik, i, p. 460; cf. heyd, Histoire, ii, p. 176, vernadsky, Mongols,
p. 198, grekov, Yakubovskiy, Orda, p. 262. the venetian iosafato Barbaro, who spent fifteen