TATAR RAIDS, 1320–1321

As we saw in Chapter 5, the fall of Nogay and his son Čeke in 1300–1 did not mean the end of Tatar rule in Dobrudja and Bessarabia. Tatar power simply shifted from Nogay (a local chief) to Toqta (the khan in the centre). Yet this shift from local to central power was enough to loosen the dependence on the Tatars of the Balkanic territories south of the Danube. Tatar power did not disappear from the region; it was just that the burdens of that power were lifted. Bulgaria, Serbia and Byzantium did not have to face an imminent and head-on collision with the Tatars of the Golden Horde. Rather, during Teodor Svetoslav's reign (1300–22), the Bulgarian–Tatar relationship was well balanced. The Bulgars recognised the Tatar suzerainty and paid tribute to the Tatars, and in return, the towns of the Danube and Dniestr deltas and possibly Bessarabia were under their actual control. Bulgar dependence on the Tatars must have been much less than during Nogay's time, prior to 1300.

After the withdrawal of the Catalans from Macedonia in 1311, Andronikos II maintained friendly relations with the Serbian and Bulgarian rulers, both of whom were related to him by marital connections. His daughter Simonis was married to the Serbian Milutin, and his granddaughter Theodora to the Bulgarian Teodor Svetoslav. Thus, in the first twenty years of the fourteenth century, relative peace prevailed in Byzantine–Bulgarian–Serbian relations.