• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1043 0

’s presence, and his upright conduct on this occasion, have not been forgotten in the Chinese Annals: ‘The Emperor…desired Polo, Assessor of the Privy Council, to explain the reasons which had led Wangchu to commit this murder. Polo spoke with boldness of the crimes and oppressions of Ahmad, which rendered him an object of detestation throughout the Empire. The Emperor’s eyes were opened, and he praised the courage of Wangchu.’” But Moule (Quinsai, page 84) has shown that the official in question, “Po-lo,” was not our Marco, but rather a Chinese. It is not known by what name Marco Polo was called in the Mongol court, or in the Chinese or Mongol annals. There is no record that he warned Kublai Khan of Ahmad’s treachery, or played an active part in the minister’s downfall, even though he recorded events accurately.

In the Service of the Khan, edited by Igor de Rachewiltz et al., has the best account in English of Ahmad’s rise and fall (pages 539–557); in this article, H. Franke draws heavily on Chinese sources as well as on Rashid al-Din, the Persian historian. And for another account of Ahmad’s rise and fall, see R. P. Lister’s Marco Polo’s Travels in Xanadu with Kublai Khan, page 138. In The Mongols, said to be a favorite of Theodore Roosevelt, Jeremiah Curtin recounts the Ahmad and Sanga episode (pages 372–373).

Marco gives the year of Nayan and Kaidu’s plot as 1286, but once again he seems to have become confused while converting a date from the Chinese or Mongol lunar calendar to the Julian calendar. Aspects of the rebellion appear in Pauthier’s edition, Le Livre de Marco Polo, page 237, note 4. The fate of the Mongol invasion force is recounted by Rossabi, Khubilai Khan, on pages 220 and following.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN / The Seeker

For a discussion of what was meant by “India,” see Yule and Cordier, volume 2, pages 426–427. Additional commentary on the final leg of Marco’s journey can be found in Hart’s Marco Polo, pages 145–167. And for a thorough and provocative discussion of Marco Polo’s spiritual experiences and the evolution of his beliefs, see Mario Bussagli’s “La Grande Asia di Marco Polo,” in Zorzi’s Marco Polo, Venezia e l’Oriente.

Marco associated Saint Thomas with a “race of men who are called gavi,” who make a practice of sitting on carpets. “When one asked them why they do this,” Marco reports, they replied, “because…we are sprung from the earth and to earth we must return.” Despite the men’s passivity, Marco insisted that ancestors of the gavi “killed Master Saint Thomas the Apostle long ago.” As a result of this deed, “none could go into the place where the body of Master Saint Thomas is, which is in the province of Maabar, in a little town.” Marco comments: “Twenty or more [men] could not put one of these gavi into the place where the body of Master Saint Thomas is buried, because the place does not receive them by virtue of the holy body.” Realizing that this requires elucidation, Marco explains, “They say they tried the experiment, and that one of the said gavi, dragged by force by many men to make him enter where the body of Saint Thomas is buried, could by no amount of force be moved…. And this very special miracle our Lord God showed for reverence of the most holy apostle.”

Those wishing to learn about differing interpretations of Thomas from a modern perspective would do well to consult Elaine Pagels’s Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (New York: Random House, 2003). The Buddhist influence on the Mongols is explained in Gianroberto Scarcia’s “I Mongoli e l’Iran: la situazione religiosa,” in Zorzi, Venezia e l’Oriente. And commentary on Marco’s distinctive name for the Buddha can be found in Pauthier’s edition of the Travels, Le Livre de Marco Polo, page 588, note, and in Olschki, Marco Polo’s Asia, pages 254–255.

I wish to acknowledge the assistance of Patrick Ryan, S.J., for his enlightening comments about Zanzibar’s religious history and traditions.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN / The Mongol Princess

Hart’s Marco Polo, page 142, note, offers the conventional account of the meaning of Kokachin