China
and Europe were strangers in AD1265. The
Himalaya Mountains and the Gobi Desert were natural boundaries that
were difficult to cross. Niccolo and Maffeo Polo were two Italian
merchants from Venice. They made the five year journey along the
Silk Road to China. The Polos met emperor Kublai Khan, who was fascinated
by their stories of their homeland.
The brothers returned to Venice and
set out on a second journey
to China in 1271. They were accompanied by Marco
Polo, Nicolo's seventeen year old son. They encountered Persians,
Turks, Mongols, and many other cultures before reaching China in
1274.
Kublai Khan was delighted by the
return of the Polos and employed them for the next seventeen years.
Kublai Khan was a Mongol. He mistrusted the Chinese people and was
more comfortable with the Polos, who, like himself, were foreigners.
The Polos worked for
Kublai Kahn for seventeen years, but wanted to return home. Kublai
Khan was nearing eighty years old and his death might have been
dangerous for a small group of isolated foreigners. A Mongol princess
was about to be sent by sea to become the bride of Arghum Khan,
a Persian prince who lived in the modern nation of Iran. The Polos
offered
to accompany the princess, and Kublai Khan Khan granted his permission
for the Italians to accompany her on their way home to Venice.
The Polos sailed south aboard fourteen
ships with six hundred people aboard. The fleet stopped on the island
of Sumatra for five months to avoid monsoon storms. Marco noticed
that on Sumatra, the North Star seemed to have dipped below the
horizon. We now know that this is because they were in the Southern
Hemisphere. When they reached their destination, they learned that
Arghum Khan has died, so they gave the princess to his son. The
Polos finally returned to Venice in 1295, but not before they were
robbed of most of their possessions while in Turkey.
Soon after the Polos returned home,
Venice went to war with the rival city-state of Genoa. Genoa captured
Marco Polo and sent him to prison. There he met Rustichello, a popular
writer of romance stories. Marco reported his twenty-five year Asian
adventure to his fellow prisoner. Their combined work became one
of the most influential books in history, the Description of
the World, now known more commonly as the Adventures of Marco
Polo.
The Description of the World
was written before the invention of the printing press, so copies
were made by hand. The book delighted its readers and stimulated
interest in China. Christopher Columbus owned a copy and studied
it closely before beginning his journey in 1492 to what he thought
would be China. Some observers saw Marco
Polo as an astute observer with a keen memory. Others argue
that Marco Polo made up his stories based on gossip and stories
he heard. Marco failed to mention the Great Wall of China, tea,
or the Chinese practice of binding the feet of women. Kublai Khan's
records make no mention of the Polos. As an old man, Marco
was asked if he invented the stories in his book. His answer was
that he barely told half of what he actually knew.
