the golden horde and the black sea 171
for such an oversight is that the tartar ruler wanted to be able to mend
relations with egypt in the event that his embargo had the desired effect;
in the meantime, internal sources reveal that the silence surrounding his
motives made both cairo and Genoa believe that the Mamluks were sim-
ply the victims of Jochid squabbles with the Genoese merchants who con-
trolled the slave trade. there are several reasons to believe that toqta’s
silence on the subject, to the Sultan at least, was a stratagem.
the most cogent reasons are offered by his successor Özbek. there is a
positive argument in the mandate given to the first ambassador he sent to
cairo after his enthronement (in 1313), Manghush, who was charged with
the “question of peace” with the Sultan,110 which presupposes that Jochid-
Mamluk relations had completely deteriorated in the period immediately
preceding. there is more evidence in Özbek’s behaviour in an analogous
situation: unlike toqta, he never ceased to complain of egypt’s policy of
appeasing the Ilkhan, and threatened to forbid the slave trade expressis
verbis.
on the other hand, the chronology of events does in itself suggest a
causal relationship: the last exchange of envoys between cairo and Sarai
took place in 1306/7, and anti-Genoese reprisals in the Golden horde
started in November 1307. If we seek to prove that toqta’s measure was
aimed at mobilising the Mamluks against the common Ilkhanid enemy,
then the reaction that the khan’s decision provoked in cairo is more con-
clusive in this regard.
the Genoese merchants who monopolised the slave trade were expelled
in May 1308.111 there is no doubt that the expulsion was understood
110 Ibn Duqmāq/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, I, p. 317.
111 It seems that diplomatic and commercial ties between the Golden horde and egypt
depended entirely on Genoese ships, since neither the Mongols nor the Mamluks had
any naval power adequate to the task (on the precarious state of the Mamluk fleet see
ayalon, “Mamluks,” and idem, “Wafidiya”). Some sources seem to suggest that egyptian
vessels nevertheless reached the Black Sea at the time, taking advantage of the right to
traverse the Straits, guaranteed by treaties with Byzantium from 1263 and 1281 (on these
treaties, see canard, “un traité,” p. 210 note 1, and idem, “Le traité,” pp. 673–674, 680);
for instance, the franciscan fidenzio da’padova’s assertion: Nam soldanus solitus mittere
annuatim aliquas naves ultra Constantinopolim ad mare majus et de juvenibus nationum
illarum qui morantur circa illud mare, facit emi in magna quantitate (Golubovich, Biblio-
teca, II, p. 48); Kedar, “Segurano,” p. 80 note 23, quite rightly remarks that the text makes
no distinction between egyptian ships, and foreign craft which the sultan may have hired;
the same uncertainty is found in the statement of Gregoras/Schopen, I, p. 102, that the
egyptians sent one or two ships through the Straits each year (cf. pachymeres/Bekker, I,
pp. 177–179, and Brătianu, Recherches, pp. 206–208); an interesting and thought-provoking
case is that of the Genoese Segurano Salvaigo, a great slave merchant, whose ships sailed