Featured Articles Archive

A Note from History
The Siege of Caffa

The siege of the Crimean city of Caffa in 1346 CE by invading Mongol hordes is often cited as the most important and recognizable among the firstrecorded incidents of biological warfare—and the primary cause of the spread of the plague to Europe.

The city of Caffa (now Feodosija, Ukraine), established in 1266 CE by agreement with the Mongols on the Black Sea, was an important trading hub between Genoa and the Far East. In 1289 CE the city fell under the suzerainty of the Khan of the Golden Horde. The relationship between the Genoese and the Khan, however, was an uneasy one. Caffa was first besieged in 1308 CE, after the reported displeasure of Khan Toqtai over Genoese trading in Turkic slaves. The sale of the slaves to the Marmelake Sultanate in Egypt reportedly raised his ire by depriving him of some of his best soldiers. The Genoese set fire to Caffa and fled. After Toqtai’s death, Khan Uzbeg allowed the Genoese to rebuild their trading colony in 1312 CE.

In 1343 CE, after a brawl between the Italians and Muslims in Italian enclave of Tana enflamed the ire of Khan Janibeg, the Italians fled Tana to Caffa, bringing the Khan army to the gates of Caffa behind them. In February 1344 CE, the Italians managed to break the siege after killing 15,000 Tartars and destroying their siege machines. Janibeg renewed the siege the next year, but the residents of Caffa were able to maintain their hold because of their sea access to supplies and foodstuffs.

In 1346 CE, the Khan army besieging Caffa suffered a natural outbreak of plague. The Tartars catapulted the plague-infected corpses of their dead comrades over the city walls. The Tartars’ tactic finally broke the three-year stalemate; Genoans were effectively crippled by the plague and fled Caffa by sea.

The most contemporaneous account of the siege was written by Gabriele de’ Mussi, a notary of the town of Piacenza, north of Genoa. There is some debate as to whether de’ Mussi witnessed the events at Caffa first hand, or merely recorded them as part of a historical account.Written in 1348 CE or early 1349 CE, the account describes the “mysterious illness� that struck the Tartar army besieging Caffa. de’ Mussi recounts how the Tartars, desperate from the devastation of the disease on their army, thought to kill the inhabitants of Caffa with the stench of their diseased dead.According to the de’ Mussi account, the people of Caffa had no hope once the air and water had been contaminated and only one in a thousand was able to flee the city. Those that did flee the city brought the plague with them as they fled.

de’ Mussi’s account suggests that not only did the Tartars deliberately hurl their diseased dead into the city walls of Caffa with the intent to kill their enemies, but those escaping Caffa brought the disease into the ports of Europe. The disease could have been brought with in the walls of Caffa either through flea infested rodents from the Tartar camps or through the transmission of the disease from direct contact with the Tartar dead. The former, according to scholar Mark Wheelis, is less likely due to the required distance needed between the Tartar encampment and the city walls to keep the encampment safe from arrows and artillery.

Most scholars believe that the Genoans brought the plague with them to Naples, which then spread throughout Europe. Others haverecently suggested that while the use of plague corpses against Caffa was a true incident of biological warfare, however, that the siege had no significant impact on the spread of the Black Death through Europe. As Wheelis suggests, Caffa was certainly not the only Tartar port that could have transmitted plague into European ports. Wheelis further argues that the rate and pattern of plague transmission suggests that the plague was spread over more than a year into different European ports.

Though Caffa may not have been the source of the spread of the Black Death into Europe, the use of infected cadavers against the besieged inhabitants remains one of the most important instances of the intentional use of disease in warfare.