246 chapter four
broken since his troops came to plunder your lands, then you should know
that I can make peace between you.ʼ the sultan wrote to Berke, requesting
with all the force he had that he make peace.”413 another Mamluk source
goes into more detail: While the tartar army was plundering and burning
the lands around constantinople, “the emperor, who was within the walls,
fled, and sent fāris al-Dīn aqūsh al-Mas‛ūdī to the commander of Berke’s
army, to say that his country [= Byzantium] was allied with Sultan al-
Malik al-Ẓāhir [Baybars] and that the khan [Berke] was at peace with [the
emperor] because he was an ally [of the sultan]. the commander asked
for this in writing. he [= al-Mas‛ūdī] wrote this down and swore to it [add-
ing that] he remained [in constantinople] of his own free will and that
nobody had prevented him from going on to Berke. then Berke’s army left
the walls of constantinople and took sultan ‛Izz al-Dīn with them, who
had been held prisoner in one of constantinople’s fortresses. then the
emperor gave al-Mas‛ūdī all that he needed for the road [and sent him] to
Berke together with an envoy of his own with a letter, undertaking to send
three hundred brocade coats as annual tribute so that [the khan] would
support him and not invade his country. al-Mas‛ūdī went to Berke. When
he arrived, [the khan] reproached him for his late arrival, but he said: ‘the
lord of constantinople detained me.ʼ then Berke showed him the docu-
ment which he had written, and which [Berke] had from the commander
of his troops, and said: ‘I will not punish you, for al-Malik al-Ẓāhir [Bay-
bars’ sake].ʼ then sultan ‛Izz al-Dīn wrote to sultan al-Malik al-Ẓāhir and
told him everything, and also told him what had come about because of
the negligence of fāris al-Dīn aqūsh al-Mas‛ūdī.”414
although the invaders could have taken constantinople by force, while
the emperor did not have the troops to defend himself,415 it seems that the
egyptian ambassador used his good offices to persuade the tartar com-
mander to withdraw. Despite this act, tartar-Byzantine relations contin-
ued to be strained until Berke’s death and the enthronement of Möngke
temür in 1267.416
413 Ibid., pp. 52–53.
414 al-Mufaḍḍal/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, I, pp. 179–180.
415 pachymeres/Bekker, I, p. 232, canard, “un traité,” p. 217 note 2.
416 cf. canard, “un traité,” p. 219, Vernadsky, “orda,” pp. 73 ff., Laurent, “croisade,”
pp. 113–118, pljakov, “relations,” pp. 285–286, pavlov, “B”lgariya,” passim, Zakirov, Otnosh-
eniya, p. 59. around the same time, the Byzantine conflict with the Genoese came to an
end; the emperor settled them in the constantinople quarter of pera, where they quickly
put down roots (cf. papacostea, “crise,” p. 349, Balard, Romanie, I, p. 182).