Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [207]
For a technical comparison of Chinese and Mongol currency, see Yule and Cordier, volume 1, pages 426–430. In Marco Polo’s Asia, pages 234–240, Olschki dissects the tensions animating relationships among Mongols and Muslims and considers reasons why Islam did not gain a firm grip on the Mongol Empire.
In Khubilai Khan, pages 40–41 and 155–160, Rossabi ably tells the story of ’Phags-pa and his script. See also Jack Weatherford’s Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, pages 205–206. And Zhijiu Yang’s Yuan shi san lun has an interesting discussion of the languages Marco Polo may have known or used, with reference to M. G. Pauthier’s thoughts on the subject. Marco Polo’s Asia, by Olschki, also discusses ’Phags-pa script and contains interesting assessments, pro and con, of the Mongol impact on Chinese culture (pages 124–128). Some early accounts ascribe five or seven wives to Kublai Khan rather than four; see Yule and Cordier, volume 1, page 358, note 2. For an explanation of Mongol succession issues, see the same work, pages 360–361, note 1.
CHAPTER EIGHT / In the Service of the Khan
Marco Polo’s accuracy in describing Cambulac can be gauged by the fact that the historian Rashid al-Din, his learned contemporary, described the city in very similar terms:
The surrounding wall of the city of Khanbaligh is flanked by 17 towers; between each [two] of these towers there is the distance of a farsang (or parasange). Daidou [Ta-tu, or Cambulac] is so populous that even outside of these towers there are great streets and houses; in its gardens there are many kinds of fruit trees brought from everywhere. At the center of this city, Khoubilai-Khaan has established one of his Ordou (a Mongolian term which like the Chinese Koung means “imperial dwelling”), in a very large palace called Karsi (in Chinese, tien, a cluster of pavilions destined for the emperor’s various uses).
The columns and the floors of this palace are all in cut stone or marble, and of great beauty; it is surrounded and fortified by four walls. Between one of these walls and the next there is a space equal to the distance covered by an arrow flung with force. The external court is for the palace guards; the next one is for the princes (omera, emirs) who assemble there each morning; the third court is occupied by the great dignitaries of the army, and the fourth by those who are in the prince’s intimate circle. The picture of this palace is based on one made on site.
At Khanbaligh and at Daidou there are two large and important rivers. They come from the north, where lies the road leading to the Khan’s summer encampment; at the frontier gorge of Djemdjal (the fortified gorge of Kiu-young) they join another river. Inside the town is a considerable lake which resembles a sea; there is a dam to bring the boats down. The water of the river further along forms a canal, and issues out into the bay which, from the ocean, extends into the vicinity of Khanbaligh. [From Pauthier’s edition of Marco Polo’s Travels, Le Livre de Marco Polo, page 266, note 5.]
For more on the complex subject of the Chinese calendar, see Yule and Cordier, volume 1, pages 388–389; Needham’s Science and Civilisation in China, volume 3, pages 390 and following; and Robert Temple’s The Genius of China, pages 36–38. Temple’s illustrated book can be considered a simplified introduction to Needham’s occasionally unwieldy magnum opus.
J. D. Langlois’s notable China Under Mongol Rule, page 3 and following, has more on the conceptual and historical roots of the Yüan dynasty, and the emperor’s role as personified by Kublai Khan.
The details of Kublai Khan’s astonishing wardrobe are drawn from Pauthier’s Le Livre de Marco Polo, page 285, note 4, and the General Ceremonial from the same work, page 290, note 4. The birthday rites were extremely intricate. Pauthier offers a record of an exhausting birthday worship service:
The “first introducer” says