138 chapter three
inability to organise a trade promotion policy which could both effectively
protect individual merchants and ensure that income from trade reached
its rightful recipient, the ilkhan.341 the last mongol rulers’ economic
base became increasingly sapped by wide-spread corruption and as their
income shrank, so too did their ability to pay the functionaries charged
with carrying out vital duties for the state.
the inevitable unravelling of this process came with the collapse of
the ilkhanate, which ceased to be the provider of security: this triggered
certain disaster for the merchant class as well, though they had done the
most to keep the security network on its feet and had perhaps benefited
from it more than any others. their fates had been closely tied to those
of the persian chinggisids, as can be seen from the tentative genoese and
venetian efforts, after the ilkhanate collapse, to travel the old tabriz road
once more.
after the mongol state fragmented, tabriz became part of the terri-
tory of the chobanid Ḥasan (1337–1343), whose simplistic trade policy
extended no further than the capricious confiscation of goods. genoese
traders suffered such great losses that the republic was forced to use the
final sanction in such a situation: the council of the Otto savi alla Navi-
gazione declared a total boycott against tabriz in 1340, and repeated
it in 1342.342
this devetum hurt the tiny principality’s exchequer enough for the new
ruler al-malik al-ashraf, upon taking power in 1344, to send an embassy
promising the genoese government complete compensation for those his
predecessor had mistreated and urging the resumption of commercial ties.
having refrained from trade for such a long time, the ligurian merchants
responded to the invitation in great numbers. it is uncertain whether
the new chobanid prince had acted in bad faith from the very start, or
whether his resolve wavered when he saw the wealth of the merchants.
341 cf. pp. 134 ff.
342 lopez, “luci,” p. 393, lopez, “documents,” p. 454, Bautier, “relations,” p. 277, petech,
“marchands,” p. 569; see also above, p. 127 note 299, for the case of tommasino gentile,
who unwittingly breached the embargo and was brought before a tribunal in genoa in Jan-
uary 1344 to answer the charge. at the same time, trouble began with trebizond, where the
internal unrest of 1340 had demonstrated the weakness of imperial authority. the emperor
could not prevent the outbreak of anti-latin sentiment among the greek population in
1344, whipped up by the arrival of genoese and venetians from tana. decisive steps were
taken toward normalising relations toward the end of the decade, although the old com-
mercial vigour of ilkhanid times no longer obtained in the new arrangement, which would
remain almost unchanged until trebizond fell to the ottoman turks in 1463 (gregoras/
schopen, ii. p. 687, heyd, Histoire, ii, pp. 103–107, Karpov, Impero, p. 85).