the disintegration of the empire 79
the mamluks had subjected cilician armenia when the kingdom surren-
dered to cairo in 1285. this action completely changed the conditions of
trade in the ‘entryway’ to the silk road and caused considerable harm to
the genoese, when we consider that after the venetians and pisans had
expelled them from acre in 1258, ayas remained the only eastern mediter-
ranean port open to them.85
the situation was all the more worrying given that in 1285 the second
prop for genoese power in the levant, constantinople, was seriously
threatened. the venetians had obtained freedom of navigation in the
Black sea by a treaty with the Byzantine emperor andronikos ii.86 this
essentially annulled the privilege of nymphaion whereby michael viii
palaiologos had reserved the right of navigation to his genoese allies
in 1261. Without this legal support, the genoese found that they had to
defend their position in the Black sea against their rivals by main force.87
these convergent factors threatened future genoese participation in
trade along the great routes controlled by the ilkhanate and the golden
horde, and only the scale of these threats can explain why the republic’s
leading merchants took on the enormous risk of heeding arghun’s call
and attacking egypt. they must have been aware that if they could not
utterly cripple the enemy who blocked their way to asia and the indian
ocean, his revenge would be terrible, a catastrophe for the whole of their
levantine trade. if they failed, the embargo on cilician armenia and their
inevitable difficulties in the Black sea would be compounded by a ban on
trading in alexandria and other mamluk ports in egypt and syria, which
could easily have been the coup de grace for the ligurian republic.88
the armenian-mamluk and venetian-Byzantine treaties of 1285 thus
each strengthened the effect of the other, forcing the genoese into a posi-
tion where they saw arghun’s appeal early in 1287 as the salvation they
needed. We may judge the desperate mood in the ligurian city from the
85 cf. Brătianu, Recherches, p. 58, lopez, Genova, pp. 131–135. their possessions on the
coast of syria where they occasionally traded (tyre, gibelet, Beirut) could not compensate
the loss, to which they had not reconciled themselves even three decades later; an unsuc-
cessful attack on acre by five genoese galleys is recorded in 1287 (pistarino, “genova,”
p. 113).
86 published in tafel, thomas, Urkunden, iii, pp. 322–339; cf. laiou, Constantinople,
pp. 65–66, thiriet, Romanie, p. 154.
87 cf. papacostea, “gênes,” pp. 226 ff.
88 on the unique importance of alexandria in the indian spice trade, see sanudo/
Bongars, p. 23; the genoese depended on this trading centre not just for spices, but also to
preserve their lucrative status as commercial and diplomatic go-betweens for the golden
horde and mamluk egypt (cf. ehrenkreutz, “implications,” p. 342, ciocîltan, “genoa,” p. 281
note 7, p. 293 note 53, and chapters 3.3.1, 4.2 below).