The Silk Route
Marco Polo
A member of a Venetian merchant family, Marco Polo (1254-1324) was a good businessman and keen observer. In 1271, when he was only 17, he travelled with his father and uncle (who had already been to China) across Persia and then along the southern branch of the Silk Route, via Khotan.
Finally arriving at what they called ‘Cathay’ (northern China), the Polos journeyed to the court of Kublai Khan at the summer palace of Xanadu – which he described as ‘the greatest palace that ever was’ – at Khanbaliq, the site of present-day Beijing. Marco Polo became a favourite of the khan, and as his emissary, he travelled quite extensively throughout China, as well as to Burma and India. In 1295, he returned to Italy by ship via Sumatra, India, the Strait of Hormuz and Constantinople.
Romantic tale
Three years later, while taking part on the Venetian side in the naval battle of Curzola against the Genoese, Marco was captured and imprisoned. One of his fellow prisoners of war in Genoa was Rustichello of Pisa, a relatively well-known romance writer, who was obviously attracted to the idea of writing a romantic tale of adventure based on Polo's travels. It should always be remembered that the book that resulted from their collaboration was written for entertainment rather than as a historic document.
However, assuming that the story has not been embroidered excessively by Rustichello, Il Milione – ‘The Million’ (from the Polo family’s nickname Emilione), known in English as The Travels of Marco Polo – gives an arresting picture of life along the Silk Route in the time of the khans.
The Travels
This is divided into four books, each of which describes a different part of Marco’s journeys:
- Book 1: the lands of the Middle East and central Asia encountered on the way to China
- Book 2: China and the court of Kublai Khan
- Book 3: some of the coastal regions of the East – Japan, India, South-east Asia – and the east coast of Africa
- Book 4: some of the recent wars among the Mongols and some of the regions of the far north, such as Russia.
Marco described the way of life – and especially the trade and marriage customs – in the cities and small kingdoms through which his party passed. His classification of the different peoples he encountered centred mainly on their religion, and his view of them was coloured by his own Catholicism. He greatly mistrusted the Muslims, but viewed the `idolaters' (Buddhists and Hindus) with more tolerance.
He judged towns and the countryside in terms of productivity. He was quick to identify available sources of food and water along the way, and to size up the products and manufacturing techniques of the places his party passed through. His descriptions of exotic plants and beasts were better than most found in the textbooks of the period. However, he showed little interest in the history of the regions he traversed, and his reports of military campaigns were full of inaccuracies.
Omissions and descriptions
Marco Polo’s account was doubted during his lifetime – even on his death bed, a priest begged him to confess that he had lied. (Marco replied: ‘I have not told half of what I saw!’) While most historians now believe that Marco did indeed reach China, some have proposed that he did not travel that far or extensively and only retold information he got from other sources.
Some of the tales in The Travels no doubt sprang from Rustichello’s romantic instincts, and others, originating from Marco, were at best third-hand reports. Sceptics point out that, among other omissions, his account fails to mention Chinese writing, chopsticks, tea, foot binding and the Great Wall. Also, Chinese records of the time do not mention Marco himself, despite the fact that he claimed to have served as a special emissary for Kublai Khan. This is puzzling, given the careful record-keeping in China at that time.
On the other hand, Marco describes other aspects of Far Eastern life in much detail: paper money, the 1,115-mile Grand Canal linking Beijing and Hangzhou (the north part of which was built during his stay in China), the structure of a Mongol army, tigers, the imperial postal system. And his reference to Japan – by its Chinese name Zipang or Cipangu – is usually considered the first mention of Japan in Western literature.
