Kublai quizzed them on European affairs and decided to send them on a goodwill mission to the pope. At the request of Kublai Khan, they secured some holy oil from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and then backtracked to Acre to pick up gifts, papal documents and two friars from newly elected Pope Gregory X. The friars quickly abandoned the expedition, but the Polos continued on, possibly by camel, to the Persian port city of Hormuz.
Over the next three years they slowly trekked through deserts, high mountain passes and other rough terrain, meeting people of various religions and cultures along the way. Kublai, who generally relied on foreigners to administer his empire, took Marco Polo into his court, possibly as a tax collector. At one point, the Venetian was sent on official business to the port city of Hangzhou then called Quinsai , which, like Venice, was built around a series of canals.
Marco Polo also purportedly journeyed across inland China and into present-day Myanmar. After many years of seeking a release from service, the Polos finally secured permission from Kublai to escort a young princess to her intended husband Arghun, the Mongol ruler of Persia.
In the Polos joined a flotilla of 14 boats that set out from Zaitun now Quanzhou, China , stopped briefly in Sumatra and then landed in Persia 18 months later, only to find out that Arghun was dead. He also told partially erroneous self-aggrandizing tales about warfare, commerce, geography, court intrigues and the sexual practices of the people who lived under Mongol rule.
A Genoese-Venetian peace treaty in allowed Marco Polo to return home. He probably never left Venetian territory again. The following year, he married Donata Badoer, with whom he would have three daughters. Not much is known about his golden years except that he continued trading and litigated against a cousin. Marco Polo died in January , having helped to inspire a later generation of explorers. Everything we know about him comes from his own text and a few Venetian documents; Asian sources never mentioned him.
This lack of hard evidence has caused a small number of skeptics to question whether Marco Polo actually made it to China. With Polo, as always, was a stamped metal packet from Khan himself that served as his official credentials from the powerful leader. As the years wore on, Polo was promoted for his work.
He served as governor of a Chinese city. Later, Khan appointed him as an official of the Privy Council. At one point, he was the tax inspector in the city of Yanzhou. From his travels, Polo amassed not only great knowledge about the Mongol empire but incredible wonder. He marveled at the empire's use of paper money, an idea that had failed to reach Europe, and was in awe of its economy and scale of production.
Polo's later stories showed him to be an early anthropologist and ethnographer. His reporting offers little about himself or his own thoughts, but instead gives the reader a dispassionate reporting about a culture he had clearly grown fond of.
Finally, after 17 years in Khan's court, the Polos decided it was time to return to Venice. Their decision was not one that pleased Khan, who'd grown to depend on the men. In the end, he acquiesced to their request with one condition: They escort a Mongol princess to Persia, where she was to marry a Persian prince. Traveling by sea, the Polos left with a caravan of several hundred passengers and sailors.
The journey proved harrowing, and many perished as a result of storms and disease. By the time the group reached Persia's Port of Hormuz, just 18 people, including the princess and the Polos, were still alive. Later, in Turkey, Genoese officials appropriated three-quarters of the family's wealth. After two years of travel, the Polos reached Venice.
They'd been gone for more than two decades, and their return to their native land undoubtedly had its difficulties. Their faces looked unfamiliar to their family and they struggled to speak their native tongue. Just a few years after returning to Venice from China, Polo commanded a ship in a war against the rival city of Genoa.
He was eventually captured and sentenced to a Genoese prison, where he met a fellow prisoner and writer named Rustichello. As the two men became friends, Polo told Rustichello about his time in Asia, what he'd seen, where he'd traveled and what he'd accomplished. The book made Polo a celebrity. It was printed in French, Italian and Latin, becoming the most popular read in Europe. But few readers allowed themselves to believe Polo's tale.
They took it to be fiction, the construct of a man with a wild imagination. Polo, however, stood behind his book, and it influenced later adventurers and merchants. After his release from prison in , Polo returned to Venice, where he married, raised three daughters and, for some 25 years, carried on the family business. Polo died at his home in Venice on January 8, The Polos had left Venice to travel all the way to Peking, China, and back when Marco was only six years old.
During their nine-year absence, Marco was raised by his mother and other members of his extended family. He became a tough, loyal, observant young man, eager to please and interested in adventure.
The Polos impressed Kublai Khan with their intelligence and their knowledge of the world. For these reasons he kept them around for several years. In he sent them to Rome as his messengers with a request that the pope send one hundred Europeans to share their knowledge with him.
Although the pope did not grant the request, the Polo brothers, in search of further profit and adventure, set out to return to China in Since his mother had died recently, Marco Polo was taken along on the trip, marking his debut, or first appearance, as a world traveler at age seventeen. The return to China, over land and sea, desert and mountain, took slightly more than three years.
Despite their failure to bring back the one hundred Europeans from Rome, Kublai Khan welcomed the Polos back and again took them into his service. He became increasingly impressed with Marco Polo, who, like his father and uncle, demonstrated not only his ability to travel but also his knowledge of the Mongol language and his remarkable powers of observation. Marco Polo. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
With the approval of Kublai Khan, the Polos began widespread trading ventures within his empire. While on these business trips around the empire, Marco Polo demonstrated his quick mind and his ability to relate what he saw in clear, understandable terms.
His reports, which formed the basis of his famous account of his travels, contained information on local customs, business conditions, and events. It was in these reports that he displayed his talent as an objective and accurate observer. Kublai Khan read and used these reports to keep informed of developments within his empire.
All three of the European visitors were kept on as messengers and advisers. The younger Polo was used on several extended missions that sent him traveling over much of China and even beyond.
By his own account he came near the edge of Tibet and northern Burma. This relationship between the Polos and Kublai Khan lasted more than sixteen years, during which Marco served as Kublai Khan's personal representative in the city of Yangchow, China. Although the Polos enjoyed the profits of their enterprise, they longed to return to Venice to enjoy their wealth. They were prevented from returning for a time because Kublai Khan was unwilling to release them from his service.
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