The siege of Caffa was a 14th-century military encounter when Jani Beg of the Golden Horde besieged the city of Caffa, (today Feodosia) between two periods in the 1340s. The city of Caffa, a Genoese colony, was a vital trading hub located in Crimea.

It is believed that the devastating pandemic of the Black Death entered Europe for the first time via Kaffa in 1347. After a protracted siege during which the Mongol army under Janibeg was reportedly withering from the disease, they catapulted the infected corpses over the city walls, infecting the inhabitants, in one of the first cases of ...

Jul 28, 2018 · Caffa (present-day Feodosiya) was a city set in Crimea, on the northern coast of the Black Sea. After the capture of Crimea in the 1230s, the city of Caffa came under the dominance of the Mongols.

Jul 16, 2010 · This narrative contains some startling assertions: that the Mongol army hurled plague-infected cadavers into the besieged Crimean city of Caffa, thereby transmitting the disease to the inhabitants; and that fleeing survivors of the siege spread plague from Caffa to the Mediterranean Basin.

Research objective: to investigate historical reality behind the supposed Tatar bombardment of Caffa by the plague-infected cadavers of their comrades-in-arms, and to clarify the chronology of this and other Golden Horde’s sieges of Caffa during Janibeg’s reign (1342–1357), as well as of the Black Death’s spread from the Jochid realm to ...

Dec 29, 2023 · Despite their diligent preparations, however, the Genoese were caught off guard when the Mongol forces launched a surprise attack on Caffa in late 1343. The initial assaults involved fierce skirmishes and attempts to breach the city's defenses.

Caffa (today: Feodosia) was a major Genoese Black Sea trading post on the Crimean Peninsula. In 1266 the Italian city state had acquired the lands from Möngke Temür, khan of the Golden Horde.

The siege of Caffa lasted until February 1344, when it was lifted after an Italian relief force killed 15,000 Mongol troops and destroyed their siege machines. Jani Beg renewed the siege in 1345, and cut off any supplies to the city, leading to miserable conditions within Caffa.

Aug 10, 2023 · Known as the Black Death, the bubonic plague crippled Europe when it arrived in 1347, killing perhaps 50 million people. If de Mussi’s tale were true, the Mongol siege had been a devastating biological attack.

Jun 28, 2012 · The first stage of the Black Death among Europeans was said to begin with the whoosh of a Mongol trebuchet. Gabriele De' Mussi, a lawyer from near Genoa writing in about 1348, is believed to have recorded the account of the earliest use of plague as weapon of war at Caffa in 1346. "The dying…