Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [21]
The vague plan placed them in harm’s way. Marco quickly realized that Armenia was among the most bitterly contested regions they planned to traverse. If only things were as they had been in the days of Alexander the Great—or so Marco implies in his frequent and admiring references to that youthful military figure, who cast a giant shadow across the landscape. In 330 BC, Armenia had been Alexander’s base of operations, and his countless descendants were everywhere, or so Marco believed. Alexander was the one figure in antiquity with whom Marco appears to have been familiar, mostly through exposure to Alexander romances, those spurious but entertaining accounts of the heroic conqueror’s deeds; such stories were common in this part of the world, where the Mongols had their own Alexander legends as well.
Alexander’s armies were succeeded by waves of Muslims, Byzantine subjects, Turks, Egyptian Mamluks, and eventually European Crusaders, all of whom staked claims to Armenia in bloody succession. By the time the Polos reached Armenia, they found it “subject to the lord Great Khan”—that is, Kublai Khan—but with a twist. “Though the inhabitants are Christians,” Marco writes, “they are not rightly of the true faith as the Romans are”—in other words, they were heretics—“and this is for want of teachers, for they were formerly good Christians.” They were devoted to amusing themselves in this “land of great enjoyment.” In days long past, the Armenians had been renowned as valiant warriors, and well-mannered, “but now they are all become very slavish and mean and have no goodness, except that they are very good gluttons”—or so they appeared to the anxious tenderfoot from Venice. Perhaps that situation was for the best, and the vulnerable Polo company survived the time spent traveling through Armenia without incident.
THE CAUTION young Marco experienced in Armenia turned to revulsion when he encountered “the province of Turkoman,” today’s Turkey. For one thing, he says, the inhabitants “worship Mohammed and hold his religion,” which was off-putting for him. More than that, they “have a brutish law and live like beasts in all things; and they are ignorant people and have a barbarous language.” This was another way of saying that the people of the region were so different from any he had encountered, and so incomprehensible, that he regarded them with conventional European disdain. He did overcome his distaste long enough to remark on their nomadic ways: “Sometimes they stay on mountains, and sometimes on moors according to where they know there is good pasture for their flocks, because they do not plough the land but make their living from flocks alone. And these Turkomans rarely dwell except in the fields with their flocks, and they have garments of skins and houses of felt or skins.”
Their carpets, on the other hand, attracted his merchant’s eye, already attuned to fine craftsmanship. “The sovereign carpets of the world,” he notes, as if delivering a sales pitch, “and of the most beautiful colors.” He appraises “cloth of crimson silk and of other colors and of gold, very beautiful and rich, in very great quantity.” His keen appreciation suggests that he traded enthusiastically in them, and that their “beautiful and rich” colors helped the Polo company profit from the transactions. The Polos were as happy to trade as to travel.
TRYING TO ADJUST to life on the road, Marco found the mingling of cultural and spiritual traditions—to say nothing of language, diet, and dress—unnerving. “These Mongols do not care what God is worshipped in their lands,” he exclaims. “If only all are faithful to the lord Khan and quite obedient and give therefore the appointed tribute, and justice is