190 chapter four
the sources do not support the idea that such an agreement ever existed:
Özbek, despairing of his cause, was probably indulging in wishful think-
ing here.
In any case, a further embassy, dispatched urgently, cleared the matter
up definitively. In the message they carried, the khan sought to convince
the Sultan, in strident terms, that the Ilkhans were “your enemies and
our enemies, and we intend to wipe them out from between us [.. .] so
that [all these lands] may become one land.”193 the sultan’s reply, which
reached Sarai in 1322/3, carried by egyptian envoys, removed any doubt
and crushed all hope. “We have made peace with the king abū Sa‛īd for
the sake of his Muslim faith, he and those around him having converted
to the true faith. he must not be prevented from making the pilgrimage
[to Mecca]. he is a pillar of Islam and will have a part in the victory of
religion and of peace. as for what the king [Özbek] says about having for-
bidding merchants to buy slaves, we—praise be to allah!—have no need
of slaves. If you wish to continue in friendship and love towards us, then
we are companions.”194
Before all else, the khan’s reaction to this refusal reveals that he was
keenly aware of the catastrophe that had taken place, namely that the
Sarai-cairo axis, nearly a decade in the making at the cost of great stub-
bornness and many sacrifices, the most significant pillar of Golden horde
foreign policy, had collapsed. the way in which Özbek resigned himself
to fate and punished those responsible for the failed policy is revealing:
the mind behind the plan, who had worked it out and watched over its
execution, Qutlugh temür, the “emir of Sarai,” was marginalised by being
made governor of Khwarezm.195 Meanwhile his foreign collaborator, the
Genoese Segurano Salvaigo, whose services to the restoration of Jochid-
Mamluk relations were a matter of public knowledge, was killed in 1322/3,
executed on the khan’s orders.196
193 al-‛aynī/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, I, p. 491, Zakirov, Otnosheniya, p. 83.
194 Ibn Duqmāq/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, I, p. 321, Spuler, Horde, p. 94, Zakirov, Otnosh-
eniya, p. 84.
195 Ibn Duqmāq/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, I, p. 321, al-‛aynī/ibid., p. 492, Spuler, Horde,
p. 95; the emir’s fall may be judged from the reports of al-aynī/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, I,
p. 486, who was appointed at the peak of the emir’s influence and writes that at the begin-
ning of Özbek’s reign, “he had control of the imperial treasury and public works and the
tributes received.”
196 al-‛aynī/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, I, pp. 492–493, Spuler, Horde, p. 94, Zakirov, Otnosh-
eniya, p. 85, Kedar, “Segurano,” pp. 90–91.