the golden horde and the black sea 185
1316, which, nota bene, required all those involved in commerce to pay
customs duties,167 not just Genoese citizens, as would have been normal
for an office on foreign territory.168
the consul’s preeminence is even more clearly demonstrated when we
compare his position with that of his Mongol counterpart, the tudun. the
“governor”169 was delegated to represent the interests of the khan’s sub-
jects in the town, and his purview was exclusively jurisdictional. from
the beginning, his writ ran only to cover disputes between Mongols, or
between Mongols and others, and over the course of time was curtailed
more and more.170 the tudun’s office can by no means be compared with
the position of the “lords” of Solkhat or tana, who governed in the khan’s
name,171 but by an irony of fate may more properly be classed as a sort
of consulate, representing the Mongol minority in their dealings with
the Genoese authorities in caffa.172 By contrast, and uniquely in Golden
horde territory, the Genoese consul acted as a true governor, with all
executive powers, thus acting as the equivalent of the above-mentioned
Mongol “lords.”
equally distinctive for caffa’s extraterritorial status was the way land
and property was administered. there is no doubt that the Genoese
behaved as though they were absolute masters of the land on which the
town stood: not a single property transaction contract in the whole of
the fourteenth century makes even the slightest mention of the khan
167 for the particular ways in which this office worked, and its development over the
course of the fourteenth century, cf. Balard, Romanie, I, pp. 408–409.
168 among many other cases which might be cited here, see that of the Genoese con-
sulate at tana in 1386 (ibid., p. 155). the dispute which took place in caffa in 1344 is most
instructive here: While the Genoese insisted that the town belonged to them, and that they
therefore had the right to levy duty on all trade passing through, the Venetians affected
argued that the settlement was part of the khan’s “empire” and that the local authorities
were only entitled to levy their own compatriots’ comercium (Morozzo della rocca, “Noti-
zie,” p. 291, papacostea, “tana,” pp. 211–212). It seems that there was a widespread percep-
tion in the West that caffa had ambiguous legal status (cf. chapter 4.2.5, pp. 204–205).
169 the word is recorded with this meaning in various turkic languages (cf. heyd, His-
toire, II, p. 371).
170 cf. Balard, Romanie, I, p. 459.
171 Skržinskaja, Storia, p. 13: “La tana era sottoposta ad uno speciale governatore tar-
taro, del tipo del ‘segnor de Sorgatiʼ della crimea.”
172 Some contemporaries, such as the well-informed francesco Balducci pegolotti,
believed in the existence of a signore de Caffa, who levied duty of 3 per centinaio (pego-
lotti/evans, p. 26), probably identical with the tudun, but modern scholarship convincingly
argues otherwise: “La présence à caffa d’un tudun et d’un commerciaire ne signifie nulle-
ment que l’on reconnaisse la souveraineté du khan sur la ville. [.. .] le rôle [du tudun] ne
semble pas dépasser celui que jouent les consuls des puissances étrangères, établis dans
les grandes villes des États d’aujourd’hui” (Balard, Romanie, I, p. 459).