The Mongols and the Black Sea Trade in the 13th and 14th Centuries

preliminary remarks 35

long-distance trade. his characterisation has long been adopted into the

historiography hereabouts, and is particularly appropriate for the situa-

tion after the wholesale transfer of Western merchants into the Black Sea

region, caused by catastrophes suffered in the eastern Mediterranean. at

this point the Black Sea picked up the slack created with the loss of these

positions, and became Western europe’s outpost in eastern europe, as a

gateway to asian trade.111

the gateway opened wide to allow merchants and missionaries unhin-

dered access to limitless horizons because the Black Sea basin was part

of the chinggisid hegemony. Unlike the Byzantine empire or the Muslim

rulers of the east, who worked to protect their own merchants’ interests

against outside competition, the Mongol khans had no commercial class

of their own and did everything they could to encourage foreign mer-

chants to traverse the territories they controlled: the chinggisids offered

merchants from other lands safety in which to travel, and various transit

facilities, in order to draw the greatest possible profit via customs levies

and the exchange of goods. this income provided an important remedy

for the chronic budgetary short-comings, though it could not save a situ-

ation in which expenditures always exceeded revenue.

around 1261 the Mongol empire fractured into several successor states:

in the West of the empire’s territory, these were the Golden horde on the

eurasian steppe, and the Ilkhanate in persia. this grand reorganisation of

power relations generated a series of rivalries within the Mongol world

and at its edges, largely commercial in nature. clashes over the control

of the trade routes led to major changes in the eurasian network, which

came out very favourably for the Black Sea region.

When the Ilkhanate and the Golden horde clashed over control of the

Silk road, part of the traffic which travelled that route was diverted from

the region of the aral Sea, through the steppe, to the ports on the north-

ern Black Sea coast, tana, caffa or Soldaia.

the Ilkhanate’s conflict with the Mamluk sultanate, and consolidation

of the Muslim barrier in the eastern Mediterranean, led to blockade on

both the Silk road itself and the Iraqi end of the spice route from the

Indian ocean via the tigris and euphrates to Syria and cilician arme-

nia. the Ilkhan arghun worked closely with the Genoese merchants

to shift trade from the Iraqi river routes to the overland route through

111 Ibid.