176 chapter four
to add weight to their reports, the embassy was made up of more than
one hundred and seventy members and brought unusually rich gifts.126
In order to consolidate the religious basis for the coalition, the Sultan
al-Malik an-Nāṣir was named in prayers in all mosques in the ulus of Jochi
immediately after the khan, who upon his conversion to Islam had taken
the name Muḥammad (also given as Ghiyāth al-Dīn) Özbek.127
the conspicuous Islamic revival in the Golden horde was intended to
make the khan a more obvious partner for the Sultan’s favour than the
Muslim Ilkhan. the wily Qutlugh temür also thought of another way to
tip the balance toward the Jochid cause: he charged Manghush, Özbek’s
first ambassador to egypt, with proposing a marriage alliance to al-Malik
an-Nāṣir, offering a princess of the chinggisid blood: this was tulunbek,
daughter of Bürlük, brother to the dead khan toqta.128 the proposed mar-
riage alliance was something new in Jochid-Mamluk relations, even if it
was intended to consolidate them, and did not have the effect that Sarai
hoped for, although the lengthy preceding negotiations, and the outcome,
accurately reflect developments in the triangular relation of forces which
has been our concern here.
In sore need of commercial and diplomatic links between the Black
Sea and the Mediterranean, Özbek hastened to call on the Genoese, who
had filled that role perfectly for the two great land-based powers before
their expulsion from caffa. the man of the moment in this new phase of
Jochid-Mamluk relations, pivotal in bringing Genoese ships back to serve
the axis, was Segurano Salvaigo.129 a scion of Genoese nobility who had
become one of the largest slave merchants in the trade130 and carried
126 tiesenhausen, Sbornik, I, pp. 145 (al-Nuwayrī; the Jochid and Mamluk messengers
were “as usual” accompanied by Byzantine envoys), 186 (al-Mufaḍḍal; they arrived at cairo
sometime between 19th March and 16th april 1314), 256 (the anonymous biographer of
Sultan al-Malik an-Nāṣir), 316–317 (Ibn Duqmāq), 424 (al-Maqrīzī, who adds the detail that
the returning egyptian envoys had been in the lands of the horde during toqta’s sickness
and last days; the anonymous biographer gives the same details), 485–486 (al-‛aynī); cf.
Spuler, Horde, pp. 92 ff., Dölger, Regesten, IV, p. 62, Schmid, Beziehungen, p. 205, Zakirov,
Otnosheniya, pp. 74–75.
127 Zakirov, Otnosheniya, p. 77, Spuler, Horde, pp. 86–88.
128 al-‛aynī/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, I, p. 485; Spuler, Horde, p. 93; Zakirov, Otnosheniya,
pp. 75 ff.; Grekov, Yakubovskiy, Orda, p. 92; Vernadsky, Mongols, pp. 197–198, wrongly con-
cludes that this was the Sultan’s idea.
129 See the monograph by Kedar, “Segurano.”
130 In the report submitted to the pope in 1317, the Dominican Guillaume adam writes
that Salvaigo and his clan are said to have transported 10,000 slaves from the Golden horde
to egypt (adam/Kohler, p. 526, Kedar, “Segurano,” pp. 76, 88).