AS MARCO LOST HIMSELF in a reverie of the region’s lore, his company advanced into the territory of the Assassins, who threatened powerful warlords and heads of state. Their notoriety had reached Western Europe as a result of a knife-wielding Assassin’s attack on Prince Edward (shortly to become King Edward I) in Jerusalem barely a year after the Polo company departed. Seriously wounded, Edward survived multiple stab wounds and fled home to England, but incidents such as these gave the Assassins a lasting mystique as a secretive fraternity of terrorists capable of striking when least expected. Marco and his collaborator realized that recounting tales of the Assassins would send a frisson of horror through their audience, and they played up the cult’s sinister mystique for all it was worth.
Relying on stories passed to him by his father and uncle, Marco explains that these notorious raiders were followers of a mythical-sounding but all-too-real figure known as the Old Man, who ruled from a fastness called Alamut, “Eagle’s Nest.” The Assassins’ name, he says, derived from the Arabic phrase meaning “those who eat hashish”—a ritual they performed to nerve themselves for their missions. He relates how the Old Man drugged and manipulated his followers to do his bidding: “Sometimes the Old Man, when he wished to kill any lord who made war or was his enemy, made them put some of these youths into that Paradise by fours and by tens and by twenties just as he wished, in this way. For he had opium…given to them by which they fell asleep immediately…and they slept three days and three nights. Then he had them taken and put into that garden, and made them wake.” At that moment, they beheld alluring women “singing and playing and making all the caresses and dalliance that they could imagine, giving them food and most delicate wines, so that intoxicated with so many pleasures and with the little streams of milk and wine that they saw,” they were made to believe that they were “truly in Paradise.” In summoning this vision of evil, Marco may well have exaggerated the role hashish played in the Assassin cult. Use of the drug was widespread in the region, not confined to Assassins, and the effects may have debilitated rather than emboldened its users.
The zealous Assassins inspired dread in surrounding kingdoms. Marco reports: “Many kings and many lords paid tribute to him [the Old Man] and cultivated his friendship for fear that he might bring about their death. This happened because at the time the nations were not united in their allegiance, but torn apart by conflicting loyalties and purposes.”
That was the state of affairs until 1256, when Kublai Khan’s brother, Hülegü, dislodged the Assassins from their Eagle’s Nest. Marco writes of a three-year-long siege that starved out the dangerous band and ended with their deaths. And he confidently reports, “To this moment, there has not been found any such Old Man nor any such assassin.” That was not strictly true, for remnants of the Assassins concealed themselves in the mountains in Marco’s day, their ability to menace their neighbors greatly reduced, but their notorious reputation still vital.
With his artful description, Marco perpetuated the Assassins’ infamy in the Western consciousness, but as he admitted, his account was based on dramatic hearsay rather than personal experience. In reality, the sect, founded by Hasan ibn al-Sabbah in 1090, was more complex than he suggested. Its fanatical members came to be known as Nizaris (so called after their caliph, Nizar ibn al-Sabbah) or as Ismai’ilis (a type of Shiite). They did inhabit a mountain fastness called Alamut, located south of the Caspian Sea. As the sect grew, outposts spread across Persia and Syria, and members were rigidly segregated into classes; potential martyrs and assassins belonged to the highest category. The young Venetian was unaware that Muslims also dreaded and stigmatized the Ismai’ilis, whom they considered dangerously heretical.
MARCO REMAINED uneasy as the Polo company gradually descended from the terrifying castle “through beautiful valleys and through beautiful slopes” to a lush plain “where there is much beautiful grass and much good pasture for cattle and fruit enough and of all things to eat in great abundance.”
The Polo company then made its cautious way eastward through what is now Afghanistan, the nexus of Central Asia. Seven hundred years later, the legendary English voyager Nancy Hatch Dupree would describe the road to Balkh in her book of the same name: “Here gnarled branches, blackened with dampness, form abstract patterns against the glistening snows of winter. These stark pictures soften as spring spreads a blanket of soft green; tulips bloom and children fashion delicate pink wands for the passerby. As spring advances, cherry, apricot, pear, and almond burst into bloom, their beauty sharp against brilliant blue skies or rain-laden black clouds. With summer the valley grows lush and fills with busy activity until the cold night air of fall adds riotous shades of yellow, gold and red before winter descends once more.” Such was the enchanted landscape that greeted the Polo company.
For six days they rode through these idyllic valleys dotted with peaceful Muslim villages and towns, a passage marking the beginning in earnest of their journey to China.
BALKH, their next stopover, was the most renowned and troubled metropolis in Afghanistan. It was, Marco says, “a noble city and great” and “the largest and most beautiful [city] found in those parts.” Or so it had been.
In its ancient prime, Balkh (or Bactria, as it was then known) had been home to the prophet Zarathustra (or Zoroaster), believed to have been born in about 628 BC, who brought a new religion to Persia. Zoroastrianism incorporated fire worship, a belief in the occult, many deities, and, in its later forms, an eternal flame burning at its Temple of Fire. Zarathustra’s mystique spread far and wide. Tradition holds that the prophet was murdered by nomads at the age of seventy-seven as he worshipped before his fire altar in Balkh. Much later, Arabs swept in and imposed Islam, designating Balkh as the Mother of Cities. And so it remained until the Mongols overran the region, and, in Marco’s words, “ravaged and wickedly damaged it.” Marco was referring to the events of 1220, when Genghis Khan led 100,000 cavalry through Balkh, leveling the city for all time.
His methods were exceptionally brutal. The thirteenth-century Persian historian Juvaini wrote that Genghis Khan “commanded that the population of Balkh, small and great, few and many, both men and women, should be driven out onto the plain and divided up according to the usual custom into hundreds and thousands to be put to the sword.” Returning to Balkh, he ordered that “a number of fugitives hidden in nooks and crannies…be killed. And whenever a wall was left standing, the Mongols pulled it down and…wiped out all traces of culture from the region.”
For the Mongols, these atrocities formed a necessary part of empire building. For their victims, the War of Mongol Aggression, as it might be termed, was a calamity without end. “With one stroke,” Juvaini continued, “the regions thereof became a desert and the greater part of the living [became] dead and their skin and bones [became] crumbling dust; and the mighty were humbled.” A devastated fort in the Islamic city of Bamiyan became known as Sharhr-i-Gholghola, “City of Noise.” It was also known as the Silent City, the Screaming City, or even the Cursed City, in memory of the Mongol massacre that exterminated every man, woman, child, and beast. Not even plants survived the Mongol assault. Although it remained a gateway to the Silk Road and the riches of China, Balkh never recovered from the slaughter.
In Balkh, Marco felt the endless pain of conquest. His powers of empathy growing, he could practically hear the screams of the victims as the Mongol invaders destroyed this once-prosperous enclave, and he recoiled at the spectacle of a civilization reduced to ashes by cruel invaders. He preferred boyish reveries of a prior invader, Alexander the Great, and marveled that he was following in the footsteps of Alexander’s army. It was said, and Marco believed, that blue-eyed inhabitants of the area were descended from Alexander’s soldiers (though the soldiers did not necessarily have blue eyes), and that local sheep and horses had as their ancestors the army’s animals. Alexander’s horse, Bucephalus, had reputedly sired local horses whose descendants still roamed the hills.
Marco took h
eart from Alexander’s superhuman example: if the young general could survive these treacherous parts, so could he. The Polos, of course, were merchants and traders, not conquerors, but they faced many of the same obstacles in their quest to lay claim to great wealth. Passing through these violent historical currents as if in a slipstream, the Polos were a commercial army in search of great natural riches.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Opium Eater
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree….
THE POLO COMPANY found the riches they sought in Taican (now the Afghan province of Talikan), where they encountered a precious commodity: salt. Mountains of salt, to be exact, “the best in the world,” and so hard that it took a great iron pick to pry it loose. Salt was a form of currency (Roman soldiers had been paid in salt), salt was preservation; salt was an engine of ancient and medieval economies. There was more to attract the Polos’ interest, for the region’s markets abounded in almonds, pistachios, and corn harvested from the alluring surrounding groves and fields. They were ready to get down to the business of trading.
Marco could not abide the people whom they encountered, “thieves and robbers and murderers” whose misdeeds were fueled by liquor. He reports: “They stay a great deal in taverns,” drinking fermented wine. Still, he was fascinated by their hunting prowess, which extended to the bloody chore of capturing porcupines: “When the hunters wish to catch them and set the very fierce large dogs upon them, the porcupines gather themselves all together and…shake themselves each with great fury and run and then throw the quills, which are lightly fastened on their backs,…at the dogs and men and wound them badly, very often in several places. Then the hunters go upon them and take them.”
Before long, Marco and his father and uncle were on their way once more.
NO ONE in the Polo company, or anyone else at that time, announced that he was going on the Silk Road; there was no such thing. Dealers trading in gems, spices, and silks and other fabrics traveled along a casual but ancient network of tracks, trails, and mountain passes snaking across Central Asia and China, encountering the occasional monk or missionary. The Silk Road as a distinct entity was not so christened until 1877, when Baron Ferdinand von Richtofen, a German geographer, conceived of the evocative but artificial image Seidenstrasse. Although the name suggests romance, luxury, and sensuality, the arduous experience of traveling the route was one of hardship and danger undertaken by those in search of wealth, conquest, or salvation.
Its tributaries extended from Central Asia—precisely where the “Silk Road” began would be impossible to say—to the eastern shore of China. Parts of the route ran south, deep into India. The Polo company entered near the westernmost reaches. Like other merchants, they traveled as part of a large caravan (in Persian, the word karvan meant “company”) and soon found themselves dependent on an extraordinary network of caravansaries—combination dormitories and stables catering to itinerant merchants. Often located near a stream, an oasis, or a village with a mosque, the caravansary gave an appearance of forbidding and secure massiveness, a sheer wall rising several stories above the ground, relieved by air holes near the bottom and small windows near the top. Travelers seeking entrance had to pass through a massive gate, which admitted them, camels and all, and was secured at night with iron chains. Within, they found a courtyard paved with flagstones on which dozens of exhausted camels and donkeys crouched around a central fountain ringed by a cloister, and beyond that area, storerooms and stables. In one corner of the quadrangular structure, a cooking fire burned, the food giving off pungent, mouthwatering aromas. A steward posted near the entrance supplied food and water, and kept order within. Stairways led to small, austere lodging rooms above the stables. Meanwhile, the travelers’ animals were tied up in the serai, or stables, below.
In Afghanistan, the caravansaries were known as robats—from an ancient term for rope to tie a horse. The Polos encountered robats throughout their travels along the Silk Road in Afghanistan; the structures were closely spaced, with a bit less than twenty miles (roughly a day’s journey) separating them. The distance was measured locally in farsakhs, with five farsakhs adding up to a full day’s journey. Caravans usually included both camels and donkeys, handled by a trainer known as a sareban, or camel rider, who rode atop the first camel. A surefooted donkey often preceded the camel, whose head was tied to the donkey’s tail. With this simple but practical method of travel, merchants trekked thousands of miles across Asia.
MARCO WAS NOT the first to travel what came to be called the Silk Road; he had been preceded by generations of Mongols, Turks, Arabs, mercenaries, and monks. Nor was he the first Westerner to describe his adventures in Asia. Nearly a hundred years earlier, Benjamin of Tudela, a rabbi from Navarre, had much the same idea concerning his journey. Benjamin’s travels brought him into contact with local officials, colorful characters, and other merchants. His account described commercial conditions from Barcelona to Constantinople, Baghdad, and points east.
From his vantage point in Baghdad, Benjamin compiled a Book of Travels, covering the years 1160 to 1173. Collecting reliable information about Jews in Palestine, Thebes, Antioch, and Tyre and on Mount Parnassus, he took note of Jewish merchants, dyers, shipowners, peasants, and laborers. He remarked on practices of obscure Jewish sects and wrote an account of a Jewish pseudo-Messiah and mystic in Persia, David Alroy, who had burst into prominence shortly before Benjamin’s excursion. In all, he included the names of 248 leaders of Jewish communities that he encountered throughout the Diaspora.
His curiosity led him to the cult of the Assassins—the same sect that would later alarm Marco Polo. “They fulfill whatever he commands them, whether it be a matter of life or death,” wrote Benjamin of their leader, in words that prefigure the Venetian’s account.
Unlike later merchants, Benjamin of Tudela did not penetrate deeply into Asia. After getting as far east as Baghdad, he returned home safely to Spain by way of Sicily. Nevertheless, he had seen much of the world. Despite his accomplishment, Benjamin of Tudela’s account, written with a collaborator in Hebrew, remained unknown in Europe, except among a handful of Jews. It was not published until 1543, and not translated into other tongues until the seventeenth century.
EUROPE remained in the thrall of legends of Prester John, the Christian leader who supposedly occupied a wealthy empire somewhere in Asia or Africa—no one knew exactly where, but theories abounded. The Church longed to make contact with him in order to fight the infidels inhabiting the gulf between East and West. Prester John was an illusion, but a powerful one, inspiring Christian missionaries to undertake pilgrimages to the East. Beginning in 1235, a series of papal bulls conferred upon missionary friars spiritual powers exceeding those of European bishops. They could, all on their own, undertake to combat heretics, convert infidels, reconcile schismatics—in other words, do whatever it took to bring recognizable, uniform Christianity to those who knew little of Rome, or who belonged to ancient sects that had gone their own way for centuries.
The earliest known missionary to travel to China, pioneering the route that the Polo company would follow, was Giovanni da Pian del Carpini, a Franciscan based in Cologne. Like Buddhist monks, Franciscans combined a vow of strict poverty with strong evangelical tendencies, and like Buddhists, they were suited for the rigors of life along the Silk Road. In 1245, carrying documents from Pope Innocent IV, Carpini and another Franciscan known as Benedict of Poland endured severe privation as they journeyed to an outpost on the bank of the Dnieper River, at the western edge of the Mongol Empire. Then, trekking to another Mongol outpost on the Lower Volga, they underwent the indignity of submitting, or being forced to submit, to a Mongol purification rite involving close proximity to crackling fires.
As they waited for the papal letters to be translated from Latin into Russian, Arabic, and Mongol tongues, they nearly perished from starvation, subsisting on a diet of millet gruel made
with snow melt. Given the treatment to which they were subjected, the two beleaguered missionaries may not have realized that the Mongols were inclined to be respectful of holy men, no matter what their affiliation. Once their identity was confirmed, the missionaries were free to travel east.
Ahead lay a trek of three thousand miles across the Steppe and arid desert of Mongolia. The travelers covered the distance in fifteen months to reach the Mongol capital of Karakorum as a new khan, Güyük, was about to receive his title. Güyük welcomed the two missionaries from the West, heard their summons to Christianity, and replied that he would oblige only if the pope and all the secular leaders of Europe came to Karakorum to swear allegiance to him. Or, in the words of the new khan, “You must come yourself at the head of all your kings and prove to us your fealty and allegiance. And if you disregard the command of God and disobey Our instructions, we shall look upon you as Our enemy. Who ever recognizes and submits to the Son of God…will be wiped out.” It was a dispiriting conclusion to their arduous journey.
In November 1246, the two monks made their way back through wind-whipped snowstorms bearing disappointing news for Pope Innocent IV. Although the mission failed to achieve its stated purpose, it had been a remarkable journey of exploration. Carpini is believed to have been the first Westerner since AD 900 to travel east of Baghdad and return safely from the great no-man’s-land that was Asia.
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