the golden horde and the black sea 251
moment he took the throne,431 which did not bode well for his reign, and
was captured in an ambush set by his overmighty co-regent in 1291 and
handed over to toqta and his brothers, the sons of Möngke temür, who
executed him.432
this brazen show of force took Noghai to the peak of his power and
assured him his own political entity, directed mostly against toqta and
conceived as a simple instrument of his will. the message which Noghai
sent in 1293 via his wife Bulaq-Khatun to the titular khan reveals much
about the new balance of power in the Golden horde: ‘“Your father sends
you greetings and tells you that there are still some thorns which must be
cleared away from your path.ʼ he asked her, ‘What does that mean?ʼ She
named the emirs [.. .] who had supported töle Bugha against Noghai. [.. .]
toqta summoned them and killed them all.”433
although toqta had followed his ‘father’s’ advice in this instance, such
a form of regency (expressed very clearly in the chosen mode of address)434
could not be endured indefinitely: rashīd al-Dīn, the well-informed vizier
of the Ilkhanate, plainly states that the war between Noghai and toqta at
the end of the century broke out when the khan on the Volga refused to
acknowledge himself any longer subject to the emir on the Danube.435 In
a final attempt to bring the ‘rebel’ to heel, Noghai decreed that three of
toqta’s brothers should be co-regents, and proposed assembling a qurul-
tai to approve this division of supreme power, offering—of course—him-
self as guarantor of the arrangement. the ruler on the Volga rejected his
regent’s offer, so that there remained no choice but to take up arms.436
431 franciscan missionaries were well received in 1287 by the two ‘emperors’ (Golubo-
vich, Biblioteca, II, pp. 444–445, Brătianu, Vicina, p. 38).
432 cf. Veselovskiy, Khan, pp. 30–38, Spuler, Horde, pp. 66–67, Grekov, Yakubovskiy,
Orda, p. 85.
433 al-Nuwayrī/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, pp. 136–137, Veselovskiy, Khan, p. 186.
434 compare the result when chinggis Khan used the same terms in addressing the
sultan of Khwarezm, chapter 2.1.1.
435 tiesenhausen, Sbornik, II, p. 70; the egyptian chronicler Baybars (ibid., I, p. 88)
offers a strikingly similar assessment: “[toqta] launched a war against Noghai and his
sons, who had become his open enemies when they opposed him; this happened because
for a long time Noghai had been the steersman of the kingdom, picking and choosing
among the members of Berke’s family without restriction, removing those of their kings
who displeased him and putting on the throne those who he had chosen himself. [.. .]
he wanted this state of affairs to stay as it was, so that he could be continue to be the
leader of the country; toqta however was not content to remain a subject; he decided to
fight.” chroniclers from the Mamluk sultanate (ibid., I, pp. 84–87, 89–90, 137) mention as
the cause other events—plots, betrayals, assassinations, with various emirs involved—but
these were merely secondary effects of the underlying conflict.
436 rashīd al-Dīn/Boyle, pp. 142–145, Spuler, Horde, pp. 74, 75 note 58.