216 chapter four
the merchants of the Serenissima must have been greatly tempted to
revive the market at tana, and knew that they would have had the sup-
port of their steppeland partners, but the risk of starting a new war with
the Genoese on the scale of the war just finished was too great284 and the
Venetians were forced to observe the letter of the treaty. there remained
however the option, with Jochid help, of breaking the spirit of the accord,
by breaching the Genoese blockade at some point not covered by the
devetum.
the spot chosen to take over tana’s function was provato. following
orders handed down by Janibek-Khan, in 1356 the governor of crimea
and lord of Solkhat, ramazan,285 granted the Venetians the right to trade
in that port and to have a consulate there, undertaking to build houses
for them286 where they could live as they wished, fixed the customs levy
at only 3% and ruled that disputes between the locals and their ‘guests’
would be jointly settled by the consul and himself.287
It is not difficult to understand the reasoning of the Golden horde
authorities here: provato, on the coast between Soldaia and caffa288 was
well placed to serve as a port for Solkhat, and the charter under discussion
explicitly mentioned such a function.289 the intention to divert Solkhat’s
traffic away from caffa to provato is as obvious as it is understandable:
Solkhat was the political capital of the tartar crimea, with a thriving mer-
cantile life, and shared an interest with Sarai290 in escaping from caffa’s
stifling monopoly, though only if the new port was acceptable, conve-
nient and practicable. the Jochid-Venetian treaty of March 1356 shows
in forti manu procedere contra eos (papacostea, “tana,” p. 213). Similar disappointment
must have reigned among the horde.
284 Known to historiography as the Second War of the Straits, this conflict pitted the
Genoese against the Venetians from 1350 to 1355 and was in fact a struggle to control access
to the Black Sea, though its origins lay in Janibek’s charter of 1347 to the Venetians at tana,
and in the Genoese reaction to the grant (cf. papacostea, “tana,” pp. 209–210).
285 a Mamluk source of 1349 mentions a person of the same name, ramaḍān, holding
the same office (tiesenhausen, Sbornik, I, pp. 450).
286 the settlement must have been in the early stages of construction, judging by the
document: lo Provato, che a nome Citade Nova (DVL, II, 25).
287 Ibid., pp. 24–26; cf. heyd, Histoire, II, 201–202, Nystazopoulou-pélékidis, Venise,
p. 27, papacostea, “tana,” pp. 213–214, Vernadsky, Mongols, p. 204 (with some errors).
288 cf. heyd, Histoire, II, p. 202, and its position on Balard’s map of ‘Genoese Gazaria’
(Balard, Romanie, I, p. 153), probably based on heyd’s information.
289 DVL, II, 24: Vignando li marcadanti Venetiani che li debia vegnir in lo Provato. Tra-
zando le sue mercadantie a vendando quele in Sorgati, debia pagar III per centener.
290 this was not always the case; see for example chapter 4.2.7.