the disintegration of the empire 103
south-West coast. polo also recorded that they sailed in their own ships
and transported these across dry land,181 which must have been via the
shortest portage between the don and the volga.182
it was probably the popularity of this trade zone that made an anony-
mous spanish franciscan erroneously state, in a geography compiled
some time after 1348, that to reach Urgench from tana, one must cross
the caucasus mountains and the caspian sea.183 certainly the genoese
frequented not just the mountains and the sea, but also lands further to
the east, also ruled by the ulus of Jochi. this period of relative calm and
intense trading activity is well-known thanks to marco polo, but also from
the writings of the minorite friar John of montecorvino, who in 1307 was
consecrated archbishop of Khanbalïq [= Beijing] and had described the
road east in a letter to the pope two years earlier, pointing out that travel-
ling to china via the lands of the golden horde was “shorter and safer” for
possible envoys, but that because of frequent wars—doubtless meaning
the wars between toqta and noghai—it was often closed.184
although the wars of the 1290s which montecorvino mentions had a
profoundly negative effect on trade, and certainly on foreign confidence
in the Pax Mongolica,185 they did not discourage merchants entirely from
visiting the golden horde once order was restored in the first year of the
following century: some of these trusting souls fell victim to toqta Khan,
unexpectedly storming caffa in 1307, and his order that all merchants
travelling in the lands of the horde be arrested.
181 polo/Benedetto, p. 44: Et novelemant les marchians de Jene najerent por cel mer, car
il v’ont mis leign ou il najerent. Et d’iluec vint la soie que est apellé G(h)elle. Because of the
commercial importance of the product, polo called the caspian the Glevechelan sea (ibid.),
that is the sea of gilan (on this persian province see le strange, Lands, pp. 172 ff.); other
regions around the sea, especially georgia, had a reputation for producing better silk than
the chinese (cf. racine, “marché,” pp. 405–406, 408), for which reason heyd, Histoire, ii,
p. 112, states: “le commerce de la caspienne semble avoir eu pour unique object le com-
merce de la soie.”
182 cf. heyd, Histoire, ii, pp. 111–112, Bautier, “relations,” p. 287, racine, “marché,”
p. 408.
183 Wyngaert, Sinica Franciscana, i, pp. 568–569.
184 ibid., p. 349: De via notifico quod per Chothay Imperatoris aquilonarium Tartarorum
est via brevior et securior, ita quod cum nunciis infra V vel VI menses poterunt pervenire;
[.. .] via secura non fuit a multo tempore propter guerras, ideo sunt XII anni quod de Curia
romana et de nostro Ordine et statu occidentis non suscepi nova.
185 along with the general worsening or total disappearance of proper trading conditions,
we should mention noghai’s raids on several crimean towns (see below, pp. 161–163).