the golden horde and the black sea 153
agreement. all of the sources invoked date from a later period, and none
has been able to resolve the question.35
there is however some indirect testimony from a Mamluk source, not
previously considered in the historiography on the question, which is
chronologically and thematically very close to what we assume to have
been the original agreement between the Mongols and the Genoese after
the upheavals of 1261 in the Black Sea and the Straits: the source records
those who took part in the ‘congressʼ of cairo in summer 1263, which laid
the foundations for the great anti-Ilkhanid coalition. as well as delegations
from Khan Berke, from emperor Michael VIII, from Sultan Baybars and
from the Seljuk ex-sultan ‘Izz al-Dīn, there was also ‘a dean’ (muqaddam)
sent by the Genoese.36 this reference shows that the Golden horde and
the Genoese were allies in the same cause.
Given that the Northern Mongols had no naval power at all, and that
the Mamluk fleet was extremely weak, we might assume that from the
very beginning, the Genoese republic’s task as a sea power was to main-
tain diplomatic and commercial ties between the two land powers. Sadly,
the documentation is too sparse to confirm such a supposition, and what
sources we have are too scattered. Nevertheless, it is known that the Sultan
of egypt negotiated two treaties with Michael VIII palaiologos, in 1261/2
and in 1281, for the right to bring slaves imported from Soldaia through the
Straits, and to allow passage for the ambassadors who maintained contact
35 In the mid-fourteenth century, Gregoras/Schopen, II, pp. 683–684, mentions in rather
vague terms a privilege whereby the Genoese were free to trade in the khan’s territories
and were obliged in turn to pay the usual taxes. a Venetian treaty of 1344 gives more exact
details, saying that the Ligurian republic habet terram Gaffe ab imperatore cum certis con-
ditionibus et pactis and that the Mongols administered the customs (Morozzo della rocca,
“Notizie,” p. 291); it may be that this refers to Özbek’s charter of 1313, allowing the Genoese
to return to caffa—and this charter too is missing! (see below, pp. 178–179)—rather than
to the original charter. even the Genoese chroniclers Stella, caffaro and Giustiniani can-
not solve the problem (cf. Balard, Romanie, I, pp. 115–116), and we can neither disprove
nor accept the uncorroborated statement of the englishwoman Maria Guthrie, who says
that she saw the document in russia at the close of the eighteenth century (cited by papa-
costea, “Gênes,” p. 222 note 36). further evidence that there never was a written document
seems to come in negotiations for a new treaty signed by the Mongols and the Genoese in
1380, whereby customs tariffs were to be fixed segundo premere usansse (see below, pp. 184,
227–228). the diplomatic conventions of the day would have required that a written agree-
ment be invoked, rather than “the old usage” (compare the treaties confirming that of 1380,
pp. 232 ff., and those confirming Özbek’s charter to the Venetians of 1332, pp. 220 ff.).
36 See above, p. 90; there is also an early and intriguing report that a number of nuncii
Tartarorum were in Genoa in 1269, but this is inadmissible as evidence, since there is
no way to tell whether these envoys came from the Golden horde or from the Ilkhanate
(caffaro/petech, “Marchands,” p. 560).