Marco Polo

by Laurence Bergreen

  The convoy bearing the Polo company headed for Acre. The passengers consisted primarily of pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land and Jerusalem, along with the Polo company, two seasoned travelers on a mission to fulfill a vow and an impressionable lad coming of age far from home.

  THE FORTRESS known as Acre stood as a poignant reminder of the former Kingdom of Jerusalem, held in the thirteenth century by Muslims and other groups. Acre itself was subdivided into quarters, each housing representatives of rival states such as Venice and Genoa. The tiny port was so crowded that many ships were forced to anchor far offshore. Christian pilgrims streamed through on their way to Jerusalem.

  Despite its cramped dimensions, Acre claimed two important personages at the time. Accompanied by a retinue of English knights, Prince Edward of England could be found there, allied with the Mongols in his own private crusade against Muslims. The other notable was the papal legate Teobaldo of Piacenza. In the small world of Acre, Edward and Teobaldo were acquainted, and it is possible that Edward also knew of the Polos.

  On returning to Acre, the Polos made straight for their old friend to renew their acquaintance after a two-year lapse. When they met, the elder Polos expressed their wish to obtain oil from the Holy Sepulcher to fulfill their vow to Kublai Khan. Teobaldo gave them permission to proceed to Jerusalem to negotiate for the valuable substance.

  It was here that King Solomon had caused the Temple to be built, and here that Jesus was crucified. And it was from here that the prophet Muhammad ascended to Heaven. (Muslims refer to Jerusalem as al-Quds, “The Holy.”) By the time the Polo company arrived, the city had been under siege for two thousand years, as one conquering army succeeded another, from Romans to Muslims. Each faith—and each army—claimed the city as its own. In Jerusalem, strife and prayer were constants; uncertainty was a way of life.

  All the while, pilgrims led by guides swarmed from one holy shrine to another, as Muslims and Christians competed for ownership of and access to sacred locations and relics. The Polos were only three more pilgrims amid the crowd, but they were on a most unusual mission. To obtain the oil they had promised Kublai Khan, they went to the Holy Sepulcher at the base of the Mount of Olives.

  Despite the misgivings of biblical scholars who say that the Holy Sepulcher may not be the actual site of Jesus’s burial, it continues to be venerated as such, and the Polos had no cause to doubt its authenticity as they pursued the necessary oil.

  The setting (in what is now Old Jerusalem) was described by Ludolph von Suchem: “There dwell in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre ancient Georgians who have the key of the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, and food, alms, candles, and oil for lamps to burn round about the Holy Sepulchre are given them by pilgrims through a little window in the south door of the church.” Along with other pilgrims to this holiest of shrines, the Polos received their oil, for which they probably made a generous contribution. Then they returned to Acre as swiftly as they could.

  LITTLE HAD CHANGED in the Polos’ absence. Teobaldo informed them that the cardinals had failed to elect a new pope, despite more than two years of deliberations. Feeling impatient and emboldened now that they had their consecrated oil, the travelers decided to leave immediately for the court of Kublai Khan rather than wait indefinitely for the election of the next pope.

  They implored Teobaldo, who was, after all, the papal legate, to supply them with official documents that would satisfy the Mongol leader and explain that Pope Clement’s death and the lack of a successor had prevented them from carrying out their mission. “Sir,” they said to Teobaldo, as Marco recalls, “since we see that there is no Apostle, we wish to go back to the great lord”—the Venetians’ reverential expression for the Mongol leader—“because we know that against our will we have stayed too long and waited enough. And so with your good will we have presumed to go back. But one thing we wish to ask of you, may it please you to make privileges and letters certifying that we came to do the embassy to the Pope and found him dead, and have waited if there should be made another, and seeing that after so long a time none has been chosen, you as legate certify all that you have seen.”

  As this speech reveals, the Polos knew how to negotiate with powerful officials, and they received the desired reply: “Since you wish to go back to the great lord it pleases me well.” Although it is doubtful that Teobaldo referred to Kublai Khan as “the great lord,” the legate was eager to use the Polos to establish diplomatic relations with the leader of the Mongols. Even better, Teobaldo promised to inform Kublai Khan as soon as the next pope was elected.

  The Polos believed they had finally assembled everything required of them to return in safety to the Mongol leader, and they proceeded to the point of departure, the Armenian port of Layas, through which they had passed three years earlier on the way home. Despite its diminutive size, Marco reports, Layas bustled with “merchants from Venice, from Pisa, and from Genoa, and from all inland parts [who] come there [to] buy and sell their own things, and keep their warehouses in that city.”

  JUST WHEN conditions approached the ideal, a rebellion broke out, as Marco explains: “A grandson of the Great Khan…went destroying all the roads of the desert, making many great trenches and pits; and this he did so that the armies should not be able to follow him.”

  The uprising stranded the Polos in Layas. As they waited helplessly for the rebellion to subside, they were approached by a courier who brought astonishing news: on September 1, 1271, after thirty-four months of deliberation (the longest in the history of the Papacy), the cardinals had finally elected a new pope, and he was none other than their trusted friend and mentor Teobaldo of Piacenza—or Teobaldo Visconti. “The brothers had great joy at this,” Marco notes.

  Yet the election led to another delay because the courier brought a summons from the newly elected pope. Once again, the Polo brothers returned to Acre, this time under armed escort. The trip was very much worth the trouble. Teobaldo, now the leading figure in Christendom, greeted them effusively and honored them with blessings and feasts. In the interim, the pontiff-elect had considered their proposed mission to Kublai Khan and concluded that it would provide the ideal opportunity to spread Christianity throughout the Mongol Empire and especially China. In this spirit, he offered the services of two friars “who were really the most learned and worthy that were in all that province,” according to Marco. “The one had the name Brother Nicolau de Vicense, the other had the name Brother Guilielme de Tripule.” They came armed with extraordinary powers, both ecclesiastical and material: “privileges, charters, and letters with full authority that they might be able to do everything freely in those parts that the Pope himself can do, that they might be able to make bishops and priests and to absolve and bind as he himself, and he gave them many jewels of crystal and other gifts to give to the Great Khan and his embassy.” In all, the elevation of their friend and protector to the papacy appeared to be a piece of wonderful fortune for the Polos, who headed east with excellent prospects.

  The favorable conditions soon vanished. While traversing Armenia, the Polos incurred the wrath of a local potentate, the sultan Bibara, who threatened to imprison them, or worse. Afraid for their lives, the two learned friars refused to proceed. But the Polo company had not come this far, and waited this long, to turn back when confronted with an obstacle. Confident that they could negotiate with the local tribes they encountered, most likely by bribing them with gems, Niccolò, Maffeo, and Marco stubbornly continued without their papal escort.

  ON MARCH 27, 1272, Teobaldo of Piacenza was consecrated in Rome as Pope Gregory X. By then, his Venetian protégés were launched on an adventure of tremendous length, complexity, and implications for the Church, for the Mongol Empire, and for the delicate and volatile relationship between East and West.

  The Polos’ decision to press on despite all obstacles meant that they were embarking on what many in Christendom would have considered a journey to certain destruction and damnation. To rational minds, it see
med impossible that they would succeed in their quest, a miracle if they even survived the ordeal.

  Yet the Polos looked at matters quite differently. They were inclined to believe that trading opportunities abounded in the East, and that those who were skillful could reap great profits. They did not regard themselves as defenders of the Christian faith, or as diplomats, but as merchants. To their way of thinking, commerce was bound to prevail over the impending clash of civilizations. Now their theory would be put to the test. If correct, they could return to Venice someday as very wealthy men. If false, they might never be heard from again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Apprentice

  And here were forests ancient as the hills,

  Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

  THERE WOULD BE no turning back. Leaving behind the frustrating delays endured in Venice, Acre, and Jerusalem, the Polo company reached Armenia, where, to Marco’s way of thinking, their journey to the heart of the Mongol Empire began in earnest. Contrary to expectations, they found it easier to travel without a conspicuous papal escort attracting notice and entangling them in officialdom.

  They were soon engulfed by doubt. At this early stage, Niccolò and Maffeo were more adept at negotiation and diplomacy than at long-distance travel. The tangle of roads and trails extending before them occasioned confusion. Even in an age of faith, a successful expedition depended on preparation and knowledge leavened with luck, which found expression in timing. In the months ahead, the Polo company would come up short.

  They had planned to make their way south from Armenia by camel or ox, or, if necessary, on foot across hundreds of miles of dangerous mountain trails until they reached the strategically located port city of Hormuz, on the Persian Gulf. From there, they would arrange for passage on a sailboat and navigate the Strait of Hormuz into the Indian Ocean. If they had a particular landfall in mind, Marco does not reveal it; perhaps they intended to decide once they reached Hormuz and took stock of conditions there. Among merchants plying the Indian Ocean, major port cities scattered along India’s western coast were favored destinations. From there, the Polo company could trek overland to the Mongol capital.

  The vague plan placed them in harm’s way. Marco quickly realized that Armenia was among the most bitterly contested regions they planned to traverse. If only things were as they had been in the days of Alexander the Great—or so Marco implies in his frequent and admiring references to that youthful military figure, who cast a giant shadow across the landscape. In 330 BC, Armenia had been Alexander’s base of operations, and his countless descendants were everywhere, or so Marco believed. Alexander was the one figure in antiquity with whom Marco appears to have been familiar, mostly through exposure to Alexander romances, those spurious but entertaining accounts of the heroic conqueror’s deeds; such stories were common in this part of the world, where the Mongols had their own Alexander legends as well.

  Alexander’s armies were succeeded by waves of Muslims, Byzantine subjects, Turks, Egyptian Mamluks, and eventually European Crusaders, all of whom staked claims to Armenia in bloody succession. By the time the Polos reached Armenia, they found it “subject to the lord Great Khan”—that is, Kublai Khan—but with a twist. “Though the inhabitants are Christians,” Marco writes, “they are not rightly of the true faith as the Romans are”—in other words, they were heretics—“and this is for want of teachers, for they were formerly good Christians.” They were devoted to amusing themselves in this “land of great enjoyment.” In days long past, the Armenians had been renowned as valiant warriors, and well-mannered, “but now they are all become very slavish and mean and have no goodness, except that they are very good gluttons”—or so they appeared to the anxious tenderfoot from Venice. Perhaps that situation was for the best, and the vulnerable Polo company survived the time spent traveling through Armenia without incident.

  THE CAUTION young Marco experienced in Armenia turned to revulsion when he encountered “the province of Turkoman,” today’s Turkey. For one thing, he says, the inhabitants “worship Mohammed and hold his religion,” which was off-putting for him. More than that, they “have a brutish law and live like beasts in all things; and they are ignorant people and have a barbarous language.” This was another way of saying that the people of the region were so different from any he had encountered, and so incomprehensible, that he regarded them with conventional European disdain. He did overcome his distaste long enough to remark on their nomadic ways: “Sometimes they stay on mountains, and sometimes on moors according to where they know there is good pasture for their flocks, because they do not plough the land but make their living from flocks alone. And these Turkomans rarely dwell except in the fields with their flocks, and they have garments of skins and houses of felt or skins.”

  Their carpets, on the other hand, attracted his merchant’s eye, already attuned to fine craftsmanship. “The sovereign carpets of the world,” he notes, as if delivering a sales pitch, “and of the most beautiful colors.” He appraises “cloth of crimson silk and of other colors and of gold, very beautiful and rich, in very great quantity.” His keen appreciation suggests that he traded enthusiastically in them, and that their “beautiful and rich” colors helped the Polo company profit from the transactions. The Polos were as happy to trade as to travel.

  TRYING TO ADJUST to life on the road, Marco found the mingling of cultural and spiritual traditions—to say nothing of language, diet, and dress—unnerving. “These Mongols do not care what God is worshipped in their lands,” he exclaims. “If only all are faithful to the lord Khan and quite obedient and give therefore the appointed tribute, and justice is well kept, thou mayest do what pleaseth thee with the soul.” Those living under Mongol rule could do whatever they wished, whether they were “Jew or Pagan or Saracen”—that is, Muslim—“or Christian.”

  This religious freedom was a source of amazement to young Marco, but the Mongols’ attitude toward Christianity baffled him. “They confess…that Christ is Lord, but they say he is a proud Lord because he will not be with other gods but will be God above all others in the world. And so in some places they have a Christ of gold or silver and keep him hidden in some chest, and say that he is the great Lord supreme of the Christians.”

  Marco would have to adapt; the Silk Road was no place for orthodoxy or single-mindedness.

  IN TURKEY, Marco gathered tales of Noah’s Ark, said to perch atop Mount Ararat, the tallest peak in the country. Even as he became aware of the multiplicity of religions all around him, he remained eager for this proof of biblical events concerning “the ship of the world.” As he recalled, the Book of Genesis states that “on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.”

  In the spirit of innocent belief, Marco searched for the evidence, only to be frustrated. In its unlikely resting place, “this ark is seen from very far because the mountain on which it rests is very high, and there is snow there almost all the year, and in one part there is…a large black thing seen from far amidst those snows; but close by nothing of it is seen.” The tantalizing feature was likely a frozen lava field glimpsed from afar, alternately revealed and concealed by shifting snows, not a ship.

  As Marco related the story of the final resting place of the Ark, he lost his enthusiasm for it. He implicitly acknowledged that there was no Ark on Mount Ararat, at least none that he could see—but how wonderful if there were.

  MARCO RETURNED to reality when he reached the thriving commercial center of Mosul, on the Tigris River. Here he had his first taste of a desert empire, with its frenzied bazaars and outpouring of goods. Mosul had been under strict Muslim rule until the Mongols conquered the city in 1182, and by the time the Polo company arrived, it was open to various religions, including Christianity. The tomb of the Old Testament prophet Jonah was to be found here, although Marco was unaware of it. As an aspiring merchant, he more likely became familiar with muslin, the strong, densely woven, unbleached fabric that had long
been locally produced.

  In Mosul, Marco encountered the followers of Nestorius, a fifth-century patriarch of Constantinople who taught that Jesus was divided into two natures, one human and the other divine, loosely bound together in what Nestorians called synapheia, or conjunction. According to the historian Edward Gibbon, Nestorius learned “nicely to discriminate the humanity of his master Christ from the divinity of the Lord Jesus.” But to the Roman Christians of Marco’s time, this notion amounted to heresy, although the issue was more subtle than Gibbon’s offhand remark would suggest. In Nestorian teaching, Mary could be venerated only as the mother of the human Jesus, not as the Mother of God. Rome, in contrast, insisted on the “hypostatic” or fundamental unity of Jesus’ two natures. Intellectuals on all sides of the question debated this subject endlessly, and it is entirely possible that the dispute arose more from varying interpretations of the Greek philosophical terms in which they framed their discussion than from actual differences. Nevertheless, a permanent rift between the Nestorians and Rome remained in place.

  Nestorians established their patriarchate at Baghdad, and their influence expanded throughout Syria, Asia Minor, Iraq, Persia, and even China. In 735, they had applied to the emperor of the Tang dynasty to build a church in the imperial capital, Ch’ang-an (now Xi’an). They received permission and made the city into a Nestorian hub, where they taught their adherents both the Old and New Testaments and occasionally converted Chinese and others. They prospered despite efforts to suppress their church until the end of the Tang dynasty in 907, when they scattered.