Five-minute digest
The Travels of Marco Polo
Summary
The book, known in Italy as Il Milione and in early French manuscripts as the Devisement du Monde (Description of the World), is less a diary than a geography of Asia as the Polos knew it, organized by route and region and told in the voice of Rustichello, who often addresses the reader directly. The Prologue tells how the Venetian brothers Niccolò and Maffeo Polo, trading in the Crimea and on the Volga in the 1260s, were carried by war farther and farther east until envoys brought them to Kublai, the Great Kaan of the Tartars, who questioned them about the Pope and the Christian faith and sent them back to Rome asking for a hundred learned Christians and oil from the lamp of the Holy Sepulchre. In 1271 the brothers set out again with Niccolò's son Marco and two friars, who soon turned back. Marco learned the languages of the court, was sent on missions across the empire, and pleased the Kaan with his reports; after seventeen years the Polos finally obtained leave by escorting the princess Cocachin by sea to the Mongol ruler Argon in Persia; Argon had died before they arrived, and she was given to his son Casan. Book I follows the overland road from Lesser Armenia through Turkey, Baghdad, Tabriz, Persia and Hormuz, the Old Man of the Mountain and his drugged Assassins, Badakhshan, the Pamirs, Kashgar, Samarkand and the desert of Lop, to Tangut, Karakorum, the rise of Chinghis Kaan against Prester John, Mongol customs, and Kublai's summer palace at Chandu. Book II describes Kublai himself: his victory over the rebel Nayan, his palace and city of Cambaluc (Beijing), his feasts, hunts, posts and runners, his paper money and his charity to the poor, the black stones burnt for fuel, and the great stone bridge over the Pulisanghin; then journeys west into Tibet, Carajan (Yunnan) and Mien (Burma), and south through the conquered Song lands of Manzi to the siege of Saianfu, the city of Kinsay (Hangzhou), and the port of Zayton. Book III turns to the sea route: Chipangu (Japan) and Kublai's failed invasion, Champa, Java, Sumatra, Ceylon and the story of Sagamoni Borcan, the pearl fisheries and tomb of St. Thomas in Maabar, the kingdoms of India, Socotra, Madagascar, Zanzibar, Abyssinia, Aden and the return to Hormuz. Book IV gives accounts of wars among the Mongol princes, including Caidu and his warrior daughter and the struggles for the throne of Persia, and of the far north, the Land of Darkness and Russia. A brief conclusion thanks God for the travellers' safe return. The library text is Sir Henry Yule's English translation as revised by Henri Cordier (1903), a composite of several manuscript versions with bracketed additions; Yule and Cordier's notes are omitted.
Top Lessons
Things seen and things heard
The Prologue promises to set down things seen as seen and things heard as heard only. Readers can test this promise: some chapters are plainly first-hand, with distances, prices and customs, while others repeat stories of griffins, Prester John or the Land of Darkness. Learning to tell eyewitness report from hearsay is the first lesson of reading any traveller.
A merchant's eye on a great empire
Marco notices what a Venetian trader would: paper money, coal, salt, pepper, silk, the post-stations, the bridges and canals of Kinsay. His admiration for Kublai's government, wealth and order made Europe aware that a civilization larger and richer than its own lay at the far end of Asia.
Faith among the nations
The Polos meet Nestorian Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and others along their road. Kublai asks for a hundred learned Christians who can argue for their faith, and in Ceylon Marco says that Sagamoni Borcan led so pure a life that, had he been a Christian, he would have been a great saint. The book shows a medieval Christian taking other peoples' religions seriously as he describes them.
Truth and doubt
From the beginning some readers thought the book exaggerated, and scholars still debate how much Marco saw himself. Some note that he omits the Great Wall, tea and the binding of women's feet, and that the Polos could not have helped at Saianfu, whose siege ended before they arrived; others point to his accurate details of salt production, paper currency and the princess Cocachin's voyage, confirmed by Persian and Chinese records. The debate is a good model of weighing evidence.
Verified Quotes
Frequently cited
“And we shall set down things seen as seen, and things heard as heard only, so that no jot of falsehood may mar the truth of our Book”
“Now, being thereafter an inmate of the Prison at Genoa, he caused Messer Rusticiano of Pisa, who was in the said Prison likewise, to reduce the whole to writing; and this befell in the year 1298 from the birth of Jesus.”
“He begged that the Pope would send as many as an hundred persons of our Christian faith; intelligent men, acquainted with the Seven Arts”
Frequently cited
“you might say he hath the Secret of Alchemy in perfection, and you would be right!”
“It is a fact that all over the country of Cathay there is a kind of black stones existing in beds in the mountains, which they dig out and burn like firewood.”
Frequently cited
“the city is beyond dispute the finest and the noblest in the world.”
“Indeed, an he had but been so, he would have been a great saint of Our Lord Jesus Christ, so good and pure was the life he led.”
“But I believe it was God’s pleasure that we should get back in order that people might learn about the things that the world contains.”
Medical Lens
The book is a valuable source for the medieval drug trade and for medical practice as a merchant observed it, not a medical text. It records where rhubarb, ginger and spices came from and how they reached Europe; describes the healing air of the Badakhshan mountains, where Marco says he recovered from an illness of about a year; reports that in Carajan there were no physicians and the sick sent for spirit-conjurors, and that crocodile gall was prized as a remedy for rabies and difficult labour; notes physicians and astrologers in the squares of Kinsay; and tells of Indian ascetics who drank a potion of sulphur and quicksilver for long life. The story of the Old Man of the Mountain, who drugged young men into a sleep and woke them in an artificial paradise, is the source of the European legend of the Assassins; the potion is not named, and its identification with hashish is a later and debated interpretation. At the shrine of St. Thomas in Maabar, pilgrims gave red earth from the place of martyrdom to those sick with tertian and quartan fevers.
- Book I, Chapters XXIII-XXIV
The Old Man of the Mountain gives his young followers a sleeping potion and carries them into his garden paradise.
- Book I, Chapter XXIX
The pure air of the Badakhshan mountains cures fevers, and Marco's own year of illness ends there.
- Book I, Chapter XLIII; Book II, Chapter LXXV
Rhubarb in the mountains of Tangut and rhubarb and ginger near Suju, gathered for trade all over the world.
- Book II, Chapters XLIX-L
Crocodile gall used against rabies and in childbirth; in Carajan no physicians, and the sick consult spirit-conjurors.
- Book III, Chapter XX
Ascetics of India who live long on rice and milk and drink sulphur and quicksilver twice a month.