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people and who know well how to argue.” They should also be prepared to proselytize among the Mongols, that is, “to show plainly to him and to the idolaters and to the other classes of people submitted to his rule that all their religion was erroneous and all the idols that they keep in their houses are devilish things.” The pope’s emissaries “should know well how to show clearly by reason that the Christian faith and religion is better than theirs and more true than all the other religions.” To a pope convinced that the khan was the spawn of the devil, this would have been an astounding request, yet it was in keeping with Kublai’s inquiring nature. If the pope or his emissaries made their case, “he and all his potentates would become men of the Church.” But that did not mean they would renounce their adherence to other religions.

The Great Khan had one other request: “some of the oil of the lamp that burns above the sepulcher of Jesus Christ our Lord in Jerusalem, in whom he had the greatest devotion, for he believed Christ to be in the number of blessed Gods.” Kublai Khan was not offering to replace other deities with Jesus, as the pope might have been led to expect when dealing with conventional infidels, but rather to add this figure to the Mongol pantheon. The nature of the request would never register with Rome, of course, but the Polo brothers were too preoccupied with their personal fate to argue theology with the Mongol leader. Instead, they vowed to return to Kublai Khan one day with one hundred wise men, oil from the Holy Sepulcher, and whatever else he required, in exchange for safe passage back to Venice. There is no indication that Niccolò and Maffeo seriously considered fulfilling every component of their vow; to bring one hundred wise men with them on a second journey was fantasy. Oil from the Holy Sepulcher, believed to have great healing powers for the body and mind, was another matter. At the time, the Armenian clergy did a brisk trade in it. The Polo brothers would have found it entirely possible to obtain the oil, at a steep price.

KUBLAI KHAN’S guarantee of safe passage for his Venetian visitors came in the form of a magnificent “tablet of gold engraved with the royal seal and signed according to the custom of his estate.” This was the celebrated paiza, the royal Mongol passport that seemed to confer magical powers of protection. (The name was actually derived from Chinese; the Mongols called it a gerega.) The precious object certified that Niccolò, Maffeo, and the Mongol baron Kogatal were emissaries of Kublai Khan himself, and that local rulers in the Mongol Empire must provide lodging, horses, and escorts, just as they would for the emperor, “on pain of their disgrace” if they failed to follow this edict.

JUST TWENTY DAYS after the Polo brothers’ departure, their Mongol traveling companion, Kogatal, became seriously ill and was obliged to stay behind. Even without the benefit of his presence, the paiza assured the brothers of safe passage and respect wherever they went.

The brothers arrived unscathed at the small port city of Layas, in what was then known as Lesser or Little Armenia, a territory lying west of the Euphrates. Here they boarded a ship to begin the most hazardous segment of their journey. On land, they had only enemies to fear, but journeys over water were occasions for dread; only the most intrepid, desperate, or foolish of travelers entrusted their lives to the vagaries of wind and water.

This time, fortune favored the Polo brothers. In 1269 they arrived safely at their destination, Acre (or Akko), an ancient seaport on what is now the northern coast of Israel, just south of Lebanon.

AMONG THE MOST ancient settlements in the world, Acre had changed hands many times during the course of its history. In 1191, Philip II of France and Richard the Lion-Hearted of England wrested it away from the Muslim sultan Saladin, and it served as the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and, for the moment, a stronghold of Crusaders.

In 1350, the German cleric Ludolph von Suchem described