Marco Polo

Marco Polo (1254-1324, fl. 1271-1295)

(Travellers | Cities | Routes | Trade Goods | Themes)

Marco Polo's Journey

Mongol Period
World Travellers

William of Rubruck
John of Plano Carpini

Marco Polo (see alternative names) was born in Venice in 1254. In 1260, his father Nicolò and his uncle Maffeo set sail for Constantinople in their own ship, laden with valuable merchandise. For unknown reasons, they later proceeded to the Mongol camp on the Volga, where in exchange for their jewels they received passports and goods. Unable to return to Constantinople because of insecure roads, they headed east, ending up at Bukhara, where they spent three years, again trapped by the upheavals that followed the Mongol conquests.

They were then taken to Karakorum, where Khubilai (Kublai, Qubilai) Khan entrusted them with a letter to the Pope, asking him to send 100 men learned in Christian doctrine to the Mongol court. Transformed from merchants to ambassadors, they made their way back to Venice, where they learned that Pope Clement IV had died in 1268 and no successor had yet been elected.

In 1270, Nicolò and Maffeo set out again for the East, this time with Marco, now aged 15. The Polos had not been able to fulfil Khubilai’s request for '100 wise men', and were worried about their reception in Karakorum. Therefore they went to Acre, in Palestine, where the Dominican Order had a chapter house, and engaged two Dominicans to accompany them. The travellers soon learned that Muslim armies were invading Armenia and the country was in turmoil. The Dominicans refused to go further and turned back. From Acre the Polos visited Jerusalem, where they obtained some oil from the lamps of the Holy Sepulchre for Khubilai’s mother, a Christian. Hoping this gift would be enough to ensure their safety, they set out on the long road to Karakorum. It took them three and a half years.

We do not know the exact itinerary followed by the Polo family, or even if they visited all the places described in Marco’s book. Despite the fact that they had not fulfilled his request, Khubilai received them well. Impressed by Marco’s intelligence, the Khan enlisted him in his service, as he had so many other foreigners of the most varied origins. Although Marco could not read Chinese, he claimed to know four languages in four different scripts – but the transcriptions of place-names in his book do not bear this out. The Polos seem to have spent a year together in Ganzhou (Kan-chou). Marco was sent on a number of missions to various parts of China, and even to India, apparently as a sort of financial inspector. He mentions many important places in China and Southeast Asia, but his accounts of them are clearly based on hearsay.

The Polos had frequently sought permission to return home to Venice, and had been denied. Returning from India, Marco found at Khubilai’s court three envoys from Arghun Khan, ruler of Iran and Iraq, who were seeking a bride for their ruler. Once again the overland route to the Islamic heartlands was disrupted, and Marco suggested that he accompany the party by sea. The Venetians, the envoys, and the bride Princess Kököchin set sail from Quanzhou (Ch’üan-chou, which Marco Polo called Zayton) with a fleet of 14 four-masted ships. The Polos are the first Europeans known to have taken the sea route west from China. From Hormuz they crossed Iran and eastern Turkey to Trebizond, whence they sailed to Constantinople and finally to Venice, which they reached in 1295 after an absence of 25 years.

In 1298, Marco was captured in a naval engagement between Venice and Genoa and held in Genoa as a hostage. Here he met a fellow prisoner named Rustichello, a writer of popular romances, and the two of them collaborated to produce the book that ensured Marco’s fame. It is a mixture of sober fact and wondrous tales, many of oriental origin. The material manifestly borrowed from such popular works as the Romance of Alexander may be additions by Rustichello. The audience for which the book was composed expected the marvellous, as the Orient was the land of marvels: for most medieval readers, the very elements that inspire scepticism in a modern scholar were signs of authenticity. By far the bulk of the information in the Travels, however, is the fruit of careful observation, and can be corroborated from other sources. Information on places Marco did not actually visit often came from eyewitness accounts by those who had been there. The Travels of Marco Polo present a colourful and basically reliable panorama of the East.

Marco Polo died in 1324, the year before Ibn Battuta set off on his own 25-year odyssey.