preliminary remarks 17
sultan al-ashraf Qānṣūh al-Ġawrī to warn him of the seriousness of the
danger they were facing together, and to recommend counter-measures.
the sultan’s reaction could hardly have been slower or more lethargic.52
he did not send ships to combat those who were destroying the “founda-
tion of his power and wealth” until 1509.53 these ships were promptly
sunk by the fleet under Francesco almeida at Diu, which put a stop to
the sultan’s naval campaign against the portuguese54 and allowed them
to consolidate their position in the region: in 1510 Goa became the capital
of their colonial empire.55
thus the stages of portuguese triumph marched closely in step with
Mamluk decline. When the ottoman Selim I attacked and conquered
egypt in 1516, he had a relatively easy task, since he encountered an enfee-
bled state whose great trade route, which had once fed its strength, had
ceased to function.56
the Golden horde belongs in the same category as the Mamluk sultanate
and the Khazar empire, sharing with the latter not just the same heartland
but a similarly structured economy, which was just as fatally dependent
on trade. It is thus obvious that, mutatis mutandis, these two steppeland
states flourished and then declined in similar ways.
reliable sources record that the majority of the horde’s population
lived a pastoral life, which gives the misleading impression that even after
the Mongol armies dismounted and settled down, the nomads continued
their ancestral way of life in the cuman steppe in every particular, with
its loose forms of association. In fact, from 1242 onwards the vast steppe
was occupied by a state in the full sense of the word, which showed excep-
tional order and rigorous centralism for a remarkably long time. Like any
other state, the Golden horde was an expensive business. however, the
besetting problem which overshadowed the fates of all the Mongol states
was more severe in the case of the ulus of Jochi than elsewhere, since
on the steppe, the material resources needed to maintain great-power
status were rarer than in the settled lands which fell under Mongol rule
52 Ibid., I, p. 520.
53 Ibid., I, p. 517.
54 Ibid., I, p. 536.
55 Ibid., I, p. 547; from 1507, portugal exercised suzerainty over the principality of
hormuz, which controlled transit between the Indian ocean and the persian Gulf (ibid.,
p. 549).
56 Ibid., I, p. 545.