the golden horde and the black sea 193
In sharp contrast to the dwindling political aspect, the commercial
side of the relationship was spared. the decision to do so was doubt-
less made in the hope that in future, cairo might look shift to a new and
more favourable position toward the Golden horde, a hope that was all
the more hollow because there was no serious alternative. perhaps Özbek
also gave more weight to a lesson which he had learned from history, hav-
ing been a part of it himself. this was the experience of his predecessor
isolating his realm, an action which cast a shadow over the beginning of
Özbek’s own reign: with the caucasus route closed off by the war with
the Ilkhanate, if the second trade route that connected the steppe to the
Mediterranean via the Black Sea were also cut off, the ulus of Jochi would
be entirely removed from the major trade circuit. the prospect posed a
mortal danger to the state’s very existence.
these considerations formed the basis for Özbek’s policy toward the
Genoese, who were the main beneficiaries of normalised Jochid-Mamluk
relations. having paid a bloody price with the death of their compatriot
Segurano Salvaigo, they now enjoyed their privileged position at caffa
undisturbed. thus when Özbek sent the courier Qara Bulat to toghluq
temür, commander of ten thousand men (tümen) and governor of the
crimea, to harass the Greeks in the neighbouring town of Soldaia in two
rounds of punitive raids—august 1322 and January 1323—the Genoese
again felt the benefits.202
to explain this eruption of violence, it must be noted that one of the
worst outbreaks of religious violence in egypt’s medieval history had
taken place in cairo in april 1322: as well as claiming numerous lives, it
saw 59 churches and countless shrines devastated.203 the Sultan, taken
by surprise, tried from the outset to protect his non-Muslim subjects, but
pressure from the fanatical masses forced him to sharpen the laws under
which the christians lived.204 When word of this outbreak reached the
202 the sinaxary of Soldaia records that churches were desecrated on both occasions
(Nistazopoulou, Soldaia, p. 123). the town was under uncontested Jochid rule and toghluq
temür held the kefale, headship, and resided in Solkhat (Kirim), where Ibn Baṭṭūṭa/
Defrémery, Sanguinetti, II, p. 359, met him in 1333/4, holding the same office. the famous
traveller also records that the area was primarily settled by ‘turks’ meaning Jochid tartars,
who protected the less numerous group of Greek merchants (al-Rūm); “the town was for-
merly very extensive, but was for the most part laid waste in the wars between the Greeks
and the turks” (ibid., p. 415). here the “war” was evidently the events of 1322 and 1323; cf.
also Brătianu, Recherches, p. 260, and idem, Vicina, p. 76.
203 the sad result is tallied by al-Maqrīzī/Schmid, Beziehungen, p. 207.
204 Weil, Geschichte, IV, pp. 356–359, Wiet, Égypte, pp. 484–488, Schmid, Beziehungen,
p. 207.