the golden horde and the black sea 161
although the fate of the Genoese seemed to have been sealed when
their two bases in the Black Sea were destroyed, two years later they were
dealt a very different hand when they struck back convincingly at curzola
in the adriatic. In the subsequent peace of Milan of 1299, Venice to all
intents and purposes recognised her rival’s Black Sea hegemony for the
long term.77
While the Genoese were still savouring their adriatic victory, a new
threat struck their eastern colonies. triumphant after his first battle with
toqta, khan of Sarai, for supremacy in the Golden horde,78 Noghai hur-
ried to reap the economic fruits of his success, and nowhere in the whole
ulus of Jochi were these more abundant than in the trading towns of the
crimea.
the first victim was Soldaia. “In the year 698 [= 9th october 1298–30th
September 1299] merchants coming from Sudak brought news [to cairo]
that the king Noghai, who sat on the throne of Berke’s kingdom, had
arrived at Sudak in the month of rabī‛ al-awwal [= 7th December 1298–5th
January 1299] and had ordered the inhabitants that all those who were of
his party should leave the town with everything they had. his party, which
made up more than a third [of the population], came out. after this, he
surrounded the town with his troops and began to call those who had
remained behind to him, one by one, tortured them, took their belongings
and killed them, and in this way he put them all to death. then he burnt
[the town] and destroyed it, so that it seemed as though it had never been.
he did these things since the taxes [customs] and other revenues from
Sudak were divided among four Mongol kings, among them toqta, who
had dealings with the lord of egypt and sent him letters and gifts. report-
edly the kings who shared his [= Noghai’s] rule cheated his governors in
dividing the income. this prompted him to act as he did.”79
the caffans demonstrated that they were of toqta’s party in no uncer-
tain terms, as recorded in an arab chronicle in a chapter entitled ‘on
how aqtaji, son of Noghai’s daughter, was killed at caffaʼ: “In the year 698
the said personage was killed in the town of caffa, since his grandfather
Noghai, having defeated king toqta and taken possession of his country,
77 the peace treaty has been variously interpreted; I have followed papacostea, “Gênes,”
pp. 232 ff., since this is the only reading that convincingly explains developments in the
Black Sea over the following two decades (see chapters 3.4.2, 4.2.3, 4.2.4).
78 See chapter 4.3.2.
79 al-Mufaḍḍal/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, I, p. 184; there is an almost identical account in
Jazarī/Sauvaget, p. 84; on the three other ‘kings’ alongside toqta, see below, p. 251.