the golden horde and the black sea 263
only be stamped out at the cost of massively reduced tartar presence and
influence in the carpathian-Balkan region. the khans would never again
be able to control events in the regions as directly or as completely as in
Noghai’s time.
the change of rule in the region contributed decisively to the general
weakening of the Golden horde that had continued for some years after
the end of the civil wars. the two great battles with Noghai had seriously
thinned the ranks of the Jochid army,486 and were followed by natural
disasters which further reduced the Volga khan’s military capacity: “In
the year 702487 news reached cairo of drought in toqta’s country, which
lasted three years, after which plague struck the cattle and sheep, and
it reached the stage when the people did not have anything to eat and
sold their children to the merchants, who took them to egypt and other
countries.”488 although he had a dependable income from the trade, the
khan was alarmed at the loss of potential taxpayers and soldiers, and
decided to stop the trade at a stroke: in 1307/8 he expelled the Genoese,
the principal agents in the slave trade, from caffa.489 the same raison
d’état made him send a peremptory command to emperor andronikos II,
ordering him to return the alans who had fled to Byzantium from the
eastern carpathian region after the death of their khan Noghai.490
even this precarious situation did not prevent toqta from gathering
what forces were left to him with the intention of invading the Ilkhanate
in 1305 together with his Mamluk allies.491 as with his predecessors and
486 Not only through the unusually high number of battlefield casualties, but also
because prisoners-of-war were sold abroad as slaves (Veselovsky, Khan, p. 50, Grekov,
Yakubovskiy, Orda, p. 88).
487 26th august 1302–14th July 1303.
488 al-Maqrīzī/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, I, p. 424; similar reports in al-‛aynī/ibid., p. 483.
489 See chapter 4.2.3.
490 pachymeres/FHDR, III, pp. 450–453, Gregoras/ibid., p. 508–509; it is not clear
whether the khan’s order was followed (Dölger, Regesten, IV, p. 46) since they are later
mentioned in Byzantium as mercenaries in the years 1305 and 1323 (Brătianu, Vicina, p. 44)
and as ‘Muslim alansʼ in the army of tsar Ivan Stratsimir of Vidin in his war against Louis
of anjou, king of hungary, in 1365 (Gjuzelev, B”lgariya, pp. 104–105, pavlov, “Mongolota-
tari,” p. 119), but also in 1330 as members of the ‘alan domain’ (yashko gospodstvo) on the
future territory of Moldavia (cf. ciocîltan, “alanii,” pp. 938 ff.).
491 al-Maqrīzī/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, I, p. 424: “In the month of Rabī‛ al-awwal in the
year 704 [= November 1304] envoys from king toqta, lord of Sarai and the cuman steppe,
came [to cairo]. they brought letters from their king, containing [the news] that he was
preparing to wide to war against [the Ilkhan] Ghazan and asking him [= the Sultan of
egypt] to lend him aid;” further detail in al-Mufaḍḍal/ibid., p. 185. this matter had become
a concern in 1301—a significant date that shows its importance—after the victory over