Marco Polo actually did not compile his own book or memoir but while held as a captive in Genoa was discovered by Rustichello of Pisa who listened to the tales of heroism, woe and violence, and exotic experiences and wrote them for publication in a book entitled Travels. The writer doesn't seem to question that the tales do not always agree with each other or that some tales are feasibly impossible for the human to do, or even if the tales were ones that Marco heard or spun or were in fact his own experiences, but that seems to be a moot point as the tales did enrapture audiences and provided lively entertainment for a people thirsty for news outside of their own sphere of hard labor and daily survival.
Marco's early tales include Armenians and Nestorians, Jacobites, Georgians and Persians, as well as the Tartars and other nations who had been converted by the Christians to Christianity because the new converts were allowed great license to sin. Marco was fascinated by the merchants of Tabriz, who didn't haggle aloud in public lest they be overheard but bargained by squeezing each other's wrists or fingertips to describe and dispute the quality of items, convey the amount of the bid offered, and to communicate acceptance of a bid. The further east Marco went, the more bizarre and laughably ludicrous the tales seemed. Despite that, Marco continue to spin and war was a frequent theme.
Although Marco saw the havoc and destruction wreaked in the trail of the rampaging Genghis Khan in Badkhshan and elsewhere, he regarded Genghis (the name is derived from the Turkic word 'tengiz' which meant 'ocean' signifying great breadth and depth) as greater even than Alexander the Great in his accomplishments. Marco interacted mostly and served Genghis's grandson Kublai Khan, who having a Nestorian Christian mother, was raised to be very open-minded to religious differences and to ultimately practice religious tolerance. Kublai was also tutored by a monk of Chinese Buddhism, received instruction by Confucians, Turkish Uighurs, Muslims and Nestorian Christians, and his court was an eclectic gathering of people from many nations and skills. Despite religious tolerance, Marco does mention a system of who received the most trust and the Mongols were the most trusted in the court, followed by the Colored-eye People (meaning the Persians and Middle Easterners), then the Northern Chinese and finally the Southern Chinese, which ironically were the most numerous of vassals but those having the least influence.
Although the Mongols were a nomadic tribe relocating twice a year to richer pasturage for their horses, camels and other livestock, Kublai Khan's seat of power was "the great city called Cambulac" where he wintered. When Genghis had ruled, Karkorum on the Mongolian Steppe was the capital, but Kublai in keeping with centralizing his authority to superimpose a Mongolian civilization on the vassal Chinese, oversaw the construction of Cambulac. Work commenced in 1267 and was completed several years later. The great city featured eleven gates guarded by imposing three-storey towers and was called in Chinese as Ta-tu, "Great Capital", but known to the Turks as Khanbalikh, which Marco spelled 'Cambulac' or 'City of the Khan'. The Mongols, adapting the Chinese name, called it Daidu, and Daidu has since undergone many name changes but is now called "Beijing". The Forbidden City was the heart of this city.
In 1271, the year before Marco arrived, Kublai Khan's Chinese engineer and astronomer utilized Persian diagrams to build instruments and developed a new Mongol calendar, one based on a 12-year cycle with each year represented by a distinct animal to characterize the year: cow, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, cock, dog, or pig. For example, following this new ideology the year of the monkey is a difficult year as the passage of time in the year symbolized simian traits like rambunctiousness and being high-strung. Marco estimated that in Cambulac alone no fewer than five thousand astrologers and soothsayers plied their trade according to their own religious beliefs and cultural backgrounds - Muslims, Christians, Chinese principally.
Everywhere Marco went in his travels in China for Kublai Khan, he encountered silk worms which were a mysterious secret even to the Chinese. Europe at this time knew nothing about the art and science of sericulture, a closely guarded ancient secret. Traditions credits Xi Ling-shi - wife of the mythical Yellow Emperor who supposedly ruled China in 3000 BC - with the introduction of silkworm cultivation along with the invention of the loom. Although she was a phantom, silk was not and archaeological digs have revealed silk threads, ribbons, and cocoons dating from 3000 BC, not to mention a small ivory cup dating the same time and having images of spinning tools as well as silk thread. And in Marco's travels, he estimated that the labor-intensive production of silk occupied half of China's provinces, but he was not to discover any significant facts about sericulture as giving knowledge of silkworm production was an offense punishable by death if such secrets were revealed to a foreigner, or even if the cocoons or eggs were transported across Chinese borders as the favored and state-secret of the carefully developed and unique Bombyx mori which produced a rounder and smoother thread than other species was nationally protected.
Brutality, as we in the modern label it, was cultural and each culture had a unique form of extermination of the enemy. An enemy or even a traitor would have hot stones forced down his/her throat [this is how marmots are still cooked - the traditional way - in Mongolia, as Mongolia has virtually no wood for fuel so dung and grasses and burned, heating stones which are then dropped down the marmots throat to cook the marmot from the inside out.] Nayan, one of Kublai's uncles, rebelled again Kublai and wanted to become the Great Khan himself, and so a major battle ensued in which Nayan was defeated. As punishment, Nayan was wrapped tightly in a carpet and violently drug until he died. As Marco puts it, "Their object in choosing the mode of death was so that the blood of the imperial lineage might not be spilt upon the earth, and the sun and the air might not witness it, nor the limbs of Nayan be touched by any animal."
Upon Marco Polo's return to Venitia, people regarded Marco's tales of technological advances with disbelief, but eventually adopted the technology. Paper money was virtually unknown in the West until Marco's return, whereupon it revolutionized finance and commerce. Coal, which had captured Marco's attention is China, soon provided a new and relatively efficient means of heating. Eyeglasses (round lenses actually) became accepted and led to the rise of both the microscope and the telescope, the latter which in turn revolutionized naval battles. Gunpowder, which the Chinese had been using for three centuries, markedly changed one-on-one personal combat to fighting impersonally and yet causing more destruction to the enemy. Marco did indeed start the bridge building of later cultural and technological exchange for a technologically developing society.
The West is still enamored with the exotic tales woven of his experiences, his father's experiences, and tales he gathered and spoke of as if they were his own. Authors like Coleridge further mystify the adventures of Marco in his poem Kublai Khan. Coleridge opens with:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately prince dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
And concludes with a warning of the dangers of unrestrained rapture, imagining himself or a kindred spirit crying out:
Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Hmmm, I don't think many people would consider the koulis, the fermented milk of the Mongols, as the milk of Paradise ... but there you have it, exoticizing the unknown and making ts alluring, mysterious and something to be desired.
