At the age of 44, and as a POW, Marco Polo dictated his prison memoir which became a medieval best seller, though it did take a century to become one.
As an inmate, he met his co-author Rustichello da Pisa, also known as Rusticiano, an Italian romance writer – which is part of the problem.
Few texts have provoked more controversy than The Travels of Marco Polo. The authorship is not clear — is it Polo or Rusticello?
Sometimes the text is in the first-person voice, sometimes in the third-person.
How much of the text is based on Polo’s firsthand experience and how much did the author(s) insert secondhand accounts by others?
Certainly it’s a mix.
What was reported seemed so bizarre to stay-at-home Europeans that the readers often assumed that everything was made up.
Many believed Marco Polo’s book about his travels was fiction and called it ‘Il Milione’ (The Million Lies.)
“About 50 years after Polo’s death, his work began to be utilized in the making of maps,” said Abernethy. “Cartographers employed the descriptions of his travel routes and the names and terms he used to designate locations in the drawing of their maps.”
It was a sort of regional geography of Asia for centuries, serving as inspiration for Christopher Columbus—who took an annotated copy along on his first voyage in 1492.
He also influenced European cartography, leading to the introduction of the Fra Mauro map.
Even today, it is considered one of the great works of travel literature.
As Polo neared death in 1324, he was even asked to recant what he had written and simply said that he had not even told half of what he had witnessed.
Yet historians have largely confirmed the facts in Polo’s account of the height of the Mongol dynasty.
Marco Polo’s first known ancestor was a great uncle, Marco Polo (the older) from Venice, who barrowed some money and commanded a ship in 1198 to Costantinople.
Andrea, Marco’s grandfather, lived in Venice in “contrada San Felice”, he had three sons: Marco “the older”, Matteo (Maffeo) and Niccolò (Marco’s father).
Marco’s father, Niccolo, and his uncle, Maffeo , were born and bred to be explorers, they left Venice for Constantinople in the Byzantine Empire in the 1250s, hoping to easily obtain money from the Latin occupation of the city.
They traded with the Near East, becoming wealthy and achieving great prestige while also establishing a trading post in the city of Constantinople.
They lived in the Venetian quarter of Constantinople, where they enjoyed diplomatic immunity, political opportunities, and tax relief because of their country’s role in establishing the Latin Empire in the 4th Crusade of 1204.
However,while residing in Constantinople, then the capital of the Latin Empire, foresaw a political change; they liquidated their assets into jewels and moved away
They understood the situation of the city as being dangerous, so they decided to transfer their business northeast to Soldaia, a city in Crimea, and left Constantinople in 1259 or 1260.
Their decision proved wise. Constantinople was recaptured in 1261 by Michael Palaeologus, the ruler of the Empire of Nicaea, who promptly burned and razed the Venetian quarter and reestablished the Byzantine Empire.
Any captured Venetian citizens were blinded, and many who managed to escape died aboard overloaded refugee ships fleeing to other Venetian colonies in the Aegean Sea.
However, the brothers judged the political situation of the city as being dangerous, so they decided to transfer their business northeast to Soldaia, a city in Crimea, and left Constantinople in 1259 or 1260.
As their new home on the north rim of the Black Sea, Soldaia had been frequented by Venetian traders since the 12th century.
When the Polos reached it, it was part of the newly formed Mongol state known as the Golden Horde.
Searching for better profits, the Polos continued their journey to Sarai, where the court of Berke Khan, the ruler of the Golden Horde, was located.
At that time, the city of Sarai was no more than a huge encampment, and the Polos stayed for about a year.
The Polo brothers became merchant partners, ortoq (foreign servants of the Khan), of Berke to sell goods entrusted to them.
Finally, they decided to avoid Crimea, because of a civil war between Berke and his cousin Hulagu or perhaps because of the bad relationship between Berke Khan and the Byzantine Empire.
Instead, they moved further east to Bukhara, in modern-day Uzbekistan, where the family lived and traded for 3 years.
Their adventures had actually taken them all the way to the Mongol capital of China, Khanbaliq (city of the Khan).
Marco Polo fell in love with the capital, which later became part of Beijing.
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 it as:
“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.”
There they had an audience with the most powerful ruler of the day, Kublai Khan, grandson of the founding emperor, Genghis Khan.
An envoy from the Levant invited the Polo, family to meet Kublai Khan, who had never met Europeans.
As the Mongols further expanded, the Christian sympathies of the court, primarily through the influential wives of the khans, led to changes in military strategy.
During the Mongols’ siege of Baghdad (1258), many of the citizens of the city were massacred, but Christians were spared.
As the Mongols further encroached upon Palestine, there were some attempts at forming a Franco-Mongol alliance with the Christians of Europe against the Muslims.
Mongol contacts with the West also led to many missionaries, primarily Franciscan and Dominican, traveling eastward in attempts to convert the Mongols to Roman Catholicism.
The Pax Mongolica refers to the relative stabilization of the regions under Mongol control during the height of the empire in the 13th and 14th centuries.
The Mongol rulers maintained peace and relative stability in such varied regions because they did not force subjects to adopt religious or cultural traditions.
However, they still enforced a legal code known as the Yassa (Great Law), which stopped feudal disagreements at local levels and made outright disobedience a dubious prospect.
It also ensured that it was easy to create an army in short time and gave the Khans access to the daughters of local leaders.
In 1266, they reached the seat of Kublai Khan at Dadu, present day Beijing, China.
Kublai received the brothers with hospitality and asked them many questions regarding the European legal and political system.
He also inquired about the Pope and Church in Rome, because the 7 th Crusade had recently ended.
After the brothers answered the questions he tasked them with delivering a letter to the Pope, requesting 100 Christians acquainted with the Seven Arts (grammar, rhetoric, logic, geometry, arithmetic, music and astronomy). Only 2 Dominican friars, Niccolò de Vicence and Guillaume de Tripoli.
The two friars did not finish the voyage due to fear, but the Polos reached Kanbaliq and remitted the presents from the Pope to Kublai in 1274.
Kublai Khan also requested that an envoy bring him back oil of the lamp in Jerusalem, because he had heard of its healing powers.
The long sede vacante (vacancy ) between the death of Pope Clement IV in 1268 and the election of his successor delayed the Polos in fulfilling Kublai’s request.
They followed the suggestion of Teobaldo Visconti, then papal legate for the realm of Egypt, and returned to Venice in 1269 or 1270 to await the nomination of the new Pope, which allowed Marco to see his father for the first time, at the age of 15 or 16.
Hoping that a new Pope would be elected soon, they stayed in Venice for 2 years.
When there was still no election, they started for the Mongol court.
In what is now Israel, the papal legate Teobaldo of Piacenza entrusted them with letters for Kublai Khan—but then good old Teobaldo got elected Pope just days after the Polos left Israel, and the crew had to turn around to get proper credentials from now-Pope Gregory X.
Almost nothing is known about the childhood of Marco Polo until he was 15 years old, excepting that he probably spent part of his childhood in Venice.
Meanwhile, Marco Polo’s mother died, and an aunt and uncle raised him. He received a good education, learning mercantile subjects including foreign currency, appraising, and the handling of cargo ships;he learned little or no Latin.
When the 3 Polo men returned to Venice after an absence of 16 years, Niccolo found that his wife had died and that he had a 15-year-old son, Marco, whom he did not know existed.
The following year, at the age of 17, Marco Polo left Venice for Asia with Niccolò and Maffeo the journey lasted 24 yrs, the same year , the Mongols conquered northern China, establishing the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), when the Church of the East was reintroduced to China after a gap of centuries.
They sailed to Acre, and then rode on camels to the Persian port of Hormuz.
The Polos wanted to sail straight into China, but the ships there were not seaworthy, so they continued overland through the Silk Road, until reaching Kublai’s summer palace in Shangdu, near present-day Zhangjiakou.
The journey to Asia wasn’t easy, and Marco faced a number of challenges.
They could not always proceed, being stopped sometimes by snow, or by heavy rains falling, or by great torrents which they found in an impassable state.
He also reported the difficulty of crossing the Gobi desert, writing that it took a month to cross it at its narrowest point
While in what is now Afghanistan, he fell ill and was forced to take refuge in the mountains while he recovered.
In another instance, the Polos joined a caravan of travelling merchants whom they crossed paths with.
Unfortunately, the party was soon attacked by bandits, who used the cover of a sandstorm to ambush them.
The Polos managed to fight and escape through a nearby town, but many members of the caravan were killed or enslaved.
With the oil, the two Polo brothers, along with a 17 year Marco Polo and the monks, started their journey to the Khan’s court.
The monks dropped out in the middle of the journey due to fear, but the Polos reached the Khan’s court near Beijing and the Khan treated the oil with respect (the same way he would treat relics from Sri Pada)
To safeguard the Polos during their journey back, Kulbai Khan gave them a foot long and three inches wide inscribed golden tablet (paiza) that was essentially a very fancy diplomatic passport, giving the brothers wide ranging rights to receive lodging, provisions, horses, and guides throughout the lands controlled by the Khan.
An English translation of the inscription would be roughly: “By the strength of the eternal Heaven, holy be the Khan’s name. Let him that pays him not reverence be killed.”
Even with a gold passport, it took 3½ years after leaving Venice, to reach the summer palace of Kublai Khan in 1275.
To attract foreign or overseas merchants and talents, the Great Khans gave them paiza exempting them from taxes and allowing them to use relay stations. Most of these merchants were business partners of the Mongols, known as ortoq.
2 years before Marco’s arrival, Kublai Khan had completed the conquest of all parts of China and needed non-Mongol administrators in areas that resisted having Mongol authorities, so Niccolo presented his son and offered him in service to the emperor. Some believe this was because the Khan was displeased at the lack of monks he requested.
A talented young man, Young Marco immersed himself in Eastern culture, customs, and languages.
Marco had learned several languages along the way, including Mongolian (though not Chinese), and had mastered four written alphabets and gained experience useful to Kublai. Historians have speculated that these other languages were probably Persian, Arabic, and Turkish.
Marco took on various sorts of diplomatic and administrative roles for the emperor from his base in Dadu, which Kublai Khan built next to Khanbaliq ( now Beijing ) .
It is possible that he became a government official; he wrote about many imperial visits to China’s southern and eastern provinces, the far south and Burma.
By trade, the Polos were merchants who sold rare items like silk, jewels, and spice, but their travels were not simply trading missions.
Kublai Kahn first commissioned the trio to be emissaries, and Marco was later sent to China and Southeast Asia as a tax collector and as Kahn’s special messenger.
Like a sensible man, Marco took great pains to learn about all kinds of different matters in the countries which he visited, so he would be able to tell about them to the Great Khan.
He gathered knowledge of anything that would be likely to interest Kublai Khan , and then on Marco’s return to Court he would relate everything in regular order, so Emperor came to hold him in great love and favor because such diligence pleased him.
For this reason he was employed most often on the most weighty and most distant missions, which Marco ever carried out with discretion and success, God be thanked.
So the Emperor became even more partial to him, and treated him with the greater distinction, and kept him so close that some of the Khan’s court became very envious of Marco.
But this is also how Marco Polo had knowledge of, or actually visited a number of the different countries of the World than any other man at court, so Kublai Khan decided to decline the Polo family’s requests to leave China and return to Venice.
Worried that their departure would make him appear weak, the elderly Kublai Kahn initially refused to release his favorite envoys from service.
However , after over 16 yrs at court, they became worried about returning home safely, believing that if Kublai (now in his 80’s) died, his enemies might turn against them because of their close involvement with the ruler.
Finally in 1292, Kublai agreed for them to escort a Mongolian princess, Kököchin, to become the bride of Kublai’s great-nephew, then ruler of Persia.
They were permitted to return to Persia with the wedding party—which left that same year from Zaitun in southern China on a fleet of 14 junks.
The party sailed to the port of Singapore, traveled north to Sumatra, and sailed west Pandyan of Tamilakkam.
After many difficulties, succeeded in delivering the princess.
Eventually Polo crossed the Arabian Sea to Hormuz. The Polos left the wedding party after reaching Hormuz and travelled overland to the port of Trebizond on the Black Sea.
The 2 yr voyage was a perilous one—of the 600 people (not including the crew) in the convoy only 18 had survived (including all 3 Polos).
Before they could reach Venice, however, Kublai Khan died on February 18, 1294, which allowed local rulers to reassert themselves and demand payment from traders.
Consequently, the Polos’ were forced to hand over 4,000 Byzantine coins, a significant portion of their fortune, to the local government of a city on the Black Sea.
When the Polos returned to Venice in 1295 wearing Mongolian clothing, they weren’t exactly greeted with a welcoming party.
After being gone for over two decades, the people in their hometown didn’t recognise them, and when Marco and his father told many of their stories, they could hardly remember their native language after having been away 24 years
Plus, their relatives had thought them long dead.
But when they produced a small fortune in gems (rubies, sapphires, garnets, diamonds, and emeralds), which had been sewn into the hems of their Mongolian garments, they were warmly welcomed.
Had Polo been entertaining any ideas about returning to Asia, the death of Kublai Kahn shut those dreams down.
After the Khan’s death, the Mongol empire went into decline, and tribal groups reclaimed the land along the Silk Road. As the land route to China became more dangerous, very few travelers had the nerve to attempt the journey.
Tragedy struck again , and soon Venice was at war with its rival city-state, Genoa, on the west coast of Italy.
As was custom for a wealthy merchant, Marco Polo financed his own war galley. He was captured during a naval battle and ended up captured and thrown in prison in Genoa.
By chance, one of his cellmates, Rusticello from Pisa, who had experience writing insisted he be allowed to co write his stories, but Polo never intended his book to be read as a memoir.
He wanted it to be a description of the places that he and his family visited and what they saw there.
Because of this, few personal details about his life are included.
As Polo entertained everyone with his tales of traveling to China, Rusticello wrote them down in a French dialect. This is how Polo’s accounts, Europe’s primary source of information about China until the 19th century, came into existence.
It is a common misconception that Marco Polo introduced pasta to Italy—in truth, the dish had already existed in Europe for centuries—but there’s little doubt he made Westerners aware of many Chinese inventions.
Among other things, Marco familiarized many of his readers with the concept of paper money, which only caught on in Europe in the years after his return. Polo also described coal—not widely used in Europe until the 18th century—and may even have introduced eyeglasses to the West.
His description of Coal :
Throughout this province there is found a sort of black stone, which they dig out of the mountains, where it runs in veins.
When lighted, it burns like charcoal, and retains the fire much better than wood; inso- much that it may be preserved during the night, and in the morning be found still burning.
These stones do not flame, excepting a little when first lighted, but during their ignition give out a considerable heat. It is true there is no scarcity of wood in the country, but the multitude of inhabitants is so immense, and their stoves and baths, which they are continually heating, so numerous, that the quantity could not supply the demand; for there is no person who does not frequent the warm bath at least three times in the week, and during the winter daily, if it is in their power.
Every man of rank or wealth has one in his house for his own use; and the stock of wood must soon prove inadequate to such consumption; whereas these stones may be had in the greatest abundance, and at a cheap rate. (p. 155)
Meanwhile, he offered one of the historical record’s most detailed accounts of the Mongol post system, a complex network of checkpoints and couriers that allowed Kublai Kahn to administrate his vast empire.
In 1299 Genoa and Venice declared peace; Polo was released and returned to Venice to marry Donata Badoer.
The couple had three daughters in quick succession.
Marco returned home to Venice, where his father and uncle in the meantime had purchased a large palazzo in the zone named contrada San Giovanni Crisostomo (Corte del Milion).
For such a venture, the Polo family probably invested profits from trading, and even many gemstones they brought from the East.
The company continued its activities and Marco soon became a wealthy merchant.
Marco and his uncle Maffeo financed other expeditions, but likely never left Venetian provinces, nor returned to the Silk Road and Asia.
He spent his remaining days as a businessman, working from home. He died there at almost 70 years of age, on January 8, 1324, and was buried under the church of San Lorenzo, though his tomb has now vanished. His house in Venice was destroyed by fire in 1596.