Jani Beg

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Metropolitan Alexis healing Jani Beg's wife from blindness.

Jani Beg (? — 1357) was a khan of the Golden Horde from 1342-1357, succeeding his father Uzbeg Khan.

After putting two of his brothers to death, Jani Beg began his reign. He is known to have actively interfered in the affairs of Russian principalities and Lithuania. The Grand Princes of Moscow, Simeon Gordiy, and Ivan II, were under constant political and military pressure from Jani Beg. In order to strengthen his power in the Horde, Jani Beg forced Islam upon his subjects.

Jani Beg commanded a massive Crimean Tatar force that attacked the Crimean port city of Kaffa in 1343. The siege was uplifted by an Italian relief force in February, 1344, resulting in 15,000 Mongol deaths and the survivors fleeing east. He returned in 1345 and besieged Kaffa a second time. The next year, however, the Mongols became infected with the Black Plague and gave up the siege. Before they left, though, the dead or dying bodies of the infected were loaded onto catapults and launched over Kaffa's walls to infect those inside. This incident was among the earliest known examples of biological warfare and is credited as being the source of the spread of the Black Death into Europe, devastating the continent over a three-year period and resulting in a maximum of 40 million deaths.

In 1356, Jani Beg conducted a military campaign in Azerbaijan and conquered Tabriz, installing his own governor there. Soon after this, there was an uprising in Tabriz. As a result, the power was transferred to the Jelairid dynasty, an offshoot of the Genghis dynasty, which had been hostile towards Jani Beg.

During Jani Beg's reign, the Golden Horde started showing signs of feudal division. Jani Beg's assassination in 1357 opened a quarter-century of political turmoil in the Golden Horde. Twenty-five khans succeeded each other between 1357 and 1378.