the disintegration of the empire 135
here, as everywhere, the sovereign’s foremost obligation for an effective
partnership with the mercantile class was to ensure security. great efforts
were made in this direction, but the results left something to be desired.
the system of road wardens which arghun had organised rapidly wors-
ened: either the watchmen demanded taxes higher than the official rate
to allow merchants to pass the guard stations, or they delivered them
into the hands of brigands and then shared the loot. the second of arg-
hun’s successors, ghazan, fought them with relentless energy: executions
thinned the ranks of the highwaymen, and at the same time the discre-
tionary powers granted to the 10,000 road wardens were considerably
curtailed, with their duties shared out to the locals in each area and the
official taxes engraved in stone tablets openly displayed.330
it is impossible to tell exactly how long the reformed security system
maintained its full vigour after ghazan’s death. all that is certain is that
under the last ilkhan, abū sa‛īd, it once more had grave problems, as
pegolotti showed, in full knowledge of the causes. he remarks that of
the 209 aspers which it costs a merchant to take a fully laden beast of
burden from ayas to tabriz, 50 of these coins—very nearly a quarter
of the whole cost—were taken per forza by “the mongols, that is by the
tartar highwaymen.”331 although there are no sources touching on the
situation on the tabriz-trebizond route, it cannot have been much differ-
ent, so that it seems that when merchants grouped themselves into large
caravans, as genoa recommended that its merchants should do, this was
also done to ensure better protection for the travellers and for the goods
transported.332
330 heyd, Histoire, ii, p. 118.
331 pegolotti/evans, pp. 28–29, heyd, Histoire, ii, p. 119, interprets the phrase moc-
coli, cioè tartari scherani as “bandes de mongols, coureurs de grand chemin;” since we
know that law enforcement and the watch was entrusted to the mongol minority in
the ilkhanate—as in the golden horde, where they carried out their duties correctly
(cf. p. 105 note 191)—they seem rather to have been corrupt officials, given that they did
not take the whole spoils, as any highwayman would, but rather took ‘their’ share. this
sort of abuse of power by office-holders does not exclude the existence of actual bands of
brigands; the abuses though were certainly widespread, with officials of all ranks indulging
in such practices (cf. spuler, Mongolen, p. 358). in the privilege granted in 1320, abū sa‛īd
promises to protect the venetians from this abuse: Item, che tatauli, charauli e podageri
del chamin debia prender dali nostri Veneciani solamente el so drito lialmente, senz alguna
forza far a quelli (DVL, i, p. 173).
332 forcheri, Navi, pp. 14–17, Brătianu, Recherches, p. 179, Balard, Romanie, i, pp. 140–141,
papacostea, “gênes,” p. 225; there is a remarkable local tradition which holds that the
genoese actually held the right to construct fortifications along the route (heyd, His-
toire, ii, p. 121, contests any historical basis for this); pegolotti, who collected much of his