268 chapter four
the Seljuk turks who had been settled here in the previous century:508 to
escape the attentions of the ‘beys’ unleashed upon them by the Bulgarians,
some emigrated back to their anatolian homeland in 1304, while those
who remained abandoned their Muslim faith and became christianised.509
the conversion of Seljuk Muslims into christian Gagauz510 was an unspar-
ing and wholesale process, for which the tsar had the advantage of an
unusually favourable religious-political context thanks to his patron at
Sarai, toqta, being a shamanist,511 one of the very few to stray from the
long line of Muslim rulers of the Golden horde.512 as such, toqta could
only approve of the Bulgarian leadership’s fanatically orthodox policy,513
since it strengthened Golden horde hegemonic interests in the region. If a
Muslim khan—by definition, the defender of the faithful—had occupied
the throne at Sarai, no such persecution of Islam by an unbeliever could
ever have taken place.
although the expulsion of the Seljuks had striking religious conse-
quences, the principle motivation was of another kind. Just like the alans,
whose lands between the carpathians and the Dniester had been a focus
508 cf. Decei, “problema,” passim.
509 the passage from the chronicle of Yazïjïoghlu ‛alī reads, in the version of Decei,
“problema,” p. 174): “an account of the current situation of Byzantine lands after
the death of Sultan ebu Seyyid Ghazan Khan: at this time Muslim nomads from the
province of Dobruja in rumelia crossed by ship to the lands of Karasi with Khalīl eje,
because there was an interregnum in anatolia and the news had spread; and the ulgar
beys [= Bulgarians] of rumelia revolted, rising against the fasilevs [= basileus, Byzantine
emperor], taking the greater part of rumelia. for this reason, in order to be free of them,
they moved and went to anatolia. those who remained in rumelia after the death of Saru
Saltuq became apostates;” according to the same ottoman chronicler, Saru Saltuq Dede
died shortly after the Ilkhan Ghazan, who died on 17th May 1304 (ibid., p. 188).
510 the ethnonym is derived from the name of the Seljuk sultan ‛Izz al-Dīn Kaykāwuz,
who in 1261 fled with his adherents first to Byzantium and then to the Golden horde (cf.
Decei, “problema,” pp. 188–192, for the long list of scholars who support this etymology).
they were probably settled as colonists from the cuman steppe to Dobruja in 1280 (ibid.,
p. 188).
511 Documented as such by al-Birzalī/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, I, p. 173, and al-asadī,
ibid., p. 443.
512 Spuler, Horde, pp. 216 ff.
513 toqta was not a christian, as Golubovich, Biblioteca, III, pp. 170–171, and Soranzo,
Papato, p. 546, claimed, but he encouraged hopes that he might become a protector of the
christians after his victory over the Muslim Noghai: Anno Domini MCCCI. Unus dominus
Tartarorum invasit alium, videlicet imperator, que dicebatur Theka [= toqta], vir bonus, qui
multum favorabilis erat Christianis, imperatorem Nocha [= Noghai], qui pessimus nigroman-
ticus et persecutor omnis boni, et destruxit eum in toto et factus est dominus in toto aquilone,
Asia et parte Orientis (Lucca/Schmeidler, p. 237). Indeed the orthodox in Bulgaria were
favoured, just as in the russian knyazates, where in 1308 the khan renewed the yarlïk of
protection as a gift to the Metropolitan peter of Moscow (Spuler, Horde, p. 228).