90 chapter three
with a letter addressed to Berke Khan, urging him as a good muslim to
take up holy war against his kinsmen in persia led by the “infidel” hülegü.131
a fully accredited embassy then left cairo at the end of 1262,132 and met
Berke’s envoys to the sultan in constantinople. the two embassies met at
the beginning of spring 1263, and then each continued on their way. the
emperor michael viii palaiologos was the host at this meeting and went
to some lengths to make members of both embassies welcome, taking
the opportunity to show them the mosque recently built in his capital,
testimony of the steadfast friendship which bound him to the two mus-
lim rulers, Berke and Baybars. the emperor also took care to mention,
in a letter to the sultan, that he had equipped the egyptian envoys with
everything that they needed for their onward journey to the Black sea
and the cuman steppe. these signs of friendship were much strength-
ened by sending his own representative to cairo along with those of the
golden horde.133
other powers who were also interested in a well-functioning sarai-
constantinople-cairo axis added their envoys to the mongol/Byzantine
embassy travelling under michael viii’s protection: a genoese delega-
tion, led by ‘a deanʼ (muqaddam) from the republic, and envoys from
the former seljuk sultan ‛izz al-dīn Kaikāwuz, a refugee at the court in
constantinople, made up the numbers in an impressive embassy that dis-
embarked in alexandria in July 1263 at the latest.134
the discussions that followed in cairo smoothed out the various
powers’ positions, assigned roles and laid the groundwork for the great
anti-ilkhanid coalition, which proved stable for decades on end—despite
its shortcomings, its crises and its demonstrable military inefficiency.
in order to understand how the coalition functioned in the Black sea,
and in particular to understand how the golden horde’s Black sea poli-
cies took shape within this framework, we must examine—however
131 the chronicler rukn al-dīn Baybars/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, i, p. 77, gives the year
in the islamic calendar as 659 [= 6th december 1260—25th november 1261]; ibn ‛abd
al-Ẓāhir, ibid., p. 49, gives the following year, and says that he wrote the message at the
sultan’s dictation, as does al-maqrīzī/canard, “Un traité,” p. 212; cf. Zakirov, Otnosheniya,
pp. 43–44.
132 al-mufaḍḍal/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, i, p. 181; ibn ‛abd al-Ẓāhir, ibid., p. 49; on this
occasion, some of the Jochid soldiers who had fled hülegü’s army to egypt were repatri-
ated (cf. Zakirov, Otnosheniya, p. 44, canard, “Un traité,” p. 212).
133 tiesenhausen, Sbornik, i, pp. 47–48 (ibn ‛abd al-Ẓāhir), 78 (Baybars), 142 (al-nuwayrī),
178, 181 (al-mufaḍḍal), 419 (al-maqrīzī); cf. canard, “Un traité,” p. 142, Zakirov, Otnosheniya,
pp. 45–46.
134 ibn ‛abd al-Ẓāhir/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, i, pp. 49–51.