Jani Beg

…death of Öz Beg’s son Jani Beg in 1357, however, the empire began to reveal serious internal strains. The tribes of the west paid little heed to the khans who appeared in dizzying succession in Sarai; the northern Russian princes fell to quarreling and to maneuvering for their own advantage…

…army of the Kipchak khan Janibeg while he was besieging the Genoese trading port of Kaffa (now Feodosiya) in Crimea (1347). With his forces disintegrating, Janibeg used trebuchets to catapult plague-infested corpses into the town in an effort to infect his enemies. From Kaffa, Genoese ships carried the epidemic westward…