Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [24]
Even as he extols the commercial life of Tabriz, Marco expresses misgivings about the inhabitants, a “mixed lot” who were “good for very little.” The variety of people—“Armenians and Nestorians, Jacobites and Georgians and Persians”—competed strenuously against one another, and despite its prosperity, the area seethed with religious violence. “The Saracens of the region are wicked and treacherous,” he reports. He deviates from his habit of dismissing Muslims as idolaters, and sets forth his understanding of some disturbing facets of their laws: “Any harm they may do to one who does not accept their law, and any appropriation of his goods, is no sin at all. And if they suffer death or injury at the hands of Christians, they are accounted martyrs.” He asserts, “That is why they are converting the Tartars and many other nations to their law, because they are allowed great license to sin.”
It came as a relief to Marco to learn that Tabriz harbored a monastery housing a mendicant order of monks. Judging from their clothing, he guessed they were Carmelites, and noted the time they spent “weaving woolen girdles” to lay on the altar during Mass and to distribute to “their friends and to noblemen” in the belief that the girdles relieved pain. These phenomena Marco reports as if they were the most natural things in the world.
Although other Venetians were scarce, merchants from Genoa had long been represented in Tabriz, and were much better known. For them, as for merchants across Asia, Tabriz served as an important pearl market, perhaps the largest of all, supplied by abundant harvests from the Persian Gulf. The Polo company found that bargaining for pearls in the Tabriz market was a serious matter governed by firm rules. A buyer and seller squatted facing each other, their hands swathed in fabric. They haggled over the price not by speaking aloud, lest the terms be overheard by others seeking an advantage, but by squeezing each other’s fingers and wrists to describe and dispute the quality of the goods, and to convey the amount of the bid offered, and accepted. This unusual form of negotiation meant that bystanders had no indication of the actual terms of the deal, and the price remained flexible from one transaction to the next.
FROM TABRIZ, Marco entered Savah, in Persia, and then Kerman, known for its Persian rugs. Here Marco’s concerns about Islam relaxed a bit, and he found himself enjoying the climate and coveting the turquoise concealed in nearby mountains. He expresses admiration for the locals’ skill in fashioning “the equipment of a mounted warrior—bridles, saddles, spurs, swords, bows, quivers, and every sort of armor.” Even their artful needlework attracted his eye, as did the spectacle of falconry.
In the brilliant skies overhead, Marco caught his first glimpse of the aristocratic sport that would become a passion for him in his travels throughout Asia. It was one of the few endeavors common to both East and West, and for Marco, as for other gentlemen, it was the embodiment of power and grace. “In the mountains are bred the best falcons in the world, and the swiftest in flight,” he reports. “They are red on the breast and under the tail between the thighs. And you may take my word that they fly at such incalculable speed that there is no bird that can escape from them by flight.” So young Marco scanned the firmament, studying the swift aerial combat that mirrored human predatory behavior.
IN HIS SURVEY of Persia, Marco never pauses to indicate when, or even whether, he visited all the places that he describes, but occasionally he traces these early travels of his with a precision born of experience. His departure from the Persian kingdom of Kerman, in which he tarried, conveys a sense of the endlessly unfolding vistas before him. “When the traveler leaves the city