Laurence Bergreen

by Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu

  THE MODERN TRAVELER seeking to retrace Marco Polo’s route will find much that stubbornly survives from the thirteenth century. In Venice, landmarks such as the Basilica di San Marco and its campanile have hardly changed at all. Visitors seeking further evidence of Marco’s era will find the Corte seconda del Milion, a compact piazza. A new edifice occupies the lot where generations of the Polo family once lived, traded, and litigated, but a few structural elements of the Ca’ Polo and Marco’s old neighborhood exist today. Decorative Byzantine archways, under which Marco once walked, survive intact, artifacts of a bygone era when Venice ruled the seas and traded with the world.

  Afghanistan remains as wild and beautiful and dangerous, and as opium-ridden, as it was in the days when the Polo company traversed its mountains on the way to Balkh, and the beginning of the Silk Road. The Pamir highlands are even now as remote and isolated as they were in the thirteenth century, the silence barely disturbed by trucks and cars, with donkeys the preferred method of travel. The Gobi Desert remains inaccessible to all but the most determined traveler, and the Singing Sands still tempt the unwary visitor into oblivion—although these days, the Global Positioning System can help explorers track a precise route through the remotest regions of the planet. Today’s Mongols are as open to foreign influences as they were when Marco first encountered them: they are nomads still, masters of the Steppe, living in gers and surrounded by their livestock as they were during the reign of Kublai Khan, but now satellite dishes stand beside their dwellings. With the departure of the Soviets in 1989, Mongolia became an independent nation, struggling to adapt its nomadic past to the demands of the present.

  The ancient Mongolian capital of Karakorum, founded by Genghis Khan as a symbol of national unity, is now a ruin, a faint reminder of the splendor that once animated his rule. One of the few surviving objects from the height of the Mongol Empire is a large granite tortoise, for which a distant mountain is named. It stands alone on a field, awaiting a more fitting resting place. Of Kublai Khan’s magnificent Xanadu, little survives beyond a few evocative mounds rising from a grassy plain, and whispers of lost grandeur carried on the wind.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THROUGHOUT MY TRAVELS in search of Marco Polo, many people helped to make this book a reality.

  At Alfred A. Knopf, I have been privileged to enjoy the support of Sonny Mehta, Ashbel Green, and Carol Janeway, all of whom brought constant enthusiasm and generous editorial wisdom to my labors; I am grateful for the inspiration of these legendary individuals. In addition, I wish to extend my appreciation to Sara Sherbill and Katherine Hourigan.

  Suzanne Gluck, my literary agent at William Morris, has been a source of steadfast belief and refreshing candor from the moment of this project’s inception; it is always a pleasure to learn from her keen insights. I am also indebted to her able assistants, including Christine Price, Erin Malone, and Georgia Cool.

  At the New York Society Library, I wish to thank Mark Piel for his help with this and my previous books, and Arevig Caprielian, Rare Books Librarian. I also wish to thank the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode Island, and especially librarian Richard Ring for his help; and the Thomas J. Watson Library of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I wish to extend particular appreciation to the Columbia University Libraries, including Butler Library, the Barnard College Library, and the C. V. Starr East Asian Library, whose collections I often consulted while researching this book. My friend of more than thirty years, Patrick Ryan, S. J., generously agreed to review the manuscript, especially concerning matters relating to Church history, and I am grateful for his scholarly clarification.

  In addition, I wish to express my appreciation to Ludwig W. Adamec, for his expertise on Afghanistan; Caroline Alexander; Susan Beningson; Sheila Callahan; Kimball Chen; Kristina Cordero, who assisted with translations; Daniel Dolgin, whom I can never thank enough yet must go on thanking because there is no alternative in light of his generosity of spirit and intellect; Dr. James B. Garvin, NASA’s chief scientist, who advised me on the geologic highlights of Marco Polo’s route through the Pamir; Toby Greenberg, whose knowledge of art history and perceptive eye made her an ideal researcher for the images reproduced in this book; Lila Haber, for her assistance in the early phases of this work; Jack Hidary; Fritz Jacobi; Ted Kaplan, for his Silk Road expertise; Laura Kopp, for her elegant translations; the distinguished medievalist James Muldoon of Brown University; Robert B. Oxnam, President Emeritus, the Asia Society, USA, and President, The Needham Research Institute, USA; Alice Petillot, my researcher and translator in Paris; the always inspiring Peter Pouncey of Columbia University; Igor de Rachewiltz of the Australian National University; Morris Rossabi of Columbia University, the author of an outstanding biography of Kublai Khan, and a generous source of wisdom on the Mongols; James D. Ryan of the City University of New York; Denise Sinclair, a board member of The Needham Research Institute, USA, for her insights on Chinese science and Joseph Needham; Jonathan Spence of Yale University; and Joseph Thanhauser III, who, along with the gang at Byrnam Wood, cheerfully distracted me.

  My daughter Sara graciously became an informal Buddhism consultant as I worked on this book, and my son Nick contributed enlightening historical perspectives.

  In England, I owe a considerable debt to the following individuals and institutions who generously assisted me during my research visits: the late David Patterson, Emeritus President of the Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies; Christopher Cullen; and Susan J. Bennett and John P. C. Moffett of The Needham Research Institute at Cambridge University. During my time at the library of the Ancient India and Iran Trust in Cambridge, I received guidance from Wieslaw Mikal and James Cormick. And in London, I consulted the British Library’s comprehensive collection concerning Marco Polo, perhaps the largest of its kind.

  In France, the Bibliothèque Nationale provided additional useful material about Marco Polo and China.

  Finally, in Washington, D.C., my research at the Library of Congress afforded me a window on the holdings of libraries around the globe.

  I was fortunate to have admirable support in researching Marco Polo from an Eastern and Middle Eastern perspective. Anna Basoli, my resourceful Italian translator, while spending months in Afghanistan to pursue her journalistic goals and without even being asked, tracked down documents relating to Marco Polo’s yearlong sojourn in that part of the world. In addition, her husband, Shoaib Harris, brought to my attention documents and histories about the Silk Road, some unknown in the West, and ably translated them for this book, especially commentary by the Persian historian Vassaf, a contemporary of Marco Polo. My thanks also to Professor Mir Ahmad Joyenda, the head of Afghanistan’s Research and Evaluation Unit, for his assistance.

  In Venice, I conducted research at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, where the archivists proved most helpful in guiding me through a maze of records to the relevant documents; the Archivio di Stato, the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti; and the Archivio Veneto.

  Thanks also to the Società Ligure di Storia Patria in Genoa for information relating to Marco Polo’s incarceration in that city.

  During my visit to China in 2005, the dedicated Marco Polo scholar Bohai Dang of Peking University brought me up to date on the state of Chinese scholarly inquiry into Marco Polo, and made many Chinese sources, both his own and others’, available to me.

  During my travels in Mongolia in 2006, I was fortunate to make the acquaintance of Nomin Lkhagvasuren, my seemingly omniscient guide and interpreter during my travels around the country. At times her sister Kuka capably stood in, aided by our interpreter Batchuluun Baldandorj, and our driver and mechanic, Dugeree, who performed vital repairs late one night to the malfunctioning stove in my smoke-filled ger. My thanks to them all, and especially to Dan Dolgin and Loraine Gardner, who came along on the adventure, and added so much, including some spirited throat-singing.

  My thanks also to the Mongolian Natural History Museum in Ulaanbaa
tar, where I was able to handle Yüan dynasty armor and weapons dating from the failed invasions of Japan in the thirteenth century. The lamas of Gandan, Erdene Zuu, and Chojin Lama monasteries of Mongolia graciously welcomed me during my visits. In addition, I wish to express my appreciation to the Mongolian Fine Arts Museum, with its exceptional collection of period artifacts.

  I also wish to record my gratitude to the Mongolian scholars who generously gave of their time and scholarship during my face-to-face interviews with them in Ulaanbaatar: Dr. Kh. Lkhagvasuren, President of the Mongolian Archeological Federation; Professor Shagdaryn Bira, Secretary General of the International Association for Mongol Studies; Professor O. Sukhbaatar, Vice Director of Chinggis Khan University; and Professor S. Tsolmon of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences.

  Finally, during my stay in Taiwan, I benefited from the encouragement of Harvey Chang, from the collection of the National Palace Museum, and from the scholarly companionship of Professor Hsiao Ch’ i-ch’ing of National Tsing Hua University.

  NOTES ON SOURCES

  FOR ALL ITS RICHES, Marco Polo’s Travels presents several challenges for modern readers. The first concerns the absence of an authoritative version of his account. There are scores of early Polo manuscripts, many of them drastically different from one another. Some versions rely on a single text, while others blend several; some contain abridgments, both subtle and obvious. Some, such as those rendered into French by Pauthier, and into English by Yule and Cordier, contain valuable annotations. Yet these versions tend to obscure the energy and quirky charm of the original by imposing a uniform tone on the entire work. The result can resemble a master painting dimmed by centuries of accumulated grime. But a relatively recent English translation by A. C. Moule and Paul Pelliot of the Latin manuscript discovered in the library of the cathedral of Toledo, Spain, in 1932 manages to evoke the spirit and substance of the original, or so it seemed to me after studying a number of other versions. Published in 1938 and based on the longest manuscript of Marco’s account known, it is 50 percent longer than other versions. In quoting this version, as well as others, I have made a number of changes for the sake of clarity and syntax. Where Moule and Pelliott stumbled or repeated patches of garbled text without clarification, I had recourse to the venerable 1818 translation by William Marsden, who based his version on the Italian translation by Giovanni-Battista Ramusio, as well as to various early manuscripts in Middle French, and to other translations that better conveyed the sense of a particular passage.

  Another significant problem with Marco’s book that translators often overlook concerns the order of events, no small matter in a chronicle of this scope. In his prologue, Marco promises accounts of happenings that he never gets around to describing in the body of his text. And on occasion he describes events at the beginning of his account even though they occurred near the end of his travels. Some of this confusion, I suspect, arises from the circumstances under which the work was composed (Marco Polo in prison, telling his story to a collaborator who was a stranger to him), and some from errors that crept into the narrative as it passed from one set of scribes to the next, in the pre-Gutenberg era. Yet even various paragraphs or sentences within the Travels seem out of order. The disarray often reminded me of a manuscript dropped on a flight of stairs, then gathered up, with many of the pages out of order. To minimize confusion, I have related all the major events chronologically, which has meant departing from the order in which certain episodes appear in the original text.

  I am indebted to the labors of several French scholars, including Jacques Gernet, A. C. Moule, M. G. Pauthier, and Paul Pelliot, for their elucidation of aspects of the text. In addition, Leonardo Olschki’s erudite Marco Polo’s Asia is valuable for its breadth and precision, despite Olschki’s tendency occasionally to overstate what Marco or the Mongols “always” or “never” did. In reality, the Travels is one of those multidimensional records in which most everything and its opposite are true, at different times and in different contexts.

  A second group of challenges concerns the many languages involved in trying to understand the Mongols who dominate Marco Polo’s account. In his 1990 book The Mongols, David Morgan writes: “The sources available to the historian are in Mongolian, Chinese, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Japanese, Russian, Armenian, Georgian, Latin, and other languages. No one can hope to be able to read more than a fraction of them in the original.” Fortunately, I was able to turn repeatedly to the sound advice of Professor Morris Rossabi of Columbia University, the author of a distinguished biography of Kublai Khan and a scholar of Mongolia and Mongol history, to guide me through these linguistic thickets. I have also consulted the works of three thirteenth-century Persian chroniclers—Vassaf al-Hazrat, Juvaini, and Rashid al-Din—who discussed the exploits of the Mongols as a more-or-less contemporary phenomenon. All were court historians, and Rashid al-Din served as grand vizier in the Ilkhanate. True, they expressed their patrons’ convictions, but as a result of their privileged positions they had access to many sources that might otherwise have been lost. Wherever possible, I have let their words speak for themselves.

  THE EPIGRAPHS to the chapters of this book are taken from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan.

  PROLOGUE / The Commander

  Concerning Marco Polo’s involvement in the Battle of Curzola, some commentators have suggested that Marco blundered into combat while leading a merchant vessel rather than a warship. Still others insist that he did not participate in the battle at all and was instead captured in a subsequent military skirmish at sea. Henry H. Hart’s brief, pithy Marco Polo, Venetian Adventurer, page 207, has Dandolo’s speech at the height of the Battle of Curzola, but Hart is among those who place Marco Polo’s capture in a different engagement between the Venetians and the Genoese.

  Although Venice and Genoa were both city-states famed for their aggressive maritime trade, they were very different from each other. The Genoese were stubborn individualists. Their trading ventures were privately financed, and their sense of civic duty was minimal. Venetians, in contrast, were known for their collective behavior, and for their exclusiveness. Their ships were communal property, their sailors not permitted to serve other governments.

  Henry Yule and Henri Cordier, volume 1, page 55, of their version of The Description of the World, provide a variant account of Marco Polo’s capture and imprisonment, quoting the Dominican friar Jacopo d’Acqui’s Imago mundi. Many details are familiar, but d’Acqui says that Polo was captured in a different military engagement. There is no reason to assume that d’Acqui has more claim to accuracy than other sources, but he was a contemporary of Marco Polo, and therefore wrote shortly after the events. But even d’Acqui commits obvious errors. Maria Bussagli’s essay in Marco Polo: Venezia e l’Oriente, edited by Alvise Zorzi, contains another variant. In this version, Marco Polo was on his way back to Trebizond to recover valuable possessions that had been confiscated several years earlier. I have also consulted Annali genovesi dopo Caffaro e suoi continuatori.

  Few accounts of the naval actions off Curzola in 1298 fully agree on dates. For a variant, see W. Carew Hazlitt, The Venetian Republic, volume 1, pages 454–472. Conditions in a Genoese jail are described at length in Leondia Balestrieri’s “Le Prigioni della Malapaga.”

  CHAPTER ONE / The Merchants of Venice

  For a lucid exploration of the medieval ethos of Marco Polo’s era, see Janet Abu-Lughod’s eye-opening work, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350, and Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century, especially pages 55–56. The best modern history of Venice is John Julius Norwich’s A History of Venice. Mrs. Oliphant’s The Makers of Venice: Doges, Conquerers, and Men of Letters also has its charms.

  The surprisingly sophisticated world of medieval Venetian and Italian contracts and commercial practices has been described in detail in Robert S. Lopez and Irving W. Raymond’s Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World; pages 14–15 and 168–178 are e
specially illuminating. See Benjamin Z. Kedar’s Merchants in Crisis: Genoese and Venetian Men of Affairs and the Fourteenth-century Depression for additional context. Lore about veneto comes from Jan Morris’s effervescent account, The World of Venice, page 31 in the 1993 Harcourt Brace edition.

  Some of what is known about Marco Polo’s early years can be found in Hart’s Marco Polo, which has more context than biography, but see especially pages xvii, 55–56, and 63–64.

  Rodolfo Gallo discusses the Ca’ Polo in “Nuovi documenti riguardanti Marco Polo e la sua famiglia,” note 3.

  In Venice: Lion City, pages 30 and following, Garry Wills analyzes the basis of power in the Republic. Michael Yamashita describes the ceremony of marriage to the sea in Marco Polo: A Photographer’s Journey, page 41. Alvise Zorzi’s Vita di Marco Polo veneziano is a useful introduction to Marco in a Venetian context.

  CHAPTER TWO / The Golden Passport

  In their consideration of foreigners who found employment in the Mongol regime, Yule and Cordier mention an oral tradition placing Jews in China since the first century. Accounts of synagogues and Jewish travelers crop up occasionally in Chinese annals as early as the twelfth century, although the terminology thought to refer to Jews may indicate another group. For more on the long but tentatively understood history of Jews in China, see Yule and Cordier, volume 1, page 347. (All citations to Yule and Cordier refer to their version of The Description of the World.)