66 chapter three
the unequal division of the spoils of war,26 confessional differences27 and
intrigue.28
the actual confrontation between Berke and hülegü was preceded by
the tensions surrounding the election of a successor to the imperial throne
after the great Khan möngke’s death. this was an unusually heated con-
test, for when the golden horde was pushed out of azerbaijan and arran
this clearly showed that the ulus of Jochi had become marginalised in the
chinggisid world. Berke’s horde lost influence drastically by contrast with
its importance in Batu’s time, due to the redistribution of forces and the
shift in the centres of power within the vast mongol territories. the duum-
virate of Batu and möngke had fixed the cuman ulus as a power in the
chinggisid empire,29 but was replaced by the entirely toluid axis of the
brothers Qubilai and hülegü.
the signs of this dangerous development could already be seen soon
after Batu’s death, and became clearer after möngke’s death four years
later: to block such a tendency, Berke threw all his strength into the
26 al-mufaḍḍal (tisenhausen, Sbornik, i, p. 177) and Jūzjānī (ibid., ii, p. 19) mention the
unjust division of spoils to the detriment of the Jochids as the only cause of the conflict
between Berke and hülegü; the ilkhan had sent only gifts to sarai, rather than the one-fifth
of spoils agreed in advance. Whatever the importance of this factor in the volga khan’s
original decision to go to war, over the following decades it obviously lost its edge. this
however did not make the struggle between the two mongol states any less fierce at the
end than it had been at the start.
27 the original cause for the break with hülegü was not Berke’s conversion to islam,
although muslim sources attempted to argue this after the event. al-‛Umarī for instance
argues that the khan of the golden horde had been against the project of conquering
the muslim east, which cannot be ruled out, but we should bear in mind that his close
relations with co-religionists were not to his brother Batu’s tastes either (cf. above, p. 63
note 9). the syrian source is even less credible when he reports a conversation where
Berke refuses möngke’s order to attack the caliph (tiesenhausen, Sbornik, i, pp. 223–224).
ibn ‛abd al-Ẓāhir, the official who edited the correspondence between Berke and the
mamluk sultan Baybars, also stressed the religious nature of the war (ibid., p. 101). there
is certainly no doubt that once it had started, the war acquired virulently religious dimen-
sions, and that in attacking his cousin hülegü, Berke presented himself as a champion of
jihād, an approach that the cairo powers appreciated and encouraged (Baybars/ibid., p. 96,
al-mufaḍḍal/ibid., p. 178, al-dhahabī/ibid., p. 201). these sources wave away the objection
that the muslim khan allowed Jochid troops in hülegü’s army to storm Baghdad. as it hap-
pens, the conflict continued unabated even after the two ulus involved switched religous
allegiance; in 1302, the shamanist toqta made exactly the same demands of the muslim
ilkhan ghazan as his predecessor Berke had made of hülegü (rashīd al-dīn/spuler, Horde,
pp. 80–81).
28 some sources mention behind-the-scenes manoeuvring by the chinggisids or by
Batu’s widow, who supposedly urged the first ilkhan to aim at the throne of sarai as well;
such plots would not have been the principal cause of the war but rather, as in so many
comparable cases, a secondary manifestation of the deep crisis between the two ulus.
29 cf. pp. 51–52.