Marco Polo

by Laurence Bergreen

  Despite oft-repeated claims that the first European to visit Zanzibar was Vasco da Gama in 1499, Marco, according to his account, set foot on the island about 205 years before the Portuguese navigator sailed into its harbor. If true, Marco was the first European to do so—or at least the first to write about Zanzibar. Marco’s account captures Zanzibar in its precolonial state, as a primitive and isolated island capable of startling even the experienced Venetian traveler.

  Once there, he feels as if he has entered another world, a very menacing one. The men are all “very large and stout,” so much so that if they were as tall as they are stout, they would “seem without doubt to be giants.” Nevertheless, he says, they are “immensely strong, for they carry a load for four other men who are not of the island. And this is no wonder, for I tell you that [each one] eats food for five men of another country.” These superhumans “are all black and go naked except that they are covered in their natural parts”—much to his relief—“for they have them very large and ugly and horrible to see.” Even their hair takes him aback, “so curly and black like pepper that it could hardly be made to stretch out with water.” And their faces startle him to the point of trauma: “They have so great a mouth and the nose so flat and turned upward the forehead, and beards, and nostrils so thick that it is wonderful. They have large ears, thick lips, turned outward, and eyes so large and so bloodshot and so red that they are a very horrible thing to see; for whoever should see them in another country would say of them that they were devils.”

  The women of this land strike Marco as repulsive, “a very ugly thing to see,” he states. “They have great mouths and large eyes and large, thick, and short noses. They have breasts four times as large as other ordinary women, which adds to the ugliness. They are black as a mulberry and of great stature.” And they also “look like devils.”

  Marco’s exceptionally harsh and racist portrayal of the Zanzibaris raises questions about its authenticity. He may have been conflating tales of nearby East Africa with accounts of Zanzibar, recklessly embellishing as he went. But after venting his spleen, he softens his characterization, as if to make amends, by acknowledging a common interest. “They are great merchants,” he says, “and do great trade.” With this endorsement, he implies that, first impressions notwithstanding, the inhabitants are fully human. To his way of thinking, trading virtually defines their humanity.

  Elephants were bred on the island, and the local merchants made “a great trade of the tusks.” Fascinated, Marco includes a graphic account of elephant breeding rites: “When the bull elephant wishes to pair with the female elephant, he hollows out a great pit in the ground until he may put the female elephant there turned over in the manner of a woman because she has the natural parts far toward the belly, and the bull elephant mounts upon her as if he were a man.”

  The island’s inhabitants, whom Marco considered “good fighters” and “strong”—though not “in proportion to their size”—relied on the elephants in battle, equipping them with “castles of wood” covered with the “skins of wild beasts and with boards.” Outfitted in this manner, they could hold “sixteen to twenty men with lances and with swords and with stones.” Marco says that to prepare the elephants for battle, the warriors “give them plenty to drink of their wine…so that they make them half tipsy, and they do this because they say that when an elephant has drunk of that drink it goes more willingly and becomes more fierce thereby and more proud and is of much better worth for it in the battle.”

  Marco insists, without proof, that the elephants were preyed upon by an even larger beast, the “grifon bird.” Those whom he asked about the strange creature likened the grifons to “immeasurably great” eagles. He reports: “They say it is so great and so strong that one of these birds, without the help of another bird, seizes the elephant with its talons and carries it off high into the air. Then it lets it drop to the ground so that the elephant is all broken to pieces, and then the grifon bird comes down upon the elephant and mounts up on it and tears it and eats it and feeds itself upon it at its will.” It is a sight he would dearly love to see, but the best he can do is convey what he has heard of the improbable spectacle.

  ALTHOUGH MARCO did not visit Ethiopia—did not even claim to have done so—the oversight did not stop him from offering a few more nuggets. He speculated that Prester John, the legendary Christian ruler, might live on in this remote African territory. Relying heavily on hearsay, Marco claims, “The greatest king in all the province is Christian and all the other kings of the province are subject to him.”

  There were six kingdoms, he reported, three of them Christian, and three Saracen—that is to say, Muslim. “I was told,” he says, “that all the Christian people of this province have three golden marks on their faces in [the] form of a cross that they may be known as more noble by others, that is, one on the forehead, two on the cheeks; and the mark that is on the forehead stretches from the forehead to the middle of the nose, and they have one of them on each cheek. And these marks are made with hot iron, and they make them when they are small, and it is for their second baptism with fire, for when they are baptized in water, then…those marks of which I have told you are made.” He also states that “many Jews” inhabit Ethiopia, “and these also bear like marks on their faces, but Jews have two marks, that is, one long line on each cheek.” As for the Saracens, they have “only one such mark alone, that is, from the forehead to the middle of the nose. And they do it with the hot iron.”

  Ethiopian religious customs held special interest for Marco, for the land had been home to his spiritual beacon, “Master Saint Thomas the glorious Apostle.” The saint’s disciple recounts with fascination that Thomas had preached in Ethiopia “and after[ward] he converted some of this people with his preaching and miracles to the Christian faith” before he went to the “province of Maabar in India where, after he had converted infinite people, he was killed, and his most holy body is.”

  Although Marco looked warmly on Ethiopia’s Christian king and people, and longed to see nearby Aden, he admitted that, were he to visit, he would be ostracized, because “merchant Christians are much hated in this kingdom, for the [inhabitants] do not wish to see them, but hate them like their mortal enemies.” That realization came as something of a shock. He had gone to considerable lengths to persuade himself, and others, that he was a Mongol official, a Buddhist student, a gentleman wayfarer. All the while, he had engaged in a search for his identity, trying out the roles of a businessman, storyteller, adventurer. Yet those around him saw through his various guises and regarded him simply as another “merchant Christian.” No matter how far he traveled, even to the ends of the earth, or how well he adapted to his changing surroundings, even to the point of persuading himself that he had become someone else, he had yet to transcend himself.

  Marco Polo had reached the end of his personal quest and of Kublai Khan’s protection. He had seen the world, or what was known of it. But how would he find his way home?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Mongol Princess

  A damsel with a dulcimer

  In a vision once I saw….

  AS KUBLAI KHAN entered a slow, painful decline, Marco and his father and uncle desperately sought release from service. With each passing year, it seemed more likely that they would not live to see Venice again. Worse, if Kublai Khan died while they were still in China, their paizas—and their lives—would be worthless. They might fall victim to his enemies, or whoever seized the throne and wished them out of the way. So a timely release from service was a matter of life and death.

  Marco describes the circumstances behind their deliverance from glorified servitude with considerable care, tracking the course of a fond wish as it developed into an obsession and, finally, a plan. “When Master Niccolò, Master Maffeo, and Master Marco had stayed with the Great Khan at his court [for] many years,” he begins, “they said among themselves that one day they wished to go back to their…native country, for it was
now high time to do so. Though they found themselves very rich in jewels of great value and in gold, an extreme desire to see their native land again was always fixed in their minds; and even though they were honored and favored, they thought of nothing else but this.” Marco summarizes their plight in a manner that is both poignant and realistic: “Seeing that the Great Khan was very old, they feared that if he were to die before their departure they might never be able to return home, because of the length of the way and the infinite perils that threatened them; though they hoped to be able to do this if he were alive.”

  When he judged the moment to be right, Marco’s father, Niccolò, seized his chance. “One day, seeing that the Great Khan was very cheerful, [he] took occasion to beg of him on his knees in the name of all three leave to depart to their home, at which word [the khan] was all disturbed and answered, ‘Why do you wish to go to die on the way? Tell me. If you have need of gold I will give you much more of it than you have at home, and likewise every other thing for which you shall ask.’”

  The khan promised to advance them “whatever honors they might wish” to guarantee their loyalty. His words implied that he considered the Polo company bound to him for life, if not for eternity.

  On bended knee, Niccolò argued, “That which I say is not for want of gold, but it is because in my land I have a wife and by the Christian law I cannot forsake her while she lives.”

  Kublai Khan considered this carefully worded appeal. “On no condition in the world am I willing that you depart from my realm,” he answered, “but I am well content that you go about it where you please.”

  Still frustrated, Niccolò, pleaded, as Marco put it, “very sweetly,” for formal permission to quit the kingdom, only to be undone by his family’s longstanding loyalty to the Mongol leader. “The Great Khan loved them so much, was so much pleased with their deeds, and kept them willingly about him, that for nothing in the world did he give them leave.” Only now did the Polos realize that Kublai Khan might consider their departure a sign of his diminishing power; at this volatile point in his reign, he could not afford that challenge.

  WHEN IT SEEMED that negotiations had reached a standstill, Kublai Khan, inspired by the unlikeliest of circumstances, the effort to find a successor for a distant queen, devised a solution that saved face for all parties.

  As Marco reports, “It happened that the Queen Bolgana, who was wife of Argon, died.” Argon, or Arghun as he was sometimes known, was the “lord of the Levant,” a western kingdom loosely affiliated with the Mongol Empire. At the same time, Argon had been locked in a fierce quarrel with his uncle Acmat Soldan, who had converted to Islam and committed the outrage of stealing his brother’s wives. Argon vowed to avenge this wrong and kill Acmat Soldan, who in turn vowed to kill him, but not before torturing him. The two spent years at war with each other, and eventually Argon won out.

  For the sake of maintaining a semblance of stability in the empire, Kublai Khan was prepared to oversee the line of succession in this distant kingdom. Marco explains that on her deathbed, the queen had expressed the wish “that no lady might sit on her throne nor be wife of Argon if she were not of her line.” Then, he continues, “Argon took three of his barons”—Oulatai, Apusca, and Coja by name—and sent them “very grandly as his messengers to the Great Khan with a very great and fair company in order to ask that he should send him a lady who was of the line of the Queen Bolgana…to marry him.”

  The three emissaries completed the hazardous mission to Kublai Khan, who “received them most honorably and made joy and feasting for them. Then, since King Argon was his very great friend, [Kublai sent] for a lady who had Cocacin for name, who was of the lineage they desired.” This was the Mongol princess known to history as Kokachin. She was seventeen years old, “very fair and amiable,” and she instantly won the emissaries’ approval. Her name, which meant “blue like Heaven,” has often been taken to indicate that her eyes were blue, which would have been highly unusual among the Mongols. More likely, her eyes were dark, and the name, like many Mongol names, included a color, in this case blue, suggestive of Heaven.

  Kublai commanded the three barons, “Take her to Argon your lord, for she is of the family he seeks, so that he may take her safely to wife.”

  In Marco’s telling, their journey sounds like a fairy tale, but it is replete with the awkwardness of reality, beginning with a false start. “When all things necessary had been made ready and a great brigade to escort with honor this new bride to King Argon, the envoys, after taking leave of the Great Khan, set out riding for the space of eight months by that same way they were come.” Soon enough, they encountered trouble. “On the journey they found that by a war newly begun between certain kings of the Tartars the roads were closed, and not being able to go forward they were obliged against their will to return again to the court of the Great Khan, to whom they related all that had befallen them.”

  The reversal of fortune provided the Polo company with a slender chance to escape the Mongol Empire, as Marco explains. “At the same time the ambassadors were come for that lady, Master Marco returned with a certain embassy from India, who was gone as ambassador of the lord and had been or passed through the kingdom of Argon.” Marco was overflowing with mesmerizing tales as he described “the embassy and the other different things that he had seen on his way and how he had gone through foreign provinces and very strange seas, and [he told] many wonderful new things of that country.”

  By virtue of his extensive travels, Marco possessed impressive credentials as a worthy guardian for the young princess on her journey to King Argon. “The three barons who have seen Master Niccolò and Master Maffeo and Master Marco, who were Latins”—that is, Christians—“and wise men, had very great wonder. And when they heard that those [the Polos] had a wished to depart, then they thought and they said among themselves that they wished that they may go with them by sea; for their intention was to return to their country by sea for the sake of the lady, because of the great labor that it is to travel by land…. On the other hand, they would gladly take them [the Polos] as their companions in this journey because they knew that they had seen and explored much of the Indian Ocean and those countries by which they must go, and”—the narrator proudly adds—“especially Master Marco.”

  Marco’s professed expertise in sailing enabled him to secure a commitment from Kublai Khan. “As Marco who had sailed to those lands had said, his Majesty should be content to do them this kindness that they should go by sea, and that these three Latins, that is, Niccolò, Maffeo, and Marco, who had experience in sailing the said seas, must accompany them to the lands of King Argon.”

  Even with this point in their favor, Kublai Khan, a latter-day Pharaoh, still resisted the idea of letting the Polo company go. “Nevertheless, as he could not do otherwise, he consented to all that they asked of him.”

  Displaying the humanity that originally drew Marco to him, Kublai Khan “made them all and three come before him and spoke to them many gracious words of the great love that he bore them, and they should promise that when they had been some time in the land of Christians and at their home, they would return to him.” The Polos, eager to be on their way after years of delay, agreed to this promise without any intention of keeping it. Timing was critical. As was apparent to all, Kublai Khan was nearing the end of his life. They had no choice but to leave now, under any terms they could negotiate.

  The bargain they struck with the Mongol ruler did not allow them complete freedom; Kublai Khan could claim that he had dispatched the Polo company on just another mission in the service of the empire. But no return was planned. Once they completed their task, the Polos would be free to go.

  IT WAS NOW 1292, and Marco Polo was a man of thirty-eight, having spent seventeen years in the service of Kublai Khan. He no longer had occasion to masquerade as someone other than a merchant of Venice, even though he was most memorable, and most convincing, when he pretended to be someone else, a replica capable of surpass
ing the original. Confined within the limits of his own identity, he was diminished. By way of compensation, he no longer had to play the role of dutiful son serving an extended, strenuous apprenticeship to his father and uncle, or that of the charming protégé of the most powerful ruler on the face of the earth. He was simply the itinerant, observant merchant, impressed by ingenuity, dismissive of folly, susceptible to the temptations of the flesh, and moved by faith. The mature Marco cast a cold eye on the dealings around him, seeing these machinations for what they were, not for what his fertile imagination might take them for.

  Despite his disillusionment, Marco was intoxicated by the prospect of returning home. Later, when he came to tell his story, he seems to have intended to describe this turning point in his travels twice, as if to underscore its importance. But his manner of handling it was odd. He devoted a significant part of the prologue to narrating the episode in considerable detail rather than summarizing it. In fact, the description of his departure from Kublai Khan’s court was by far the longest entry in the prologue, and the space devoted to it suggests that Marco regarded it as the most noteworthy event of his entire career in the service of the Mongol Empire.

  With every mile he traveled on the Silk Road and beyond, Marco composed his own epitaph, combining the fragments of experience to form a great, if erratic, epic, romantic yet existential, purposeful yet impulsive. Marco never set out to discover a particular place, and never thought of himself as an explorer—“wayfarer” was the term he used to describe himself. His adventures occurred, and would continue to occur, by accident rather than design. He did not, and could not, plan; he lived by his wits and his talent for improvisation. A wanderer by temperament, he knew how to blend in rather than stand out.