Laurence Bergreen

by Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu

  BAGHDAD, still the seat of the Nestorian Church in Marco Polo’s day, lies 220 miles to the southeast of Mosul. Marco discusses Baghdad with an air of confidence, but it is unlikely that he actually visited the city. To obscure that omission, he resorts to telling stories, beginning with a lengthy miracle tale pitting the thirty-seventh caliph, or Muslim ruler, of Baghdad against a humble Christian cobbler, with the fantastic outcome that the caliph secretly converted to Christianity. Rustichello’s fingerprints can be found all over this elaborate and somewhat cloying set piece.

  In a similar spirit, Marco speaks with gusto about the end of the caliphate at the hands of the Mongols. In this case, his account follows what is known about actual events. He sets the scene in 1255—actually, it was 1258—when Hülegü, one of Genghis Khan’s grandsons, vowed to conquer the ancient caliphate and claim it for the rapidly expanding Mongol Empire. Since its heyday under Harun ar-Rashid over four centuries earlier, Baghdad had deteriorated, but it still posed a formidable challenge to would-be invaders. To forestall an assault, envoys of the caliph called on Hülegü and cautioned, “If the Caliph is killed, the whole universe will fall into chaos, the sun will hide its face, rain will no longer fall, and plants will cease to grow.”

  Undeterred, and perhaps even provoked by the warning, Hülegü “resolved to capture it by a ruse rather than by force. Having about a hundred thousand cavalry, without counting infantry, he wished to give the Caliph and his followers in the city the impression that they were only a few.” Hülegü charged the city gates with few warriors, and “the Caliph, seeing this force was a small one, did not take much account of it,” whereupon Hülegü made a “pretence of flight and so lured [the caliph] back past the woods and thickets where his troops lay in ambush. Here he trapped his pursuers and crushed them. So the Caliph was captured together with the city.” Mongol warriors killed eight thousand inhabitants in the attack; only the lives of Christians were spared, thanks to the intervention of Hülegü’s wife, who shared their faith.

  Marco describes a grotesque end to the caliph’s life: Hülegü confined the Muslim leader to his tower of treasure and let him starve to death amid his wealth. In fact, the caliph’s execution was more bizarre.

  Despite their brutality, the Mongols abhorred the thought of spilling blood. Their methods of “bloodless” execution included smothering by stuffing the victim’s mouth with stones or feces. The caliph was subjected to a more dignified but even harsher ordeal. On February 10, 1258, he was wrapped in a carpet and trodden to death by horses. His family was also said to be executed, with the exception of a daughter, who became a slave in Hülegü’s harem.

  After the Mongol conquest, Baghdad’s population shrank to a tenth of its former size. Nevertheless, the provincial capital still traded on its reputation as a center of commerce and of intellect, storied for its madrassas, libraries, giant moat, and, it was said, 27,000 public baths. Legends of the former glories of Baghdad and the court of Harun ar-Rashid remained potent enough to impress even Marco Polo.

  IN HIS ACCOUNT, Marco abruptly turns his attention from Baghdad to Tabriz, the city reputedly built by one of the wives of Harun ar-Rashid, whose luxurious court served as the setting for the tales known as The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment. In this instance, the Venetian actually visited, and came away impressed by, the thriving commercial center—“the most splendid city in the province,” he calls it, as if compiling a guidebook for travelers. With its “market for merchandise from India and Baghdad, from Mosul and Hormuz, and from many other places,” Tabriz is worth a journey, he says, if only to see the “attractive orchards, full of excellent fruit” surrounding the city.

  Even as he extols the commercial life of Tabriz, Marco expresses misgivings about the inhabitants, a “mixed lot” who were “good for very little.” The variety of people—“Armenians and Nestorians, Jacobites and Georgians and Persians”—competed strenuously against one another, and despite its prosperity, the area seethed with religious violence. “The Saracens of the region are wicked and treacherous,” he reports. He deviates from his habit of dismissing Muslims as idolaters, and sets forth his understanding of some disturbing facets of their laws: “Any harm they may do to one who does not accept their law, and any appropriation of his goods, is no sin at all. And if they suffer death or injury at the hands of Christians, they are accounted martyrs.” He asserts, “That is why they are converting the Tartars and many other nations to their law, because they are allowed great license to sin.”

  It came as a relief to Marco to learn that Tabriz harbored a monastery housing a mendicant order of monks. Judging from their clothing, he guessed they were Carmelites, and noted the time they spent “weaving woolen girdles” to lay on the altar during Mass and to distribute to “their friends and to noblemen” in the belief that the girdles relieved pain. These phenomena Marco reports as if they were the most natural things in the world.

  Although other Venetians were scarce, merchants from Genoa had long been represented in Tabriz, and were much better known. For them, as for merchants across Asia, Tabriz served as an important pearl market, perhaps the largest of all, supplied by abundant harvests from the Persian Gulf. The Polo company found that bargaining for pearls in the Tabriz market was a serious matter governed by firm rules. A buyer and seller squatted facing each other, their hands swathed in fabric. They haggled over the price not by speaking aloud, lest the terms be overheard by others seeking an advantage, but by squeezing each other’s fingers and wrists to describe and dispute the quality of the goods, and to convey the amount of the bid offered, and accepted. This unusual form of negotiation meant that bystanders had no indication of the actual terms of the deal, and the price remained flexible from one transaction to the next.

  FROM TABRIZ, Marco entered Savah, in Persia, and then Kerman, known for its Persian rugs. Here Marco’s concerns about Islam relaxed a bit, and he found himself enjoying the climate and coveting the turquoise concealed in nearby mountains. He expresses admiration for the locals’ skill in fashioning “the equipment of a mounted warrior—bridles, saddles, spurs, swords, bows, quivers, and every sort of armor.” Even their artful needlework attracted his eye, as did the spectacle of falconry.

  In the brilliant skies overhead, Marco caught his first glimpse of the aristocratic sport that would become a passion for him in his travels throughout Asia. It was one of the few endeavors common to both East and West, and for Marco, as for other gentlemen, it was the embodiment of power and grace. “In the mountains are bred the best falcons in the world, and the swiftest in flight,” he reports. “They are red on the breast and under the tail between the thighs. And you may take my word that they fly at such incalculable speed that there is no bird that can escape from them by flight.” So young Marco scanned the firmament, studying the swift aerial combat that mirrored human predatory behavior.

  IN HIS SURVEY of Persia, Marco never pauses to indicate when, or even whether, he visited all the places that he describes, but occasionally he traces these early travels of his with a precision born of experience. His departure from the Persian kingdom of Kerman, in which he tarried, conveys a sense of the endlessly unfolding vistas before him. “When the traveler leaves the city of Kerman, he rides for seven days across a plateau, finding no lack of towns and villages and homesteads. It is a pleasant and satisfying country to ride through,” he notes, “for it is well stocked with game and teems with partridges.” After this passage, he writes of coming to a great escarpment, “from which the road leads steadily downhill for two days through a country abounding all the way in fruits of many kinds. There used to be homesteads here; but now there is not one, but nomads live here with their grazing flocks. Between the city of Kerman and this escarpment the cold winter is so intense that it can scarcely be warded off by any number of garments and furs.”

  In Persia, he beheld evidence of the region’s intense geologic activity. Here, active faults and volcanoes had created some of the most calamitous eve
nts on the planet. The Polo company sought safer surroundings in the pleasant town of Rudbar, high in the Alborz Mountains in northwest Persia. Rudbar served as a merchants’ gathering place and offered lush pasture for livestock. The picturesque grazing herds inspired Marco to exercise the powers of description that would eventually win him fame. “Let me tell you first about the oxen,” he writes. “They are of great size and pure white like snow. Their hair is short and smooth because of the heat. Their horns are thick and stumpy and not pointed. Between their shoulders they have a round hump fully two palms in height. They are the loveliest things in the world to look at. When you want to load them, they lie down like camels; then, when they are loaded, they stand up and carry their loads very well, because they are exceedingly strong. There are also sheep as big as asses, with tails so thick and plump that they weigh a good thirty pounds. Fine, fat beasts they are, and good eating.”

  JUST AS MARCO was beginning to feel at home in the Persian mountains, he stiffened at the mention of the Karaunas, “bands of marauders who infest the country.” The Karaunas preyed on the plump, grazing herds. More terrifying still, they were reputed to be adept at performing a diabolic enchantment that turned day into night over a distance as far as a man could ride during the space of seven days. “They know this country very well,” Marco says. “When they have brought on the darkness, they ride side by side, sometimes as many as ten thousand of them together,…so that they overspread the region they mean to rob. Nothing they find in the open country, neither man nor beast nor goods, can escape capture.”

  The Polo company fled to the seaport of Hormuz, but not before they had several close encounters with these predators. “I assure you,” Marco’s account states with emphasis, “that Master Marco himself narrowly evaded capture by these robbers in the darkness they had made. He”—that is, Marco—“escaped to a town called Kamasal; but not before many of his companions were taken captive and sold [as slaves], and some put to death.”

  Of this dangerous episode, Marco says nothing more. Events at their next stop outweighed all else.

  HORMUZ ENJOYED a reputation as a prosperous haven on the Persian Gulf. Here the Polos expected to travel aboard one of the port’s many sailing vessels to a destination in India, and then proceed to China. Marco remarks on the “excellent harbor” and confidently notes that “merchants come here by ship from India, bringing all sorts of spices and precious stones and pearls and cloths of silk and gold and elephants’ tusks and many other wares. In this city they sell them to others, who distribute them to various customers through the length and breadth of the world. It is a great center of commerce, with many cities and towns subordinate to it.”

  For the wandering Polo company, the sight of so much water after months in the desert evoked memories of Venice and the Adriatic Sea, but on closer inspection, Hormuz was not quite the gem it had seemed from afar. For one thing, “If a merchant dies here, the king confiscates all his possessions.” The climate also presented a hazard to unwary travelers. Wind from the surrounding desert could turn “so overpoweringly hot that it would be deadly if it did not happen that, as soon as men are aware of its approach, they plunge neck-deep into the water and so escape from the heat.”

  While in Hormuz, Marco was horrified to learn that the deadly wind had surprised no less than six thousand soldiers (five thousand on foot, the rest on horseback) in the desert and “stifled them all, so that not one survived to carry back the news to their lord.” Eventually, the “men of Hormuz” learned of the mass deaths and decided to bury the corpses to prevent infection, but “when they gripped them by the arms to drag them to the graves, they [the corpses] were so parched by the tremendous heat that the arms came loose from the trunk, so that they [the men] had to dig the graves beside the corpses and heave them in.”

  The sailing vessels, when he finally inspected them, were a disappointment. “Their ships are very bad, and many of them founder, because they are not fastened with iron nails but stitched together with thread made of coconut husks,” Marco reports in dismay. Nor did their other features inspire much confidence. “The ships have one mast, one sail, and one rudder, and are not decked; when they have loaded them, they cover the cargo with skins, and on top of these they put the horses that they ship to India for sale.” The design was cause for concern; Marco preferred the security of two rudders, two masts, and proper decks. These stripped-down vessels seemed to ask for trouble at the first hint of foul weather. Worse, “They have no iron for nails; so they employ wooden pegs and stitch [them] with thread. This makes it very risky to sail in these ships. And,” Marco says, “you can take my word that many of them sink, because the Indian Ocean is very stormy.” As if all that were not bad enough, these leaky ships were not even caulked properly with pitch; instead, they were “anointed with a sort of fish oil.”

  The Polo company had seen enough. They would not sail to India, after all. Earning their livelihood by making calculations, and accustomed to living by their wits, they decided the prospect was too dangerous.

  They left Hormuz as quickly as they had come, and returned to Kerman, where they rethought their method for reaching China and the court of Kublai Khan. Rather than trust their lives to precarious water craft, they would move in accordance with the rhythm of the camel’s languorous gait along the ancient traders’ routes that have come to be known as the Silk Road.

  AS THEIR CAMELS and donkeys headed into the wasteland, Marco apprehensively noted “a desert of sixty miles in which water to drink is sometimes not found.” The Polos were concerned both for themselves and for the beasts of burden on which their lives and fortunes depended. At one point, they spent three days without sighting water they could use. “What water there is,” Marco reports, “is brackish and green as meadow grass and so bitter that no one could bear to drink it.” It was not only unpleasant, it was downright dangerous: “Drink one drop of it and you void your bowels ten times over. It is the same with the salt that is made from it. If you eat one little granule, it produces violent diarrhea.” Driven mad with thirst, animals that drank the water suffered as terribly.

  And so their caravan moved on. For transportation—indeed, for survival itself—the Polo company relied on the Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus), which had served travelers along the Silk Road since biblical times. Unlike the single-humped dromedary, common in North Africa, the Bactrian camel has two lopsided humps to store fat, a long neck, minimal ears, and massive teeth, some of them pointed. The animals come in as many colors as the desert itself, from dirty white to deep, gritty brown.

  Camels are suited to desert crossings. Their broad cloven hoofs resist sinking into loose sand, and their large nostrils are lined with hairs and can close like valves to prevent the inhalation of flying sand. Bactrians are especially sturdy animals, accustomed to sleeping on hard surfaces, with a thick, heavy coat to protect their bodies. They can go for several days without water, and even longer if they find plants on which to feed.

  It has long been noted that camels possess a sixth sense for traversing the desert. In the third century AD, the Chinese writer Kuo P’u observed, “The camel is an unusual domestic animal; it carries a saddle of flesh on its back; swiftly it dashes over the shifting sands; it manifests its merit in dangerous places; it has secret understanding of springs and sources; subtle indeed is its knowledge!”

  Marco, his father, and his uncle were acutely aware of their beasts of burden; the animals’ coarse, vital smell filled the nostrils of their masters. Atop their camels, the Polos did not so much stride as stagger. Yet a sturdy Bactrian camel can carry more than six hundred pounds, and under favorable conditions can cover thirty miles a day. For reliable transport across the desert, no other creature could match these characteristics.

  After several days of strenuous travel atop their camels, the exhausted and thirsty travelers reached their first oasis.

  SAPURGAN was the name of their salvation, “a town beautiful and great and fertile and of great
plenty of all things needful for life.” There were stands of trees, perhaps poplars, their leaves bright and vivid in the desert air, and the region’s famous melons, tasting so ripe and sweet as to seem “the best in the world.” They sustained life year round, thanks to the preservation techniques Marco observed. “When they are dried they cut them in slices like threads or strips of leather,” he says, “and they become sweeter than honey.”

  Still in the Persian mountains, Marco fell under the spell of another town, Tunocain. Entering early manhood, he was becoming acutely aware of women, and he dared to describe them with a robust appreciation and informality at odds with the accounts of pious miracles that Rustichello slipped into the account. The women of Tunocain caught his eye and, for the moment, engaged his heart; he calls them “the most beautiful in the world.” They were Muslim women, whose like he had previously dismissed as idolaters, but now he thought of them constantly. Even allowing for his penchant for overstatement, this revelation suggests that Marco’s experiences on the road were beginning to influence his assumptions about the world around him.

  Near Tunocain, Marco took note of another shrine, the Dry Tree. Although he did not trouble to explain the tree’s significance to his audience, many knew that the Dry Tree appeared in Christian legends, and in Alexander romances, as an ancient, even immortal phenomenon possessing magical powers. Reverence for the Dry Tree, a startling apparition in this arid, mountainous area, seems to hark back to a primitive form of tree or nature worship. Marco describes the phenomenon with enough detail to suggest that he had actually seen it: “It is very large and thick, and its leaves are green on one side and white on the other, and it forms burrs like the burrs of chestnuts, but there is nothing inside them. They are not good to eat. Of its wood balsam is made. It is solid and very hard wood.” But he may have been relying on hearsay for his information.