the disintegration of the empire 67
election of the new emperor—a tactic which his brother had successfully
used in 1251. his ties to the nomad factions meant that he supported arigh
Böke, the preferred steppe candidate, who set himself up as a defender
of mongolian tradition against the “traitor” Qubilai in china. the latter
however won the election with the help of hülegü, the other great sed-
entarist ruler. Berke and the equally conservative chaghataids refused to
recognise Qubilai, at his court in Beijing, as the supreme authority, but
this was a poor consolation for the Jochids which did nothing to restore
their lost transcaucasian territories or to lessen their isolation in the
cuman steppe.30
after this defeat in the proxy conflict of the election, Berke’s final move
at the bilateral level was to send an embassy to his rival’s court in persia.
hülegü’s response was decisive: the two envoys sent to convey the volga
khan’s demands were executed.31 the ilkhan then underlined his policy
with further bloody deeds, when three commanders of the Jochid contin-
gent which had served in the campaign in iraq and syria were accused of
treason, and met the same fate as the envoys.32 after these insults, Berke
had no other path open to him in pressing his transcaucasian claims than
to take up arms.
the earliest Jochid expedition against the ilkhanate33 probably took
place in the winter of 1262/3.34 on hearing that his envoys had been
killed, Berke ordered a general mobilisation and set out for enemy ter-
ritory. although it seems that the cuman troops enjoyed a victory, they
30 grousset, Empire, pp. 352–353, Brosset, Histoire, i/1, p. 566 note 2, spuler, Horde,
pp. 41–42, Jackson, “dissolution,” pp. 234–235.
31 al-mufaḍḍal/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, i, pp. 176–177; cf. spuler, “außenpolitik,” p. 27.
32 rashīd al-dīn/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, ii, p. 68; for the context, cf. ibid., i, pp. 78, 141,
418, spuler, Mongolen, p. 63, Zakirov, Otnosheniya, pp. 10, 12.
33 Understandably, the khans of the golden horde were always seen either as peti-
tioners or as aggressors; for some general remarks on the topic, see spuler, Mongolen,
pp. 54–55.
34 the wider impact of these first battles between mongols in the Western parts of
the former empire must have been uncommonly strongly felt, judging by the unusually
frequent reports in contemporary sources: tiesenhausen, Sbornik, i, pp. 70–72 (ibn Wāṣil)
and 273 (ibn Kathīr), ii, pp. 74–75 (rashīd al-dīn), 81 (Waṣṣāf ), 219 (Ḥamd allāh Qazwīnī)
and 228 (the ‘history of sheikh Uwais’); polo/Benedetto, p. 360. they mistakenly stretch
the duration of the war, which in fact only lasted a few weeks, from 1255 to 1265 and their
reports conflict in several aspects. Zakirov, Otnosheniya, p. 11, confines events to the period
1261–1263 with more justification than the assertion of grekov, Yakubovskiy, Orda, p. 77,
that “the first major encounter took place in 1263–1264 near the left bank of the Kura, and
ended in total defeat for hülegü.”