preliminary remarks 31
side-show. In the mid-fourteenth century the khan of the Golden horde
tried to create naval supremacy at a critical moment in tartar relations
with the Genoese, by launching ships under the horde’s own flag to break
the Italian power. the Genoese got wind of the plan and in 1345 their
squadrons destroyed the vessels hastily being built in the port of cembalo
(Balaklava) in crimea; at the same time they destroyed any hopes that the
khan harboured that a continental great power could also become a great
naval power.101
the tartars were lords over many lands, but were also land-locked:
even though almost all european and asian coasts of the Black Sea were
under direct or indirect Mongol rule by the mid-thirteenth century, fate
would have it that they played a passive role in events on the water.102
When the nomads poured forth from the depths of asia, the land-
locked nature of their rule became so evident that some observers had the
impression that the Mongols as a nation suffered from hydrophobia. Later
scholars of the medieval history of the Black Sea, perhaps taking over this
error, have also paid remarkably little attention to steppeland influence
over the course of events, generally considering that in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries the sea was the almost exclusive domain of the Ital-
ian naval republics, with Genoa exercising unquestioned supremacy. the
bibliography on the Black Sea issue in the period is most instructive in
this regard.103
one source in particular casts new light on the overly narrow and exces-
sively Mediterranean perspective which most modern scholars take on
the matter. In a treaty of December 1347 concluded between the Golden
horde and the Venetians, the khan mentioned above, Janibek, succeeded
in including a warning clause: “on the sea, our word shall prevail and we
shall have the command.”104
101 Morozzo della rocca, “notizie,” p. 282; papacostea, “tana,” pp. 212–213, and below,
chapter 4.2.5.
102 cf. the political map of the Black Sea coasts in 1254–1255 set out accurately by
the Franciscan missionary William of rubruck (rubruck/Jackson, pp. 61–67, and below,
chapter 4.1.2).
103 cf. for example, Balard, Romanie, Karpov, Impero, I, Strässle, Schwarzmeerhandel.
It is remarkable that historians of the chinggisid empire have not paid due attention to
this chapter, and have been content to take over the conclusions of Black Sea scholars tale
quale. the two monographs by Spuler, Horde, and idem, Mongolen, are typical here.
104 DVL, II, p. 312: Sullo uiso del mar la parola nostra ual et hauemo forza.