Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [135]
AGAINST THE ADVICE of his councilors, Kublai Khan prepared for a third invasion of Japan.
In 1283, two years after the kamikaze demolished the Mongol fleet, the shipyards of southern China sprang to life once more, obeying the Great Khan’s orders to build five hundred new battleships. Two years later, the Khan demanded the same contribution from the Manchurians of northern China. The Chinese protested Kublai’s warlike excesses, as did his own advisers. Opposition to the undertaking became universal, and in 1286 Kublai Khan reluctantly abandoned his visions of conquest.
AFTER THE ROUT in Japan, Kublai Khan never regained his political power or his diplomatic dexterity, and the entire Yüan empire suffered from diminished prestige. Kublai’s modern biographer Morris Rossabi observes: “The failures shattered the Mongols’ mantle of invincibility in East Asia.” And everyone took note. “One of the principal underpinnings of their power—the psychological edge of terror they held over their opponents—was badly shaken, if not dislodged.”
In defeat, Kublai Khan retreated from reality. He passed his days and nights feasting on boiled mutton, eggs, raw vegetables in pancakes, koumiss, and beer. He became depressed and obese. Portraits of the Great Khan in old age show him grown as fat as a Buddha, but not nearly so happy. How could he rejoice with his empire collapsing all around him, his favorite wife and son both dead, and his reputation in tatters? He sought relief from his political and physical ills in a variety of miracle cures, everything from drugs to more drinking to the incantations of shamans from as far away as Korea. None of the spells proved efficacious, and his drinking became still more excessive. The expansive yet shrewd monarch who had once greeted Marco Polo and his father and uncle had given way to a sad and self-pitying old man whose weaknesses encouraged his enemies.
Marco looked on in dismay as the Great Khan, along with the entire Yüan dynasty, nearly succumbed to the subversive designs of a single highly placed individual.
HIS NAME WAS AHMAD, and he had risen from obscurity to become the most powerful Muslim official during Kublai Khan’s long reign. Ahmad specialized in finance, an area in which the Mongols lacked expertise, and he cunningly turned his influence and high status to tremendous personal profit. He had the arrogance of a minister secure in his sovereign’s trust. He was Kublai Khan’s gatekeeper, feared and secretly despised, who bullied everyone at court and held them at bay, at least for a time. While the khan was devoting his energies to brilliant military conquests, his minister was conducting a reign of terror in the palace.
Ahmad made himself indispensable to the khan, yet remained an outsider because he was a Muslim. Although Kublai declared the prophet Muhammad to be one of the empire’s four spiritual beacons, he himself preferred to keep Muslims at arm’s length. Skilled in finance and trade, Muslims had their uses, Kublai believed. And they were considered more trustworthy than the Chinese, if only because they were beholden to the Mongols, in the same way that Marco was. Of the many Muslims who energetically served Kublai Khan, none rose higher or posed a greater threat to the Mongol rule of China—and the Polo family’s secure niche within it—than Ahmad. In his hunger for power, he came close to toppling the Yüan dynasty.
Marco observed Ahmad’s rise and fall firsthand; he knew the principals and was able to describe their bewilderment