The Polo Brothers
The marooned Polo brothers were abruptly rescued in Bukhara by the arrival
of a VIP emissary from Hulagu Khan in the West.
The Mongol ambassador persuaded the brothers that Great Khan would be delighted
to meet them for he had never seen any Latin and very much wanted to
meet one. So they journeyed eastward.
They left Bukhara, Samarkand, Kashgar, then came the murderous obstacle of
the Gobi desert. Through the northern route they reached Turfan and Hami,
then headed south-east to Dunhuang.
Along the Hexi Corridor, they finally reached the new capital of the Great Khan,
Bejing in 1266.
The Great Khan, Mangu's brother, Kublai, was indeed hospitable. He had
set up his court at Beijing, which was not a Mongol encampment but an
impressive city built by Kublai as his new capital after the Mongols took
over China in 1264 and established Yuan dynasty (1264-1368). Kublai asked them all
about their part of the world, the Pope and the Roman church. Niccolo and Matteo,
who spoke Turkic dialects perfectly, answered truthfully and clearly. The Polo brothers
were well received in the Great Khan's capital.
To make sure the brothers would be given every assistance on their travels, Kublai
Khan presented them with a golden tablet (or paiza in Chinese, gerege in Mongolian)
a foot long and three inches wide and inscribed
with the words (Left Fig.): "By the strength of the eternal Heaven, holy be the Khan's name. Let
him that pays him not reverence be killed." The golden tablet was the special
VIP passport, authorizing the travelers to receive throughout the Great Khan's
dominions such horses, lodging, food and guides as they required. It took the
Polos three full years to return home, in April 1269.
Although the Polo brothers blazed a trail of their own on their first journey
to the East, they were not the first Europeans to visit the Mongols
on their home ground. Before them Giovanni di Piano Carpini in 1245 and
Guillaume de Rubrouck in 1253 had made the dangerously journey to Karakorum
and returned safely; however the Polos traveled farther than Carpini and Rubrouck and
reached China.
Marco Polo's Birth and Growing Up
Marco Polo was only 6 years old when his father and uncle set out eastward on their
first trip to Cathay (China).
He was by then 15 years old when his father and his uncle returned to Venice and his
mother had already passed away. He remained in Venice with his father and uncle for two more
years and then three of them embarked the most couragous journey to Cathay the second time.
The Long and Difficult Journey to Cathay
Avoiding to travel the same route the Polos did 10 years ago, they made a wide
swing to the north, first arriving to the southern Caucasus and the kingdom of
Georgia. Then they journeyed along the regions parallel to the western shores of the Caspian Sea, reaching
Tabriz and made their way south to Hormuz on the Persian Gulf. They intended to
take sea route to the Chinese port. From Hormuz, however, finding the ships
"wretched affairs....only stitched together with twine made from the husk of
the Indian nut", they decided to go overland to Cathay and continued eastwards.
From Homurz to Kerman, passing Herat, Balkh, they arrived Badakhshan, where
Marco Polo convalesced from an illness and stayed there for a year. On the move
again, they found themselves on "the highest place in the world, the Pamirs", with its
name appeared in the history for the first time.
When the Polos arrived the Taklamakan desert (or Taim Basin), this time they skirted
around the desert on the southern
route, passing through Yarkand, Khotan, Cherchen, and Lop-Nor. Marco's keen
eye picked out the most notable peculiarities of each. At Yarkand, he
described that the locals were extremely prone to goiter, which Marco
blamed on the local drinking water. In the rivers of Pem province were found
"stones called jasper and chalcedony in plenty" - a reference to jade. At Pem,
"when a woman's husband leaves her to go on a journey of more than 20 days,
as soon as he has left, she takes another husband, and this she is fully
entitled to do by local usage. And the men, wherever they go, take wives in the
same way." Cherchen was also a noted jade source.
It is the Gobi desert (Right Fig.)where Marco Polo left us the feeling of awe for the vastness
The fact that Marco was not a historian did not stop him offering a long history about
the Mongols. He provided a detailed account of the rise of Mongol and Great Khan's life
and empire. He described the ceremonial of a
Great Khan's funeral - anyone unfortunate enough to encounter the funeral cortege
was put to death to serve their lord in the next world, Mangu Khan's corpse scoring
over twenty thousand victims. He told of life on the steppes, of the felt-covered yurt drawn by
oxen and camels, and of the household customs. What impressed Marco most was the way in which the
women got on with the lion's share of the work:"the men do not bother themselves
about anything but hunting and warfare and falconry." In term of marriage, Marco
described that the Mongols practiced polygamy. A Mongol man could take as many
wives as he liked. On the death of the head of the house the eldest
son married his father's wives, but not his own mother. A man could also take on
his brother's wives if they were widowed. Marco rounded off his account of Mongol's
home life by mentioning that alcoholic standby which had impressed Rubrouck before
him:"They drink mare's milk subjected to a process that makes it like white
wine and very good to drink. It is called koumiss"
Marco's account of the Mongol's life is particularly interesting when compared to the tale of
many wonders of Chinese civilization which he was soon to see for himself. Kublai Khan,
though ruling with all the spender of an Emperor of China, never forgot where he had come
from: it is said that he had had seeds of steppe grass sown in the courtyard of the
Imperial Palace so that he could always be reminded of his Mongol homeland. During
his long stay in Cathay and Marco had many conversations with Kublai, Marco must have come
to appreciate the Great Khan's awareness of his Mongol origins, and the detail in
which the Mongols are described in his book suggests that he was moved to make a close
study of their ways.
Finally the long journey was nearly over and the Great Khan had been told of their
approach. He sent out a royal escort to bring the travellers to his presense. In May 1275 the
Polos arrived to the original capital of Kublai Khan at Shang-tu (then the summer residence),
subsequently his winter palace at his capital, Cambaluc (Beijing).
Years Serviced in Khan's Court
However there were some phenomena which were totally new to him. The first
we have already met, asbestos, but the other three beggared his imagination, and
they were paper currency, coal and the imperial post.
The idea of paper substituting gold and silver was a total surprise even to the
merchantile Polos. Marco attributed the success of paper money to Kublai stature as
a ruler. "With these pieces of paper they can buy anything and pay for anything.
And I can tell you that the papers that reckon as ten bezants do not weight one."
Marco's expressions of wonder at "stones that burn like logs" show us how ignorant
even a man of a leading Mediterranean seapower could be in the 13th century. Coal
was by no means unknown in Europe but was new to Marco: "
Marco was equally impressed with the efficient communication system in the Mongol world.
There were three main grades of dispatch, which may be rendered in modern terms
as 'second class', 'first class', and 'On His Imperial Majesty's Service: Top
Priority'. 'Second class' messages were carried by foot-runners, who had relay-stations
three miles apart. Each messenger wore a special belt hung with small bells to announce
his approach and ensure that his relief was out on the road and ready for a smooth takeover.
This system enabled a message to cover the distance of a normal ten-day journey in
24 hours. At each three miles station a log was kept on the flow of messages and
all the routes were patrolled by inspectors. 'First class' business was conveyed
on horseback, with relay-stages of 25 miles. But the really important business
of Kublai empire was carried by non-stop dispatch-riders carrying the special
tablet with the sign of the gerfalcon. At the approach to each post-house the
messenger would sound his horn; the ostlers would bring out a ready-saddled fresh
horse, the messenger would transfer to it and gallop straight off. Marco affirmed
that those courier horsemen could travel 250 or 300 miles in a day.
Marco Polo traveled in great deal in China. He was amazed with China's enormous
power, great wealth, and complex social structure.
China under the Yuan (The Mongol Empire) dynasty was a huge empire whose internal economy
dwarfed that of Europe. He reported that Iron manufacture was around 125,000 tons a year (a level not
reached in Europe before the 18th century) and salt production was on a prodigious scale:
30,000 tons a year in one province alone. A canal-based transportation system linked China's
huge cities and markets in a vast internal communication network in which paper money
and credit facilities were highly developed. The citizens could purchase paperback books
with paper money, eat rice from fine porcelain bowls and wear silk garments, lived in
prosperous city that no European town could match.
Kublai Khan appointed Marco Polo as an official of the Privy Council in 1277 and
for 3 years he was a tax inspector in Yanzhou, a city on the Grand Canal, northeast
of Nanking. He also visited Karakorum and part of Siberia. Meanwhile his father and
uncle took part in the assault on the town of Siang Yang Fou, for which they designed
and constructed siege engines. He frequently visited Hangzhou,
another city very near Yangzhou. At one time Hangzhou was the capital of
the Song dynasty and had a beautiful lakes and many canals, like Marco's
hometown, Venice. Marco fell in love with it.
Coming Home
Marco did not provide full account of his long journey home. The sea journey took
2 years during which 600 passengers and crewed died. Marco did not give much clue
as to what went wrong on the trip, but there are some theories. Some think they may
have died from scurvy, cholera or by drowning; others suggest the losses were caused
by the hostile natives and pirate attacks. This dreadful sea voyage passed
through the South China Sea to Sumatra and the Indian Ocean, and finally docked at
Hormuz. There they learned that Arghun had died two years previously so the princess
married to his son, prince Ghazan, instead. In Persia they also learned of the death of Kublai Khan.
However his protection outlived him, for it was only by showing his golden tablet
of authority that they were able to travel safely through the bandit-ridden interior.
Marco admitted that the passports of golden tablets were powerful:
"Throughout his dominions the Polos
were supplied with horses and provisions and everything needful......I assure you for a fact
that on many occasions they were given two hundred horsemen, sometimes more and sometimes
less, according to the number needed to escort them and ensure their safe passage from one
district to another."
From Trebizond on the Black Sea coast they went by sea, by way of Constantinople, to
Venice, arriving home in the winter of 1295.
The Book, Life in Venice and Controversies
In the summer of 1299 a peace was concluded between Venice and Genoa, and after a year
of captivity, Marco Polo was released from the prison and returned to Venice. He was married
to Donata Badoer and had three daughters. He remained in Venice until his death in 1324, aged 70.
At his deathbed, he left the famous epitaph for the world: "I have only told the half of what I saw!"
On Marco's will, he left his wife and three daughters substantial amount
of money, though not an enormous fortune as Marco boasted. He also mentioned his servant,
Peter, who came from the Mongols, was to set free. We also learned that 30 years
after his return home, Marco still owned a quantity of cloths, valuable pieces, coverings,
brocades of silk and gold, exactly like those mentioned several times in his book, together
with other precious objects. Among them there was "golden tablet of command" that had
been given him by the Great Khan on his departure from the Mongol capital.
Many people took his accounts with a grain of salt and some skeptics question the authenticity
of his account. Many of his stories have been considered as fairytales: the strange oil
in Baku and the monstrous birds which dropped elephants from a height and devoured their
broken carcasses. His Travels made no mention about the Great Wall. While traveled
extensively in China, Marco Polo never learned the Chinese language nor mentioned
a number of articles which are part of everyday life, such as women's foot-binding,
calligraphy, or tea. In additional, Marco Polo's name was never occurred in the Annals of the
Empire (Yuan Shih), which recorded the names of foreign visitors far less important
and illustrious than the three Venetians. So did Marco Polo ever go to China?
Contribution
We see that Marco Polo was in every way a man of his time. He was quite capable of
comprehending cultures completely alien in spirit to his own. Traversing thousands of miles,
on horseback mostly, through uncharted deserts, over steep mountain passes, exposed to
extreme weathers, to wild animals and very uncivilized tribesmen,
Marco's book has become the most influential travelogue on the Silk Road ever written
in a European language, and it paved the way for t he arrivals of
thousands of Westerners in the centuries to come.
Today there are a school of experts conducting research and authentication of Marco Polo and
his Travels. Much of what he wrote, which regarded with suspicion
at medieval time was, confirmed by travelers of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Marco Polo is receiving deeper respect than before because these marvelous characters
and countries he described did actually exist. What's more interesting is that his book
becomes great value to Chinese historians, as it helps them understand better
some of the most important events of the 13th century, such as the siege of Hsiangyang,
the massacre of Ch'angchou, and the attempted conquests of Japan. The extant Chinese
sources on these events are not as comprehensive as Marco's book.
Although Marco Polo received little recognition from the geographers of his time, some
of the information in his book was incorporated in some important maps of the later
Middle Ages, such as the Catalan World Map of 1375, and in the next century it was
read with great interest by Henry the Navigator and by Columbus. His system of measuring distances by days'
journey has turned out for later generations of explorers to be remarkably accurate.
According to Henry Yule,
the great geographer: "He was the first traveler to trace a route across the whole
longitude of Asia, naming and describing kingdom after kingdom.....". Today topographers
have called his work the precursor of scientific geography.
However Marco Polo's best achievement is best said with his own words in his own book:
In 1260 two Venetian merchants arrived at Sudak, the Crimean port. The brothers
Maffeo and Niccilo Polo went on to Surai, on the Volga river, where they traded
for a year. Shortly after a civil war broke out between Barka and his cousin Hulagu, which
made it impossible for the Polos to return with the same route as they came. They
therefore decide to make a wide detour to the east to avoid the war and found
themselves stranded for 3 years at Bukhara.
One year later, the Great Khan
sent them on their way with a letter in Turki addressed to Pope Clement IV asking
the Pope to send him 100 learned men to teach his people about
Christianity and Western science. He also asked Pope to procure oil from the lamp at the Holy
Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
According to one authority, the Polo family were great nobles originating on the
coast of Dalmatia. Niccolo and Maffeo had established a trading outpost on the
island of Curzola, off the coast of Dalmatia; it is not certain whether
Marco Polo was born there or in Venice in 1254. The place Marco Polo grew up,
Venice, was the center for commerce in the Mediterranean. Marco had the usual
education of a young gentleman of his time. He had learned much of the classical
authors, understood the texts of the Bible, and knew the basic theology of the Latin
Church. He had a sound knowledge of commercial French as well as Italian. From his
later history we can be sure of his interest in natural resources, in the ways of
people, as well as strange and interesting plants and animals.
At the end of year 1271, receiving letters and valuable gifts for the Great Khan from the new Pope Tedaldo (Gregory x),
the Polos once more set out from Venice on their journey to the east.
They took with them 17-year-old Marco Polo and two friars. The two
friars hastily turned back after reaching a war zone, but the Polos
carried on. They passed through Armenia, Persia, and Afghanistan, over the
Pamirs, and all along the Silk Road to China.
of desert and its effects on those hardy enough to penetrate it:
"This desert is reported to be so long that it would take a year to go from
end to end; and at the narrowest point it
takes a month to cross it. It consists entirely of mountains and sands and valleys.
There is nothing at all to eat." Despite the dangers encountered during the Gobi
crossing, Marco's account suggests that the route was safe and well established
during Mongol's reign. After they left Gobi, the first major city they passed was
Suchow (Dunhuang), in Tangut province, where Marco stayed for a year. Marco also noted
the center of the asbestos industry in Uighuristan, with its capital Karakhoja; he
added that the way to clean asbestos cloth was to throw it into a fire, and that
a specimen was brought back from Cathay by the Polos and presented to the Pope.
By then it had been 3 and half years since they left Venice and they had traveled total of 5600 miles on the journey.
Marco recalled it in detail on the greatest moment when he first met the Great Khan (Left Fig.):
Marco, a gifted linguist and master of four languages, became a favorite with the khan and was appointed to high
posts in his administration. He served at the Khan's court and was sent on a number of
special missions in China, Burma and India.
Many places which Marco saw were not seen again by Europeans until last century.
Marco went on great length to describe Kublia's capital, ceremonies, hunting
and public assistance, and they were all to be found on a much smaller scale
in Europe. Marco Polo fell in love with the capital, which later became part of
Beijing, then called Cambaluc or Khanbalig, meant 'city of the Khan.' This new city,
built because astrologers predicted rebellion in the old one, was described as the most
magnificent city in the world. He marveled the summer palace in particular. He described
"the greatest palace that ever was". The walls were covered with gold and silver and
the Hall was so large that it could easily dine 6,000 people. The palace was made of
cane supported by 200 silk cords, which could be taken to pieces and transported easily
when the Emperor moved. There too, the Khan kept a stud of 10,000 speckless white horses,
whose milk was reserved for his family and for a tribe which had won a victory for
Genghis Khan." fine marble Palace, the rooms of which are all gilt and painted with figures of
men and beasts....all executed with such exquisite art that you regard them with
delight and astonishment." This description later inspired the English poet
Coleridge to write his famous poem about Kublai Khan's
"stately pleasure-dome" in Xanadu (or Shang-du).
The Polos stayed in Khan's court for 17 years, acquiring great wealth in jewels and
gold. They were anxious to be on the move since they feared that if Kublai - now in his
late seventies - were to die, they might not be able to get their considerable fortune out
of the country. The Kublai Khan reluctantly agreed to let them return after they escorted a
Mongol princess Kokachin to marry to a Persian prince, Arghun.
Three years after Marco returned to Venice, he commanded a galley in a war against the rival
city of Genoa. He was captured during the flighting and spent a year in a Genoese prison -
where one of his fellow-prisoners was a writer of romances named Rustichello of Pisa. It
was only when prompted by Rustichello that Marco Polo dictated the story of his travels,
known in his time as The Description of the World or The Travels of Marco Polo.
His account of the wealth of
Cathay (China), the might of the Mongol empire, and the exotic customs of India and Africa
made his book the bestseller soon after. The book became one of the most popular books
in medieval Europe and the impact of his book on the contemporary Europe was
tremendous. It was known as Il Milione, The Million Lies and Marco earned
the nickname of Marco Milione because few believed that his stories were true and
most Europeans dismissed the book as mere fable.
Fiction or not, his Travels has captured readers through the centuries.
Manuscript editions
of his work ran into the hundreds within a century after his death. The book was recognized as the
most important account of the world outside Europe that was available at the time.
Today there are more than 80 manuscript copies in
various versions and several languages around the world. 