Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [23]
Throughout the Nestorians’ struggle to find a safe haven in Asia, much of Western Europe remained perplexed by these devout “Eastern Christians,” as they were sometimes called. Marco frequently took note of the Nestorians he encountered, but he considered them enigmatic and “inferior”—that is, heretical.
BAGHDAD, still the seat of the Nestorian Church in Marco Polo’s day, lies 220 miles to the southeast of Mosul. Marco discusses Baghdad with an air of confidence, but it is unlikely that he actually visited the city. To obscure that omission, he resorts to telling stories, beginning with a lengthy miracle tale pitting the thirty-seventh caliph, or Muslim ruler, of Baghdad against a humble Christian cobbler, with the fantastic outcome that the caliph secretly converted to Christianity. Rustichello’s fingerprints can be found all over this elaborate and somewhat cloying set piece.
In a similar spirit, Marco speaks with gusto about the end of the caliphate at the hands of the Mongols. In this case, his account follows what is known about actual events. He sets the scene in 1255—actually, it was 1258—when Hülegü, one of Genghis Khan’s grandsons, vowed to conquer the ancient caliphate and claim it for the rapidly expanding Mongol Empire. Since its heyday under Harun ar-Rashid over four centuries earlier, Baghdad had deteriorated, but it still posed a formidable challenge to would-be invaders. To forestall an assault, envoys of the caliph called on Hülegü and cautioned, “If the Caliph is killed, the whole universe will fall into chaos, the sun will hide its face, rain will no longer fall, and plants will cease to grow.”
Undeterred, and perhaps even provoked by the warning, Hülegü “resolved to capture it by a ruse rather than by force. Having about a hundred thousand cavalry, without counting infantry, he wished to give the Caliph and his followers in the city the impression that they were only a few.” Hülegü charged the city gates with few warriors, and “the Caliph, seeing this force was a small one, did not take much account of it,” whereupon Hülegü made a “pretence of flight and so lured [the caliph] back past the woods and thickets where his troops lay in ambush. Here he trapped his pursuers and crushed them. So the Caliph was captured together with the city.” Mongol warriors killed eight thousand inhabitants in the attack; only the lives of Christians were spared, thanks to the intervention of Hülegü’s wife, who shared their faith.
Marco describes a grotesque end to the caliph’s life: Hülegü confined the Muslim leader to his tower of treasure and let him starve to death amid his wealth. In fact, the caliph’s execution was more bizarre.
Despite their brutality, the Mongols abhorred the thought of spilling blood. Their methods of “bloodless” execution included smothering by stuffing the victim’s mouth with stones or feces. The caliph was subjected to a more dignified but even harsher ordeal. On February 10, 1258, he was wrapped in a carpet and trodden to death by horses. His family was also said to be executed, with the exception of a daughter, who became a slave in Hülegü’s harem.
After the Mongol conquest, Baghdad’s population shrank to a tenth of its former size. Nevertheless, the provincial capital still traded on its reputation as a center of commerce and of intellect, storied for its madrassas, libraries, giant moat, and, it was said, 27,000 public baths. Legends of the former glories of Baghdad and the court of Harun ar-Rashid remained potent enough to impress even Marco Polo.
IN HIS ACCOUNT, Marco abruptly turns his attention from Baghdad to Tabriz, the city reputedly built by one of the wives of Harun ar-Rashid, whose luxurious court served as the setting for the tales known as The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment. In this instance, the Venetian actually visited, and came away impressed by, the thriving commercial center—“the most splendid city in the province,” he calls it, as if compiling a guidebook