the golden horde and the black sea 165
longer ago than 1303:85 we can clearly rule out the idea that the caffans
would have been able to resist the Mongol siege for eight months without
such defences.
the Genoese merchants’ effrontery met with similar rebuffs wherever
they pushed their demands: while emperor andronikos II palaiologos
gave way unconditionally, since Byzantium was at the end of its strength,86
alexios II comnenos resisted the brazen Genoese demands at trebizond
and won the dispute.87
If we ask whether toqta’s action in 1307 was in the same category as the
emperor of trebizond’s actions against the Genoese in 1304, or Janibek’s
actions four decades later,88 the answer can only be conjectural given the
scarcity of sources. Whatever disagreements there may have been over
caffa’s status cannot have been the only cause of the rupture.
the Mamluk sources are less detailed and descriptive than the Genoese
chronicler quoted, but they do give a precise cause for the reprisals: the
khan “took his revenge on the Genoese franks” because they stole Mongol
children and sold them in egypt.89 from this account we realise that
toqta’s actions were not just punitive, but preventative as well: all sources,
including the arabic, agree that the Genoese were expelled, which put an
end to the slave trade on the cuman steppe.
export of slaves was certainly a major source of income and other mate-
rial benefit for the Mongol khans,90 but it was also a source of concern.
Notarial documents clearly show that younger, more able slaves fetched
a premium price, so that the constant haemorrhaging of valuable human
capital from the Golden horde’s lands deprived it of soldiers as well as
85 continuazione da Varagine/promis, p. 500, Brătianu, Recherches, pp. 250 ff., Dölger,
Regesten, IV, pp. 40–41, ostrogorsky, Geschichte, p. 404.
86 ostrogorsky, Geschichte, p. 404.
87 See above, p. 125.
88 papacostea, “tana,” passim, and below, pp. 204 ff.
89 tiesenhausen, Sbornik, I, pp. 95 (Baybars), 140 (al-Nuwayrī); the author of the Soldaia
synaxarion notes only that the Mongols laid waste to caffa on 21st May 1308 (Nystazopou-
los, Sougdaia, p. 129).
90 the khan’s agents had two sources of profit from this trade, through customs duty
and—indirectly—through tax. a Muslim merchant records that “the whole population
pays tribute to the lord of the country; this is demanded even in poor years, when plague
has killed the animals or when much snow has fallen and there are heavy frosts; in order to
be able to pay the tax, people sell their children” (‛umarī/Lech, p. 140). Since the Mamluk
sultanate depended on the import of slaves (cf. especially Labib, Handelsgeschichte), the
Mongol khans benefitted in another, very important, way when we consider the interna-
tional context of the trade, which gave them a further weapon against the Ilkhanate.