Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [205]
CHAPTER TWO / The Golden Passport
In their consideration of foreigners who found employment in the Mongol regime, Yule and Cordier mention an oral tradition placing Jews in China since the first century. Accounts of synagogues and Jewish travelers crop up occasionally in Chinese annals as early as the twelfth century, although the terminology thought to refer to Jews may indicate another group. For more on the long but tentatively understood history of Jews in China, see Yule and Cordier, volume 1, page 347. (All citations to Yule and Cordier refer to their version of The Description of the World.)
In his incisive The History of the Mongol Conquests, J. J. Saunders describes Mongol-Chinese segregation; see page 124. See also Hart, Marco Polo, page 16.
Igor de Rachewiltz, in “Marco Polo Went to China,” page 66, suggests that by “Latin,” Marco (or his translator) actually meant “Italian,” and thus the Polo brothers were the first Venetians that Kublai had met. If so, Marco was not, in this instance, exaggerating. Hart’s Marco Polo, page 38, note, traces the Polo company’s uncertain progress, and includes Ludolph von Suchem’s description of Acre. See also Richard Humble’s illustrated Marco Polo for another retelling.
CHAPTER THREE / The Apprentice
Just what Marco meant by “muslin” is open to question. The term generally refers to white or unbleached cloth woven from cotton, but his was made of silver and gold, in which case he may have had another fabric in mind; or perhaps he meant that the muslin fabric was trimmed with silver and gold threads.
Gibbon’s remark comes from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume 2, page 818. More about the caliph and Hülegü can be found in Zorzi’s Vita di Marco Polo. Yule and Cordier (volume 1, page 344, note 1) consider the Mongol taboo against spilling blood. For a diverting introduction to Mongol culture, see Ian Frazier’s “Invaders,” New Yorker, April 25, 2005. Kuo P’u’s remark appears in Irene M. Franck and David Brownstone, The Silk Road: A History, page 48. For extended analysis of the Dry Tree’s potential significance, see Yule and Cordier, volume 1, pages 128–139. The validity of Marco’s account of the Assassins has generated debate; some commentators believe that the hashish connection may be spurious, and that the Old Man did not drug his followers. For more, consult Leonardo Olschki, Marco Polo’s Asia, pages 369–370, and for recent observations on the Assassins, see Bernard Lewis, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam, and Farhad Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Isma’ilis.
The description of Balkh by Nancy Hatch Dupree can be found in The Road to Balkh, page 1. Juvaini’s comments appear in the same work on page 75 and following. Hart, Marco Polo, page 97, adds background. See also Dupree’s An Historical Guide to Afghanistan, page 42, for the destruction of Balkh by the Mongol invaders.
CHAPTER FOUR / The Opium Eater
Manuel Komroff includes an account by Benjamin of Tudela in Contemporaries of Marco Polo, pages 268–269. John Larner’s Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World, pages 12–13, has additional context; William of Rubruck’s comments on what he took to be Mongol squalor are on page 25. Carpini’s account is quoted in Christopher Dawson’s The Mongol Mission, pages 6–7, and in Margaret T. Hodgen’s valuable Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, pages 90–92.
James D. Ryan’s “Preaching Christianity Along the Silk Route: Missionary Outposts in the Tartar ‘Middle Kingdom’ in the Fourteenth Century” contains a trove of useful data concerning the issues confronting early missionaries to Asia.
The story of Genghis Khan’s horse is told by Mike Edwards in “Genghis: Lord of the Mongols,” National Geographic, December 1996. Juvaini’s observation about perdition is drawn from Morris Rossabi’s Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times, page 2.
For an interesting if technical discussion of the origins and evolution of the