the golden horde and the black sea 155
there is no question that even after 1261 Soldaia continued to be the
chief commercial centre in the Northern Black Sea for quite some time.
there is documentary evidence for Genoese presence in the great port
from 1274, when the merchant Lanfranchino di Savignone and the notary
federico di piazzalonga are attested.45 the pisans appear in 1277 and
the Venetians only in 1287, when they have a consul whose jurisdiction
extends over all Gazaria.46
It is much more difficult to discern when exactly the town which would
go on to displace Soldaia, and take over its function, first made its pres-
ence felt. this was caffa, whose origins were obviously so modest that
at the time, they went unrecorded: when Genoese chroniclers in the fol-
lowing century tried to record how the great city was founded, nobody
knew for sure, so that they came up with a long string of conjectures, a
historiographical habit which still endures today.
there is no doubt that the Genoese gained the right to settle and trade
in caffa in the usual way, under the standard conditions which the Mon-
gol rulers granted to foreign merchants;47 these conditions must have
been the same as their Genoese and pisan predecessors enjoyed at Sol-
daia. Soldaia itself was clearly adequate for any strictly commercial needs,
and the fact that the Genoese were not content simply to pursue their
business there but sought another market nearby indicates that they had
ulterior motives from the very start, and the future development of caffa
would lay these bare.
having learnt from the recent experience of their expulsion from acre
in 1281, the Genoese knew how dangerous it could be to depend on their
host’s good will, and had no desire to repeat the lesson on the Northern
Black Sea coast. thus they chose the location of their new settlement as
a safe haven where the colonists could not be reached, and their criteria
were that the town should be both commercially viable and secure, by
sea and by land.48
45 Brătianu, Recherches, pp. 207 ff., p. 321, idem, Marea Neagra, p. 99; petech, “March-
ands,” p. 571.
46 cf. Manfroni, “relazioni,” p. 169, Brătianu, Recherches, p. 256, Nystazopoulou-
pélékidis, Venise, p. 26.
47 Gregoras/Schopen, II, pp. 683–684, using his characteristic archaising language that
the “great captain of the Scythians” granted permission to settle, meaning the Mongol
khan (cf. Balard, Romanie, I, p. 114, ciocîltan, “origines,” pp. 143 ff.).
48 Gregoras/Schopen, II, pp. 683 ff., relates Genoese methods in such instance in his
description of the founding of caffa, starting with scouting for a location and ending with
the negotiation and conclusion of a treaty with the local authorities that sets out their
reciprocal obligations exactly.