240 chapter four
a campaign on this scale, over such distances, required the mobilisation
of all available resources, and required that conflicts smouldering on the
Golden horde’s Western border be banked down. the great army invaded
transoxiana in winter 1387/8 at the latest.386
thus the hasty treaty with the Genoese of 12th august was forced upon
toqtamïsh by the urgent need to restore peace on the Western frontier of
the ulus—under unfavourable conditions, once again—for the duration
of his campaign in central asia.
the accommodation that the Genoese reached went rather beyond
what was recorded in writing. In exchange for the guarantees offered in
the new treaty, the Genoese actively supported toqtamïsh’s bold and haz-
ardous campaign: a contingent of caffan mercenaries is recorded in the
khan’s army in late 1388, alongside other auxiliaries.387
examination of the circumstances of the tartar-Genoese treaties of
1380–1387 reveals a common denominator: khan toqtamïsh was always
willing to make far-reaching concessions as and when these were needed
as temporary sacrifices, tactical moves to allow him to pursue other goals
in rebuilding his power. the attempt to restore the balance between 1383
and 1387 did not last beyond the beginning of the clash with timur’s
forces, since this conflict struck the death-blow for the tartars. the war
which toqtamïsh launched in his squabble with timur Lenk for azerbai-
jan lasted intermittently from 1387 to 1396, and destroyed the basis upon
which the Golden horde could be rebuilt.388
During the decade of the 1380s, tartar-Genoese relations were always
rooted in toqtamïsh’s broader policies, and they worsened considerably in
the following period as the Golden horde unravelled. In 1395–1396 timur’s
troops systematically destroyed all the commercial centres of the ulus of
Jochi, and the irreversible decline of the tartar state crushed any desire
that Sarai may have felt to pursue a more coherent Black Sea policy.
this was not, to be sure, the end of tartar history on the Black Sea:
the crimean khanate continued as an autonomous fragment after the dis-
memberment of the Golden horde around 1430, and played an important
role in events in the sea. Yet that is another story.
386 according to a persian source, the campaign began in the Muslim year 789 = 21st
January 1387–10th January 1388 (tiesenhausen, Sbornik, II, p. 153).
387 the persian chronicler Sharaf al-Dīn ‛alī Yezdī notes russians, circassians, Bulgar-
ians, cumans, alans and Bashkirs in toqtamïsh’s army, along with caffans and troops from
tana (ibid., p. 156).
388 Grekov, Yakubovskiy, Orda, pp. 333 ff., offers the most detailed account of the war.