Jani Beg's reign over the Golden Horde coincided with the catastrophic arrival of the Black Death in the western steppe territories during the late 1340s, a plague his armies are thought to have inadvertently spread to Europe through the siege of Caffa in 1346. By 1353 his administration was still actively minting at Khwarizm — the ancient Oxus delta city that functioned as the Horde's most important Central Asian commercial hub — suggesting the eastern trade networks remained operational despite the demographic collapse further west.
Jani Beg's reign over the Golden Horde coincided with the catastrophic arrival of the Black Death in the western steppe territories during the late 1340s, a plague his armies are thought to have inadvertently spread to Europe through the siege of Caffa in 1346. By 1353 his administration was still actively minting at Khwarizm — the ancient Oxus delta city that functioned as the Horde's most important Central Asian commercial hub — suggesting the eastern trade networks remained operational despite the demographic collapse further west.