172 chapter four
correctly in cairo, as shown by the Sultan’s response in September/
october of that year: once news reached egypt of a clash in the cauca-
sus between Jochid and Ilkhanid frontier brigades, “he decided to equip
a unit of the victorious army to prevent [threats] from near and far. [.. .]
When such preparation had been made, trustworthy men brought news
that the accursed enemy’s advances had been halted, and the [expedition-
ary force] was disbanded.”112
the “accursed enemy” was the Muslim Ilkhan Öljeitü, whom the Sultan
refused to attack a few months later when toqta demanded, telling his
Jochid ally, who was a shamanist,113 that his faith did not allow him to
attack a co-religionist. however, as we shall see, the egyptian “pillar of
Islam” came to consider the security of the state, jeopardised by the inter-
ruption in the supply of slaves, as more important than religious solidarity
with the persian rulers.
the khan at Sarai was not convinced by cairo’s anti-Ilkhanid initia-
tive, which looked more like a hastily improvised feint than a reliable
diplomatic measure. toqta was disillusioned by his recent experiences,
and cut the egyptian dimension entirely from his plans for war against
persia.114 the only message which contemporary sources record him as
having sent between now and his death was mere formality: when a Mam-
luk embassy reached Sarai bringing news of al-Malik an-Nāṣir Muḥammad
ibn Qalāwūn’s third enthronement in 1310, he confined himself, in 1311/2,
under the Mamluk flag (adam/Kohler, pp. 525–526, cf. Brătianu, Recherches, p. 229, Kedar,
“Segurano,” pp. 75–76); Guillaume adam, archbishop of Sultaniye, explicitly mentions the
Genoese role as the principal actors in commercial and diplomatic exchange (adam/
Kohler, p. 531, Kedar, “Segurano,” p. 88). the Venetians never succeeded in supplanting
their Genoese rivals as intermediaries between the two land-based powers, or in seriously
threatening their dominance in the slave trade, which remained a Genoese speciality
(Balard, Romanie, II, pp. 785–786).
112 Baybars/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, I, p. 96.
113 cf. Spuler, Horde, p. 216.
114 Ibid., p. 82: “es scheint aber, daß tokhtu sich bewußt gewesen sei, daß sich der
Mamlukn-Sultan zwar sehr gern in freundschaftliche Verhandlungen mit dem Gegen-
spieler seines feindes in Syrien einlasse, da er dort jüngst wieder erheblich, wenn auch
vergeblich von den iranischen Mongolen bedrängt worden war, daß er aber zu einem Vor-
marsch über Syrien hinaus weder fähig noch willens sei. al-Malik an-Nāṣir betrachtete die
Verbindung mit der Goldenen horde offenbar—im Gegensatze zu Baybars—nur als eine
angenehme rückendeckung für sich und als wertvolles Mittel, um das reich Öldjaitüs
auch im Norden als gefährdet erscheinen zu lassen.” Zakirov, Otnosheniya, p. 72, adds the
lack of any ideological basis of “holy war” as a factor corroding the anti-Ilkhanid alliance,
once the Muslim Ghazan took the throne in tabriz (1295) while toqta remained an adher-
ent of shamanism.