chapter four

THE AND THE BLACK SEA

There is very little to choose between the two Mongol states, that of the Cuman steppe and that of Persia, from the perspective of their contribu- tion to Black Sea geo-politics and integration into the great Eurasian trade routes: each contributed in its own particular way to the process, and nei- ther was less significant in its contribution.1 Nevertheless, the Golden Horde is categorically different from the in the immediacy of its Black Sea initiatives. While the Mon- gol lords of Persia only rarely intervened in the region,2 their opposite numbers in , whose lands bordered the Black Sea, showed that they had a consistent and coherent policy approach and well-define goals and methods. In this latter case, it is perfectly appropriate to say that they had a Black Sea policy as such. In pursuing this policy, the khans of the Golden Horde had two fixed goals: cooperation with the Italian thalassocracies, and the freedom of the Straits.

4.1 The Origin of the Golden Horde’s Black Sea Policy

Before achieving its mature form, the Jochid approach to Black Sea ques- tions developed and went through several stages. These are hard to under- stand without reference to previous circumstances, specifically the Cuman approach to this sea and to its maritime commerce.

4.1.1 The Cumans and the Black Sea Trade In this as in so many other regards, the Cumans were the fore-runners for their Chinggisid conquerors and successors, participating in and benefit- ting from Black Sea commerce.

1 See chapters 3.3 and 3.4. 2 Only two Ilkhanid political initiatives can be considered as genuinely Black Sea- oriented: the first is Hülegü’s insistence that the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII cut off communications through the Bosphorus between the Jochids and the Mamluks, in 1263/4 (see below, p. 243), and the second is ’s arming of a Genoese galley, at his own cost, to hunt pirates in the Black Sea in 1290 (see above, p. 158 note 65). 142 chapter four

The Arab chronicler Ibn al-Athīr notes the earliest significant sequence of events, set in motion when the Mongol generals and Sübödei led their expedition through Transoxiana in 1219 and onward into Persia by 1223. Their long campaign took them through the Caucasian lands and the Cuman steppe, into Volga Bulgaria,3 and the incursions had an effect on trade: “Arriving at Sugdāq [= Soldaia], the took it, while the inhabitants scattered to different destinations: some of them fled with their families and possessions into the mountains, others crossed the seas and arrived in the Land of Rūm [= Asia Minor], which is held by Muslims from the nation of Kilij Arslan.”4 Soldaia was the most important centre of the region to the North of the Black Sea, and its destruction was a grave blow for all trade in the Black Sea basin. The situation again became critical after the extended wars of 1223, when the Mongols shattered the army of the Russian knyazï at Kalka, having previously defeated the Alans and the Cumans. Only the Bulgars held out in their fortified capital on the Volga.5 There was thus a state of war in the Crimea and the Cuman steppe, and total insecurity, so that from 1223 onwards merchants could not pur- sue their trade: this led to a crisis on Near Eastern markets which found themselves starved of goods from the and forest. Again, Ibn al-Athīr takes up the story: “Ties with the Cuman steppe were broken with the arrival of the Mongols, and no wares were received, no furs of black fox or of squirrel or beaver, nor any of the other things which are brought from that country; then once they [= the Mongols] returned to their own country, the road was opened again and the goods began to a rrive once more, as they had before.”6 Although the Arab chronicler’s account has to do with matters of the day, it also gives indirect testimony, by his use of contrast, to the ‘nor- mal’ state of affairs in the longer term, the constant and well-established exchange of goods between the steppe to the North of the Black Sea and the Fertile Crescent: a few months of turmoil in the sea’s vast hinter- lands was enough for the distant markets of the Muslim East to feel the

3 See above p. 29. 4 Tiesenhausen, Sbornik, I. p. 26; the events are also recorded by Rashīd al-Dīn/Arends, I/2, p. 229, and in the synaxarion of Soldaia, which gives a date of 27th January 1223 (Nys- tazopoulos, Sougdaia, p. 118); cf. Spuler, Horde, p. 12, Grekov, Yakubovskiy, Orda, p. 50. 5 Cf. Spuler, Horde, pp. 12–13, Grekov, Yakubovskiy, Orda, pp. 50 ff. 6 Tiesenhausen, Sbornik, I. p. 28; cf. Grekov, Yakubovskiy, Orda, pp. 51–52.