Papal Envoys, Missionaries, and Marco Polo
In 1274, after a journey of over three years, a most enterprising young Venetian merchant, Marco Polo, reached the summer palace of Kublai Khan at Shangdu, immortalized in the poetry of Samuel Coleridge as Xanadu. Twenty-five years later, Marco Polo vividly recollected his initial awe of Shangdu while languishing in a Genoese prison. He dictated his memories to a fellow prisoner, Rustichello da Pisa, an accomplished composer of Arthurian romances. Rustichello composed in the northern French tongue (langue d’oeil), the widely known language of commerce and crusading, so it can never be determined how much he edited and embroidered Marco Polo’s dictation in the Venetian language.1 Yet Marco Polo’s description of the Mongol summer capital rings true. The surrounding wall of the palace complex he saw was a perfect square measuring four miles on each side.2 The main palace itself was a gilt-domed building of bamboo, mounted on the wheels of a huge gers, which could be dismantled and moved. Years later he still marveled at the gilt decorations of the palace. The grounds of the inner city had sprawling parks and woodlands filled with beautiful animals and a huge lake. The palace itself in opulence and size exceeded anything he had ever seen. Marco Polo had traveled in the company of his father and uncle, Niccolo and Maffeo, to find their fame and fortune, and so they took service with Kublai Khan for the next seventeen years.3 Marco’s anecdotal travelogue, best known as Book of the Marvels of the World, is often so difficult to verify that some scholars even suspect Marco invented the entire journey.4 Yet despite his exaggerations and mistakes, Marco Polo was the first European traveler to record his experiences in East Asia.5 His sensational reports about Kublai Khan’s fabled kingdom of Cathay so excited the imagination of readers that Marco Polo shaped European perceptions of East Asia for the next seven centuries. The Polos, however, followed well-established routes of the Silk Road to reach the Mongol court, and avoided crossing the vast Eurasian steppes. The Polos were hardly the first Christian Europeans to make a journey to the court of the Great Khan. Earlier European travelers could and did make the trek across the Eurasian steppes. These accounts by travelers to the Mongol court reshaped European notions of the world, because they brought back the first accurate information since Antiquity about the peoples of the Eurasian steppes.
The three best accounts that speak to us today about the lives of nomadic peoples were penned by a papal envoy, a missionary, and the astute merchant prince Marco Polo. Each set forth with very different aims, but each man’s view of the world was profoundly changed by the experience. Fortunately, each author took the time to write an account of his experiences. Numerous envoys, vassal rulers, and merchants flocked to the Great Khan’s court, but they chose not to write down their experiences or, if they did, they do not survive.6 Giovanni da Pian del Carpine and his colleague Friar Benedict each wrote up a report for Innocent IV.7 Giovanni del Carpine composed by far the most insightful analysis about the military power and intentions of the Mongols. He closed with recommendations on how to oppose the next invasion by the Mongols.8 His was a diplomatic report to Pope Innocent IV, and not unlike a report submitted to modern state departments. He included a wealth of information on the geography, fauna, and flora of the Eurasian steppes and the customs and diet of the Mongols. This information, however, was background to the military analysis. The work was well-known as attested by the number of surviving manuscripts. The Dominican encyclopedist Vincent of Beauvais incorporated virtually all of Giovanni’s account into his Speculum Maius.9 The missionary William of Rubruck, a Franciscan friar and chaplain to Queen Marguerite of France, penned some of the most insightful observations about daily life among the Mongols during his visit in 1253–1255.10 William needed to learn about the peoples he wished to convert. Several years after his return, William of Rubruck met in Paris Roger Bacon, the renowned English scholastic, who included William’s description of the Mongols in his Opus Majus.11 William’s own work thereafter sank into obscurity for the next three hundred years. Fathers Giovanni and William both wrote in Latin so that their reports circulated among the literate prelates and princes of Europe.
Marco Polo, however, wrote his account as a bestseller to recover the fortune he had made in the service of Kublai Khan and lost on his return voyage.12 His bad luck is our good fortune. If Polo had returned to Venice with his wealth intact, he would never have written such an account, because he would have been reluctant to betray trade secrets to would-be competitors. Rustichello da Pisa, who translated Marco’s recollections into French, ensured the widest circulation of the work. In the prologue of Marvels of the World, Marco Polo exhorts a secular readership—the princes, knights, merchants, and craftsmen of Europe—to revel in the wonders which he himself saw in the east.13 Hence, the Marvels of the World has survived in many translations and over 150 known manuscripts. Furthermore, Marco Polo inspired a new genre of travelogue for a wider readership.14 Ironically, of the three accounts, the most sensational work proved the most influential and long-lasting.
In 1245, Pope Innocent IV, resident in Lyons, sent out four missions to Asia. Two of the missions traveled to the Mongol courts in the hopes of achieving peace with the Great Khan and perhaps sealing an alliance against the Muslims who had recaptured Jerusalem in 1244. The other two were instructed to open negotiations for reunion with the churches of Eastern Christendom.15 Innocent IV had very limited information about the Mongols. A refugee Russian bishop, Peter, about whom virtually nothing is known, had witnessed Mongol rampages across Russia and advised the Papal Curia.16 A Hungarian Dominican friar, Julian, had filed a report of his journey across the Pontic-Caspian steppes to convert the Kipchak Turks just before Batu invaded and ended the mission.17 Innocent turned to Franciscan or Dominican mendicant friars to serve as his envoys. For a generation, the friars had served as papal emissaries on delicate missions such as collecting tithes or negotiating with the secular princes of Europe. They were known for their observant reports to the Holy See. Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Dominic each had founded an order of wandering friars who recognized no authority other than the Pope and pledged themselves to poverty and service in imitation of Christ.18 They enthusiastically, sometimes with bigoted zeal, preached to convert the heathen and heretic. Dominicans conducted investigations into the heretic Cathars of southern France, and the lax Christians, Jews, and Muslims of Spain.19 These investigations provided the legal precedent for the later Inquisition. Saint Francis, ever the zealous proselytizer, accompanied the Fifth Crusade and secured an interview with al-Kamil in a vain effort to convert the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt.20 Pope Innocent IV knew his envoys could be trusted to represent the Holy See faithfully, for they could be neither bribed nor intimidated.
For the prime mission to the Mongol court, Innocent IV chose fellow Italian Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, a native from a small town outside of Perugia, and an early disciple of Saint Francis.21 Friar Giovanni had considerable experience in Germany and Spain, and he was well-known at the courts of Prague, Breslau, and Cracow, and so he had an entrée to the courts of the Orthodox Russian princes. He was entrusted with two objectives, initiating serious talks about reunion with the churches of Orthodox Russia and opening diplomatic relations with the Great Khan.22 If Innocent had possessed accurate information about the distances and dangers of the journey, he would not have chosen Friar Giovanni, who was at least sixty years old and overweight. The hardships of traversing the Eurasian steppes nearly proved too much for the gentle friar, who repeatedly complained of his ordeal.23
Giovanni da Pian del Carpine set forth from Lyons on Easter, April 16, 1245, and made his way across Central Europe. At Prague, he was joined by Friar Stephen, compliments of King Wenceslaus of Bohemia, and then he traveled to Breslau, where the Polish friar Benedict joined the company that now totaled ten members.24 From Breslau they headed to Cracow, and thence to Kiev, where they entered into promising talks with the Russian boyars and prelates about reunion, but the Russians would make no final commitment until Prince Daniel Romanovich returned from the court of his overlord, Khan Batu.25 The mission did not set out for the steppes until February 3, 1247, after they had secured Mongolian mounts that could survive the extremes of winter. For the corpulent Father Giovanni, who customarily rode a donkey at an easy pace, the hard riding on a horse was excruciating. Sixteen days later, after crossing the steppes in the dead of winter, the mission reached the town of Kaniev on the Dnieper River (today in Ukraine), where they obtained fresh mounts and provisions.26 They set out again, traveling southeast toward the Sea of Azov, and soon stumbled upon a Mongol encampment. Friars Giovanni and Benedict recall with terror this first encounter with nomadic horsemen. The Mongol horsemen rushed out of their camp, surrounded the small company, and demanded to know the envoys’ purpose and to receive precious gifts.27 Friar Stephen, too ill to travel farther, was left behind as a hostage along with several servants. Father Giovanni and the rest of the mission persevered on fresh mounts and with Mongol guides, so that they next arrived at the camp of Qurumshi, a cousin of Khan Batu, who also demanded rich gifts and inquired as to Giovanni’s purpose.28 Giovanni and his companions tactfully conformed to Mongol protocol, kneeling three times and not touching the threshold of Qurumshi’s tent lest they displease Tengri of the eternal blue sky.29 Qurumshi sent the Christians on their way with fresh mounts and new guides. Father Giovanni and company reached the camp of Batu on the lower Volga River on April 4, 1246, just shy of one year from when Father Giovanni had departed from Lyons. They at last stood on the western edge of the Mongol Empire.
From a distance, Father Giovanni was awestruck by Batu’s sprawling tent city along the banks of the Volga River, sixty-five miles north of the Caspian Sea and destined to become Saray, the capital of the Golden Horde. They were received into the tent of Batu, a richly furnished linen one that had been the property of King Bela IV of Hungary. Batu treated his unexpected guests to a banquet, but the monks could not partake of the strong drinks and meat served on exquisite golden plate because it was Lent.30 Father Giovanni keenly observed Batu, judging him an exceptionally brave and cunning prince whose bearing commanded respect from his warriors. He would be a deadly foe should he return to Europe.31 Conforming to Mongol protocol, Giovanni had Innocent’s letter translated from Latin, via Russian-and Persian-speaking translators, into Mongolian.32 Batu Khan listened politely, and circumspectly. His enemy Güyük was soon to be enthroned as the next Great Khan, and Batu could ill afford a diplomatic misstep. Since the Pope’s letter was addressed to the Great Khan, Batu adroitly dodged any decision by recommending the envoys journey to Karakorum and see the Great Khan himself. Batu Khan furnished the envoys with fresh horses, provisions, guides, and a pass to travel along the imperial postal route.33
On April 8, 1246, Giovanni da Pian del Carpine and his companions departed for Karakorum, taking the southern route across the Eurasian steppes. The friars with Mongol guides and escorts rode all day, sometimes with as many as three changes of mounts per day, and often traveling into the night. Sometimes they rode for several days from one relay station to the next. Each dawn, they were aroused from their sleep, devoured a gruel of boiled millet, and rode until evening, when they camped and partook of a simple fare of broth and partially cooked leg of mutton.34 They covered over three thousand miles in 106 days, at an average of thirty miles per day, to reach the summer encampment of Güyük, just a half day’s ride south of Karakorum, on July 22, 1246.35 The route took the travelers along the edges of the Karakum Desert, with views to the south of the shores of the Caspian and Aral Seas, across the fertile grasslands watered by the tributaries of Lake Balkhash, and finally over the Altai Mountains onto the steppes of Mongolia. The great distances, endless seas of grass, and ever-distant horizon unnerved Father Giovanni, and shattered his worldview forever. The first European to traverse the Eurasian steppes, Father Giovanni beheld landscapes beyond anything he had ever experienced before and nothing like what he had learned from reading the fabulous tales handed down since Antiquity. In his account, he dwells on the terror of the loneliness of minuscule humans on the vast Eurasian steppes. It was all too easy to become disoriented and lost, and starve to death.
The papal envoys arrived in time to witness the enthronement of Güyük as the Great Khan on August 24, 1246. The humble friar must have struggled to conceal his bewilderment and awe, for over three thousand representatives of kings, princes, and peoples across Eurasia attended and offered their obeisance to the new Great Khan.36 At that moment, he must have grasped for the first time the immense size and diversity of the Mongol Empire and the awesome might of the Great Khan. In Mongol eyes, Latin Christendom was an inconsequential place on the edge of the great ocean encircling the inhabited earth. To his credit, Giovanni kept his wits and noted the Mongol’s salient customs and ways of war, which he later wrote up in his final report. Remarkably, Father Giovanni also overcame his prejudices, and noted that many of their habits and diet, while repugnant to Europeans, were born out of the necessity of surviving on the steppes.37 He singled out for praise the Mongols’ worship of a single God, and the long-suffering character of both men and women.38 Yet he reassured his readers, and himself, that Christian knights could defeat these Devil’s horsemen of the Great Khan, but he must have known that this was special pleading.39
The new khan was unimpressed by the Pope’s appeal not to war on Christians, and he was amused by the shabbily dressed friars who were the least important of over three thousand envoys from across Eurasia. They brought no worthy gifts, for what costly gifts they had were long handed out to Batu and lesser Mongol princes. After patiently listening to the two papal bulls read by translators, Güyük agreed to dictate his reply in Mongolian, which, with the aid of two scribes, was faithfully translated into Latin.40 The final version, in Latin, Arabic, and Mongolian, has survived in the papal archives.41 The Great Khan Güyük informs Pope Innocent IV that the eternal lord of the universe obviously entrusted the sovereignty of the world to Genghis Khan and his heirs. If the Pope and the kings of Europe desire peace, they are admonished to journey to Karakorum and render their submission. With Güyük’s reply in hand, Fathers Giovanni and Benedict were granted permission to depart on November 13, 1246. Neither friar in his account records the details of the six-month winter journey back to the encampment of Batu, which they reached on May 25, 1247.42 Giovanni only remembers endless frozen wastes, blizzards, and sleeping on the ground covered by snow and under the nocturnal skies of winter. They reached Kiev on June 10, 1247, sixteen months after they had initially departed from the Russian city. There they found Father Stephen, recovered and ready to return home.43 Their amazed Russian hosts greeted the two friars as if they had returned from the dead. On October 2, 1247, the friars entered Cologne, where Fathers Giovanni and Benedict dictated their reports. In early November 1247, Giovanni da Pian del Carpine stood before Pope Innocent IV, over two and a half years from when he had departed.44 Innocent IV was overjoyed to greet Giovanni, and he was most pleased with the report. He rewarded his envoy with an archbishopric, because Giovanni da Pian del Carpine was the first European to bring back accurate reports about Eurasian nomads since Herodotus penned his account of the Scythians.45 Yet the report’s conclusion was most disheartening. In his letter, Güyük curtly answers Innocent’s appeals point by point, and concludes with the demand to submit before any alliance could be discussed. Innocent IV only saw a bleak future of another Mongol invasion of Europe.
The other three missions were even less successful. The two missions seeking reunion with the eastern churches returned with little to show for their efforts.46 Innocent received equally distressing news from the other mission he had sent to the Mongols. The Dominican friar Ascelin of Lombardy headed a mission to the Mongol noyan Baiju in Iran. This company of five included the Dominican friar Guichard of Cremone, who had been stationed in Tiflis (today Tbilisi) for five years, so Ascelin was likely served by competent interpreters speaking Georgian and Persian. The friar Simon of Saint Quentin wrote the account of the mission in his Historia Tartarorum, but the work does not survive except for citations by Vincent of Beauvais.47 Ascelin took passage by sea to Trebizond (today Trabzon) on the southern shores of the Black Sea, and then traveled through Christian Georgia to Baiju’s encampment.48 He and his companions observed little of nomadic life, and had even less interest in describing it. Ascelin found Baiju’s main encampment on the Aras River in Azerbaijan in 1247. Ascelin lacked the diplomatic manners of Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, for he tactlessly refused to genuflect before the image of the khan, and dismissed Mongol etiquette, which he found demeaning to the Holy Father at Rome. These negotiations did not end well. Baiju, to his credit, contained his ire toward the presumptuous Dominican friar.49 The obstinate friar was lucky that the Mongols took seriously the inviolate status of envoys. Ascelin was ordered to return with Baiju’s reply, a missive that demanded the submission of Pope Innocent and the Christian kings of the West.50 Two Mongolian envoys, Aïbeg and Serkis, accompanied Ascelin, who reached Lyons in the late summer of 1248. The disappointed Pope could only issue an unenforceable papal bull, pleading that the Mongols should stop killing Christians. The Mongol envoys returned home with Innocent’s reply dated November 22, 1248.51 Thereafter, the Holy See suspended diplomatic approaches and braced for the inevitable Mongol invasion. But it never came.
The Great Khan Güyük died on April 20, 1248, before he could lead the imperial army in a second invasion of Central Europe. Surprisingly, the Mongols soon initiated the next diplomatic exchange with Latin Christendom. The new noyan of Iran, Eljigidei, sent a Nestorian Christian envoy named David to King Louis IX, whom the Mongol envoy found at the Cypriote port of Limassol in December 1248.52 King Louis, who was preparing to invade Egypt, gleefully received an offer of alliance from Eljigidei, who, on his own initiative, was planning an attack on Baghdad. In reply, Louis dispatched as his ambassador to Güyük Khan André de Longjumeau, a Dominican friar who was conversant in Arabic and Syriac, and had met David in the Armenian city of Kars several years earlier.53 Longjumeau’s party set sail for Antioch on February 16, 1249, carrying letters from King Louis and rich gifts. It took over a year for Louis’s envoys to traverse Iran and Transoxiana, cross the Jaxartes, and reach Karakorum. Once at Karakorum, André de Longjumeau learned that Güyük Khan was dead, rumored to have been poisoned by Batu Khan’s agents. The regent Oghul Qaimish, the principal consort of Güyük, was busy scheming to rig a kurultai to elect her son Shiremun the next Great Khan.54 She summarily dismissed the French envoys with the usual ultimatum ordering King Louis to submit. In 1251, André de Longjumeau returned to find King Louis at Caesarea, recently released by his Mamluk captors on promise of paying an enormous ransom.55 Louis must have been crestfallen to receive more bad news, namely that there would be no Mongol alliance against the Muslims. André de Longjumeau wrote a detailed report of the mission, but the little that survives are brief citations by later chroniclers. What turned out to be far more important, André of Longjumeau met the Flemish Franciscan William of Rubruck. André lamented to William about the plight of the many German captives enslaved by Batu and who were without any spiritual comfort.56 The earnest William of Rubruck was inspired to declare himself the Apostle of the Tartars, for he promised to bring comfort to the enslaved Christians and to convert the heathen Tartars. William of Rubruck, the missionary, would write the second, and in many ways the most perceptive, account of the Mongols.
William of Rubruck was probably in his thirties when he accompanied Saint Louis IX on the ill-fated Seventh Crusade that ended in debacle in 1250.57 Friar William had heard reports about the mission of Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, and he likely read Giovanni’s account. Once he was convinced of his calling to bring Christianity to the Mongols, William approached King Louis, but the king was not keen on pursuing yet another diplomatic mission to the Mongol court. Louis only agreed to entrust William with a polite letter to Sartaq Khan, the son of Batu, requesting that William be permitted to preach Christianity to the Tartars. Since Sartaq was rumored to be a Christian, Louis calculated that the request would be readily granted. Neither Louis nor William dreamed that William’s small company of missionaries would repeat the trek across the Eurasian steppes to the Mongol court. Louis’s letter proved indispensable, because Mongol khans and princes all misinterpreted the letter as commissioning William as the envoy of the French king. Hence, William was granted the inviolate status and liberty of an envoy, and so he was escorted to Karakorum, even though William always protested that he was not an envoy. Otherwise, in his own account, William admits that he would have never reached the camp of Batu on the lower Volga, let alone the court of the Great Khan Möngke.
On May 7, 1253, William set sail from Acre to Constantinople, where he conferred with Count Baldwin of Hainault, a vassal of the Latin emperor Baldwin II.58 Baldwin of Hainault had married a Cuman princess, a daughter of Cuman kaghan Saronius, whose people had found refuge from the Mongols in the Latin Empire. Baldwin probably knew sufficient Turkish from his wife so that he could communicate with the Mongols directly. As an envoy of Baldwin II, he had just returned from the courts of Saray and Karakorum, so he could provide William with information about the political climate at both courts. William’s party then sailed across the Black Sea and landed at Soldaia (today Sudak), a Genoese commercial port on the southern shores of the Crimea, on May 21, 1253. The notables who governed the city as vassals of the Batu advised William of Rubruck that he should represent himself as if he were an envoy without admitting it. They also gave him practical advice on how to reach the encampment of Sartaq on the Pontic-Caspian steppes, because many Genoese merchants engaged in the slave trade knew the way.59 Two weeks later, on June 1, 1253, William of Rubruck, so informed, departed for the steppes. In retrospect, he was angry with himself for choosing to travel by ox-drawn carts rather than on horses. He more than doubled his time in travel, and repeatedly faced problems crossing rivers.60 Yet the carts were often the only source of shade from the unrelenting summer sun on the treeless, flat grasslands.61 Once at the encampment of Sartaq, William Rubruck presented the letter and costly gifts of Louis IX. Sartaq Khan could not help but conclude that William was another Latin envoy, and so instructed him to journey to Saray, and confer with his father, Khan Batu.62 William immediately departed for Saray with an uneasy feeling about the future of his mission. First, Sartaq Khan, who inclined toward Nestorian Christianity, identified himself first and foremost as a Mongol.63 Mongols practiced many faiths, and Sartaq was no different. To the dismay of William, Mongols considered no faith superior to the other, but all reflected a truth about Tengri, the lord of the eternal blue sky. Second, William already found himself at a disadvantage, because his interpreter, Omodeo, a Syrian Christian, whose native language was Arabic, was not up to the task of explaining in broken Turkish sophisticated theological arguments.64 As the journey progressed, William grew ever more frustrated with Omodeo, whom he accused of being habitually drunk on qumis. Omodeo, in turn, finally refused to translate any religious arguments, because the task was beyond his capacity.65 In contrast, Giovanni da Pian del Carpine had skillfully avoided this problem by sticking to immediate diplomatic concerns without raising issues of doctrine and conversion.
It took William’s party over five weeks to travel from Soldaia to Batu’s encampment on the Volga. At the Don River, the guides provided by Sartaq negotiated for a ferry to convey the carts across the river, but not the oxen or horses.66 The guides promptly returned to Sartaq’s camp, while William wasted three days seeking new teams of oxen from villagers on the eastern bank of the Don. Father William, just like Father Giovanni, expressed his awe of the endless grasslands, with forests to the north, and at times glimpses of the Black Sea to the south. The broad expanse of the Don River amazed him, for it was far wider than the broadest part of the Seine near Paris.67 As soon as he was on the steppes, William repeatedly expressed his bewilderment and fear as he crossed an alien world.
In early July, Batu received friar William of Rubruck, whom Batu too viewed as yet another papal envoy, the second in seven years.68 After Batu entertained the Latins, he then sent them on their way to Karakorum on September 16, 1253. During his stay at Saray, William explained details of court protocol. The Mongols always pitched their tents facing south, and family members, vassals, and guests were seated on the right (west) or left (east) based on a strict hierarchy of their rank and sex.69 This orientation was at least as early as the time of the Xiongnu, who viewed the world from the same northern perspective looking south. William too avoided breaking taboos such as crossing over the threshold of Batu’s tent. He was pleasantly surprised how much he enjoyed qumis, and approved of Batu maintaining three thousand white mares celebrated for the quality of their milk.70
William of Rubruck, along with a fellow Franciscan Bartholomew of Cremona, the interpreter, and a servant, crossed over three thousand miles of the Eurasian steppes in 111 days, reaching Karakorum on January 4, 1254.71 Father William had to leave his French secretary, Gosset, and several servants behind as sureties for their proper conduct. Batu had issued William the imperial passport so that William’s company and its Mongol escort could obtain fresh mounts and provisions at each station. Before their departure, the Mongol guide ensured the Latins were properly attired in felt caps, fur-lined boots, trousers, and coats. He also sternly warned that should the friars lag behind, they were on their own if they got lost, because only the fittest deserved to survive the rigors of travel in winter.72 They endured the same hard riding over the same route as had Giovanni’s party seven years earlier. But once at Karakorum, they were generously received by the new Great Khan Möngke, a most intelligent and tolerant ruler, who had directed his armies against the Caliphate of Baghdad and Song China rather than Latin Christendom.73 Möngke too assumed that Father William was an ambassador of the French king. But the khan was long baffled as to the purpose of William’s visit, because the Latin holy man showed little interest in war or politics. The interpreter, Omodeo, could not or would not explain how William wished to comfort Christian captives and preach to the Mongols.74 It was only when William gained the friendship of the Parisian master goldsmith Guillaume de Boucher that he could communicate with Möngke effectively through Guillaume’s adopted son, who was fluent in Mongolian.75
From the start, William of Rubruck discovered that he was out of his depth. He wrote the later chapters of his account to justify why his mission had failed. He never located the German slaves because they had been resettled near the Altai Mountains, where they mined iron and forged weapons for the Great Khan. During his six months at Karakorum, he baptized only six individuals as Catholic Christians. He vents his ire and disgust on the Nestorian Christians, who had initially welcomed him and offered their church in Karakorum for Catholic services.76 Even so, William remained a thoughtful observer, for he describes the operation of Möngke’s silver tree designed by Guillaume de Boucher. He also was the first Westerner to record a Buddhist prayer summoned by bells. But as the months wore on, William became ever more frustrated by the tolerant, heterodox, cosmopolitan society of the Mongol capital. The inflexible William simply lacked the tact and linguistic skills to convince anyone to convert. He could make no sense out of Buddhist doctrines, and dismissed Buddhists as heretical Manichees because the two shared a belief in transmigration of souls.77 The later pages of his account are marred by his unfair criticisms of Nestorians, and his tedious claims that holy water and Catholic rites administered by him were the only cures against disease. His disappointment climaxed in a debate mandated by the Great Khan, who summoned Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims to argue the validity of their respective faiths.78 William admitted no one was convinced by the debate. Each group offered up platitudes and declarations of faith, while the amused Mongols toasted points with qumis so that the event quickly became just another drinking bout at the Great Khan’s court.
After six months, William had overstayed his welcome. Möngke summoned William, and put it to the Franciscan what he wanted to do. William cryptically answered that he wanted whatever pleased the Great Khan. Thereupon, Möngke sent William on his way back to Batu, with a letter to King Louis IX, on July 10, 1254.79 The contents, as reported by William, suggest the original was not unlike the ultimatum sent by Güyük to Innocent IV. Friar Bartholomew chose to remain in Karakorum on grounds of age and illness. William of Rubruck retraced his route to the court of Batu at Saray, where he arrived on September 14, 1254.80 His scribe, Gosset, rejoined the mission, and William, with Batu’s passport, traveled southwest, crossed the Derbent Pass, and spent Christmas at Nakhchivan (today in Azerbaijan). He finally reached Cyprus in July 1255, only to discover that King Louis and Queen Marguerite had returned to Paris. His order appointed him to a lectureship in theology at Acre.81 He was languishing as a lecturer and longing to return to Paris when he composed his itinerary in the summer of 1255. His report was his passport back to Paris. William repeatedly wrote letters to Queen Marguerite, imploring her to approach her husband to recall him. William explained that, out of a sense of obligation, he must personally deliver the report into the hands of the king. He finally succeeded after two years, and returned to the comforts of the court of Paris.82 His account provided the best description of the customs of nomadic peoples to date. It also recommended that in the future, the Holy Father of Rome must send an archbishop, along with a staff of priests and friars with the requisite languages, if he wished to gain converts. In 1289, Pope Nicholas IV sent such an archbishop, Giovanni da Montecorvino, who arrived at the Mongol court five years later in 1294. Consecrated the Archbishop of Khanbaliq,83 Giovanni da Montecorvino earned the confidence of Yuan emperor Temür, the grandson and successor to Kublai Khan. The Catholic community prospered under Mongol protection, but it never amounted to more than thirty-five thousand souls. Most converts were among the foreigners in the employ of the Mongol khan or Turkish and Mongol Nestorian Christians.84 Few if any Chinese were among the converts. The mission disappeared with the collapse of the Yuan dynasty in 1368.
While European diplomats and missionaries returned home with disappointing results, European merchants venturing into the Mongol Empire came home with fabulous windfalls and reports of even more opportunities for profit. The Great Khans Möngke and Kublai together greatly extended the Mongol Empire, and they united more of Eurasia under a single sovereignty than ever before or since. During the second half of the thirteenth century, these two Mongol khans imposed a pax Mongolica over the Eurasian steppes, the cities of the Silk Road from Tabriz to Dadu, and China. Mongol courts required luxuries and foodstuffs, and so this demand fueled the rapid expansion of international trade across the continent. Saray on the lower Volga River succeeded to the commercial role of the earlier Atil of the Khazars. Genoese and Venetian merchants, based in their colonies on the southern shores of the Crimea, exploited the trade in slaves, furs, and products of the forest, which khans of the Golden Horde received in tribute from their Turkish and Russian subjects. In turn, the Italians supplied Saray with vendibles of every description. Likewise, Tabriz, seat of the Ilkhans of Iran, attracted European merchants keen on acquiring silks and spices at rock-bottom prices. The most lucrative markets were the most distant, the Mongol capitals of Shangdu and Dadu.85
In 1254, the brothers Niccolo and Maffeo Polo departed Venice in search of business opportunities in the Levant and the Aegean world. At the time, Niccolo’s wife, Nicole Anna Defuseh, was with child, a son, Marco, whom Niccolo would only meet fifteen years later. The Polo brothers followed in the footsteps of many Venetian merchants seeking to profit off the trade in the Latin Empire and Outremer.86 They traveled first to Acre, the seat of Outremer, but soon decided to quit the port for Constantinople, “Queen of Cities,” then ruled by Baldwin II, a French count declared Latin emperor. Members of the Fourth Crusade had captured Constantinople, the historic capital of the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire, in 1204. Frankish emperors ruled, but the Venetians controlled the banking and shipping in the city.87 Shortly before the Byzantines recaptured their capital in 1261, the Polo brothers hit upon a get-rich-quick venture. They exchanged all their merchandise for gems, sailed to Soldaia on the southern shores of the Crimea, and then made their way to the court of Khan Berke at Saray.88 They presented the gems to Khan Berke, who was most pleased. The khan rewarded the brothers and permitted them to trade in the markets of Saray, where they quickly reaped profits double the value of the gems. With a keen sense for profit, the brothers Polo took their leave of Saray a year later, and under the khan’s protection, joined a caravan crossing the steppes and Karakum Desert to Bukhara.89
In Bukhara, over the next three years, the Polo brothers learned Persian, or more likely Sogdian, the eastern Iranian language still widely used in commerce. They gained an intimate knowledge of the trade in high-value commodities. They mastered the art of working patronage among the merchant princes who governed the city. An envoy of Hulagu en route to Kublai Khan (whom Marco Polo never names) invited the brothers to join his mission so that a year later, perhaps in 1264, the Polo brothers presented themselves to Kublai Khan.90 They offered costly gifts; they also impressed the khan by their respectful manner. The Polo brothers were the first Latins Kublai Khan had seen, although his brother Möngke would have related his opinion of William of Rubruck. Kublai Khan, just like his brother Möngke, saw European visitors as sources of information, and so he questioned the Venetians intensively. In 1266, Kublai Khan summoned the brothers to his presence and commissioned the Venetians to return home as his emissaries and to request from the Pope that one hundred men learned in Christianity be sent to Dadu. This odd request might have originated from the khan’s fascination with the religions of the empire. Perhaps he had just witnessed a spectacular display of miracles performed by Buddhist monks, and so he desired to test Christian holy men next. If so, he shared the tolerant henotheistic views of his brother Möngke, who had staged the debate among Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims for the same reason. Once again, the Polo brothers, merchants by vocation, trod the Silk Road as the emissaries of a Mongol khan. Kublai Khan invested the Polo brothers with the golden tablet that charged Mongol officials to provide fresh horses and provisions without cost. A Mongol lord, Koeketei, accompanied them, but he fell ill and had to remain behind. It took the brothers over two years to traverse the domains of Kublai Khan and the Ilkhan Abaqa.91 When they reached Acre, in late 1268, they learned that the papal throne was empty, and the College of Cardinals was deadlocked over electing a successor. They booked passage to Venice, where Niccolo met, for the first time, his precocious son of fifteen years of age, who had been reared by his maternal relatives after the premature death of his mother.92 Marco Polo never reports the reunion with his father or how father and son quickly bonded over the next two years. Impatient to return to Dadu, Niccolo and Maffeo, along with seventeen-year-old Marco, set sail to Acre, and started the journey back to Dadu. Fortunately, they were quickly recalled, because the college elected Teobaldo Visconti, then the papal legate in the East, as Pope Gregory X on September 1, 1271. Gregory X, the last pope seriously committed to crusades, granted the Polos a papal letter to Kublai Khan, and assigned two Dominican friars, who soon tired and turned back several months later.93 Once again, the Venetian merchants, eager for fame and fortune, traveled the next three years as envoys of both Pope Gregory X and Kublai Khan, for they still possessed the khan’s golden passport.
The goal of the Polos was profit. To be sure, they were pious Christians, but they were circumspect, polite toward those of other faiths they encountered, and they themselves did not proselytize. They came with the practical skills of business. Foremost, they did not depend on interpreters, in contrast to papal envoys and missionaries. Marco Polo had an exceptionally retentive memory, and there is no reason to reject his claim to know four languages.94 These were most likely his native Venetian tongue, Persian (likely an eastern dialect still used in commerce and culture in the lands of Eastern Islam), Turkish (likely the Uyghur dialect), and finally Mongolian. He seems never to have learned Chinese, and he makes no reference to Chinese characters, but neither did other European travelers of the thirteenth and fourteenth century.95 When Niccolo Polo presented Marco to Kublai Khan, Marco likely could speak in Mongolian the polite phrases required by court etiquette. On his travels from Baghdad to Khotan, Marco, between ages seventeen and twenty, was constantly exposed to speakers of Persian and Turkish. His father and uncle could assist and encourage him given what they had learned in Bukhara. Persian is an Indo-European language, so its system of verbs and syntax are related to Western European languages. Sir Richard Burton, the celebrated explorer of the Victorian era and connoisseur of the bizarre in his day, claimed Persian was the Italian of the Middle East. A clever linguist could learn the language in an evening’s study. Turkish, an agglutinative language, posed a far greater challenge, but Marco was adept in learning new languages so that he then attained some fluency when the Polos reached Khotan in the Tarim Basin. The Polos traversed the caravan cities along the northern rim of the Taklamakan Desert, where Turkish was the dominant language of commerce. They then spent a year at Campçio (today Zhangye) in the Gansu corridor, resting or, more accurately, seeking future business opportunities.96 For well over a year, Marco encountered many Uyghurs, from whom he learned Turkish. Once the Polos set out for the Mongol court in 1274, Marco could, through Turkish, gain familiarity with the related language of Mongolian, especially since he journeyed first across the eastern steppes to Karakorum, before he arrived at Shangdu, the summer palace of Kublai Khan in Inner Mongolia. Literacy and command of languages were the passports for the Polos in the Great Khan’s service. They would be the most useful as the khan’s emissaries, officials, and fact finders.
The Polos did not cross the vast expanses of the Eurasian steppes; instead, they joined caravans on the Silk Road. These caravan cities were well-known to merchants of the Islamic world. Benjamin of Tudela a century earlier, and Ibn Battuta a century later, recorded the cities and commerce along the Silk Road.97 Neither work was known in Latin Christendom. For Europeans, Marco’s account was a revelation. In Marvels of the World, Marco narrates his experiences in five books, dealing with the Middle East, Mongolia, Cathay, Mangi (southern China), and India and covering twenty-five years. He writes a discursive narrative, often including places he did not visit, because he could not pass up a story that would thrill his readers, such as the demise of the Assassins of Alamut or the gardens of Samarkand.98 On the whole, it is possible to follow his itinerary. Once the Polos had crossed the Upper Euphrates River, they traveled by caravan to Baghdad, and thence to the port of Hormuz on straits between the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. Unable to book passage on a ship, the Polos joined another caravan heading for Balkh on the Oxus River, and crossed the Pamirs via the Tera Pass to reach Kashgar and then Khotan.99 He reports the marvels that he witnessed with the interest of a merchant. Near Taican, where the Polos spent time resting, he describes the salt mines at Kamul. He explains in detail how asbestos is manufactured, and he dispels the myth cherished by the Europeans that a salamander was the source of the product.100 The Polos also took their time traveling along the Silk Road rather than using the rapid travel afforded by the Mongol postal and relay system. Again, moneymaking dictated their choice. They took extended rest stops along the way, where they investigated future business possibilities. Hence, Marco dwells on each city’s silks, cottons, spices, or gems—high-priced commodities easily transported and lucrative to market.
When at last Marco Polo reached noble Khotan, the first city on the edge of the Tarim Basin, he encountered a strange world unknown to Europeans. His tone and perspective noticeably change from just reporting the extraordinary to delight his readers to appreciating and approving of what he witnessed. He reports carefully the practices and beliefs among Buddhists.101 Some he abhors such as cremation, but he comes to appreciate and even admire the morality of Buddhist monks, and their teaching on the soul and achieving union with the single divine entity. He also overcomes his distaste for idols, statues of the Buddha, and sees their function in Buddhist worship. Even more important, Marco Polo forever changed the European perspective on the Mongols. For Marco Polo, the Mongols were not the Devil’s horsemen, but rather the finest of warriors. Hence, Marco Polo narrates a very different Mongol history for his European readers, praising the spectacular successes of Genghis Khan.102 Prester John is demoted to a lesser king defeated and humbled by Genghis Khan.103 Many of Marco’s readers must have been shocked to read Marco’s favorable comparison of Genghis Khan to Alexander the Great.104 Even more shocking are his rhapsodies about Kublai Khan as the greatest, most just, and most beloved sovereign of the world.105 Previous Westerners reported Mongol Khans as arrogant despots demanding that the Pope and Western kings journey to Karakorum and submit. Instead, Marco paints the enduring image that the Khan’s palaces at Shangdu and Dadu were the most splendid in the world. The Mongol capitals were transformed from the seat of a dreaded foe to a most desirable destination. Even more significantly, he admires the prowess of Mongol horsemen, even warning that they should not become too accustomed to the luxuries lest they risk the loss of their martial virtues.106 Throughout his second and third books, Marco writes from the Mongol perspective rather than a Western one. For Marco Polo, the conquest of Eurasia by the Mongols created a far more unified and better world, and it was maintained, along with all the trading opportunities, by the Mongol imperial army. He embraces the pax Mongolica, and only later, as emissary in the service of Kublai Khan, does he note in passing the dreadful costs paid by the conquered of Mangi (southern China).
In 1274, Kublai Khan must have been surprised, and pleased, to receive the Polos, who had departed eight years earlier.107 The Venetian brothers were not accompanied by Christian holy men, but Kublai Khan seemed not to mind, and instead he gladly received Marco as courtier and official. Marco Polo surely did not rise to the high favor at the Mongol court he claims, for he was merely one of many foreigners who served the Great Khan. Even so, the young Venetian must have impressed the Great Khan with his mastery of languages, accounting, and winning ways. Kublai Khan soon after sent Marco Polo as a fact finder about the salt monopoly in the southwestern regions of China and borderlands of Burma and Annam.108 The distance was a journey of six months from Dadu, and Marco returned with a detailed analysis of the Great Khan’s revenues. Thereafter, he had the confidence of Kublai Khan, and so secured a succession of lucrative missions for the Great Khan over the next sixteen years.109 These missions took him to the jungles of Burma and Annam, the great cities and canals of the Yangtze, and finally the ports of the Indonesian islands and the Malabar coast of India. With each mission, Marco Polo delights his readers with even more marvels, such as the hunting of lions in Southeast Asia or the incomprehensible size of the cities of southern China or the construction of cargo ships used in the Indian Ocean.110
By 1292, Kublai Khan was long failing, and the Polos had grown anxious over their position and wealth in the event of the Great Khan’s death and a succession crisis. Marco Polo was now thirty-eight years old, and his father and uncles were in their early sixties. They were ready to return to Venice. Kublai Khan repeatedly refused to give the Polos leave because the loyal, experienced Venetians were too valuable. Again, the Polos exploited an unanticipated diplomatic opportunity to obtain permission to travel home at the Great Khan’s expense.111 An embassy from Arghun, the Ilkhan of Iran, had suddenly arrived, requesting a marriage alliance. Kublai Khan obliged his great nephew, and arranged for him a bride, Kököchin, an illustrious Mongol princess of age seventeen. Since Kublai Khan was warring with Kaidu Khan on the central steppes, the delegation would travel by sea. The Polos were the ideal emissaries to accompany the young princess. Marco Polo, in his khan’s service, had already visited the ports of Indonesia and the Malabar coast of India. In his account, Marco expresses his joy because the mission enabled him to learn the sea routes for future business opportunities. The Great Khan was convinced; the Polos were allowed to leave. In 1292, the Polos set sail from the Chinese port of Quanzhou and reached Venice four years later. They were among the eighteen out of the original six hundred passengers to survive the voyage.112 They did deliver the bride, but not to the intended groom because Arghun had died, and so Kököchin was wedded to Arghun’s son, Mahmud Ghazan, a convert to Islam.113 But on their overland journey from Hormuz to Tabriz, and thence to Trebizond, the Polos lost most of their fortune to rapacious brigands and mishaps. When they reached the port of Trebizond and took passage for Venice, they had little left of the fortune they had amassed in the Great Khan’s service.114 Hence, Marco Polo had to write a bestseller if he were to recover his fortune lost on his way home. In the Western tradition, Marco Polo assured the memory of Kublai Khan and his golden palace of Xanadu, the name coined from Marco’s name for Shangdu. Hence, Samuel Coleridge, in an opium dream, beheld a vision of Polo’s Xanadu. He awoke to compose a poem, but the vivid images escaped him before he finished, because he was interrupted. In “Citizen Kane” (1941), the opulent California estate of Charles Foster Kane is named after Coleridge’s Xanadu. Inevitably, Marco inspired many imitators who strove to outdo him by writing their own versions of Marvels of the World. Among these, the most successful was an author claiming to be an English knight, Sir John Mandeville.115 Sir John penned a fantastic travelogue of his supposed adventures in the mid-fourteenth century. Even though Sir John never ventured farther east than the shores of Normandy, he shrewdly cashed in on Polo’s success. Sir John shamelessly plagiarized many of Polo’s descriptions, but Sir John had a gift for storytelling equal to that of Sir Geoffrey Chaucer. Sir John, unlike Marco Polo, populated his distant eastern realms with monstrous races and fabulous creatures of Antiquity in which European readers still wanted to believe.116 What was far more important, learned Europeans sought to comprehend a new conception of the world revealed by Marco Polo. The world was not, as Medieval maps had depicted, an orderly one of three equal continents surrounding the Mediterranean Sea with Jerusalem standing in the center. The Italian cartographer Giovanni Battista Ramusio claimed that his Fra Mauro Map of 1453, which was the first effort to render the known world to scale, was based on one brought back by Marco Polo.117 Christopher Columbus acknowledged that he was inspired to sail west to Cathay after reading Marvels of the World.118 Marco Polo excited the Western imagination about East Asia down to this day, and so Europeans dared to undertake one of the greatest ventures: to sail the oceans in search of the fabled Xanadu of Kublai Khan. In so doing, they launched the Age of European Discovery, and the global economy of today.