It consists entirely of mountains and sands and valleys. There is nothing at all to eat. Still, his writing also suggests that the route through the desert was well-established at this point in history. In Suchow, Marco Polo took a break from traveling and stayed for a year.
Situated in an oasis that included the Crescent Lake, Suchow was one of the major stops on the southern Silk Road, and also a stop on the main road going from India via Lhasa to Mongolia and southern Siberia. Suchow controlled the entrance to the narrow Hexi Corridor, which was the most important route between North China and the Tarim Basin and Central Asia.
Kublai Khan new that they were on their way, and had sent a royal escort to greet them. The Great Khan bade them rise and received them honorably and entertained them with good cheer. He asked many questions about their condition and how they fared after their departure. The brothers assured him that they had indeed fared well, since they found him well and flourishing.
Then they presented the privileges and letters which the Pope had sent, with which he was greatly pleased, and handed over the holy oil, which he received with joy and prized very hightly. When the Great Khan saw Marco, who was then a young stripling, he asked who he was.
What need to make a long story of it? Great indeed were the mirth and merry-making with which the Great khan and all his Court welcomed the arrival of these emissaries. And they were well served and attended to in all their needs.
They stayed at Court and had a place of honor above the other barons. Kublai Khan took a liking to the young Marco Polo and appointed him to high posts in his administration.
Already well-traveled and capable of speaking several different languages, Polo was sent by the Khan on a number of special missions to various places in China, Burma, and India. Many of the places that Marco Polo visited during these missions were remote ones that no European would visit and write about again until the 19th century. When the Kublai Khan was in his late 70s, the Polo family began to worry about what would happen to them when he died.
The Polos had amassed great amounts of gold and jewelry, but would they be able to take it out of China without the protection of the Khan? At the same time, the Khan really enjoyed their company and was reluctant to let them go.
They were assigned one last task: escorting the Mongol princess Kokachin to her betrothed Persian prince Arghun. Various theories have been proposed, including scurvy, cholera, drowin, pirate attacks, and hostile natives.
When they finally reached Persian land, they found out that Prince Arghun had died two years ago. While in Persia, the Polos also learned that Kublai Khan had died. Even from beyond the grave, the khan was a powerful man, and the Polos were amply supplied with horses, provisions, and escorts that could take them through dangerous passages and show them the right routes.
Eventually, the Polos reached Trebizon, a city on the Black Sea from which they could continue their journey by ship again. Trebizon, today known as Trabzon, was one of the notable stops along the Silk Road and functioned as a gateway to Persia in the southeast and the Caucasus to the northeast. The city was an important destination for Venetian and Genose merchants who sold linen and woolen cloth here.
From the early 13th century to , Trebizon was the capital city of the Empire of Trebizond, and Eastern Orthodox Christian monarchy spread over southern Crimea and the.
They arrived to Venice in the winter of , after being away for 24 years, and loaded with many treasures from the Far East. One of the amazing things that they brought back to Europe was asbestos, which they presented to the Pope. Marco Polo would later write about asbestos in his book, explaining that asbestos cloth was cleaned by throwing it into a fire. Khan's Empire, the largest the world had ever seen, was largely a mystery to those living within the borders of the Holy Roman Empire.
A sophisticated culture outside the reaches of the Vatican seemed unfathomable, and yet that's exactly what the Polo brothers described to confounded Venetians when they arrived home.
In , Polo set out with his father and uncle, Niccolo and Maffeo Polo, for Asia, where they would remain until Unable to recruit the priests that Kublai Khan had requested, they left with only two, who, after getting a taste of the hard journey ahead of them, soon turned back for home.
The Polos' journey took place on land, and they were forced to cut through challenging and sometimes harsh territory. But through it all, Polo reveled in the adventure. His later memory for the places and cultures he witnessed was remarkable and exceptionally accurate. As they made their way through the Middle East, Polo absorbed its sights and smells. His account of the Orient, especially, provided the western world with its first clear picture of the East's geography and ethnic customs.
Hardships, of course, came his way. In what is now Afghanistan, Polo was forced to retreat to the mountains in order to recoup from an illness he'd contracted. Crossing the Gobi desert, meanwhile, proved long and, at times, arduous. It consists entirely of mountains and sands and valleys.
There is nothing at all to eat. Finally, after four years of travel, the Polos reached China and Kublai Khan, who was staying at his summer palace known as Xanadu, a grand marble architectural wonder that dazzled young Polo.
The Polos had originally planned to be gone for only a few years. However, they were away from Venice for more than 23 years. Debate has swirled among historians as to whether Polo ever really made it to China. There is no evidence outside his famous book that he traveled so far east. Yet his knowledge of the culture and its customs are hard to dismiss.
His later account told of Khan's extensive communication system, which served as the foundation for his rule. Polo's book, in fact, devotes five pages to the elaborate structure, describing how the empire's information highway efficiently and economically covered millions of square miles.
Khan's acceptance of the Polos offered the foreigners unparalleled access to his empire. Niccolo and Maffeo were granted important positions in the leader's Court. Polo, too, impressed Khan, who thought highly of the young man's abilities as a merchant. Polo's immersion into the Chinese culture resulted in him mastering four languages. Kublai Khan eventually employed Polo as a special envoy he sent to far-flung areas of Asia never before explored by Europeans, including Burma, India and Tibet.
With Polo, as always, was a stamped metal packet from Khan himself that served as his official credentials from the powerful leader. As the years wore on, Polo was promoted for his work. Over the next three years they slowly trekked through deserts, high mountain passes and other rough terrain, meeting people of various religions and cultures along the way. Kublai, who generally relied on foreigners to administer his empire, took Marco Polo into his court, possibly as a tax collector.
At one point, the Venetian was sent on official business to the port city of Hangzhou then called Quinsai , which, like Venice, was built around a series of canals. Marco Polo also purportedly journeyed across inland China and into present-day Myanmar. After many years of seeking a release from service, the Polos finally secured permission from Kublai to escort a young princess to her intended husband Arghun, the Mongol ruler of Persia.
In the Polos joined a flotilla of 14 boats that set out from Zaitun now Quanzhou, China , stopped briefly in Sumatra and then landed in Persia 18 months later, only to find out that Arghun was dead. He also told partially erroneous self-aggrandizing tales about warfare, commerce, geography, court intrigues and the sexual practices of the people who lived under Mongol rule.
A Genoese-Venetian peace treaty in allowed Marco Polo to return home. He probably never left Venetian territory again. The following year, he married Donata Badoer, with whom he would have three daughters. Not much is known about his golden years except that he continued trading and litigated against a cousin. Marco Polo died in January , having helped to inspire a later generation of explorers.
Everything we know about him comes from his own text and a few Venetian documents; Asian sources never mentioned him. This lack of hard evidence has caused a small number of skeptics to question whether Marco Polo actually made it to China. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. John Cabot or Giovanni Caboto, as he was known in Italian was an Italian explorer and navigator who may have developed the idea of sailing westward to reach the riches of Asia while working for a Venetian merchant.
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