In 1271, Niccolò and Maffeo Polo went to China again and took with them Niccolò's son Marco, who was 17 years old. The Polo family returned to Venice only 25 years later. Marco Polo's vivid travelogues, recorded by a man named Rusticiano, became known as "The Book of the Wonders of the World."

The hard way

Marco Polo (1254-1324)

Two years (1271) after their return, the Polo brothers received a response letter from the pope and gifts for Kublai Khan. This time Niccolo took his 17-year-old son Marco with him. The journey to China was long, it took about four years. Two missionaries went with the Polo family to the Great Khan Kublai Khan. Having reached Armenia, both monks refused to continue their journey. But the Polos continued their journey, which was believed to be 8,000 km long. However, Marco soon fell ill.

Having missed a year, they set off on the road again; they had to cross the Pamirs at an altitude of more than 3000 m. They rode on horseback for 12 days, without meeting either housing or a living soul. Marco was surprised at how cold it was in these parts. After this, the Polo family had to cross the Gobi Desert, where the heat reached 45 °C during the day and the temperature dropped to 10 °C at night. It took a month to cross the desert. Finally, the travelers reached the Chinese city of Kampichion, where they lived for a year. Marco Polo, describing the city, mentions statues “ten steps high,” among which “there are wooden, clay and stone, all gilded.”

At the court of the Great Khan

In May 1275, the Venetian merchants were introduced to Kublai Khan, who really liked Marco. Marco spent the next 20 years in the service of the Great Khan, while Maffeo and Niccolo were engaged in trade. Marco visited many areas of China - from coastal cities to Eastern Tibet.

The Polo family at a reception with the Great Khan

Attentive Observer

Khan sent Marco to explore his possessions. Marco was surprised that the Chinese used paper money, which did not yet exist in Europe. He was delighted with the postal system, which maintained hundreds of thousands of horses for Kublai's messengers. He admired Chinese cities. One of them, he said, had 12,000 bridges spanning huge rivers. For such exaggerations, Marco received the nickname Marco Million. For example, he described a rhinoceros, but could not resist fiction and added a horn studded with thorns. He even invented that at the court of the Great Khan, when he was thirsty, cups of drink flew up to the khan with the help of witchcraft. It is difficult to say whether Marco himself invented the fantastic details, or whether Rusticiano added them.

Return

25 years after leaving their homeland, Polo decided to return to Venice. Kublai Khan asked them to accompany the Mongol princess to her fiancé, the Shah of Persia. In 1295 they set off on their return journey by sea. In Indonesia, they had to wait five months for the monsoons - the winds that were supposed to drive the ship to India. After two years of wandering around India, the Polos arrived in Hormuz and handed the princess over to the groom. When they arrived home, no one recognized them.

Marco Polo- Italian merchant and traveler who presented the story of his travels through Asia in the famous “Book of the Diversity of the World.” Despite doubts about the reliability of the facts presented in this book, expressed from the moment of its appearance to the present time, it serves as a valuable source on geography, ethnography, history of Iran, China, Mongolia, India, Indonesia and other countries in the Middle Ages. This book had a significant influence on sailors, cartographers, and writers of the 14th-16th centuries. In particular, she was on the ship of Christopher Columbus during his search for a route to India.

Origin

Marco Polo was born into the family of a Venetian merchant, Nicolo Polo, whose family was involved in the jewelry and spice trade. Since there is no surviving birth certificate for Marco Polo, the traditional version of his birth in Venice was challenged in the 19th century by Croatian researchers who claim that the first evidence of the Polo family in Venice dates back to the second half of the 13th century, where they are referred to as Poli di Dalmazia , while until 1430 the Polo family owned a house in Korcula, now in Croatia.

The Journey of Marco Polo

Road to China

A new journey to China passed through Mesopotamia, Pamir and Kashgaria.

Travels 1271-1295

Life in China

The first Chinese city to which the Polo family reached in 1275 was Shazha (modern Dunhuang). That same year they reached Kublai Kublai's summer residence in Shangdu (in modern Gansu province of China). According to Polo, the khan admired him, gave him various instructions, did not allow him to return to Venice, and even kept him governor of the city of Yangzhou for three years (Chapter CXLIV, Book 2). In addition, the Polo family (according to the book) participated in the development of the khan's army and taught him to use catapults in the siege of fortresses.

Descriptions of Polo's life in China rarely follow a chronological order, making it difficult to determine the exact route of his travels. But its description is quite accurate geographically; it gives orientation by cardinal directions and distances in terms of days of the route: “To the south of Panshin, one day’s journey away, is the large and noble city of Kaiu”. In addition, Polo describes the daily life of the Chinese, mentioning the use of paper money, typical crafts and culinary traditions of various areas. He stayed in China for fifteen years.

Return to Venice

Despite numerous requests from the Polo family, Khan did not want to let them go, but in 1291 he married one of the Mongol princesses to the Persian Ilkhan Arghun. To organize her safe journey, he equipped a detachment of fourteen ships, allowed the Polo family to join as official representatives of the khan, and sent a flotilla to Hormuz. During the voyage, the Polos visited Sumatra and Ceylon and returned to Venice in 1295 through Iran and the Black Sea.

Life after returning

Very little is known about his life after returning from China. According to some reports, he took part in the war with Genoa. Around 1298, Polo was captured by the Genoese and remained there until May 1299. His travel stories were recorded by another prisoner, Rustichello (Rusticiano), who also wrote chivalric romances. According to some sources, the text was dictated in the Venetian dialect, according to others, it was written in Old French with inserts in Italian. Due to the fact that the original manuscript has not survived, it is not possible to establish the truth.

After his release from Genoese captivity, he returned to Venice, got married and from this marriage he had three daughters (two were married to merchants from Dalmatia, which, according to some researchers, confirms the hypothesis of his Croatian origin, but the wife herself was from the famous Venetian family, which rather speaks of the well-established connections of the Polo family in Venice). He also had a house on the corner of Rio di San Giovanni Crisostomo and Rio di San Lio. There are documents showing that he was involved in two minor trials.

In 1324, already an ill man, Polo wrote his will, which mentioned the golden paiza received from Tatar Khan(he received it from his uncle Maffeo, who in turn bequeathed it to Marco in 1310). Also in 1324, Marco died and was buried in the church of San Lorenzo. In 1596, his house (where, according to legend, the things he brought from the Chinese campaign were kept) burned down. The church in which he was buried was demolished in the 19th century.

Researchers about the book

Cover of the English edition Books by Marco Polo, 1874

The book of Marco Polo is one of the most popular objects of historical research. The bibliography, compiled in 1986, contains more than 2,300 scientific works in European languages ​​alone.

From the moment he returned to the city, stories from the trip were viewed with disbelief. Peter Jackson mentions as one of the reasons for mistrust reluctance to accept his description of a well-ordered and hospitable Mongol Empire, which contradicted the traditional Western view of barbarians. In turn, in 1995, Frances Wood, curator of the Chinese collection of the British Museum, published a popular book in which she questioned the very fact of Polo's travel to China, suggesting that the Venetian did not travel beyond Asia Minor and the Black Sea, but simply used the ones known to him. descriptions of the travels of Persian merchants. For example, in his book, Marco Polo writes that he helped the Mongols during the siege of the Song base in Sanyang, but the siege of this base ended in 1273, that is, two years before his arrival in China. There are other shortcomings in his book that raise questions among researchers.

Previous contacts with China

One of the myths surrounding this book is the idea of ​​Polo as the first contact between Europe and China. Even without the assumption of contact between the Roman Empire and the Han dynasty, the Mongol conquests of the 13th century eased the route between Europe and Asia (since it now passed through the territory of almost one state).

In Khubilai's archives from 1261 there is a reference to European merchants from Lands of the Midnight Sun, probably Scandinavian or Novgorod. On their first journey, Nicolo and Maffeo Polo followed the same route as Guillaume de Rubruck, indeed sent by Pope Innocent IV, who reached the then Mongol capital of Karakorum and returned in 1255. The description of his route was known in medieval Europe and could have been known to the Polo brothers on their first journey.

During Polo's stay in China, Rabban Sauma, a native of Beijing, came to Europe, and missionary Giovanni Montecorvino, on the contrary, went to China. Published in 1997 by David Selbourne, the text of the Italian Jew Jacob of Ancona, who allegedly visited China in 1270-1271, shortly before Polo, is, according to most Hebraists and Sinologists, a hoax.

Unlike previous travelers, Marco Polo created a book that gained great popularity and throughout the Middle Ages competed in public success with the fantastic journey of John Mandeville (the prototype of which was Odorico Pordenone).

Book versions

Little is known about Marco Polo's literacy rate. Most likely he could keep commercial records, but it is unknown whether he could write text. The text of the book was dictated by him to Rustichello, probably in his native language, Venetian, or in Latin, but Rustichello could also write it in French, in which he wrote novels. The process of writing a book could significantly affect the reliability and completeness of its content: Marco excluded from his description those memories that were of no interest to him as a merchant (or were obvious to him), and Rustichello could omit or interpret at his own discretion memories that were not of interest to him. interest or already incomprehensible to him. It can also be assumed that Rustichello was only involved in some of the four books, and Polo could have other “co-authors”.

Soon after its appearance, the book was translated into Venetian, Latin (different translations from the Venetian and French versions), back into French from the Latin version. In the process of translation and rewriting, books were changed, text fragments were added or deleted. The oldest surviving manuscript (Manuscript F) is significantly shorter than the others, but textual evidence suggests that the other surviving manuscripts are based on more complete original texts.

Fragments that raise doubts

Significant omissions

Francis Wood notes that neither hieroglyphs, nor printing, nor tea, nor porcelain, nor the practice of binding women's feet, nor the Great Wall of China are mentioned in Polo's book. The arguments put forward by proponents of travel authenticity are based on the specific process of the book's creation and Polo's purpose in conveying his memories.

Polo knew Persian (the language of international communication at that time), while living in China, he learned Mongolian (the language of the Chinese administration during this period), but did not need to learn Chinese. As a member of the Mongol administration, he lived at a distance from Chinese society (which, according to him, had a negative view of European barbarians), had little interaction with his daily life, and was unable to observe many of the traditions evident only in the household.

To a man who had not received a formal education and was a stranger to literature, local books represented “Chinese literacy,” but Polo describes in detail the production of paper money, which differs little from the printing of books.

Tea was by that time widely known in Persia, so it was of no interest to the author; similarly, it is not mentioned in Arabic and Persian descriptions of that time.

Porcelain was mentioned briefly in the book.

Regarding footbinding, one of the manuscripts (Z) mentions that Chinese women walk in very small steps, but this is not explained more fully.

The Great Wall as we know it today was built during the Ming Dynasty. In the time of Marco Polo, these were mostly earthworks, which did not form a continuous wall, but were limited to the most militarily vulnerable areas. For the Venetian, fortifications of this kind may not have been of significant interest.

Inaccurate descriptions

Descriptions of Marco Polo are full of inaccuracies. This applies to the names of individual cities and provinces, their relative locations, as well as descriptions of objects in these cities. A famous example is the description of the bridge near Beijing (now named after Marco Polo), which actually has half as many arches as described in the book.

In Marco Polo's defense, it can be said that his description was from memory, he was familiar with Persian and used Persian names, which were often also inconsistent in their rendering of Chinese names. Some inaccuracies were introduced during translation or rewriting of the book, so some surviving manuscripts are more accurate than others. In addition, in many cases Polo did use second-hand information (especially when describing historical or fantastic events that happened before his journey). Many other contemporary descriptions also suffer from this kind of inaccuracy, which cannot be blamed on the fact that their authors were not in that place at that time.

Role at court

Kublai's honor to the young Polo and his appointment as governor of Yangzhou do not look credible, and the absence of Chinese or Mongolian official records of the merchants' presence in China for almost twenty years, according to Frances Wood, looks particularly suspicious. Most authors mention only a reference from 1271 in which Pagba Lama, a close adviser to Kublai Kublai, mentions a foreigner on friendly terms with the khan, but it does not indicate the name, nationality, or length of stay of this foreigner in China.

It is possible that Polo's role in China is greatly exaggerated in his book, but this error may be attributed to the author's boasting, the embellishment of the copyists, or problems of the translators, as a result of which the role of adviser could be transformed into the post of governor.

In the book, Polo shows awareness of relationships at the khan's court, information about which would not have been available without proximity to the court. Thus, in Chapter LXXXV (On the treacherous plan to revolt the city of Kambala), he, emphasizing his personal presence at the events, describes in detail the various abuses of Minister Ahmad and the circumstances of his murder, naming the name of the killer (Wanzhu), which exactly corresponds to Chinese sources. This episode is significant because the Chinese dynastic chronicle Yuan-shi mentions the name of Po-Lo as a person who was part of the commission investigating the murder and stood out for sincerely telling the emperor about Ahmad's abuses. It was common practice to use Chinese nicknames for foreigners, making it difficult to find mention of Polo's name in other Chinese sources. Many Europeans who officially visited China during this period, such as de Rubruck, received no mention at all in Chinese chronicles.

Evaluation of the book by modern researchers

Most modern researchers reject Frances Wood's opinion about the complete fabrication of the entire trip, considering it an unsubstantiated attempt to make money on a sensation.

A more productive (and generally accepted) point of view is to look at this book as a source of merchant records about places to buy goods, routes for their movement and the circumstances of life in these countries.

MARCO POLO(Marco Polo) (1254–1324), Venetian traveler. Born into the family of the Venetian merchant Niccolo Polo. In 1260 Niccolo and Maffeo Polo, Marco's father and uncle, went to Beijing (Khanbalay, or Tatu), which Kublai Khan, grandson Genghis Khan, made it the capital of his possessions. Kublai made them promise to return to China and bring with him several Christian monks. In 1271 the brothers set off on a long journey to the east, taking Marco with them. The expedition reached Beijing in 1275 and was warmly received by Kublai Kublai. Marco was a diligent young man and had a talent for languages. While his father and uncle were engaged in trade, he studied the Mongolian language. Khubilai, who usually brought talented foreigners to his court, hired Marco into the civil service. Soon Marco became a member of the privy council, and the emperor gave him several assignments. One of them was to compile a report on the situation in Yunnan and Burma after the latter was conquered by the Mongols in 1287, the other was to purchase a Buddha tooth from Ceylon. Marco subsequently became prefect of Yangzhou.

During his 15 years of service, Marco studied China and collected a lot of information about India and Japan. In 1290 he asked to be allowed to go home, but Kublai refused. Marco managed to get out of China only in 1292, when he was appointed to accompany the Mongol princess Kokachin, who was going to Persia, where she was supposed to marry the local viceroy Arghun, Kublai's grandnephew. Having reached Persia, Marco received news of the death of Kublai. This freed him from the obligation to return to China, and he went to Venice.

The following year, after returning to Venice, Marco found himself aboard a Venetian merchant ship and was captured by the Genoese in the eastern Mediterranean. From 1296 to 1299 he was in prison in Genoa, where he dictated the Book of Marco Polo (or the Book of Wonders of the World) to a certain Rustichello from Pisa. The book contains descriptions not only of China and mainland Asia, but also of the vast world of islands - from Japan to Zanzibar.

In 1299 Marco was released. In the eyes of his fellow citizens, he remained an eccentric; no one believed his stories.

Historical background

Marco Polo was born on September 15, 1254 in the large Italian trading city of Venice. He came from a merchant family, which partly determined his future fate. Medieval trade was based on trips to other countries for valuable goods, which can partly be considered travel. Father Marco, returning in 1269 from Mongolia, Crimea and the lands of modern Uzbekistan, spoke about large and little-explored countries that are rich in strange goods. The commercial orientation became the basis of a new campaign that lasted 24 years, on which young Marco Polo set out in 1271.

Life in China, where the merchants arrived in 1275, was successful, except for the excessive guardianship of Kublai Khan over them. According to historians, the older Polo brothers were good advisers on the technical re-equipment of the Chinese army. Marco was also quite smart, and the khan entrusted him with diplomatic work. With instructions from Kublai Kublai, Marco Polo traveled almost all of China, becoming acquainted with the history of the country and its culture. Foreigners were probably beneficial to the khan, so until 1292 they lived as if in a golden cage.

Only chance helped them leave China. To escort princesses to Persia, who were given as wives to the ruler of this country, the khan needed especially trusted persons. There were no better candidates than the Polo brothers. The travelers decided to go by sea: by land it was quite dangerous due to the strife between the princes within the country. The sea voyage ended successfully both for the future wives in the harem of the Persian ruler, and for Marco Polo, the traveler and writer. The road home did not only pass through Persia, where the fleet with the royals was actually heading. Along the way, Marco Polo described the new lands he saw. Sumatra, Ceylon, Madagascar, Malaysia and a number of other islands, the African coast, India and many other lands were included in the stories of Marco Polo.

Significance for modern times

Arriving home, Marco Polo was imprisoned as a participant in the civil war, but was soon released. Death overtook him in 1324, when he was known and respected for the book he wrote and the stories of his own adventures. Despite many inaccuracies in his narrative, it was from the pages of the initially handwritten (and from 1477 printed) edition that Europeans first learned about Japan, Indonesia, and Indochina. Today, this campaign of Marco Polo, his story about what he saw, makes it possible to spend a vacation in Bali, travel to Sumatra, Java, Borneo and many other islands. These places are loved by many lovers of beach holidays, diving, and surfing. The nature of the region is untouched by civilization, and fans of ecotourism will appreciate the pristine flora of the Indonesian islands.

The description of Chipingu Island opened up Japan to readers, and modern tourists the opportunity to visit this island country. Although this island is one of the 3922 that make up Japan, the information received about it then has turned into a powerful tourism industry today, offering tours to the most technologically advanced state in the world. Traveling in the spring, during the cherry blossom period, is most popular among Russian tourists. Also favorite places for vacationers in Japan are thermal springs and various natural parks. And, of course, the culture that is unusual for Europeans attracts people.

Despite the fame of China at the time of Polo, his popularization of this country, the abundance of information received during his 17 years in China attracted many Europeans to these places. Today, tours to China are becoming increasingly popular, and the Chinese themselves, as a sign of gratitude to Marco Polo for his achievements in the development of their country, erected a monument to him.

Conclusion

Christopher Columbus used The Diversity of the World as an authoritative reference in his search for India. Despite the apparent fame of Columbus's biography, many facts from his fate will be of interest to readers.