34 chapter one
By securing passage through the Straits in this manner, Western mer-
chants were one step closer to an important approach to the grand trunk
routes of eurasian trade, and after 1261 the region would play a central
role in transcontinental commerce. the Black Sea took on this additional
function because the Islamic blockade in the Fertile crescent withstood
all attempts to break it, from both east and West.
the crusader footholds on the eastern Mediterranean coast and hinter-
land, of which the Kingdom of Jerusalem was the most important, were
mere dents in this Muslim barrier, and never created a corridor to allow
Western merchants access to the routes through persia to central asia,
or through Iraq or egypt to the Indian ocean. Genoa’s involvement in the
crusades in 1218/9 and 1249/50, and in the Ilkhanate’s campaigns against
the Mamluk sultan in egypt and Syria in 1288–1290, certainly aimed to
remove this Muslim barrier to trade.109
attempts from the east fared no better. a Mongol army was defeated
in 1260 by Mamluk troops at the battle of ‛ayn Jālūt in palestine, and they
never recovered from this loss: the battle definitively fixed the border
between the two powers at the euphrates, despite countless later attempts
by the Ilkhans to change it, either on their own or in combined operations
with Western powers.
the decisive moments in the confrontation came in 1285 when the king-
dom of cilician armenia passed from Ilkhanid suzerainty into cairo’s sphere
of influence, and in 1291 when the Mamluks took acre, the last important
position held by the Western european christians in the eastern Mediter-
ranean. these gains sealed Mamluk supremacy in the near east, and since
the christian outposts had also been outposts for long-distance trade, the
change in ownership brought about a large shift in the structure of eur-
asian commerce. Many of those who now found it impossible to trade in
Mediterranean turned to the Black Sea to seek compensation.110
1.2.3 The Black Sea—A Crossroads of Eurasian Trade
as mentioned above, the romanian historian Gheorghe Brătianu coined a
phrase to explain the commercial boom of the Black Sea in the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries: the sea, he said, was a “plaque tournante” of
(chapter ‘restauraţia bizantină la Strâmtori şi penetraţia genoveză în bazinul pontic,
1261–1293ʼ).
109 cf. ciocîltan, “Genoa,” pp. 283 ff., and below, chapter 3.2.
110 Ibid., pp. 135 ff., and below, chapter 3.2.