194 chapter four
cuman steppe, it arrived just in time for Özbek, still striving to win over
the Mamluk Sultan, to seize the occasion to show that Muslims under
his reign could feel and act in unison with their brothers in egypt. this
piece of flattery by imitation was no more use than all his other sacrifices
and stratagems in swaying al-Malik an-Nāṣir from neutrality toward the
Ilkhanate.
Some interpretations hold that the khan primarily intended the raids
on Soldaia to dislodge the Genoese.205 Not only does this not reflect real-
ity, it is even directly contradicted by the facts. Shortly after their return to
the peninsula, the Genoese merchants resumed their systematic and sus-
tained efforts, evident in the last century as well, to topple Soldaia from its
position as crimea’s commercial capital, a haven for their Venetian rivals,
and replace it with their own settlement of caffa.206 the Genoese were
never able to give the rival trading town the coup de grace by their own
unaided strength, not while Golden horde state power was at its height,207
but instead the khan, de jure and de facto ruler over the town, himself
destroyed much of it for them.
regardless of whether or not Özbek intended to hand the Genoese
such an advantage, the raids on Soldaia certainly had this (possibly unin-
tended) consequence: the port was heavily damaged and definitively lost
the race with caffa. the town’s irreversible decline was harshly hastened
by the Mongol raids of 1322–1323, and helped along by the trade boycott
which Genoa declared in 1316 and reinforced in 1336.208 In hindsight, it
can be seen to have given the deathblow to Venice’s hopes of creating a
bastion on the crimean coast which would have been able to compete
successfully with their rivals’ rapid assumption of hegemony in the region,
or at least slow it down.209
205 Vernadsky, Mongols, p. 96: “presumably the leading role in the Soldaia conflict
belonged not to the Greek, but to the Genoese.” None of the sources support this opin-
ion, and Ibn Baṭṭūṭa/Defrémery, Sanguinetti, II, p. 359, provides proof positive that the
Jochids were attacking al-Rūm, the ‘romans’ meaning the Byzantine Greeks (Ibn Baṭṭūṭa/
Defrémery, Sanguinetti, II, p. 359).
206 Nystazopoulou-pélékidis, Venise, pp. 26–27, Balard, Romanies, I, pp. 57–58, Ibn
Baṭṭūṭa/Defrémery, Sanguinetti, II, p. 359.
207 cf. the views of Spuler, Horde, p. 87, Grekov, Yakubovskiy, Orda, pp. 89–90, who
agree on this point.
208 forcheri, Navi, p. 20, Balard, Romanie, I, p. 158. the absence of any reference to Sol-
daia in commercial documents until the mid-fourteenth century shows that the devetum
was observed during this period.
209 expelled by the Jochids in 1343, the Venetians made some final, vain efforts to gain a
lasting foothold in Soldaia; in 1356 the governor of crimea forbade them to settle anywhere
but at provato, a nearby spot with no commercial value. although his successor granted