230 chapter four
historians have taken this, along with the fact that the treaties were iden-
tical in content, to mean that the first copy we have preserved was in fact
nothing more than a draft of the official treaty, concluded three months
later.344 once we realise however that the leader of the tartar delegation
had been replaced, and once we tease out the political implications here,
it becomes clear that the second document is a confirmation of the first.
When Ilyas Bey was named as chief negotiator in place of cherkez, this
was not a routine piece of business as usual for the central power but
expressed deep shifts at the core of the Golden horde following the vic-
tory at Kalka. It did not take long for the demoralising effect to make itself
felt. “Mamai’s knyazï took council among themselves and said: ‘It is not
good that we live under Mamai’s rule, we are a laughing-stock wherever
we go and we are destroyed by our enemies; what does it help us to live
under his rule? Let us go to the tsar toqtamïsh and we will see how things
are under his rule’.”345 there is no doubt that this is what they did, and
that the new khan was glad to have the services of the renegade emirs in
return for various advantages, including recognition of their status and
privileges.
among the high-ranking defectors was Qutlugh Bugha,346 whose status
in the horde grew considerably once he had embraced the victor’s cause.
there appear to be records of the mid-fourteenth century that link him to
crimean affairs,347 and in the last years of Mamai’s reign he seems to have
344 Desimoni, “trattato,” pp. 162–163, as the title of his study reveals, considers that
there was only one treaty, negotiated over the period November 1380–february 1381.
heyd, Histoire, II, p. 205, reaches the same conclusion, observing that the first example
was unsigned and taking this as proof that the treaty itself was only definitively concluded
on 23rd february 1381; this argument is considerably undermined once we remember that
the first text was not the original treaty of 27th November 1380 but a later copy, which we
might expect to be unsigned but which nevertheless mentions all tartar and Genoese par-
ties to the treaty; the notary who drew up the copy confirms that it was taken from caffan
official documents (cf. Sacy, “pièces,” p. 55), and the absence of signatures is in the normal
manner of things; the notary provided authentication.
345 Nikonovskaya Letopisʼ, XI, p. 69.
346 the treaty of 23rd february 1381 sets out the family relations; Ellias segno fijo de
Inach Cototoloboga seando mandao segno in Sorgati (Desimoni, “trattato,” p. 162). We find
Inach along with other corrupt forms in various Genoese documents, Inat, Ina, Ayna (Iorga,
Notes, I, pp. 15–16), and it was understood as part of the personal name of Qutlugh Bugha
(which is also much mangled in the transmission); it is actually the noble title inak, used
by the Golden horde tartars to mean ‘courtier, person close to the khan’ (tiesenhausen,
Sbornik, II, p. 302, fedorov-Davïdov, Stroy, pp. 46–47).
347 Cotloboga (Cotulubuga) appears as a witness to the treaties with the Venetians of
Janibek in 1347 and Berdibek in 1358 (DVL, I, p. 313, II, p. 51), and one of the tartar com-
manders who fought the Grand Duke of Lithuania at the Battle of ‘Blue Watersʼ in 1362