Marco Polo

Mosaic Palazzo Tursi

Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 1
 Marco Polo and His Travels

"When a man is riding through this desert by night and for some reason -falling asleep or
anything else -he gets separated from his companions and wants to rejoin them, he hears spirit
voices talking to him as if they were his companions, sometimes even calling him by name. Often
these voices lure him away from the path and he never finds it again, and many travelers have
got lost and died because of this. Sometimes in the night travelers hear a noise like the clatter of
a great company of riders away from the road; if they believe that these are some of their own
company and head for the noise, they find themselves in deep trouble when daylight comes and
they realize their mistake. There were some who, in crossing the desert, have been a host of men
coming towards them and, suspecting that they were robbers, returning, they have gone
hopelessly astray....Even by daylight men hear these spirit voices, and often you fancy you are
listening to the strains of many instruments, especially drums, and the clash of arms. For this
reason bands of travelers make a point of keeping very close together. Before they go to sleep
they set up a sign pointing in the direction in which they have to travel, and round the necks of
all their beasts they fasten little bells, so that by listening to the sound they may prevent them
from straying off the path."
---- Marco Polo, Travels

Marco Polo (1254-1324), is probably the most famous Westerner traveled on the Silk Road. He
excelled all the other travelers in his determination, his writing, and his influence. His journey
through Asia lasted 24 years. He reached further than any of his predecessors, beyond Mongolia
to China. He became a confidant of Kublai Khan (1214-1294). He traveled the whole of China
and returned to tell the tale, which became the greatest travelogue.
The Polo Brothers
In 1260 two Venetian merchants arrived at Sudak, the Crimean port. The brothers Maffeo and
Niccilo Polo went on to Surai, on the Volga river, where they traded for a year. Shortly after a
civil war broke out between Barka and his cousin Hulagu, which made it impossible for the
Polos to return with the same route as they came. They therefore decide to make a wide detour to
the east to avoid the war and found themselves stranded for 3 years at Bukhara.
The marooned Polo brothers were abruptly rescued in Bukhara by the arrival of a VIP emissary
from Hulagu Khan in the West. The Mongol ambassador persuaded the brothers that the Great
Khan would be delighted to meet them for he had never seen any Latin and very much wanted to
meet one. So they journeyed eastward. They left Bukhara, Samarkand, Kashgar, then came the
murderous obstacle of the Gobi desert. Through the northern route they reached Turfan and
Hami, then headed south-east to Dunhuang. Along the Hexi Corridor, they finally reached the
new capital of the Great Khan, Bejing in 1266.
The Great Khan, Mangu's brother, Kublai, was indeed hospitable. He had set up his court at
Beijing, which was not a Mongol encampment but an impressive city built by Kublai as his new
capital after the Mongols took over China in 1264 and established Yuan dynasty (1264-1368).
Kublai asked them all about their part of the world, the Pope and the Roman church. Niccolo and

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Matteo, who spoke Turkic dialects perfectly, answered truthfully and clearly. The Polo brothers
were well received in the Great Khan's capital.
One year later, the Great Khan sent them on their way with a letter in Turki addressed to Pope
Clement IV asking the Pope to send him 100 learned men to teach his people about Christianity
and Western science. He also asked the Pope to procure oil from the lamp at the Holy Sepulchre
in Jerusalem.
To make sure the brothers would be given every assistance on their travels, Kublai Khan
presented them with a golden tablet (or paiza in Chinese, gerege in Mongolian) a foot long and
three inches wide and inscribed with the words: "By the strength of the eternal Heaven, holy be
the Khan's name. Let him that pays him not reverence be killed." The golden tablet was the
special VIP passport, authorizing the travelers to receive throughout the Great Khan's dominions
such horses, lodging, food and guides as they required. It took the Polos three full years to return
home, in April 1269.

Although the Polo brothers blazed a trail of their own on their first journey to the East, they were
not the first Europeans to visit the Mongols on their home ground. Before them Giovanni di
Piano Carpini in 1245 and Guillaume de Rubrouck in 1253 had made the dangerously journey to
Karakorum and returned safely; however the Polos traveled farther than Carpini and Rubrouck
and reached China.
Marco Polo's Birth and Growing Up
According to one authority, the Polo family were great nobles originating on the coast of
Dalmatia. Niccolo and Maffeo had established a trading outpost on the island of Curzola, off the
coast of Dalmatia; it is not certain whether Marco Polo was born there or in Venice in 1254. The
place Marco Polo grew up, Venice, was the center for commerce in the Mediterranean. Marco
had the usual education of a young gentleman of his time. He had learned much of the classical
authors, understood the texts of the Bible, and knew the basic theology of the Latin Church. He
had a sound knowledge of commercial French as well as Italian. From his later history we can be
sure of his interest in natural resources, in the ways of people, as well as strange and interesting
plants and animals.
Marco Polo was only 6 years old when his father and uncle set out eastward on their first trip to
Cathay (China). He was by then 15 years old when his father and his uncle returned to Venice
and his mother had already passed away. He remained in Venice with his father and uncle for
two more years and then three of them embarked the most couragous journey to Cathay the
second time.
The Long and Difficult Journey to Cathay
At the end of year 1271, receiving letters and valuable gifts for the Great Khan from the new
Pope Tedaldo (Gregory x), the Polos once more set out from Venice on their journey to the east.
They took with them 17-year-old Marco Polo and two friars. The two friars hastily turned back
after reaching a war zone, but the Polos carried on. They passed through Armenia, Persia, and
Afghanistan, over the Pamirs, and all along the Silk Road to China.

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Avoiding to travel the same route the Polos did 10 years ago, they made a wide swing to the
north, first arriving to the southern Caucasus and the kingdom of Georgia. Then they journeyed
along the regions parallel to the western shores of the Caspian Sea, reaching Tabriz and made
their way south to Hormuz on the Persian Gulf. They intended to take the sea route to the
Chinese port. From Hormuz, however, finding the ships "wretched affairs....only stitched
together with twine made from the husk of the Indian nut", they decided to go overland to
Cathay and continued eastwards. From Homurz to Kerman, passing Herat, Balkh, they arrived at
Badakhshan, where Marco Polo convalesced from an illness and stayed there for a year. On the
move again, they found themselves on "the highest place in the world, the Pamirs", with its name
appeared in the history for the first time.
When the Polos arrived at the Taklamakan desert (or Taim Basin), this time they skirted around
the desert on the southern route, passing through Yarkand, Khotan, Cherchen, and Lop-Nor.
Marco's keen eye picked out the most notable peculiarities of each. At Yarkand, he described
that the locals were extremely prone to goiter, which Marco blamed on the local drinking water.
In the rivers of Pem province were found "stones called jasper and chalcedony in plenty" - a
reference to jade. At Pem, "when a woman's husband leaves her to go on a journey of more than
20 days, as soon as he has left, she takes another husband, and this she is fully entitled to do by
local usage. And the men, wherever they go, take wives in the same way." Cherchen was also a
noted jade source.
It is the Gobi desert where Marco Polo left us the feeling of awe for the vastness of desert and its
effects on those hardy enough to penetrate it: "This desert is reported to be so long that it would
take a year to go from end to end; and at the narrowest point it takes a month to cross it. It
consists entirely of mountains and sands and valleys. There is nothing at all to eat." Despite the
dangers encountered during the Gobi crossing, Marco's account suggests that the route was safe
and well established during Mongol's reign. After they left Gobi, the first major city they passed
was Suchow (Dunhuang), in Tangut province, where Marco stayed for a year. Marco also noted
the center of the asbestos industry in Uighuristan, with its capital Karakhoja; he added that the
way to clean asbestos cloth was to throw it into a fire, and that a specimen was brought back
from Cathay by the Polos and presented to the Pope.

The fact that Marco was not a historian did not stop him offering a long history about the
Mongols. He provided a detailed account of the rise of Mongol and Great Khan's life and empire.
He described the ceremonial of a Great Khan's funeral - anyone unfortunate enough to encounter
the funeral cortege was put to death to serve their lord in the next world, Mangu Khan's corpse
scoring over twenty thousand victims. He told of life on the steppes, of the felt-covered yurt
drawn by oxen and camels, and of the household customs. What impressed Marco most was the
way in which the women got on with the lion's share of the work: "the men do not bother
themselves about anything but hunting and warfare and falconry." In term of marriage, Marco
described that the Mongols practiced polygamy. A Mongol man could take as many wives as he
liked. On the death of the head of the house the eldest son married his father's wives, but not his
own mother. A man could also take on his brother's wives if they were widowed. Marco rounded
off his account of Mongol's home life by mentioning that alcoholic standby which had impressed
Rubrouck before him: "They drink mare's milk subjected to a process that makes it like white
wine and very good to drink. It is called koumiss"

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Marco's account of the Mongol's life is particularly interesting when compared to the tale of
many wonders of Chinese civilization which he was soon to see for himself. Kublai Khan,
though ruling with all the spender of an Emperor of China, never forgot where he had come
from: it is said that he had had seeds of steppe grass sown in the courtyard of the Imperial Palace
so that he could always be reminded of his Mongol homeland. During his long stay in Cathay
and Marco had many conversations with Kublai, Marco must have come to appreciate the Great
Khan's awareness of his Mongol origins, and the detail in which the Mongols are described in his
book suggests that he was moved to make a close study of their ways.
Finally the long journey was nearly over and the Great Khan had been told of their approach. He
sent out a royal escort to bring the travellers to his presence. In May 1275 the Polos arrived to the
original capital of Kublai Khan at Shang-tu (then the summer residence), subsequently his winter
palace at his capital, Cambaluc (Beijing).
By then it had been 3 and half years since they left Venice and they had traveled total of 5600
miles on the journey. Marco recalled it in detail on the greatest moment when he first met the
Great Khan:

" They knelt before him and made obeisance with the utmost humility. 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 highly. When the Great
Khan saw Marco, who was then a young stripling, he asked who he was. 'Sir' said Messer
Niccolo, 'he is my son and your liege man.' 'He is hearty welcome,' said the Khan. 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."
Years Serviced in Khan's Court
Marco, a gifted linguist and master of four languages, became a favorite with the khan and was
appointed to high posts in his administration. He served at the Khan's court and was sent on a
number of special missions in China, Burma and India. Many places which Marco saw were not
seen again by Europeans until last century. Marco went on great length to describe Kublia's
capital, ceremonies, hunting and public assistance, and they were all to be found on a much
smaller scale in Europe. Marco Polo fell in love with the capital, which later became part of
Beijing, then called Cambaluc or Khanbalig, meant 'city of the Khan.' This new city, built
because astrologers predicted rebellion in the old one, was described as the most magnificent city
in the world. He marveled the summer palace in particular. He described "the greatest palace that
ever was". The walls were covered with gold and silver and the Hall was so large that it could
easily dine 6,000 people. The palace was made of cane supported by 200 silk cords, which could
be taken to pieces and transported easily when the Emperor moved. There too, the Khan kept a
stud of 10,000 speckless white horses, whose milk was reserved for his family and for a tribe
which had won a victory for Genghis Khan." fine marble Palace, the rooms of which are all gilt
and painted with figures of men and beasts....all executed with such exquisite art that you regard
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them with delight and astonishment." This description later inspired the English poet Coleridge
to write his famous poem about Kublai Khan's "stately pleasure-dome" in Xanadu (or Shang-du).
However there were some phenomena which were totally new to him. The first we have already
met, asbestos, but the other three beggared his imagination, and they were paper currency, coal
and the imperial post.
The idea of paper substituting gold and silver was a total surprise even to the merchantile Polos.
Marco attributed the success of paper money to Kublai stature as a ruler. "With these pieces of
paper they can buy anything and pay for anything. And I can tell you that the papers that reckon
as ten bezants do not weight one." Marco's expressions of wonder at "stones that burn like logs"
show us how ignorant even a man of a leading Mediterranean sea-power could be in the 13th
century. Coal was by no means unknown in Europe but was new to Marco:

“It is true that they have plenty of firewood, too. But the population is so enormous and there
are so many bath-houses and baths constantly being heated, that it would be impossible to
supply enough firewood, since there is no one who does not visit a bath-house at least 3 times a
week and take a bath - in winter every day, if he can manage it. Every man of rank or means has
his own bathroom in his house....so these stones, being very plentiful and very cheap, effect a
great saving of wood."
Marco was equally impressed with the efficient communication system in the Mongol world.
There were three main grades of dispatch, which may be rendered in modern terms as 'second
class', 'first class', and 'On His Imperial Majesty's Service: Top Priority'. 'Second class' messages
were carried by foot-runners, who had relay-stations three miles apart. Each messenger wore a
special belt hung with small bells to announce his approach and ensure that his relief was out on
the road and ready for a smooth takeover. This system enabled a message to cover the distance of
a normal ten-day journey in 24 hours. At each three miles station a log was kept on the flow of
messages and all the routes were patrolled by inspectors. 'First class' business was conveyed on
horseback, with relay-stages of 25 miles. But the really important business of Kublai empire was
carried by non-stop dispatch-riders carrying the special tablet with the sign of the gerfalcon. At
the approach to each post-house the messenger would sound his horn; the ostlers would bring out
a ready-saddled fresh horse, the messenger would transfer to it and gallop straight off. Marco
affirmed that those courier horsemen could travel 250 or 300 miles in a day.
Marco Polo traveled a great deal in China. He was amazed with China's enormous power, great
wealth, and complex social structure. China under the Yuan (The Mongol Empire) dynasty was a
huge empire whose internal economy dwarfed that of Europe. He reported that iron manufacture
was around 125,000 tons a year (a level not reached in Europe before the 18th century) and salt
production was on a prodigious scale: 30,000 tons a year in one province alone. A canal-based
transportation system linked China's huge cities and markets in a vast internal communication
network in which paper money and credit facilities were highly developed. The citizens could
purchase paperback books with paper money, eat rice from fine porcelain bowls and wear silk
garments, lived in prosperous city that no European town could match.

Kublai Khan appointed Marco Polo as an official of the Privy Council in 1277 and for 3 years he
was a tax inspector in Yangzhou, a city on the Grand Canal, northeast of Nanking. He also
visited Karakorum and part of Siberia. Meanwhile his father and uncle took part in the assault on

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the town of Siang Yang Fou, for which they designed and constructed siege engines. He
frequently visited Hangzhou, another city very near Yangzhou. At one time Hangzhou was the
capital of the Song dynasty and had a beautiful lakes and many canals, like Marco's hometown,
Venice. Marco fell in love with it.
Coming Home
The Polos stayed in Khan's court for 17 years, acquiring great wealth in jewels and gold. They
were anxious to be on the move since they feared that if Kublai - now in his late seventies - were
to die, they might not be able to get their considerable fortune out of the country. The Kublai
Khan reluctantly agreed to let them return after they escorted a Mongol princess Kokachin to
marry to a Persian prince, Arghun.
Marco did not provide full account of his long journey home. The sea journey took 2 years
during which 600 passengers and crewed died. Marco did not give much clue as to what went
wrong on the trip, but there are some theories. Some think they may have died from scurvy,
cholera or by drowning; others suggest the losses were caused by the hostile natives and pirate
attacks. This dreadful sea voyage passed through the South China Sea to Sumatra and the Indian
Ocean, and finally docked at Hormuz. There they learned that Arghun had died two years
previously so the princess married to his son, prince Ghazan, instead. In Persia they also learned
of the death of Kublai Khan. However his protection outlived him, for it was only by showing
his golden tablet of authority that they were able to travel safely through the bandit-ridden
interior. Marco admitted that the passports of golden tablets were powerful:
"Throughout his dominions the Polos were supplied with horses and provisions and everything
needful......I assure you for a fact that on many occasions they were given two hundred
horsemen, sometimes more and sometimes less, according to the number needed to escort them
and ensure their safe passage from one district to another."
From Trebizond on the Black Sea coast they went by sea, by way of Constantinople, to Venice,
arriving home in the winter of 1295.
The Book, Life in Venice and Controversies
Three years after Marco returned to Venice, he commanded a galley in a war against the rival
city of Genoa. He was captured during the fighting and spent a year in a Genoese prison - where
one of his fellow-prisoners was a writer of romances named Rustichello of Pisa. It was only
when prompted by Rustichello that Marco Polo dictated the story of his travels, known in his
time as The Description of the World or The Travels of Marco Polo. His account of the wealth of
Cathay (China), the might of the Mongol empire, and the exotic customs of India and Africa
made his book the bestseller soon after. The book became one of the most popular books in
medieval Europe and the impact of his book on the contemporary Europe was tremendous. It was
known as Il Milione, The Million Lies, and Marco earned the nickname of Marco Milione
because few believed that his stories were true and most Europeans dismissed the book as mere
fable.
In the summer of 1299 a peace was concluded between Venice and Genoa, and after a year of
captivity, Marco Polo was released from the prison and returned to Venice. He was married to
Donata Badoer and had three daughters. He remained in Venice until his death in 1324, aged 70.
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At his deathbed, he left the famous epitaph for the world: "I have only told the half of what I
saw!" In Marco's will, he left his wife and three daughters substantial amount of money, though
not an enormous fortune as Marco boasted. He also mentioned his servant, Peter, who came from
the Mongols, was to set free. We also learned that 30 years after his return home, Marco still
owned a quantity of cloths, valuable pieces, coverings, brocades of silk and gold, exactly like
those mentioned several times in his book, together with other precious objects. Among them
there was "golden tablet of command" that had been given him by the Great Khan on his
departure from the Mongol capital.
Many people took his accounts with a grain of salt and some skeptics question the authenticity of
his account. Many of his stories have been considered as fairytales: the strange oil in Baku and
the monstrous birds which dropped elephants from a height and devoured their broken carcasses.
His Travels made no mention about the Great Wall. While traveled extensively in China, Marco
Polo never learned the Chinese language nor mentioned a number of articles which are part of
everyday life, such as women's foot-binding, calligraphy, or tea. In additional, Marco Polo's
name was never occurred in the Annals of the Empire (Yuan Shih), which recorded the names of
foreign visitors far less important and illustrious than the three Venetians. So did Marco Polo
ever go to China?
Contribution
Fiction or not, his Travels has captured readers through the centuries. Manuscript editions of his
work ran into the hundreds within a century after his death. The book was recognized as the most
important account of the world outside Europe that was available at the time. Today there are
more than 80 manuscript copies in various versions and several languages around the world.
We see that Marco Polo was in every way a man of his time. He was quite capable of
comprehending cultures completely alien in spirit to his own. Traversing thousands of miles, on
horseback mostly, through uncharted deserts, over steep mountain passes, exposed to extreme
weathers, to wild animals and very uncivilized tribesmen, Marco's book has become the most
influential travelogue on the Silk Road ever written in a European language, and it paved the
way for t he arrivals of thousands of Westerners in the centuries to come.
Today there are a school of experts conducting research and authentication of Marco Polo and
his Travels. Much of what he wrote, which regarded with suspicion at medieval time was,
confirmed by travelers of the 18th and 19th centuries. Marco Polo is receiving deeper respect
than before because these marvelous characters and countries he described did actually exist.
What's more interesting is that his book becomes great value to Chinese historians, as it helps
them understand better some of the most important events of the 13th century, such as the siege
of Hsiangyang, the massacre of Ch'angchou, and the attempted conquests of Japan. The extant
Chinese sources on these events are not as comprehensive as Marco's book.
Although Marco Polo received little recognition from the geographers of his time, some of the
information in his book was incorporated in some important maps of the later Middle Ages, such
as the Catalan World Map of 1375, and in the next century it was read with great interest by
Henry the Navigator and by Columbus. His system of measuring distances by days' journey has
turned out for later generations of explorers to be remarkably accurate. According to Henry Yule,
the great geographer: "He was the first traveler to trace a route across the whole longitude of

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Asia, naming and describing kingdom after kingdom.....". Today topographers have called his
work the precursor of scientific geography.
However Marco Polo's best achievement is best said with his own words in his own book:
" I believe it was God's will that we should come back, so that men might know the things that
are in the world, since, as we have said in the first chapter of this book, no other man, Christian
or Saracen, Mongol or pagan, has explored so much of the world as Messer Marco, son of
Messer Niccolo Polo, great and noble citizen of the city of Venice."
Silkroad foundation 1997-2000

Illuminations on the Manuscripts of

Rusticien de Pise (Rustichello da Pisa)
Patricia M. Gathercole Italica, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Dec., 1967), pp. 400-408 Published by: American
Association of Teachers of Italian

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Cycnos | Volume 24 n°1 Vladimir Nabokov,
Annotating vs Interpreting Nabokov-
Monica Manolescu :
“Verbal Adventures in the Inky Jungle”: Marco Polo and John Mandeville in Vladimir
Nabokov’s The Gift

Abstract
This paper seeks to examine a particular facet of Nabokov’s authorial presence, namely the
kinship between the figures of the author and the explorer. The act of exploration emerges as a
powerful topos in Nabokov’s fiction and drama, generally triggered by the fascination for the
blank spot that still awaits a name. Mirroring the foundational gesture of the explorer, the author
draws the cartography of a new fictional world and endows it with a nominal identity.
I would like to argue that one of the possible sources for the unstable pronominal behavior
typical of The Gift can be found in Marco Polo’s Description of the World, a text produced
jointly by Marco Polo and a professional scribe, Rusticello di Pisa. John Mandeville’s Travels,
with their source appropriation and mystification, also seem to provide a relevant textual model.

Texte intégral
1 This paper deals with the place and role of Marco Polo and John Mandeville in Nabokov’s last
Russian novel, The Gift, and with the literary models they seem to provide for the novel’s
protagonist, Fyodor Godounov-Cherdyntsev. The prudent verb “seem” in the previous sentence
renders the idea of a putative source on which this paper would like to focus, together with the
difficulty of talking about something that only seems to exist, but in the existence of which the
Nabokovian critic strongly, fiercely wants to believe. Starting from my personal intertextual
explorations and speculations related mainly to the figure of Marco Polo and, secondarily,
Mandeville in The Gift, I would like to address a more general question having to do with the
ways in which critical discourse is tempted to move on from annotation to interpretation when it
investigates Nabokov’s intertextual practices. This is of course a general question in literary
studies, famously discussed by Umberto Eco in The Limits of Interpretation, and it is always a
fruitful question: how far can the reader stray from a visible intertext in order to establish more
subtle, complex and ultimately far-fetched links between the two texts? How far can one go once
one has clutched the inviolable shade of an intertext (as Kinbote puts it, quoting Matthew
Arnold), an intertext in which one sees not “flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense” (Nabokov,
Pale Fire 63)?
2 In the case of Nabokov’s fiction, critical discourse has sometimes started from details
(chronological, intertextual or other) in order to build wholescale interpretations.1 “The detail is
all”, so Nabokov used to proclaim, and the details in his texts are a good point to start a
discussion on annotation and interpretation because of the patterns they form, because of the
constellations of meaning they build. To the (re)reader, patterns of details may become mirages
Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 10
leading him astray, but the detour they create is an exciting one because of the opening effects it
creates, because of the new light it sheds on the text. My discussion of Marco Polo and
Mandeville in The Gift is precisely an example of such a pursuit of mirages. However, mirages
have an intrinsic beauty and there is always a great deal of enthusiasm involved in literary
research and in the discovery of landmarks, of signs leading to Nabokov’s sources and to the
ways he used sources. This paper is both a celebration of intertextual investigations and a
convoluted question: to what extent should one trust one’s intuition of patterns of echoing
relations between Nabokov’s texts and the texts he alludes to without losing what Eco calls
“hermeneutic common sense” (Eco 133), that sensible faculty which keeps the reader or critic on
the right track, if such a thing exists?
3 Nabokov’s interest in explorers and naturalists, particularly in The Gift, has been studied in
great detail by Dieter E. Zimmer and Sabine Hartmann in a paper published in Nabokov Studies
in 2003, which uncovers an impressive amount of intertextual references present in chapter 2 of
The Gift, the chapter which deals with Fyodor’s abortive biography of his famous father
(Hartmann and Zimmer, “The Amazing Music of Truth”). Dieter E. Zimmer has also recently
published a beautiful book on the Asian travels in The Gift (Zimmer, Nabokov reist im Traum in
das Innere Asiens). Thus, the dense structure of references and allusions that Fyodor builds when
talking about his father and appropriating his travels has become transparent, with whole quotes
and episodes being traced back to famous or obscure sources.
4 Nabokov’s fascination with geographical exploration is closely linked to his proficiency as an
entomologist longing, like Pilgram in “The Aurelian”, to stand “waist-deep in lush grass” and
“net the rarest butterflies of distant countries” (Nabokov, “The Aurelian” 252). In Speak,
Memory Nabokov refers to “the terra-incognita blanks map makers of old used to call ‘sleeping
beauties’” (Nabokov, Speak, Memory 136). Undiscovered and unnamed spaces seen as sleeping
beauties await the kiss of naming, of representation, of writing. It is through this magic encounter
that fairy tales are born, and for Nabokov great novels are great fairy tales. The sleeping beauties
attract not only the naturalist, but also the writer, for whom the discovery of a new world is,
essentially, the invention of this new world. Writing and exploration are inseparable, since their
common goal is to name the nameless:

The writer is the first man to map it [the new world of the book] and to name the natural objects
it contains. Those berries there are edible. That speckled creature that bolted across my path
might be tamed. That lake between those trees will be called lake Opal or, more artistically,
Dishwater Lake. That mist is a mountain – and that mountain must be conquered. Up a trackless
slope climbs the master artist, and at the top, on a windy ridge, whom do you think he meets?
The panting and happy reader, and there they spontaneously embrace and are linked forever if
the book lasts forever. (Nabokov, Lectures on Literature 2)
5 In chapter 2 of The Gift, the naturalist-explorer and the writer correspond to two separate
figures, that of the father, an eminent entomologist, author of a certain number of “fabulous
voyages” (Nabokov, The Gift 15), and that of the son, who had always stayed behind and had
been imbued with the magic of his father’s stories and with the foreign language of entomology.
After having failed with his first volume of poetry, Fyodor starts writing a biography of his
father. The biography is a referential genre, but “the amazing music of truth” (Nabokov, The Gift
121) that Fyodor hears in his father’s writings and in the writings of the naturalists he worships
becomes, for the novice, a siren’s song luring him away from the sacred goal of objectivity.
Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 11
Writing the father’s biography turns into a series of verbal adventures (Nabokov, The Gift 139)
in an inky jungle (Nabokov, The Gift 138), in a dark and chaotic world of rough drafts, reading
notes and recollections. The faithful biographer slowly projects himself into the story, with a
change in pronouns signaling a treacherous shift in perspective. From a more or less neutral
“he”, focusing on the father, the narrator adopts a plural “we” (a collective pronoun, actually an
expansion of the first person, a disguised “I”, an amplified first person), and then an insolent “I”
who claims to have discovered an unknown moth (G, 123), thus usurping the father’s place and
thus claiming the privilege of naming. The heterodiegetic narrator, the narrative outsider, slowly
becomes an autodiegetic narrator at the very center of the narrative, telling his own story instead
of his father’s story. This is a classical scenario in a biographer’s life, since every biographer is a
divided character, both a submissive servant and a rebellious subject. Several explanations of the
pronominal fluctuations in The Gift have been given. Julian W. Connolly has interpreted them as
signs of Fyodor’s struggle for authorial emancipation, as indications of the clash between self
and other, between Fyodor the character and Fyodor the author (Connolly 196-219).2 Nassim
Berdjis has argued that it is the lack of distance between the writer and his material, the ardent
proximity of the subject matter that prompts the biographer to project himself into the father’s
story (Berdjis 200).
6 This is where Marco Polo’s mirages come in. A different understanding of the pronominal
fluctuations in The Gift can possibly be traced back to Marco Polo’s The Description of the
World, a major intertext, overtly mentioned several times in the novel. A miniature of Marco
Polo leaving Venice which decorates the father’s desk functions as a magical visual stimulus
provoking Fyodor’s vision of his father’s travels, the emergence of his visionary voice following
closely the progress of the paternal caravans.3 In chapter 2 of The Gift, Nabokov certainly relied
on existing texts, which are clearly identifiable thanks to numberless echoes, hints, traces, but at
the same time the highly elaborate intertextual construction of the father’s biography is bathed in
invention, marred or transfigured by fabulation, since Fyodor’s artistic project of faithfulness to
authority and gigantic, weighty, manly models fails and a playful usurpation replaces it. The
beauty and the complexity of chapter 2 of The Gift lie precisely in the ambiguous encounter
between skilful, lucid documentation and ardent subjectivity, between a yearning for influence
and the birth of an original, insolent voice.
7 When taking a close look at Marco Polo’s The Description of the World, one is struck by
pronominal inconsistencies that remind one of those in Nabokov’s The Gift, inconsistencies
which, in the case of The Description of the World, stem from the double paternity of the text. As
a matter of fact, Marco Polo’s famous book was not written by the Venetian merchant. In 1298,
in a prison in Genoa where he was detained at the end of a war opposing Venice and Genoa,
Marco Polo dictated the story of his travels to a professional scribe, Rustic(h)ello of Pisa, an
Italian writer who had already composed a certain number of Round Table epic poems in French
and who signed his works as “maître Rusticien de Pise”. The Description of the World is written
in French by two Italian authors, therefore the work is claimed both by Italian and French
literatures. Rusticello acknowledges from the very beginning the distinct roles he and Polo play
in the production of the text. Marco Polo is the eyewitness and the explorer, whereas Rusticello
is the methodical teller (although his “method” is highly idiosyncratic), who records the oral
information and translates Marco’s Venetian dialect into the French language he was familiar
with:

Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 12
Pour savoir l’entière vérité sur les différentes contrées du monde, prenez ce livre et lisez-le: vous
y trouverez les grandes merveilles de la Grande Arménie, de la Perse, des Tartares, de l’Inde et
de bien d’autres pays, comme notre livre vous les contera méthodiquement, merveilles que
messire Marco Polo, savant et illustre citoyen de Venise, raconte pour les avoir vues. Il y a un
certain nombre de choses qu’il n’a pas vues, mais qu’il a entendues de gens absolument sûrs.
Aussi donnerons-nous les choses vues pour vues et les entendues pour entendues afin que notre
livre soit sincère, sans le moindre mensonge. Que chacun qui entendra lire ce livre ou le lira lui
fasse confiance parce qu’il ne s’agit que de choses vraies. Car je vous fais savoir que, depuis que
Notre-Seigneur a créé Adam notre premier père, il n’y a eu personne en aucune race qui
parcourût et connût autant des différentes terres du monde que ce messire Marco Polo. Aussi a-t-
il pensé que ce serait grand dommage qu’il ne fît mettre par écrit ce qu’il avait vu et entendu de
sûr, afin que les gens qui ne l’ont ni vu ni entendu le connussent grâce à ce livre – et j’ajoute
qu’il est resté bien vingt-six ans à s’informer dans ces différentes terres – et ce livre, comme il
était dans la prison de Gênes, il l’a fait mettre en bon ordre par messire Rusticien, Pisan, qui était
dans cette même prison en l’année de l’incarnation du Christ, 1298. (Marco Polo, La Description
du monde 50-51)
8 The book is defined as “our book”, Marco Polo’s and Rusticello’s, a shared textual space with
a narrator who is ample enough to include the scribe. With a certain awkward elegance,
Rusticello introduces himself in the vast space of 1st person plural pronoun (“nous”) or hides
himself in the impersonality of the French pronoun “on”, to such an extent that it is sometimes
difficult to distinguish between the two figures. The subject-matter of the book is defined by the
scribe as “nostre matiere” or “our subject-matter” (Marco Polo, La Description du monde 264-
265) and, at times, the narrative act oscillates between the 1st person singular and plural: “Nous
vous avons parlé de la Petite Arménie, je vous parlerai de la Turquie” (Marco Polo, La
Description du monde 76-77). Gradually, the space of the voyage itself and the space of the
narrative (with its forward and backward movements from one topic to the other) are
superimposed, with the effect of a total blurring of boundaries between the act of travelling and
the act of telling:
Mais laissons ces gens-là! Nous ne vous parlerons pas de l’Inde maintenant, mais en temps en
lieu, et nous reviendrons au nord pour parler du pays et retournerons par une autre route à la cité
mentionnée plus haut de Kerman parce que, dans ces contrées dont je veux vous parler, on ne
peut aller qu’à partir de la cité de Kerman. (Marco Polo, La Description du monde 112-113)
9 In spite of this constant hesitation and mingling of “on”, “je” and “nous”, the scribe never
seems to openly appropriate the feats of the merchant in his own name – he only claims a
common narrative substance and a collaborative narrative act, visible everywhere in the mottled
pronominal landscape of The Description of the World, totally indifferent to the use of
homogeneous norms of designating the narrator and the hero. Nevertheless, these pronominal
fluctuations ultimately create the impression that Rusticello intrudes upon and gains control of
Marco’s journey itself, not only of its verbal, narrative content. The scribe’s shamelessness
should not be exaggerated, since he is not the radical and ruthless appropriator of another hero’s
glory, but simply a careless and incoherent writer who sometimes gets carried away in the exotic
whirls of a marvellous trip narrated to him in the narrowness of a prison cell.
10 This phenomenon of the uncertain subject, hesitating between “I” and “we” (for the narrator),
between “he” and “we” (for the hero of the narrative), is highly unusual in medieval texts. These
Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 13
pronominal oscillations were extremely annoying to editors and authors of critical editions of
The Description of the World. According to Henri Cordier, author of a monumental edition based
on Henry Yule’s English translation, the erratic pronominal slippages together with the markers
of oral style necessarily have to be erased from any serious translation and critical edition of the
book:
There is in the style, apart from grammar or vocabulary, a rude angularity, a rough dramatism
like that of oral narrative; there is a want of proportion in the style of different parts, now over
curt, now diffuse and wordy, with at times a hammering reiteration; […] a frequent change in the
spelling of the proper names, even when recurring within a few lines, as if caught by ear only; a
literal following to and fro of the hesitations of the narrator; a more general use of the third
person in speaking of the Traveller, but an occasional lapse into the first. All these
characteristics are strikingly indicative of the unrevised product of dictation, and many of them
would necessarily disappear either in translation or in a revised copy.4 (italics mine, Yule-
Cordier, The Travels of Marco Polo 84)
11 By imposing a uniform, orderly, rigid model of style and narrative, the irritated editor misses
the rich and versatile spontaneity of Marco Polo and Rusticello’s book. By wishing to preserve
its content, he sacrifices its form, as if the two could be dissociated. When discussing late
medieval exploration texts, Stephen Greenblatt identifies a certain propensity towards
fragmentariness, discontinuity, heterogeneity due to the gradual discovery of an unknown world,
to its surprises and unexpected wonders. Fyodor’s biography of his father clearly displays this
feature as well:

Compared to the luminous universal histories of the early Middle Ages, the chronicles of
exploration seem uncertain of their bearings, disorganized, fragmentary. Their strength lies not in
a vision of the Holy Spirit’s gradual expansion through the world but in the shock of the
unfamiliar, the provocation of an intense curiosity, the local excitement of discontinuous
wonders. Hence they present the world not in a stately and harmonious order but in a succession
of brief encounters, random experiences, isolated anecdotes of the unanticipated. (Greenblatt 2)
12 It is worth noting that three other major chronicles of exploration of the Middle Ages and of
the Renaissance, in the European and in the Arab world, follow exactly the same pattern of
collaboration between a professional scribe and an explorer who has returned from a long
journey beyond the familiar boundaries of the known world: the 14th century friar Odoric of
Pordenone, the 15th century Venetian merchant Niccolo di Conti, the 14th century Muslim
traveler Ibn Batuta, all dictated or described their travels to another person, playing the secretary.
However, in these cases there is no obvious sign of the scribe’s interference, contrary to The
Description of the World, where Rusticello’s watermark cannot be missed. Nevertheless, the
scribes are invariably proud of their enterprise, conscious of the importance of their task, of the
historic act of committing the traveler’s tale to paper. As the Arab scribe of Ibn Batuta lyrically
argues in the introduction to the main text, without his help, “the pearl of these extraordinary
travels would have forever remained in the drowsy obscurity of their shells” (Voyages d’Ibn
Batouta 11-12). This kind of collaboration is supposedly at the center of Pale Fire, where
Kinbote wishes to establish “a secret compact” between himself, the possessor of the Zemblan
theme, and Shade, “the fireside poet”: “I mesmerized him with it, I saturated him with my vision,
I pressed upon him, with a drunkard’s wild generosity, all that I was helpless myself to put into
verse” (Nabokov, Pale Fire 80). This is certainly not the case in The Gift, since the father is an
Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 14
accomplished writer himself, author of several learned volumes and no Kinbotian wild
generosity is involved.
13 Fyodor chooses his forefathers, or, as Borges famously argues in “Kafka and His Precursors”,
he creates his forefathers, but the models he wishes to follow are already examples of elaborate
mystification – a strange case of faithfulness to unfaithfulness. Alexander Dolinin, in the notes to
the Sympozium edition, has already emphasized the fact that Pushkin’s works that Fyodor
quotes, The Captain’s Daughter, Maria Shoning and A Journey to Arzrum, already display a
great deal of freedom in the treatment of literary and historical sources (Nabokov, Dar 664). The
Description of the World seems to offer another example of playful treatment of a given material,
with a distinct approach, narrative and pronominal in nature due to Rusticello’s intrusions.
Gérard Genette, in Palimpsests, makes a distinction between intertextuality defined as co-
presence – text A is present in text B – and hypertextuality defined as derivation – text A is not
effectively present in text B, but B is derived from A (Genette 8-13). The Description of the
World can therefore be seen as both a visible intertext, quoted and alluded to several times in
chapter 2 of The Gift, and as a veiled hypotext, as a model of this chapter’s narrative and
pronominal strategies.
14 Nabokov’s excellent knowledge of French medieval literature, which he studied at
Cambridge, certainly made him sensitive to Rusticello’s appropriation practices and gave him
access to the original text. This leads us to another medieval text written in French, John
Mandeville’s Travels, a more delicate case in The Gift, much more of a mirage and a problem
than The Description of the World. It is worth pointing out that the name “Mandevil” appears in
Pale Fire, where it designates the two cousins Mirador and Radomir, as well as two place names,
Mandevil Forest and Mt. Mandevil.

15 Marco Polo and Mandeville were the most revered exploration authors of the 14th and 15th
centuries. When Christopher Columbus embarked upon his 1492 voyage of discovery, he was
carrying these two books along, since they played a major role in the mental shaping of his
expectations. As Dieter E. Zimmer suggests, it is not clear whether Mandeville’s Travels are
indeed a source of The Gift. Only one episode could be traced back to Mandeville’s Travels, the
drumlike roar Fyodor hears in a Tibetan gorge, but this is rather a canonical topos which can also
be found in Odoric of Pordenone and Marco Polo (Hartmann and Zimmer 66). The medieval
culture of repetition, of collective, continuous writing, impervious to modern notions of
originality and individual authorship complicates the task of the contemporary reader, eager to
clarify the status of one particular text in the intertextual framework of the novel.
16 Even if there is no unmistakable sign of Mandeville’s direct presence in The Gift, one cannot
help identifying striking similarities between Fyodor’s biography of his father and the writings of
the author whom we call John Mandeville. The notion of hypertextuality (derivation) appears
once again to be more appropriate than the notion of intertextual presence. The Mandeville
connection is therefore caught somewhere between the blinding clarity of obviousness and the
shady illusions of an impalpable object. Solid intuitions and impressions replace solid proofs.
Instead of referring to textual evidence, to unmistakable intertexts, it is only possible to evoke
the influence of a type of approach, a hypertextual, derivative practice.
17 Mandeville’s text, dating from 1370, is a remarkable case of literary forgery, with an authorial
persona who dramatizes himself as the author of a certain number of travels borrowed from a
Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 15
wealth of different sources, mainly Marco Polo, Odoric of Pordenone, William of Boldensele
and medieval lore in general. Paradoxically, Mandeville’s Travels were more successful in
popularizing the geographical and encyclopedic knowledge of medieval explorers than all his
sources put together. Some critics consider Mandeville a postmodern author avant la lettre, an
unfounded opinion, as Greenblatt argues, since the meaning of authorship in the 14th century was
undoubtedly not the same as today (Greenblatt 165). Fyodor certainly does not go all the way in
the construction of an explorer identity. He quickly dissipates the illusion of his personal
participation in an Asian expedition and at the end of chapter 2 he abandons his text, lamenting
the “secondary poetization” and the dilution to which he submits his material. He extricates
himself from the inky jungle he himself created, condemning his biography as a series of vain,
useless “verbal adventures” (Nabokov, The Gift 139).
18 Interestingly, according to some scholars, Marco Polo himself is a Mandeville-figure, an
impostor and an artifex who never went to China but only used sources produced by other,
genuine, travelers to build up his Asian narrative. Significant omissions are identified in The
Description of the World, which a traveler through China would not have missed: no references
to the Great Wall, to green tea or to the bandaged feet of Chinese women, no mention at all of
Marco Polo and his family in the Chinese archives of the time (Wood). An obvious conclusion is
that every traveler in an unknown land, every traveler who has awakened a “sleeping beauty” is
necessarily a liar in the eyes of his readers. Paradoxically, such scholars deem Marco Polo’s
blanks and omissions to be signs of imposture, whereas some of his contemporaries called his
book Il Milione for its exaggerations, embellishments, and shameless hyperboles. Poised
somewhere between “not enough” and “too much”, the traveler’s credibility (and implicitly, his
book’s) is at stake in both cases. Nabokov’s The Gift reflects on this twofold contradictory drive
towards excess and omission in The Description of the World when Fyodor quotes a legend
about Marco Polo’s death:
In the twenties of the fourteenth century when the great explorer was dying, his friends gathered
by his bedside and implored him to reject what in his book had seemed incredible to them – to
water down its miracles by means of judicious deletions; but he responded that he had not
recounted even a half of what he had in fact seen. (Nabokov, The Gift 124-125)

19 By discarding notions such as completeness/incompleteness and verisimilitude, Marco Polo

stresses the mysterious and ineffable plenitude of a trip that cannot possibly be exhausted by any
narrative act.
20 Arguably, one can identify Mandevillian fits of mystification in The Gift, as well as
Marcopolian, or rather, Rusticellian fits of mastery. Rusticello, the now forgotten scribe, and
Mandeville, the self-styled traveler, are eminently Nabokovian figures, with their propensity to
control, if not the actual space of exploration, which is inaccessible to them, at least the textual
space of the narrative. Having said all this, having pointed out the Rusticello-Fyodor kinship,
and, secondarily, Mandeville’s appropriation of sources, having, in a word, anchored Fyodor in a
medieval family of mystifiers, liars and manipulators, I feel I myself have got lost in the inky
jungle of The Gift and have diluted the text with my own fancies, simply because there is no
unmistakable sign of Rusticello and Mandeville in The Gift. Since annotation failed, I strayed
into the space of speculative annotation, of tempting, irresistible, fanciful annotation. It is
sometimes difficult to indulge in the intertextual analysis of Nabokov’s fiction without a slight
feeling of discomfort, without being afraid of insisting on inconclusive allusions, while missing
Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 16
other, deliberately foregrounded allusions. Nabokov’s intertextual strategies form one of the
most exciting and rewarding objects of critical study, but they are also potentially slippery and
misleading objects. As Brian Boyd suggests in “Pierre, or the Ambiguities of Allusion” (on the
presence, or rather the absence of Melville’s Pierre in Ada), “Nabokov may distort or disguise
allusions, but he also repeats and even insists on his key allusions and he makes each word
count” (Boyd, “Pierre” 8).
21 Sadly, Rusticello and Mandeville are only intuitively there, they are a presence-absence,
insubstantial, impalpable, yet their “inviolable shades” seem to tower above the narrative. Such
intertextual presences-absences in Nabokov, which are somehow dubious or tenuous, devoid of
strong, clear “pointers”, become mirages which are exhilarating objects of intellectual chase.
They are precious despite their seeming emptiness and this paper intends to be an apology of
such exuberant examples, which uncover the creative dimension of annotation and open up the
space of interpretation. The world of Nabokov studies and our own reading experience would be
much more gray and boring without such speculative annotations.
22 I am well aware of the fact that I am performing a strange, self-destructive act, both defending
a personal point of view on the pronominal play in The Gift and questioning it at the same time.
This double movement illustrates a common stance of the critic and rereader. What prevails, in
the end, is the celebration of these Marcopolian and Mandevillian intertextual mirages, which are
true to the spirit of the text, even if they fail to be true to its letter.

Notes de bas de page numériques

1 The best example is provided by the chronological inaccuracy in Lolita, which has led a certain
number of critics to question the reality of Humbert’s trip to Coalmont and of Quilty’s murder.
From this perspective, the second part of the novel is seriously undermined by a series of
incoherent dates. For a detailed analysis of this theory and for a refutal, see Brian Boyd, “’Even
Homais Nods’: Nabokov’s Fallibility, Or, How to Revise Lolita”.
2 For a similar interpretation see Alexandrov, 129.
3 This miniature brings together St. Petersburg, Venice and Asia in a single spatial knot.
Similarly, Berlin, Venice, Russia and China meet in the poems Fyodor composes when waiting
for Zina’s arrival in the mysterious darkness of the Berlin night: “Waiting for her arrival. She
was always late – and always came by another road than he. Thus it transpired that even Berlin
could be mysterious. Within the linden’s bloom the streetlight winks. A dark and honeyed hush
envelops us. Across the curb one’s passing shadow slinks: across a stump a sable ripples thus.
The night sky melts to peach beyond that gate. There water gleams, there Venice vaguely shows.
Look at that street – it runs to China straight, and yonder star above the Volga glows! Oh, swear
to me to put in dreams your trust, and to believe in fantasy alone, and never let your soul in
prison rust, nor stretch you arm and say: a wall of stone” (Nabokov, The Gift 176-177).
4 Since the editor formulates such strong opinions on the absolute necessity of revising the
original text, his edition is not reliable when one wishes to investigate the oral style of the
narrative or its collaborative nature. In this case, it is imperative to examine the original French
text. An excellent bilingual edition is that of Pierre-Yves Badel quoted above. Henri Cordier
openly describes his editorial method as one of clear dissociation between manner and matter:

Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 17
“To adopt that Text [the original French text] with all its awkwardness and tautologies, as the
absolute subject of translation, would have been a mistake. […] The process of abridgement in
this text […] has been on the whole judiciously executed, getting rid of the intolerable prolixities
of manner which belong to many parts of the Original Dictation, but as a general rule preserving
the matter” (Yule-Cordier, The Travels of Marco Polo 41).

Bibliographie
Alexandrov, Vladimir E. Nabokov’s Otherworld. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991.
Berdjis, Nassim. Imagery in Vladimir Nabokov’s Last Russian Novel, Its English Translation
and Other Prose Works of the 1930s. Bern: Peter Lang, 1995.

Boyd, Brian. “’Even Homais Nods’: Nabokov’s Fallibility, Or, How to Revise Lolita”. Nabokov
Studies 2 (1995): 62-86.
Boyd, Brian. “Pierre, or the Ambiguities of Allusion”. The Nabokovian 50 (spring 2003): 6-17.
Connolly, Julian W. Nabokov’s Early Fiction. Patterns of Self and Other. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1992.
Eco, Umberto. Les Limites de l’interprétation (1990). tr. Myriam Bouzaher. Paris: Bernard
Grasset, 1992.
Genette, Gérard. Palimpsestes. Paris: Seuil (Collection « Points »), 1982.
Greenblatt, Stephen. Marvelous Possessions. The Wonder of the New World. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1991.

Hartmann, Sabine & Zimmer, Dieter E. “The Amazing Music of Truth: Nabokov’s Sources for
Godounov’s Central Asian Travels in The Gift”. Nabokov Studies 7 (2003): 33-74.
Marco Polo. La Description du monde. Bilingual medieval French-modern French edition, tr.
and notes Pierre-Yves Badel. Paris: Le Livre de Poche (“Lettres gothiques”), 1998.
The Travels of Marco Polo. The Complete Yule-Cordier Edition (1920). New York: Dover, 2
vol., 1993, vol. 1.

Nabokov, Vladimir. “The Aurelian” (1930). The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, New York:
Vintage International, 2002.
Nabokov, Vladimir. The Gift (1937-1938). New York: Vintage International, 1991.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Dar. St. Petersburg: Sympozium, 2002.

Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire (1962). New York: Vintage International, 1989
Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak, Memory. An Autobiography Revisited (1966). New York: Vintage
International, 1989.

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Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Literature. New York: Harcourt, 1980.
Zimmer, Dieter E. Nabokov reist im Traum in das Innere Asiens (mitarbeit Sabine Hartmann).
Reinbek: Rowohlt, 2006.
Wood, Frances. Did Marco Polo Go to China? Boulder: Westview, 1996.
------- Voyages d’Ibn Batouta. Bilingual Arab-French edition, tr. C. Defrémery and B.R.
Sanguinetti (1853-1858), Paris: Anthropos, 4 vols., 1968, vol. 1.

Pour citer cet article

Monica Manolescu, « “Verbal Adventures in the Inky Jungle”: Marco Polo and John Mandeville
in Vladimir Nabokov’s The Gift », paru dans Cycnos, Volume 24 n°1, mis en ligne le 20 mars
2008, URL : http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/index.html?id=1060.

Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 19
Marco Polo (1254-1324) is regarded as one of the world’s greatest and most influential travelers.
He set off on a journey to the East at the age of seventeen with his uncle and father as part of a
diplomatic mission for Pope Gregory X. After a three-and-a-half-year overland journey through
present day Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and China he met the great Kublai Khan who took a liking
to the young man and used him as an emissary for 20 years. [Sources: Mike Edwards, National
Geographic, May 2001, June 2001, July 2001]

Marco Polo was not the first European to venture to China. The friars mentioned earlier arrived
in Asia before him. But to Marco Polo's credit his journey was longer (24 years), more extensive
(through China and much of Asia) and far richer in experiences (on many missions he was the
personnel emissary of Kublai Khan) than the journeys of other European travelers.
Marco Polo took advantage of the brief window of opportunity to travel to the East provided by
the Mongol conquests. He was able to travel throughout Asia at a time when the Mongols
controlled much of the region. After the Mongol empire collapsed not long after Marco Polo’s
journey travel between the East and West was all but impossible.
Marco Polo’s descriptions of his travels opened up Asia as a new world to Europeans and
generated a fascination with the East. As for Marco Polo himself he probably would have ended
up as a footnote in history where it not for his cellmate in a Genoan prison, who wrote about
Marco Polo's adventures after Marco Polo was captured during a naval battle between Venice
and Genoa (Genoa fought with Venice for control of the trade routes to the East).

Websites and Resources

Marco Polo: Wikipedia Marco Polo Wikipedia ; Marco Polo Odyssesy nationalgeographic.com
; Footsteps of Marco Polo metmuseum.org ; Open Directory Project dmoz.org ; Works by Marco
Polo gutenberg.org ; Internet Movie Database imdb.com ; Marco Polo and his Travels silk-
road.com ; Marco Polo in China easia.columbia.edu ;

Links in this Website: SILK ROAD factsanddetails.com ; MARITIME SILK ROAD; SILK
ROAD CARAVANS; SILK ROAD CAMELS; SILK ROAD HISTORY AND EXPLORERS;
MARCO POLO; MARCO POLO IN CHINA; CHINESE EXPLORATION AND ZHENG HE;
EARLY EUROPEANS IN CHINA; SILK IN CHINA; YUAN (MONGOL) DYNASTY (1215-
1368) MING DYNASTY (1368-1644)
Good Websites and Sources on the Silk Road: Silk Road Seattle washington.edu/silkroad ;
Silk Road Foundation silk-road.com ; Wikipedia Wikipedia ; Silk Road History ess.uci.edu ; Silk
Road Atlas depts.washington.edu ; History of Silk Road ess.uci.edu ; Old World Trade Routes
ciolek.com ; Travel Photos studyrussian.com ; Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project silkroadproject.org
; Silk Road Society travelthesilkroad.org ; Silk Road Travelerssilk-road.com ; International
Dunhuang Project idp.bl.uk ; Camel Trains in the Desert chinavista.com ; China Page
chinapage.org ; Ancient China Life Ancient China Life Books: The Silk Road (Odyssey Guides);
Marco Polo: A Photographer's Journey by Mike Yamashita (White Star, 2002). Television
show: Silk Road 2005, a 10-episode production by China's CCTV and Japan's NHK, with music
by Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. The original series was shown in 1980s.

Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 20
Zheng He and Early Chinese Exploration : Wikipedia Chinese ExplorationWikipedia ; Le
Monde Diplomatique mondediplo.com ; Zheng He’s Voyages international.ucla.edu ; Zheng He
muslimheritage.com ; Zheng He Wikipedia Wikipedia ; Gavin Menzies’s 1421 1421.tv ; Asia
Recipe asiarecipe.com ; China Page chinapage.com ; First Europeans in Asia Wikipedia ;
Matteo Ricci faculty.fairfield.edu ; Matteo Ricci international.ucla.edu

Versions of Marco Polo's Account

Marco Polo’s account his travels was originally called Description of the World, but is now
known as The Travels of Marco Polo. The book was widely translated and circulated and became
a medieval version of a bestseller. The account covers Marco Polo's 24 years of travels (17 of
them in China). In Italy his book is known by the name Il Millione, a reference to its million tall
tales.
Marco Polo's cell mate and the man who wrote the book was a romance writer named
Rustichello known for his stories about chivalrous knights. The book was probably written in
1298. Rustichello made some additions and changes. Early editions were copied and translated
by hand by monks. They no doubt made some additions and changes too. About 150 versions of
the text remain today, The version thought to be closest to the original is one translated from a
14th century copy in the Biblioteque Nationale in Paris.
Marco Polo reveals little about himself but provides information on places he visited such as
China and places he didn’t visit like Japan. He listed things he saw on sale in markets; wrote
about the customs he observed and events he witnessed. He wrote frequently about alcohol and
mentioned local moonshine and wines made from rice, dates, gram, palm sap and mare’s milk. It
is not known whether Marco Polo kept a journal and but some of the description are so rich in
details it seems likely they came from a journal.

See Marco Polo's Discoveries in China.

Impact of Marco Polo's Journey

Marco Polo's travel accounts made a large impression on European readers for centuries after his
journey was over. Christopher Columbus and many other explorers were inspired by Marco
Polo's descriptions of Asian riches and set out to explore the region themselves. His accounts
along with reports from the Crusaders encouraged trade between East and West.
Marco Polo introduced places such Japan, the Pamirs and Java to Europe. Mapmakers added
Japan or Java to their maps even though Marco Polo and no known European had ever been
there.
The notion that Marco Polo introduced pasta (derived from noodles) and ravioli (derived from
dumplings) to Italy and Europe is largely a myth. Noodles at least already existed in Italy. Ice
milk and fruit appeared in Italy in the 14th century and may have been introduced from China by
Marco Polo, who reportedly brought recipes for ice-cream-like chilled milk deserts from China.

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Marco Polo's Exaggerations, Omissions and Lies
Marco Polo often reported hearsay and had a tendency to stretch the truth. He wrote of enormous
p'eng birds, or gryphons, from Madagascar, for example, that were large enough to consume
elephants as well as men with dog features. Some of his accounts were outright lies. In one
section, he relates how the Polos helped the Mongols capture the southern city of Xiangyang
from the Southern Song dynasty by introducing the Mongols to catapults. It turns out the
Mongols already had catapults and the city fell two years before the Polos arrived in China.

Some historians have suggested that Marco Polo never went to China and that his adventures
were based on accounts that he heard while working at his family's trading outposts on the Black
Sea and in Constantinople. These historians base their argument on: 1) the fact that Rustichello
was a fiction writer who probably embellished the account; 2) that Marco Polo failed to describe
the Great Wall of China, chopsticks, tea, calligraphy or the binding of women’s feet; 3) that the
things he described—paper money, porcelain—were well known to travelers who came to
Constantinople and other trading areas; and 4) that Marco Polo wasn't mentioned at all in the
extensive Chinese archives between 1271 and 1295 even though he described himself as a
personal emissary of Kublai Khan.
Historians that contend that Marco Polo’s journey probably did take place argue: 1) that tea and
chopsticks were so commonplace perhaps Marco Polo failed to mention them because he was so
used to them; 2) that foot binding was something practiced mainly by upper class women who
rarely left their homes so Marco Polo didn't see them; 3) that the Great Wall as we know it today
for the most part was built after Marco Polo's death (in his time it was decaying mud bricks) and
walls around towns and cities were as common in Europe as they were in China; and 4) that
documents that may have mentioned Marco Polo probably were destroyed (many Mongol
documents after the Mongols were ousted from China).

Marco Polo’s Credibility

Mike Edwards, the author the three-part National Geographic series about Marco Polo, wrote in
Smithsonian magazine, “”Like others who examined his writings closely, I am dismayed by his
omissions and floored by his whoppers, But I am ultimately convinced of his essential
truthfulness, Why? For one thing his itineraries, as laid out by the sequence of the book chapters,
are fundamentally accurate, whether he’s crossing Central Asia or central China. Where did he
acquire that geographical knowledge if he didn’t make the these journeys himself?”
“I believe Polo kept a journal during his travels...Having followed his tracks, I know firsthand
that he got many things right, such as both lapis lazuli and rubies are found in the Badakshan
region of Afghanistan: in China’s southwest a minority people eat raw flesh; people in Sumatra
and Sri Lanka make a joy juice from fermented palm tree sap...Polo also produced an report on
Hindu customs.” One version of his narrarive said he brought back “writings and memoranda.”
Some exaggerations were not necessarily Marco Polo’s fault. Some versions of his travel log say
that the walls surrounding Kubali Khan’s palace are four miles long while other versions say
walls were 32 miles long—discrepancies that appeared long after Marco Polo died. Other famous
“historical” works are also filled with exaggerations an lies. Herodotus described gold-digging

Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 22
ants in India and winged snakes in Egypt. Sir Walter Raleigh told tales of gold-strewn El Dorado
in Latin American.
Some think that Rustichelo of Pisa, the man credited with writing Marco Polo’s adventures, was
the the source of the tall tales such a the battle between Kublai Khan and Prester John, a mythical
Christian figure better known in Europe than the East. He had written some romantic stories
about King Arthur and early Christian figures.

Marco Polo's Early Life

Little is known about Marco Polo's early life. It is known that he was born in Venice; that his
father was traveling during his youth; that his mother died before his father returned and that
Marco was raised by a relative. What education he received is unknown. He probably received
some training in navigation and trading. It seem plausable, also, that he developed some street
sense growing up in the alleys of Venice among sailors, traders, moneylenders and prostitutes.
When Marco Polo was coming of age Venice was the dominant trading and military power in the
Mediterranean. In Marco's time merchants in Venice were looking more and more towards the
East for new markets and were establishing networks to these markets.

Marco Polo's father, Nicoló, and uncle, Maffeo, were Venetian traders with trading houses in
Constantinople in Asia Minor and Soldaia on the Crimea peninsula in the Black Sea. They
specialized in the sale of gems stones and jewelry.

Travel’s by Marco Polo's Father and Uncle

In 1260, when Marco Polo was just six, his father and uncle set out from their merchant colony
in the Crimea to sell jewels in the lower Volga and stayed a year there at the camp of a Mongol
Khan. Some Mongol traders escorted them eastward and introduced them to Kublai Khan.

The Polos traveled deep into the Mongol empire. They journeyed across the steppes of what is
now southern Russia and Kazakhstan and stayed for three years in Bukhara (Uzbekistan) and
arrived at Kublai Khan court, perhaps in Shangdu (Xanadu), not so far from Beijing., six years
after they set off.
Kublai Khan had never met people from southern Europe before. He welcomed the two
Venetians with open arms. The Polos remained in his court for four years. They reported that
Kublai Khan was a man of "great intelligence and wide-ranging interests” and said he asked
them many questions about life in Europe.
Kublai Khan asked the Polo brothers to be his emissary to the Pope; to retrieve some oil from the
lamp at the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, considered a potion for the soul; and to recruit one
hundred missionaries "educated in all Seven Arts," who would argue the merits of their religion
in the khan's court. Kublai Khan reportedly said if there case was convincing he was willing to
covert his subjects to Christianity.
In 1269, when Marco Polo was just 15, his father and uncle returned from their nine-year
journey. They told fantastic stories about their experiences. No one believed them. Pope Gregory
denied the Great Khan's request and sent only two Dominican friars.

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Marco Polo's Journey to the East
Marco Polo traveled 7,500 miles on his famous journey from Italy to China. He accompanied
Nicoló and Maffeo on their second journey back to the East. Marco Polo was 17 when their
journey began in 1271.
Marco Polo and his father and uncle traveled from Venice to the Middle East by boat and then
traveled overland to Baghdad and then Ormuz on the Persian Gulf. Instead of taking the more
well-traveled sea route through the Arabian Sea to India, they headed north across present-day
Iran to Afghanistan.
After Afghanistan the Polos crossed the Pamirs in present-day Tajikistan. From the Pamirs the
Polos followed to the Silk Road caravan route through western China. After a three-and-a-half
year journey the Polos arrived at the court of he Great Khan when Marco Polo was 21. Delays
were caused by rain, snow, swollen rivers, and illnesses. Time was taken off to rest, trade and
restock.

Marco Polo Returns to Venice

The Polos returned to Venice in 1295 after 24 years. According to a story that first appeared in
the 1500s, the Polo family had long given them up for dead. When they appeared no one
recognized them and they gave off "a certain indescribable smack of the Tartar both in air and
scent." The memories of the relatives were quickly revived when the shabby wanderers ripped
open their grubby clothes, and watched "vast quantities of rubies, diamonds, and emeralds spill
out.” The Polos were then affectionately embraced, and treated to a lavish banquet, filled with
music and stories.
When the Polos arrived, Venice was engaged in a naval conflict with Genoa. Marco Polo
somehow became involved in the conflict and was captured by the Genoese about a year after his
return and imprisoned. The details of his war record, his capture and prison life are not known.
He was released in 1299.
Marco Polo’s book was published while he was alive and became a bestseller in a world that was
largely illiterate. Marco Polo became a celebrity. The book was translated into many languages.
The first known printed edition appeared in Nuremburg in 1477.

After being released from prison Marco Polo moved into a mansion in the Rialto business district
of Venice. He was about 45 at this time. He married and had three daughters and died in 1224 at
the age of about 70. His house in Venice was destroyed by fire in 1596. In Venice he is known
today as "Million." Some say this is a reference to his wealth. Other say it refers to his
exaggerations.” Even in his time there were those that wanted him to confess that everything he
reported was hoax. Marco Polo reportedly replied, "I did not write half of what I saw."
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London,
National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides,
Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
© 2008 Jeffrey Hays; Last updated March 2010

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Marco Polo, from myth to man
01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, October 21, 2007

MARCO POLO: From Venice to Xanadu,

by Laurence Bergreen (Knopf. 415 pages. $28.95).
BY TONY LEWIS
Special to the Journal
Marco Polo is one of those historical characters who seem half real, half mythological. Like
Attila or Alexander, or other larger-than-life figures we’ve known since junior high school,
familiarity has led to blurring and even disbelief, turning what was once startlingly real into the
likes of Paul Bunyan.
In Marco Polo: from Venice to Xanadu, Laurence Bergreen rescues his hero from this benign
neglect and snaps the picture into sharp focus. In his recounting of these epic travels, Polo seems
for us — as he once seemed for most of the known world — a real traveler with an appetite to
match the grand sweep of his journey through Europe and across Asia.
Bergreen’s account, however, is more than just a retelling of the “Travels” and a re-historicizing
of its central character. Marco Polo is a new take on Polo, a postmodern re-imagining that brings
him to the land of the Mongols as a European and then follows him back home a quarter of a
century later to Venice as a quasi-Asian.
This refashioning of his hero makes for fascinating reading. Unlike Wonderland’s Alice, who
steps through the looking glass as a proper young Victorian and returns entirely unchanged,
Bergreen’s Polo undergoes a slow, half reluctant transformation from Euro-centered Christian to
someone “as eclectic as his mentor Kublai Khan in matters of faith” and with a belief system “as
inclusive and porous as that of the Mongols.”
In other words, in this reading of Marco Polo’s travels, the hero undergoes the kind of change
that the best travel writers always claim to have undergone — D.H. Lawrence in Sardinia, Henry
Miller in Greece, Bruce Chatwin in Patagonia.
Polo, however, didn’t actually write his “Travels.” He narrated them to one Rustichello of Pisa,
with whom he shared a jail cell after being captured at sea by the Genoese years after returning
from Asia. Bergreen distinguishes between the romanticizing Rustichello and Polo, filtering the
account through the lens of modern scholarship; what’s left seems carefully tested and credible.
And what a story it is. Bergreen’s Polo starts out as a “pious” young man, tagging along with
father and uncle on their trading mission along what would become known as the Silk Road, and
then matures, sexually, psychologically, emotionally. Taken with women he meets en route,
startled by dress, food, climate, tried by mountains, steppes, deserts, he blossoms intellectually,
rejecting alien notions and then trying them on for size and gradually liking the fit.
Unlike others who had traveled east before him, Marco Polo, Bergreen writes, “did not simply
describe the Mongol way of life, he lived it,” at times seeing himself as a Mongol. Little wonder,
then, that he considered Kublai Khan “the greatest leader in history.”

Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 25
In Bergreen’s account of Polo’s life, we find a hero tailor-made for these perilous times —
courageous, global, open, and respectful of all that is different.
MARCO POLO: From Venice to Xanadu,

POLO, MARCO
(1254-1324), Venetian merchant and traveler (b. Venice or Curzola, 1254; d. Venice, 8 January
1324), whose travel accounts gained worldwide fame and whose description of the countries he
visited between 1271 and 1298 represents a primary geographical and historical source
concerning Asia during the Mongol domination.
POLO, MARCO, Venetian merchant and traveler (b. Venice or Curzola, 1254; d. Venice, 8
January 1324), whose travel accounts gained worldwide fame and whose description of the
countries he visited between 1271 and 1298 represents a primary geographical and historical
source concerning Asia during the Mongol domination.
On a previous journey Marco’s father Niccolò and his uncle Maffeo, both of whom were also
merchants, had reached China, departing from Soldanie (Soldaya/Sudak) in the Crimea in 1261.
En route they met Berke, the khan of the Golden Horde (q.v.) in 1262 and proceeded on to
Bukhara (Baccara), where they remained for three years, finally reaching China, whence they
returned in 1269 (Polo, 1928, sec. II-X; 1938, I, pp. 74-80; 1975, sec. 2-9; 1999, pp. 113-14;
2001, pp. 119-25). At the end of 1271, Niccolò, Maffeo, and Marco embarked at Acre for the
East and they met Qubilai in his summer seat at K’ai-ping-fu in Northern China in 1275 (Polo,
1928, sec. XI-XIX; 1938, I, pp. 82-93; 1975, sec. 10-18; 1999, pp. 116-21; 2001, pp. 125-35).
During the meeting with the khan they gave him a letter from Pope Gregory X (Tebaldo
Visconti, 1271-76), and then went on to Khanbaliq (Beijing). Seventeen years later, in 1291, they
left China by sea from Zaytun (Quanzhou), traveling via the Persian Gulf and Tabriz. By 1295
they were in Venice. In 1298, Marco Polo was captured by the Genoese in Curzola (Korčula) and
imprisoned in Genoa where he met Rustichello da Pisa who wrote out Marco Polo’s memoirs in
French. The text was probably not completed, due to the sudden separation of Marco Polo and
Rustichello. This early version is lost, and the actual knowledge of the evidence furnished by
Marco Polo is based on later manuscripts of the text in different languages. The Description of
the World is preserved in French and Franco-Italian (Devisement du Monde or Livre des
Merveilles du monde), in Tuscan, and Venetian Italian (Meraviglie del Mondo or Milione, this
latter title being derived from a surname of the family, “Emilione”: Szczesniak, 1960; Pelliot,
1959-73, II, pp. 625-26), in Latin and in other languages. (For the textual problems see
Charignon, 1924-26; Iwamura, 1949; Jackson, 1998, pp. 84-86; Pelliot, 1959-73; Polo, 1865;
1928; 1938, I, pp. 41-55 and II; 1975, intr.; 1998; 1999, pp. 23-110; Ramusio, 1559, pp. 2-60;
Ramusio, 1980; Roques, 1955; Watanabe, 1986, pp. 3-63; 2001, pp. 9-115; 2003, pp. IX-XL.) In
1299 Marco Polo returned to Venice, where he died in 1324.
The Description of the World is not a conventional travel account, but rather a list of the
countries visited (and, in some cases, not visited; for a plan of Asia in Polo’s text see Hambis,
1955). The first part of the text gives an itinerary of his travels through Asia to the court of
Qubilay, to whom the main part of the text is devoted. The last chapters, which include some
sections on India and Africa (countries that Marco Polo does not appear to have visited himself

Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 26
and the descriptions of which are thus at second hand), are followed by a short description of the
return journey, and a short conclusion.
The Description of the World was a success from very early on, and the text was well known and
widely circulated during the Renaissance. Ramusio’s edition can be considered one of the finest
expressions of the scholarly activity of this period (Ramusio, 1559; 1980). The success of the
work is further shown by the production of illuminated manuscripts containing depictions of
episodes from the Description of the World (Wittkower, 1957; Polo, 1999b). Among the
numerous analyses of the text made by modern scholars, the seminal research of Pelliot (1959-
73) should be mentioned for its substantial contribution to the solution of various onomastic and
topographic questions related to Polo’s account. Recently Jackson (1998) has reopened the
debate concerning the authenticity of Description of the World, examining the doubts raised by
Chritchley (1992) and Wood (1995; for a general bibliographical survey see Piemontese, 1982, I,
pp. 137-40; Watanabe, 1986).
While much of the information furnished by Marco Polo is focused on China and the Far East,
much space is also devoted in the text to Persia, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. The information
on Persia has been studied by Franchi (1941) and Gabriel (1963, q.v.), that on the Pamirs and
Afghanistan by Lentz (1933), and that on the Silk Road by Drège (1976). Other scholars have
used the work of Marco Polo to shed light on pre-Islamic sites (Invernizzi, 2005, pp. 78-79), on
which Polo’s information is, however, meager. During the 20th century, the Description of the
World had considerable success in Persia, Piemontese listing more than twenty works and
translations of it that appeared there between 1949 and 1996 (Piemontese, 2003, pp. 234-36).

Among the motivations behind Marco Polo’s journey to Persia and Central Asia, diplomatic
activity was certainly important, even if the details are now not always easy to ascertain. After
the death in 1286 of Queen Boloḡan Ḵātun (q.v., Bolgana/Bolgara), who was the wife of the Il-
khanid rulers Abaqa (Abaga) and Arḡun (Argo/Argon), Marco Polo was charged by Qubilay in
1291 to accompany the new princess of the Bayaʾut lineage, Cocacin (Kökejin), to Persia. By
the time of their arrival, however, Arḡun was dead and his successor Gayḵātu (q.v., Acatu) had
taken power (Polo, 1938, I, pp. 87-93; 1975, sec. 16-17). While this episode appears to be
confirmed by Persian sources (Cleaves, 1976), Marco Polo himself is not mentioned. Moreover,
he is also absent from other Oriental sources and it has been shown that the Chinese name of Po-
lo and the Mongol and Persian names Bolod/Pulād refer not to Marco Polo but to another person
(Allsen, 1994; 2001, pp. 60-61).
The Benedetto edition of the Description of the World is the only one that gives evidence about
the languages spoken by Marco (Polo, 1928, sec. XVI, 2-5; 1938, I, p. 16). Linguistic evidence
allows us to assume that Marco Polo knew Persian and Mongol, which he was also able to read
in the Arabic-Persian and Uighur scripts. He probably used a Persian translator for Chinese, and
it is possible that he was able to read the ʾpʿags-pa scripts that were adopted by the Mongols
(note of Cardona in Polo, 1975, pp. 650-51).
The Description of the World makes frequent use of literary traditions, as in the case of the
conquest of Baghdad (Baudac/Baudas/Baudaca) by Hulagu (Ulau/Alau/Alchom/Altu), and the
killing of the last caliph al-Mostaʿṣem (1258), to which are added legendary elements such as
the description of the caliph dying of starvation in front of his treasury, a fact that seems to be an
adaptation of classical traditions, unsupported by contemporary Arabic sources (Polo, 1928, sec.
Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 27
XXV; 1975, sec. 24, and note on pp. 574-76; 1999, pp. 126-27; 2001, pp. 141-43). Marco Polo
narrates another legendary event, said to have occurred in Baghdad in 1275, when a sovereign,
erroneously defined as the caliph, challenged the Christians to join two mountains together. The
miracle was accomplished by God in response to the prayers of a cobbler. As Monneret de
Villard demonstrated (1948, pp. 84-86), this legend was probably an adaptation of a legend
attributed to the Fatimid caliph al-Moʿezz (953-75) or other later members of the Egyptian
dynasty (Polo, 1928, sec. XXVI-XXIX; 1955, pp. 29-35; 1975, sec. 26-29; 1999, pp. 128-30;
2001, pp. 143-49). Various chapters of the Description of the World are dedicated to the the Viel
de la Montaigne/Veglio della Montagna, “the Old Man of the Mountain,” the šay ḵ al-jabal of the
Islamic sources (Polo, 1938, I, pp. 128-32; 1975, sec. 39-42; 1999, pp. 138-40; 2001, pp. 166-69;
Nowell 1947), Alaodin (ʿAlā-al-Din Moḥammad) who was the seventh Grand Master of the
Ismaʿilis of Alamut called Assassins/Assassini/Harcassis/Hasisins, a term probably derived by
the word ḥašīš/ḥašīšiyin, although this etymology remains controversial (Pelliot, 1959-73, I, pp.
52-55). The country of the members of the sect is called Milect/Mulect/Mulehet/Milice, a
corruption of the word molḥed “heretic,” mistakenly applied by Marco Polo to the region
(Pelliot, 1959-73, II, pp. 785-87). The description given by Marco Polo of the marvelous garden
where ʿAlā-al-Din Moḥammad and the Ismaʿilis lived, and of the activities of the Grand
Master, are practically identical with those of Oderico da Pordenone (Wyngaert, 1929, pp. 488-
89). Polo also describes the destruction of Alamut by Hulagu.
Not all of Marco Polo’s description rests on legend, for several of the episodes he relates
concerning the Mongols seem historically reliable. Even if he includes the tradition of Prester
John (Polo, 1928, sec. CX; 1975, sec. 64-67, 108 and note pp. 696-701; 1999, p. 156), echoing
previous descriptions (see Beckingham, Hamilton, 1996; Doresse, 1953; Nowell, 1953;
Rachelwitz, 1972; Richard, 1957; 2005), he also furnishes a careful history of the line of Čengiz
Khan (q.v.), including a discussion of the customs and the religion of the Mongols (Polo, 1975,
sec. 68-69). The descriptions of the wars of the Il-khanids Abaqa (Abaca/Abaga) and Arḡun
(Argo/Argon) with the Chagatay lord Qaidu (Caidu) and of the open conflict between Qaidu and
Qubilay are useful sources for these events (for this historical evidence, see Biran, 1997, pp. 54-
57). Polo also refers to the Princess Aigiaruc/Aigiarne, a name that is identified by Pelliot as Ay-
Yaruq, probably a surname of the princess Qutulun (Pelliot, 1959-73, I, p. 15). There are
extensive descriptions in Polo’s text of the conflicts between Arḡun and Aḥmad Tegüder, called
Acamat soldan or, in the Tuscan version, simply Soldano (Aḥmad Solṭān). These events occupy
various chapters (Polo, 1928, sec. CCVI-CCXIV; 1938, I, pp. 456-67; 1975, sec. 196-203) where
Polo relates the conversion of Aḥmad and his death at the hands of Arḡun. Polo states also that
Arḡun died from poison. Another figure who appears in Polo’s account is Milichi (malek), who
was the “vicar” of Aḥmad (about him, see Pelliot, who identified him as Alīnāq (killed in 1284:
Pelliot, 1959-73, I, pp. 29-30). Marco Polo also describes the descendants of Jöči, including
Conci/Canci (Qoniči) who ruled in the domains of Ordu (Polo, 1928, sec. CCXVIII; 1975, sec.
204). He names the founder of the Golden Horde Sain/Frai from his epithet Sayin-Khan, “the
good Khan,” which title was in fact used for Batu, though Marco Polo believed that this name
referred to the father of Batu, and not to Batu himself (Bacui/Patu; Polo, 1975, sec. 208; Pelliot,
1959-73, II, p. 327). Among the successors of Batu, Polo mentions Barga/Barca (Berke) who
defeated Hulagu around 1262, a fact that is reported by Polo (1938, I, pp. 478-83; 1975, sec. 209,
see also notes pp. 556-57). The Franco-Italian version of the text also includes some chapters

Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 28
dedicated to Toqtai, the fifth son of Mцngke Timur, who is absent from other versions (Polo,
1928, sec. CCXXX-CCXXXXIII).
Other data attest to the religious interests of Polo, such as the parts dedicated to the three Magi
(Polo, 1938, I, pp. 112-15; 1975, sec. 30-31; Monneret de Villard, 1952, pp. 81-86), where
Marco Polo gives important information about the town of Sāve (Saba), a place where a King of
the Magi was buried, information which appears to be confirmed by various contemporary
Oriental sources such as the Syriac Diatasseron, translated into Persian between 1265 and 1295
(Messina, 1951, p. 22). Polo here refers, interestingly, to fire-worship, which was introduced,
according to him, by the Magi themselves (Polo, 1975, sec. 31; 1999, pp. 130-31; 2001, pp. 152-
53). Fire temples are described by Marco Polo in other regions such as Yazd and Isfahan, and in
a village near Kāšān called Cala Ataperistan (Pers. Qalʿa-ye āteš-parastān) “The castle of the
fire worshipers” (Jackson, 1905).
Polo also gives information on the Christians and the Muslims. He notes the presence of
Nestorians (Nestorini/Nestarini) and Jacobites (Iacopetti/Iacopit) in Mosul and Tabriz, and refers
to Nestorians in Central Asia and China. The Ramusio edition, based on a lost manuscript, is the
only one to introduce a description of the monastery dedicated to Bar Sauma near Tabriz (Polo,
1938, I, p. 105; see Borbone, 2000). Marco Polo shows a certain hostility towards the Muslims,
frequently called Saracini, but also described as adherents to the faith of Macomet/Macometto
(Moḥammad). This hostility probably derived more from the political situation (the Mongols,
allied with the West, had just been defeated by the Mamluks at ʿAyn Jālut in 1260) than from
religious motivations (Olschki, 1960, pp. 232-52).
The more substantial information furnished by the Descriptions of the World is not related to
historical events but rather to the geography of the regions Marco Polo visited during his stays in
Persia and Central Asia. Polo talks of Trepisonde/Trapisonde (Trabzon) and Armenia (Ermenie/
Erminia/ Hermenie/Arminia), divided into Lesser and Greater Armenia, the former ruled by a
king who dwelt in the city of Sebastala/Blasius/Sevasto (Sivas; see Polo, 1928, p. 14; 1938, I, p.
93, Polo, 1955, p. 21; see for Sivas instead of Sis, the capital of the Cilician Kingdom, Pelliot
1959-73, I, p. 97; for Le Conie/Chomo [Konya] and Caserie/Cesare [Kayseri] in other versions
see Polo, 1999, p. 123; 2001, p. 137). The region was subject to the Great Khan (i.e. the Il-
khanids). The region of modern Turkey is called Turcomanie/Turcomania (the land of the
Turkmen) by Polo, while a large part of Anatolia was included in Greater Armenia, whose
capital was Arç ingan/Arzinga (Erzincan), a center famous for its textiles, such as
bucherame/boquerant, taken, probably inaccurately, to mean a textile in the style of Bukhara
(boḵāri; Polo, 1955, p. 22 and note p. 351; 1975, note on pp. 566-68; 2001, pp. 136-37) and
bambagia. The inhabitants of Erzincan were Christians. They were mainly Armenians and
subjects of the Tatars (i.e. the Il-khanids; Polo, 1938, I, p. 96). Two other towns of the region
were Argiron/Arçiron (Erzurum) and Arçiçi/Arzici/Darçiçi (Arčeč, in Polo from the Ar. Arjiš) on
the northeast shore of Lake Van. In connection with Greater Armenia, Polo introduces the legend
of Noah’s Ark. He describes Mosul, where the population was Christian (Polo, 1928, sec. XXII;
1938, I, p. 97; 1975, sec. 21).
The next chapter is dedicated to Georgia (Giorgianie/Giorgens/Jorganie/Zorzania), whose king
was called David (Davidre or David Melic < Ar. malek), probably David V (r. 1249-69), son of
Queen Russudan. Polo relates that all the kings of that province were born with the mark of an
eagle on their right shoulder. The Georgians were valiant warriors, and they were Christians.
Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 29
Polo alludes to the Iron Gate (< Pers. Darband/Darband-e Āhanin) made by Alexander the Great
(Polo, 1975, sec. 22; 1999, pp. 124-25; 2001, pp. 138-40; for other versions see Pelliot, 1938, I,
p. 98) and adds that, in the account in the Book of Alexander (Polo’s reference here to a version
of the Alexander Romance is generally considered an interpolation by Rustichello; see Polo,
1975, note p. 534), Alexander shut the Tatars within the mountains, but that the reference was to
the Comain (Cumans, see above), because there were no Tatars at the time of Alexander. Polo
also mentions a monastery dedicated to St. Leonard (probably a Dominican house) and gives
important information about the Caspian Sea, called Gel or Chelan “Geluchelan” (from Gilān >
Mer de Ghel, see Pelliot, 1959-73, II, pp. 733-35; Polo 1928, sec. XXIII; 1975, sec. 22; 2001, p.
140), where the Genoese sailed. The presence of the Genoese here is confirmed by other sources
(Richard, 1970).
Marco Polo divides Persia into eight regions which he calls “realms” (reami):
Causom/Casum/Casibin (Qazvin), Distan or Cordistan (Kordestān, but also Dehestān?); Lor
(Lorestān); Cielstan/Culstan (probably Šulestān; Pelliot, 1959-73, I, pp. 263-64);
Ispaan/Istain/Istanit/yspaan (Isfahan; for other variants see Pelliot, 1959-73, II, pp. 752-53);
Çiraç/Zerazi (Shiraz; see other variants in Pelliot, 1959-73, I, pp. 609-10);
Anchora/Crocara/Soncara/Soncaran, the kingdom of the Šabānkāraʾi, south of the great salt
lake and east of Shiraz (Pelliot, 1959-73, II, p. 837); and Tunocain (Tun-o-Qāyen, a name
formed by two towns of the Kohestān; see the variants in Pelliot, 1959-73, II, p. 863; see Polo
1999, pp. 131-32), near the enigmatic Arbre seul/Arbor sol/Albaro Solo/Albero del sole where
Alexander fought Darius (Polo, 1928, sec. XXXIII; 1938, I, pp. 116-33; 1975, sec. 39; 2001, pp.
150-52). This “Dry [Lone] Tree” has been variously interpreted as being connected to various
mythical or real trees (see Pelliot, 1959-73, II, pp. 628-37). A more recent interpretation, that of
Piemontese (1997, pp. 149-50), identifies it with the šul (the Cydonia indica), a sort of Indian
quince. In any case the Albaro Solo seems to be located in Khorasan, and the mention of it in the
Descriptions of the World probably represents different traditions, in particular one preserved by
the tradition of the Alexander Romance (see the note in Polo, 1975, pp. 532-33). The eighth
realm is described by Polo as a country full of horses where silks and brocades were worked.
One chapter in the Descriptions of the World is devoted to various towns: Tauris/Toris (Tabriz),
capital of the Il-khanid Empire between 1265 and 1304, is considered one of the main towns of
Yrac/Irac which Marco Polo misinterprets as an expanded ʿErāq-e ʿAjam (Polo, 1928, sec.
XXX; 1975, sec. 25; 1999, p. 127; 2001, pp. 149-50). The people of this town traded with India
and other countries, and produced silk fabrics and brocades. Latin, Armenian, Nestorian,
Jacobite, and Georgian merchants were active there. The town was surrounded by beautiful
gardens, even if the population was evil and disloyal. Iasdi/Iadis/Jasoy (Yazd) was a beautiful
town where silk and brocades were worked (Polo, 1928, sec. XXXIV; 1975, sec. 33; 2001, p.
155). Turquoise (turchesche) was extracted in great quantities from the mountains of Kerman
(Creman) and was worked there. The people of Kerman also specialized in the production of iron
and steel, and prepared arms and harness for the knights. The women worked silk and gold. In
this country the art of falconry was particularly developed. In Yazd and Kerman, Marco
observed some onagers, which he calls “wild asses” (Polo, 1928, sec. XXXV; 1975, sec. 34;
1999, pp. 152-53; 2001, pp. 155-57). The village of Camadi or Camandi (Qamādin), a suburb
near Jiroft, in the realm of Reobales (Rudbār?), was famous for dates and other fruits (Pelliot,
1959-73, I, p. 139), and it was here that animals such as donkeys and rams with their typical fat
tails could be found. The local population built walls of earth to defend themselves. They sold

Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 30
slaves and were under King Nogodar, identified as a chief of the
Carans/Carans/Charaunas/Caraonas /Scherani, the Qaraunas (Pelliot, 1959-73, I, pp. 183-96;
II, p. 792) about whom Marco Polo gives information in various parts of his text (Polo, 1928,
sec. XXXVI; 1938, I, pp. 120-22; 1975, sec. 8, 35, 114-15; 2001, pp. 158-59; see also Aubin,
1969). To escape from them Marco Polo takes refuge in the castle of Canosalmi/Ganasalim
(probably *Qanāt-e Šāh: Pelliot, 1959-73, I, p. 158).
Marco Polo also reached Cormos/Cremosa/Formosa (Hormoz), were he observed merchants
from India trading in textiles, ivory, and other goods. The king of this country was called
Reumeda Iacomat/Ruccomod Iacamata,possibly a transliteration of Rokn-al-Din Aḥmad [for
Maḥmud] who reigned there for thirty-five years until 1278 (see Aubin, 1953). Hormoz
produced dates, wine, and spices. The boats made there were not of good quality and to be at sea
in them was very dangerous. The deserts in Asia were also dangerous, and Marco Polo described
the difficulties a traveler could meet there. One of the deserts divided Kerman from
Cobinam/Cobiam/ Gobiam (Kubanān), a place where tutty (toutie/tuzia/tutia, < Pers. tutiyā) was
produced and where there was a furnace used for its production according to Marco Polo, whose
information furnishes one of the earliest pieces of evidence on this activity there (Allan, 1979,
pp. 40-41; Polo, 1938, I, p. 127; 1999, p. 137; 2001, p. 164). In Kubanān he also observed the
manufacturing of iron and steel.
In what is now Afghanistan, Marco Polo describes
Sapurgan/Sopurgan/Supunga/Sipurgan/Espurgam, identified by Benedetto (Polo, 1928, sec.
XLIV; 1938, I, pp. 133-34; 1975, sec. 43; 1999, p. 140; 2003, p. 1) as Šeberḡān, north of Mazar-
e Sharif, as a country full of trees and delicious melons. He observed the destruction wrought by
the Mongols in Balc/Balac/Baldach (Balkh) and noted that the people of this town lived in
fortresses in the mountains. It was in Balkh that Alexander had married the daughter of Darius
(Polo, 1938, I, pp. 134-35; 1975, sec. 44; 1999, p. 141; 2003, pp. 2). The castle of
Taican/Tahican, noted by Polo as a good market for fodder, was identified by Pelliot (1959-73,
II, pp. 842-43; see also Lentz, 1932, p. 8) as Taliqan. Here the mountains were of salt. The same
chapter (Polo, 1975, sec. 45; 1999, pp. 141-42; 2003, pp. 4-6) includes a mention of
Scasem/Scassem, which Lentz (1932, pp. 10-12) and Pelliot (1959-73, II, pp. 826-27) have
identified as Iškāšm (Sikašīm in Ḥudūd al-ʿ lam, Ā see Minorsky, 1982, p. 121, nr. 14), a town
on the south-west slopes of the Pamirs (see also the comments about another Iškāšm in the notes
to Polo, 1975, pp. 716-17).

The Description of the World mentions Badaḵšān several times (Badasciam/Balascam/

Balassam; Polo, 1928, sec. XLVII, L; 1938, I, pp. 136-39; 1975, sec. 46, 47, 49; 2003, pp. 4-6),
where the kings were descended from Alexander the Great and the daughter of Darius. For this
reason the kings of this dynasty were called Zulcarnei (from the Qurʾ nic ā epithet of Alexander
Ḏu’l-qarnayn and the tradition concerning Rōšanag and her daughter Stateira, see Pelliot, 1959-
73, I, pp. 615-16). Very expensive rubies (balais/balasci < badaḵšī, “stones from Badakhshān”;
Pelliot, 1959-73, I, pp. 63-65; Polo, 1975, note p. 551), as well as the best azul/azzurro (lapis
lazuli, < Pers. lājvard) in the world, and silver were mined here. Badakhshān was a cold country
where it was possible to find very good horses. The population produced oil from nuts and were
good warriors. The women wore trousers because they had large buttocks and people liked them
when they were fat. Pascian/Bastian (Pasciai in Polo, 1928, sec. XXXVI, 35; XLVIII, 1; 1999,
p. 143; 2003, p. 6) is variously interpreted. It seems to be the Pashai, south of the Hindukush
Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 31
(Lentz, 1933, pp. 16-17). Here, the population, which spoke its own language (pašayī, see
Morgenstierne, 1967, pp. 1-4), was of dark complexion and were idolaters. In their ears they
wore gold and silver earrings set with precious stones. This land was near Kashmir (Chesciemur/
Chesmir/Chesimun/Thesimur/Kesimur), another land of idolaters (Polo, 1928, sec. XLIX; 1938,
I, pp. 139-49; 1975, sec. 48; 1999, 144; 2003, p. 7). The Lord of Badakhshān also governed the
Vocan (Wakhan) in the Pamirs, which was inhabited by Muslims who spoke their own language
(for the wakhi language see Pakhalina, 1966, pp. 398-418). Marco Polo claimed that the
mountain here was the highest in the world, alluding to one of the peaks of the Pamirs. Here
there was a great and beautiful river and good pastures. As Cardona noted (in Polo, 1975, pp.
753-54) the description of this valley appears similar to that given by Edrīsī (1987, II, p. 204;
also Lentz, 1933, pp. 17-20). Moving eastward, away from the Pamirs, Marco Polo described
Belor/Balor/Bolor, a country identified by Pelliot as the Bulur of Ḥudūd al-ʿ lam Ā (Pelliot,
1959-73, I, pp. 90-91; Minorsky 1982, p. 369). It is the area of Balur or Balurestān, which
includes the valleys of Chitral, Yasin, and Gilgit. Polo noted that the people of this region too
were idolaters.

Kaxgar (Kashgar: Cascar/Casar/Calsar) was inhabited by Muslims. It was a great market for
international trade, and the town was also inhabited by Nestorian Christians. The people of this
region spoke their own language (Polo, 1928, sec. XL; 1975, sec. 50; 2003, pp. 9-10; Pelliot,
1959-73, I, pp. 196-214). In Samarqand (Samarcam/Sammarcham/Samartan) too, Muslims and
Christians lived together. Marco Polo states that Chaḡatay (Gigata/Chagatai/Agatai/
Ciagati/Agati), the son of Čengiz Khan, who was the lord of this region, became Christian, and
for this reason a great church dedicated to St. John the Baptist was built in this town (Polo, 1928,
sec. LII; 1938, I, pp. 143-46; 1975, sec. 51; 1999, p. 146; 2003; pp. 10-12). Pelliot, like other
scholars, argues that Chaḡatay was never a Christian (Pelliot, 1959-73, I, pp. 250-54), and that
the story of the church, with the stone and the column that supported the church, together with
the dispute between Muslims and Christians, is a legend. Moreover, contrary to his usual
practice, Marco Polo gives no information concerning the town and its products. This might
indicate that Marco Polo was, in fact, never in Samarqand. Yarkant (Yarkand, Shache:
Carcam/Iarchan/Yarcan; Polo, 1928, sec. LII, LIII; 1938, I, p. 146; 1975, sec. 52; 1999, pp. 146-
47; 2003, p. 12; Pelliot, 1959-73, II, pp. 876-85), had a Christian and Muslim population,
whereas Hotan (Khotan, Cotam/Cotan/Cothan) is described as inhabited only by Muslims. This
seems unlikely, given the fact that the region had been invaded by Küčlüg, a bitter opponent of
Islam, and by Čengiz Khan shortly before the period which Marco Polo was describing (Polo,
1928, sec. LIV; 1975, sec. 53; Pelliot, 1959-73, I, pp. 408-25; 1999, p. 147; 2003, p. 147). In the
same region as Hotan, Marco Polo describes a place called Pein/Pem/Peiu, which is perhaps
modern-day Uzuntatп between Keriya and Dandan Uilik (Polo, 1928, sec. LV; 1975, sec. 54, and
note p. 688; Pelliot, 1959-73, II, p. 801; 1999, p. 147), and Ciarcian (Čärčän), a post house
between Keriya and Lop Nur (Lop Nor: Pelliot, 1959-73, I, pp. 261-62). This region, called Lop,
together with its capital Ruoqiang (Charkhlik; see Pelliot, 1959-73, II, p. 170) was the last stop
before the Lop Nur desert, and the route into what is now the province of Gansu (Kansu) in
China.
Various Persian linguistic and historical influences are evident in the section of The Description
of the World dedicated to China. The use of words such as Fafur/Facfur (Pers. faḡfur), used by
Arab and Persian historians for the Sung emperor, seems clearly to reflect the adoption by Marco
Polo of a Muslim tradition (Pelliot, 1959-73, II, pp. 652-61). The name Catai
Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 32
(Alcatay/Cata/Catai) used by Marco Polo for Northern China stretching to the Huang Ho derives
from the Arabic transcription of the world *Qitai (>Ar., Pers. Ḵaṭā/Ḵaṭāy), referring to the Kitan
tribes who migrated to the West and were known in the Islamic world as Qara Khitay (Pelliot,
1959-73, I, pp. 216-29). A Persian influence appears in some topographical names, such as
Taianfu (T’ai-yüan-fu in Shanxi/Shansi), which reflects the transcriptions of the name given by
Rašid-al-Din (Tāyanfu and Tāyvanfu; see Blochet, 1911, II, 181, 214; and Pelliot 1959-73, II, p.
842), and Acbalec Mangi/Anbalet Mangi (Aq Baleq) which came from the Persian construction
Aqbaleq-e Manzī, probably Hanzhong (Han-chung) on the Han river (Pelliot, 1959-73, I, pp. 7-
8). Pianfu (P’ing-yang-fu in Shanxi), seems to be derived from the Persian (Tung Ping Fu in
Rašid-al-Din; Blochet, 1911, II, p. 181; Pelliot, 1959-73, II, p. 803). For a river in Canbalu
(Beijing, Peking) Polo employs the term Pulisanghyn/Pulizanghiz (< Pers. Pul-e sangīn),
probably using the Persian name for the river Sang-kan (Pelliot, 1959-73, II, p. 812; Polo, 1975,
sec. 104, note p. 701; 1999, p. 189). Persian influence is also evident in ethnic names, such as
Çardandan/Ardandan, from the Persian zar-dandān “golden tooth (teeth),” which is the exact
translation of the Chinese Chin-ch’ih used for a population of southern China (Pelliot, 1959-73,
I, pp. 603-6; Polo, 1975, sec. 119).
Marco Polo also appears to use references to Muslim traditions in his account of India. He gives,
for example, the legend of the tomb of Adam on the highest mountain of Sri Lanka (Ceylon:
Seilla/Seilan), which is referred to in sources such Qazvini or Demašqi (Polo, 1975, sec. 174;
Ferrand, 1913-14, pp. 307, 378; about Polo in India see Sastri, 1957). The same traditions may
be connected with his reference to the bird Ruc (roḵ or roḵḵ in Muslim literature), mentioned in
Madagascar (Polo, 1975, sec. 21).
On his account of his return journey, which appears in the last part of The Description of the
World, Marco Polo gives a description of Aden (Aden/Adan/Adam) which, like that of Šir (Scier/
Escier/Esier), Dhofar (Dufar/Defur/Dofar) and Kalat (Calatu/Calata), seems to be based on
second-hand information (Polo, 1975, sec. 190-93). From Hormoz, he passes on to Gran
Turchie/Grande Turchia “Great Turkey” which corresponds to the ulus of Chaḡatay (Turkistan),
governed at this time by Qaidu (Polo, 1975, sec. 195).
Marco Polo lists the provinces of the Golden Horde domains, conquered by Batu (see above):
Rossia (Russia); Cumania/Comanie/Comania, the land of the Kipchaq (Cumans), known by the
Byzantines as Kуmanoi (Polo, 1975, note p. 601); Alains/Alani/Alanai, the lands of the Alans
(Ossetes; also As or Asi in Rubrouck, Wyngaert, 1929, p. 89; Pelliot, 1959-73, I, pp. 16-25); Lac/
Lacca (Dagestan/Daghestan; Pelliot, 1959-73, II, p. 760); Mengiar/Megia/ (Hungary < Magyar,
see the question in Pelliot, 1959-73, II, pp. 777-78, Polo, 1975, note pp. 663-65);
Çiç/Ziziri/Zirziri, a name that may be related to the Eastern Circassians (Jik; Pelliot1959-73, I,
pp. 606-8; Deeters 1958); Gucia/Gutia/Scozia, Crimea, which was inhabited by Goths (See
Wyngaert, 1929, p. 170; Pelliot, 1959-73, II, p. 743) and Gazarie/Gasaria, the “land of the
Khazars,” modern Crimea (Polo, 1975, sec. 208).
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W. Lentz, “War Marco Polo auf dem Pamir?” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlдndischen
Gesellschaft 86, N.S. 11, 1933, pp. 1-32. G. Messina, Diatasseron persiano, Rome, 1951.
M. Mir-Ahmadi, “Marco Polo in Iran,” Oriente Moderno 88, 2008, forthcoming.
U. Monneret de Villard, Il Libro della peregrinazione nelle parti d’Oriente di Frate Ricoldo da
Montecroce, Rome, 1948.
Idem, Le leggende orientali sui Magi evangelici, Vatican City, 1952.

V. Minorsky ed., Ḥudūd al-ʿ lam.

Ā The Regions of the World: A Persian Geography 372 A.H.-
982 A.D., 2nd ed., Cambridge, 1982.
G. Morgenstierne, Indo-Iranian Frontier Languages III/1, Oslo, 1967.
C. E. Nowell, “The Old Man of the Mountain,” Speculum 22, 1947, pp. 475-89.

Idem, “The Historical Prester John,” Speculum 28, 1953, pp. 435-45.
L. Olschki, Marco Polo’s Asia. An Introduction to his “Description of the World” called “Il
Milione,” Berkeley, 1960.
T. N. Pakhalina, “Vakhanskiĭ yazyk,” in Yazyki narodov SSSR I, Moscow, 1966, pp. 398-418.

A. M. Piemontese, Bibliografia italiana dell’Iran (1462-1982), 2 vols., Naples, 1982.

Idem, “Il pomo aureo del paradiso persiano,” in In memoria di Francesco Gabrieli (1904-1996),
suppl. 2, Rivista degli Studi Orientali 71, Rome, 1997, pp. 147-57.
Idem, La letteratura italiana in Persia, Rome, 2003.

P. Pelliot, “Chrétiens d’Asie Centrale et d’Extrème-Orient,” Toung Pao 25, 1914, pp. 157-64.
Idem, Notes on Marco Polo: Ouvrage posthume, 3 vols., Paris, 1959-73.
I. de Rachelwitz, Prester John and Europe’s Discovery of East Asia, Canberra, 1972.
Idem, “Marco Polo Went to China,” Zentralasiatische Studien 27, 1997, pp. 34-92.
J. Richard, “L’Extrème-Orient légendaire au Moyen Age: Roi David et Prètre Jean,” Annales
d’Ethiopie 2, 1957, pp. 225-42.
Idem, “Les navigations des Occidentaux sur l’Océan Indien et la Mer Caspienne,” in Sociétés et
compagnies de commerce dans l’Océan Indien, ed. M. Mollat, Paris, 1970, pp. 353-63.

Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 36
Idem, Au-dela de la Perse et de l’Armenie. L’Orient latin et la découverte de l’Asie intéreure,
Turnhout, 2005.
M. Roques, “Les manuscrits de Marco Polo,” Romania 76, 1955, pp. 399-408.
K. A. N. Sastri, “Marco Polo in India,” in Oriente poliano. studi e conferenze tenute
al’Is.M.E.O. in occasione del VII centenario della nascita di Marco Polo (1254-1954), Rome,
1957, pp. 111-20.
D. Sinor, “The Mongols and Western Europe,” in K. M. Setton and E. H. Hazard, eds., A History
of the Crusades; The Fourteenth and fifteenth century, Madison, 1975.
B. Spuler, “La situation de l’Iran а l’époque de Marco Polo,” in Oriente Poliano, studi e
conferenze tenute all’Is.M.E.O. in occasione del VII centenario della nascita di Marco Polo
(1254-1954), Rome, 1957, pp. 121-32.
B. Szczesniak, “Marco Polo’s Surname ‘Milione’ According to newly discovered Documents,”
T’oung Pao 48, 1960, pp. 447-52.

U. Tucci, “Polo Marco,” in Venezia e l’Oriente, Venice, 1983.

Idem, “Marco Polo mercante,” in Venezia e l’Oriente, ed. L. Lanciotti, Florence, 1987.
H. Watanabe, Marco Polo Bibliography, 1477-1983, Tokyo, 1986.
F. Wood, Did Marco Polo go to China? London, 1995.
R. Wittkower, “Marco Polo and the Pictorial Tradition of the Marvels of the East,” in idem, ed.,
Allegory and the Migration of Symbols, Boulder, Colorado, 1977, pp. 75-92.
A. van den Wyngaert, Sinica Franciscana I. Itinera et relationes fratrum minori saeculi XIII et
XIV, Quaracchi, 1929.

July 28, 2008

(Michele Bernardini)
Originally Published: July 28, 2008
Last Updated: July 28, 2008

POLO, MARCO - Encyclopædia Iranica | Articles

In 1298, Marco Polo was captured by the Genoese in Curzola (Korčula) and imprisoned in
Genoa where he met Rustichello da Pisa who wrote out Marco Polo's ...
www.iranica.com/articles/polo-marco -

Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 37
Journal of World History 10.1 (1999) 220-223

Karl J. Schmidt - Did Marco Polo Go to China? (review) - Journal ...

The ghostwriter, a Pisan romance writer named Rustichello, shared a Genoese prison cell in 1298
with Marco Polo; it was to him that Polo ostensibly dictated ...
muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_world.../10.1schmidt.htm

F. Wood'sDid Marco Polo Go To China?

A Critical Appraisal by I. de Rachewiltz
In her book Did Marco Polo Go To China? (first published by Secker & Warburg, London, in
1995), Dr Frances Wood claims that Marco did not go to China and that he 'probably never
travelled much further than the family's trading post on the Black Sea and in Constantinople'.
F.W.'s thesis, leading to the above conclusion, is based on a number of principal arguments and a
few secondary ones as props. It should be mentioned that most of these arguments have been
'aired' by various writers since the beginning of the 19th century, but were never taken seriously
by Polan scholars.
The principal arguments impugning Marco's credibility are the following:
1. Marco's itinerary is untrustworthy because of lack of coherence, because it is impersonal
and in several instances actually incorrect as to dates, distances and events;
2. The geographical and proper names mentioned by Marco in his book are not given in their
Mongolian or Chinese form (as we would expect), but in their Persian form. This seems
to confirm a theory put forth many years ago by the German sinologist H. Franke that
Marco may have used a Persian source on China;
3. Marco fails to mention many important aspects of Chinese life and material culture.
Among these notable omissions are: a) the Chinese writing system; b) books and
printing; c) tea and tea drinking; d) porcelain; e) the Chinese custom of footbinding; and
f) cormorant fishing;
4. Marco is incorrect in his description of certain landmarks in cities like Peking (e.g., the so-
called Marco Polo Bridge, which he erroneously describes as having twenty-four arches
instead of eleven or thirteen);
5. Marco ignores the existence of the Great Wall. According to F.W. 'the omission of the
Wall in the Description of the World is telling';
6. Marco claims that he, his father Nicolò and uncle Maffeo were present at the siege of
Hsiang-yang (the important Sung stronghold in Hu-pei) by the Mongols, and that, in their
capacity of mangonel experts, they were actually instrumental in bringing about its

Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 38
 surrender. This claim is patently false since the siege of Hsiang-yang ended in January
1273, and the three Polos reached north China only in 1274/5;
7. Marco states that he was for three years governor of the important city and trade-post of
Yang-chou in Chiang-su. However, no gazetteer of Yang-chou mentions him; therefore,
this too appears to be another unsubstantiated claim;
8. Neither Marco nor his father and uncle are mentioned in any Chinese source of the period.
This is strange since Marco specifically claims that during his seventeen years in
Mongol-ruled China he was constantly sent on special missions by Khubilai Khan in
different parts of the empire; he must, therefore, have held an important position, and his
name should be recorded somewhere.
To strengthen the case against Marco, F.W. adduces the following secondary arguments:
1. Marco's book is not written like a real travelogue, but rather as an 'armchair guidebook' for
merchants, like Pegolotti's Pratica della Mercatura;
2. Stories, such as the famous account of Marco's return to the West accompanying the
Mongol princess Kökechin to Persia to marry the Il-khan Arghun, 'could have been
borrowed from another source';
3. Rustichello of Pisa's role in editing Marco's work is ambiguous: it is difficult to say what,
in the book, is Marco's own contribution and Rustichello's (or other editors') later
additions;
4. Contrary to popular belief, Marco did not introduce spaghetti and ice-cream to the West;
5. Marco's claim that his father and uncle were the first 'Latins', i.e. Western Europeans, ever
seen by Khubilai Khan is incorrect since we know that they had been preceded by at least
one Frankish embassy;

6. Marco's references to the golden tablets of authority which he, his father and his uncle
received from Khubilai Khan are confused and therefore unreliable as evidence of
Marco's journey. So is also a reference to one of these tablets in the (surviving) inventory
of his possessions; and the will of Marco's uncle Maffeo of 1310 suggests some 'jiggery-
pokery' by Marco over one of the tablets.
From the above, F.W. infers that while Marco's father and uncle may have undertaken the
dangerous journey to the Mongol court (witness the golden tablets they brought back), there is no
evidence that Marco did. She suggests a scenario whereby Marco tried to steal their glory by
writing himself into the story while in prison in Genoa - something that is possibly related to the
family dispute recorded in the will of 1310.
F.W.'s final conclusion, however, is that on the available evidence Marco could have gained the
information found in his book partly from his father and uncle who had been to the East, and
partly from the knowledge of farther Asia collected by the family's commercial houses in the
Crimea and Constantinople, with the additional help of Persian guidebooks, maps, etc. available
to him. He himself need not have set foot much beyond those trading posts.

Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 39
All F.W.'s arguments have been discussed in detail and refuted in Igor de Rachewiltz's review-
article 'Marco Polo Went to China' in Zentralasiatische Studien 27 (1997), pp. 34-92. The main
thrust of the above review is to focus attention on the internal evidence provided by Marco's
work and contemporary documents, as well as on the evidence provided by the Chinese and
Persian sources; and to point out the numerous contradictions and superficial (and often
incorrect) interpretations in F.W.'s arguments that vitiate her thesis. The following points are
especially relevant1:
1. In order to explain Marco's 'failings' and the shortcomings of his book, one must first
understand the nature of the former and the character of the latter. Marco was not a
professional writer, in fact he was not a writer at all. His knowledge of the written
language was probably limited to the basic vocabulary and stereotyped formulae of the
mercatura, for he left Venice as a young lad and spent much of his adult life in foreign
lands. He was a keen observer, but lacking in imagination. The personal element in the
narrative does not come through because it is simply not there, having been relegated and
disposed of in the Prologue of the book, the title of which is The Description of the
World, not My Life & Travels. The description of places and peoples is what matters, and
Marco's involvement in them is purely incidental. If the geography and chronology of
The Description of the World at times lack coherence and precision it is because the
individual episodes that Marco relates are far more important than strict adherence to
topographical and chronological accuracy. The result is that while the main events
described and the names are generally correct, the details are not. We must not overlook
a) the fact that it may not have been possible to check many of the details, especially
concerning figures (distances, quantities, etc.) after Marco's return to Venice; and b) we
must also take into account factors like lapses of memory and blurred recollections
concerning things seen or done, or heard many years before; c) Marco's own biases in the
choice of matters to relate; d) an obvious tendency to exaggerate his role; and e) the
mediaeval man's tendency to fill in gaps in knowledge with wild statements and tales of
marvels. Had Marco had access to written sources like 'Persian guidebooks', he would
have been able to avoid some of his most glaring mistakes, such as that concerning the
bridge in Peking or the exact situation of a town in China. Marco's book is not a report
commissioned by the authorities (or meant for them) like the well-known accounts of
John of Pian di Carpine and William of Rubruck; nor is it a merchant's guide to Asia like
Pegolotti's book. Although Marco's 'mercantile' remarks are frequent, the style, structure
and organization of his book are completely different from Pegolotti's work, as the Polan
scholar Leonardo Olschki has shown. And, contrary to what F.W. claims, Marco's
itinerary does not lack coherence and adheres until the very last chapters to the order set
out in the Prologue, as J. Critchley, another Polan scholar, has amply demonstrated. The
occasional 'undisciplined' way in which Marco tells his story is precisely due to the fact
that the author lacked the constraints of a diarist, a chronicler or a compiler of a travel or
commercial guide.

1
Most of the arguments presented in this paper are discussed in detail (with supporting references) in my review
article in Zentralasiatische Studien 27 (1997). A short list of Additions and Corrections appeared in Zentralasiatische
Studien 28 (1998), p. 177. Bibliographical and other references for the additional arguments included in the present
paper are given in the following notes. Many of the criticisms I make have already been made by other reviewers
and commentators in the past years, but not (to my knowledge) in a thorough and systematic way.
Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 40
 2. During his seventeen years in Mongol-ruled China, Marco did not 'mix' with the Chinese,
he never learned their language and was not interested in their ancient culture. He moved
among the many foreign communities already established there before the Mongol
invasion and greatly enlarged thanks to the Mongol government multiethnic policy. There
was then (second half of the 13th c.) a vast number of Persian and Turkic-speaking
Central and Western Asians, Arabs, Alans from the Caucasus, as well as traders, clerics
and adventurers from various European countries, Italy in particular, owing to the
commercial activity of Venice, Genoa and Pisa. The lingua franca of these 'Westerners' in
China at the time was Persian. This was, indeed, not only the dominant foreign language,
but also the 'official' foreign language until the Ming period, as shown by Huang Shih-
chien of Hang-chou University. Chinese was the language of the subjects, and Mongolian
(and, to a lesser extent, Turkic) the language of the rulers - a huge social and cultural gulf
separating the native subjects from their foreign masters. At the bottom of the scale were
the Chinese scholars, i.e. the keepers and transmitters of China's tradition and culture.
The foreigners of various extractions who had settled in the country formed a sort of
intermediate structure or class with close links to the top, however, and purely mercantile
and/or administrative relations with the Chinese (as petty-officials, tax collectors, etc.).
The three Polos belonged to this multiethnic society and most, if not all, of their business
was transacted in Persian (as well as Italian, of course, with their countrymen). The fact
that Marco employs the Persian and Turkic forms of geographical and proper names, and
of various terms for official titles, objects, etc., is exactly what we would expect of him
and should therefore not surprise us. As for the many outlandish forms of names and
terms that we encounter in his book, these are often due simply to textual corruptions and
scribal errors, as shown by P. Pelliot's meticulous reconstructions.
3. Marco's indifference to things Chinese in general, and to the finer products of their ancient
culture in particular, goes a long way to explain some of the 'notable omissions' that we
find so puzzling: a) Marco makes only a cursory remark on the Chinese language and
dialects, and on a single system of writing ('one manner of letters'). He mentions the
(printed) Chinese paper money but, like Ibn Battùta and Odoric of Pordenone, does not
comment on the script; b) he does not mention Chinese books - which were really a
closed book to him! - and book-printing. However, the printing process involved in the
production of the banknotes which he describes is essentially the same as that used for
printing books, the only difference being that what Marco calls 'a seal' is, in reality, a
'printing block'. Clearly, the complex Chinese system of writing, and the fine points of
printing, only interested travellers who were more educated and literary-minded than was
either Marco or Odoric. And, again, we must not forget that we are in the 13th century,
when the vast majority of Marco's contemporaries were illiterate; c) tea drinking was a
custom spread mainly among the Chinese, too trivial an item to have made an impression
on Marco. Neither Odoric nor Ibn Battùta mention it in their travelogues - and none of
them speaks of chopsticks either, obviously for the same reason; d) pace F.W. (who
contradicts herself here) porcelain and porcelain-making are described by Marco; e) the
curious and notorious custom of footbinding is ignored by Marco, as it is also by Ibn
Battùta. Since Marco had no close contact with Chinese society and only a very
superficial interest in its customs, it would have been difficult for him to investigate this
practice, confined as it was to a stratum of society alien to him and one largely removed

Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 41
 from the public eye; f) cormorant fishing, which is noted by Odoric but not by Ibn
Battùta, is likewise omitted from Marco's narrative, no doubt through oversight.
4 & 5. Whereas Marco's incorrect description of the famous bridge in Peking can be simply
explained through either a faulty recollection on his part of the exact number of arches, or
an early scribal error, the same could not be said of his total silence on the Great Wall.
But the fact is that the Wall, as we know it, did not exist in Marco's time. As shown by
A.N. Waldron, the magnificent Wall we see today is the fortification built or re-built by
the Ming government in the 16th and 17th centuries. Before the Ming there were only a
series of ramparts, erected in different periods and made of pounded earth reinforced with
wooden stakes or bundled twigs. At no stage was there a continuous 'line', only
discontinuous walls, differently placed and shifting position from dynasty to dynasty.
What remained unchanged throughout the centuries was the literary fiction of the 'Long
Wall' built by the Ch'in emperor Shih-huang in the 3rd century B.C., i.e. the 'myth' of the
Great Wall which is still alive and well today in China and in Europe. There is no
mention of the Great Wall as a material reality in the Chinese sources of the 13th century.
Indeed, in the great Ming cartographic work Kuang-yü t'u, which had six editions
between ca. 1555 and 1579, the Great Wall appears for the first time only in the 1579
edition. 2 This means that until 1579 the Chinese geographers themselves had ignored the
existence of the Wall. No wonder Marco failed to notice it!
6. To explain away Marco's absurd claim that he, his father and uncle had been present at the
siege of Hsiang-yang, we have only two options: a) plain boasting on his part, in the near-
certain knowledge that he could get away with it; and b) Rustichello or a later editor
invented the story to give credit to the Polos, the text being amended accordingly. I am in
favour of (b) because this claim is not found in an important and related group of MSS.,
as already noted by A.C. Moule.

7. Marco's claim that he held the governorship of Yang-chou for three years is an
exaggeration to say the least. There is no reason to disbelieve his statement that he
resided in that city, and for a lengthy period. After all, Yang-chou was a thriving
commercial centre and wealthy Italian merchants were established there in the 13th-14th
century (the Yilioni family from Genoa).3 But Marco was certainly never the governor of
that city, although he may have held a temporary position of authority there as inspector
or court appointed commissioner - a position that he, or Rustichello, later magnified.
8. It is true that no mention of Marco, his father and uncle has yet been discovered in the
Chinese sources of the period. However, we do not know what Marco's name was in
Chinese (if he ever had one), nor in Mongolian for that matter, in spite of his claim that at
court he was simply called 'Master Marc Pol'. The Mongols often gave nicknames to
2
The six editions in question are those of ca. 1555, 1558, 1561, 1566, 1572 and 1579. A seventh edition was
published in the Ch'ing period under the Chia-ch'ing emperor (1799). See W. Fuchs, The "Mongol Atlas" of China
by Chu Ssu-pen and the Kuang-yü-t'u, Monumenta Serica Monograph VIII, Peiping, 1946, pp. 15-24. The reference
to the Great Wall is on p. 21.
3
On the Genoese Yilioni (= Ilioni) family, see R.S. Lopez, 'Trafegando in partibus Catagii: altri genovesi in Cina nel
Trecento', in Su e giù per la storia di Genova, Genoa, 1975, pp. 184-5. Cf. L. Petech, Selected Papers on Asian
History, Is. M.E.O.: Serie Orientale Roma LX, Rome, 1988, pp. 168-9. I wish to thank Prof. L. Petech of Rome for
kindly supplying the references cited in nn. 2 and 3. (The statement concerning the 'Vilioni' family of Venice in my
article 'Marco Polo Went to China', p. 40, must be amended accordingly.)
Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 42
 people in their employment and these would have been phonetically transliterated into
Chinese. We can only guess and so far we have not been successful in tracing him.
Personally, I think that Marco is totally ignored by the Chinese sources, as were so many
other foreign personages who resided in, or visited China. Neither John of Montecorvino,
the first Catholic Archbishop of Peking (and a contemporary of Marco), nor the famous
roving friar Odoric of Pordenone, nor John of Marignolli, the head of an important Papal
embassy to the last Mongol ruler of China, get any mention in the Chinese sources. I
believe that Marco's name is not included in any Chinese official source because he did
not have a truly 'official' position. We can gather from his own account that he was sent
by Khubilai Khan on 'special' missions and that he reported to him personally. Clearly, he
did not belong among the rank and file of the Mongol administration, and must have
acted as a special court agent, inspector, or ad hoc investigator on assignments requiring
tact and diplomacy. Interesting theories have been put forward as to what agencies
operating in China and in the wider Mongol empire he may have been inspecting
specifically, but this area of Marco's activities remains largely speculative. In any event,
the fact that he is not mentioned in the Chinese sources should not surprise us unduly, for
such is the case of other, possibly more exalted, individuals at the time. 4
With regard to F.W.'s secondary arguments, most of them, as shown in my review article, are
based on misinterpretations of the original sources. The entire section on spaghetti, ravioli and
ice-cream is, of course, irrelevant since Marco never claims that he was responsible for their
introduction to the West. In fact, Marco does not mention spaghetti or ravioli in his book, but
speaks only of 'lasagne' (as a staple food of the Mongols and the Chinese), a term incorrectly
rendered as 'vermicelli' and 'noodles' by a series of English translators who were evidently not
very conversant with the different types of pasta. They alone are responsible for the legend of
Marco's involvement in the noodle migration - a legend which never spread outside English-
speaking countries.5
4
In a letter to me of 5 August 1998, Prof. G. Stary of Venice wrote: 'It is no wonder that the Chinese sources are
silent on Marco Polo. Similar cases can be quoted regarding the activity of the Jesuits at the Ch'ing court. You will
recall the famous report of [Fr. Ferdinand] Verbiest [1623-88] on K'ang-hsi's journey to Manchuria in 1682: a
foreigner accompanying the emperor - something sensational, but only in Europe and for the Europeans! Kao Shih-
ch'i [1645-1703], who was close to the emperor and likewise accompanied him on that tour, makes no mention of
Verbiest's presence in his diary [the Hu-ts'ung tung-hsün jih-lu] although this was an extraordinary or at least
unusual event in the circumstances. No mention either of Verbiest's presence in the Shih-lu and Chi-chü-chu: in both
these works Verbiest is mentioned but only because he had been conferred an honorific title in Peking!...One has the
impression that for the Chinese/Mongols/Manchus, the few Europeans who resided in China were so insignificant as
to be hardly worth mentioning in their official documents. It is we who, as usual, overestimate ourselves ...'. (My
translation - I.R.) Perhaps the best illustration of the eastern and western attitudes towards such cultural 'encounters'
is the report on the papal embassy to the Mongol court led by John of Marignolli in 1342. Whereas Marignolli's
report contains a detailed and florid description of the audience with Emperor Toghon Temür (Shun-ti, r. 1333-67),
the Chinese annals merely record the gift of 'a remarkable horse' from the Kingdom of the Franks, describing its
unusual physical features. Such was the impression that this equine wonder made on the emperor that the court
painter Chou Lang was commissioned to make a portrait of it and the leading academician was instructed to
compose an 'Ode to the Heavenly Horse' in its honour. No mention, however, even in passing of the pope, his envoy
and the aim of the embassy. See I. de Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys to the Great Khans, Faber & Faber, London, 1971,
pp. 193-5.
5
For the history of noodles in Central and East Asia, see P.D. Buell, E.N. Anderson and C. Perry, A Soup for the
Qan: Chinese Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era as Seen in Hu Szu-hui's Yin-shan Cheng-yao, Kegan Paul
International, London, 1998, pp. 617-38 (forthcoming). Cf. also by the same author, 'Mongol Empire and
Turkicization: the Evidence of Food and Foodways', in R. Amitai-Preiss and D.O. Morgan (eds), The Mongol
Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 43
Two items in this class of arguments that are played down and distorted by F.W. are, on the other
hand, of prime concern to us because they conclusively prove that Marco was in China. I refer to
the story concerning Princess Kökechin's voyage to Persia and the 'mystery' surrounding the
golden tablets of authority.
In the first place it should be mentioned that Khubilai Khan's embassy to his grand-nephew the
Il-khan Arghun, Mongol ruler of Persia, in 1290, is not recorded in the official history of the
Yüan dynasty. The embassy was to escort Princess Kökechin to Arghun to be his wife.
Furthermore, Kökechin is nowhere mentioned in the Chinese sources. This mission, involving an
internal family arrangement between the two courts and fraught with dangers owing to the long
voyage in perilous waters, was obviously considered of a private and delicate nature and,
therefore, not to be officially recorded. However, material arrangements had to be made, and
Khubilai Khan in April-May 1290 issued a directive to the effect that the three envoys Ulutai,
Abishkha and Khoje were to go to Prince Arghun by way of 'Ma'bar' (i.e. the Coromandel Coast)
and that certain arrangements had to be made concerning the rations and provisions for the
voyage. From this document we also learn that the mission was preparing to sail from Ch'üan-
chou in Fu-chien in September of that year. There is no hint of the purpose of the mission and of
course no mention of Kökechin. The directive in Chinese has miraculously survived by being
quoted, together with other administrative documents of that period, in the great 15th-century
encyclopaedia Yung-lo ta-tien. This very short document buried in one of the surviving volumes
of the encyclopaedia was discovered by the Chinese scholar Yang Chih-chiu, who published it in
1941.
In his book Marco gives a detailed account of the embassy, of the adventurous voyage to Persia,
and of the delivery of Princess Kökechin to Arghun's son Ghasan (Arghun had died in the
meantime). Marco gives the names of the three envoys as Oulatai, Apusca and Coja, and informs
us that only Coja survived the two and a half year long voyage. The Polos had joined the
embassy in China as a means of returning home; they were (so Marco relates) entrusted by
Khubilai with an unspecified mission to the Pope and the kings of Europe, as well as with the
care of the royal bride, the latter claim very much open to doubt.
The Persian historian Rashìd al-Dìn, writing a few years after these events, gives a brief account
of the arrival in Abhar (near Kazvin) of Khoja and 'a party of envoys' who had been sent by
Khubilai, with the bride sought by Arghun in the person of Lady Kökechin, in the spring or early
summer of 1293. Rashìd al-Dìn's brief notice confirms Marco's account in its essentials,
including the name of the surviving envoy Khoja, now leading the party. He makes no mention
of the three 'Franks' who, after delivering the bride to Ghasan, had resumed their journey to
Venice via Trebizond and Constantinople. The three Polos were obviously an adjunct to
Khubilai's embassy to the Il-khan and would have been included among the 'party of envoys'
referred to by Rashìd. Marco's account is of vital importance in testing the veracity of his book,
for:
1. He could not have learned about this mission from either the Chinese or Persian written
sources, as the former do not mention it (and, in any case, Marco could not read Chinese),
and the only Persian source that mentions it was not completed until 1310-11;

Empire and its Legacy, Brill, Leiden-Boston-Köln, 1999, pp. 209ff.

Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 44
 2. He must have been well acquainted with the three envoys, whose names appear only in an
internal administrative document in Chinese concerning rations and provisions. Had
Marco not been personally acquainted with them, it is most unlikely that he would have
been able to record their names so accurately, and in the correct sequence, solely from
second-hand oral information;
3. Marco says that two of the three envoys died during the voyage and only the third,
Coja/Khoja, survived. Rashìd al-Dìn confirms this fact indirectly by mentioning Khoja in
his account;
4. It is, in fact, thanks to Marco's own account that we can reconcile the partial references in
the Chinese and Persian sources and thus complete the picture. At the same time this is
also a test of the veracity of the story since the basic facts and the chronology corroborate
each other.
Pelliot, one of the leading Polan scholars, wrote that Marco's very detailed account about the
sending of the embassy to Arghun 'is to be entirely trusted', and Yang Chih-chiu, certainly the
leading Polan scholar in China today, regards the entire Kökechin episode as the definitive proof
that Marco was in China.6 Indeed, the likelihood of Marco's reconstructing the whole episode in
Genoa (from memory) or in Venice (from notes) on the basis of second-hand information that he
had previously obtained from an unknown informant in the Crimea or in Constantinople is so
remote as to be safely dismissed.
But there is more. We know that in a conversation with the famous physician and astrologer
Petrus de Abano (1250-1316) which took place some time before 1303, Marco made certain
astronomical observations, illustrating them with a sketch in his own hand. These observations,
together with Marco's drawing, are reproduced in Petrus' work Conciliator (published in 1303),
but are not found in Marco's book. Through a close analysis of these observations and of data
found in the latter, J. Jensen has conclusively shown in an article published in 1997 that Marco
went to Sumatra and that he must have done so by way of the South China Sea. His conclusion in
answer to F.W.'s question is 'Yes, Marco Polo did go to China'.7
Last, but not least, the vexed question of the golden tablets of the Great Khan, i.e. of the tablets
of authority. These were given as laissez-passer by Khubilai to the Polos to facilitate their
journeys. They were usually oblong, made of gold or silver, and about 30x9cm. The gold paizas
(as they are usually called from their Chinese name, p'ai-tzu) were in the shape of a tiger or a
gerfalcon at the top, or were just plain. They are described in detail by Marco who also notes the
ones he, his father and uncle were granted in the course of their travels. In F.W.'s book there is
an attempt at confusing the issue and downplaying the role of the paizas by casting doubts on
their number and by connecting them with some dubious business dealings involving Marco and
his relatives.

6
Paul Pelliot (1878-1945), the leading French sinologist and savant who devoted much of his life to the study of
Marco Polo's Description of the World and related problems, and whose commentary to the text was published
posthumously in 1959-63, never doubted the authenticity of Marco's account. See his Notes on Marco Polo, I-II,
Imprimerie Nationale, Paris, 1959-63, passim. The same can be said of Prof. Yang Chih-chiu and other leading
Polan scholars in China.
7
See J. Jensen, 'The World's Most Diligent Observer', Asiatische Studien. Études Asiatiques 51.3 (1997), pp. 719-
26.
Cor Hendriks, Marco Polo and His Travels (internet-file) (2011; PDF 2017) 45
There is, however, no doubt about the total number of paizas received at various times by the
three Polos: they were seven, as a careful reading of the book will reveal. There was also no
'jiggery-pokery' over these gold tablets and no family dispute, as I have shown in my review
article: they are all products of F.W.'s misreading of the original documents and of her fertile
imagination. But having led the reader into a maze of doubts and uncertainties about both the
tablets' record and the part they played in an imaginary family quarrel, she ably steers him/her
away from the one vital bit of information concerning these precious (in more ways than one)
laissez-passer. The evidence in question is contained in the will of Marco's uncle Maffeo dated 6
February 1310 in which there is a reference to certain arrangements concerning a jewel and 'the
three tablets of gold which were from the magnificent Chan of the Tartars'. As a corollary to this
revealing piece of evidence we have the list of Marco's possessions made after his death in 1324.
One of the items in this list is 'a large gold tablet of command'. We do not know what happened
to the rest of the paizas (they were probably melted), but at least one of them was still in
existence in Marco's household in 1324. The provenance of the former is clearly stated in the
will, a document whose authenticity is not in question: they came from the 'magnificent Chan of
the Tartars', i.e. from Khubilai Khan himself.
Now, assuming that only Marco's father and uncle had gone to the Mongol court as suggested by
F.W., they would have received one tablet each for their return journey. Then how do we account
for the third one? And why should Maffeo (not Marco!) gratuitously lie about their provenance
in his last will and testament.
F.W.'s thesis is so full of holes as to be untenable from whichever angle we look at it. One of its
cornerstones is the 'Persian guidebook' hypothesis extrapolated from a casual remark made
several decades ago by H. Franke. In a letter to me dated 28 July 1998, Professor Franke writes:
'Yesterday I received your article ... on F. Wood's misleading book on Marco Polo. I am pleased
that you pointed out how she misquoted what I had said, very provisionally, in 1965. I think that
you have definitely laid to rest her theory.'
There are, of course, still unresolved problems relating to the manuscript tradition of Marco's
text, and the precise role of Rustichello and others in editing the same. Scholars in several
countries are investigating these problems at present and we must wait for the results of their
research. This is highly specialized work, and I do not think that F.W. can take much comfort for
her theory (or theories) from the data published so far on the subject by B. Wehr of Johannes
Gutenberg University in Mainz, and others.
In conclusion, an examination of F.W.'s book reveals once more the fundamental weakness of
the argumentum e silentio. Marco's book, with its immense wealth of information, speaks for
itself. Had Marco, as F.W. claims, obtained so much varied and detailed intelligence about most
of 13th-century Asia (including, beside China, Iraq, Persia, Central Asia, Mongolia, continental
Southeast Asia, Java, Sumatra, Malacca, the Nicobar Islands, Ceylon, Southern India and the
coasts and islands of the Indian Sea) - not to speak of his insider's description of the Mongol
court - without actually going there, this in itself would have been an even greater feat than that
of compiling a genuine eyewitness account of the magnitude of The Description of the World.
But, as we have seen, this was not the case: Marco was there all right.
Dr Igor de Rachewiltz
Division of Pacific And Asian History
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