Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [29]
For six days they rode through these idyllic valleys dotted with peaceful Muslim villages and towns, a passage marking the beginning in earnest of their journey to China.
BALKH, their next stopover, was the most renowned and troubled metropolis in Afghanistan. It was, Marco says, “a noble city and great” and “the largest and most beautiful [city] found in those parts.” Or so it had been.
In its ancient prime, Balkh (or Bactria, as it was then known) had been home to the prophet Zarathustra (or Zoroaster), believed to have been born in about 628 BC, who brought a new religion to Persia. Zoroastrianism incorporated fire worship, a belief in the occult, many deities, and, in its later forms, an eternal flame burning at its Temple of Fire. Zarathustra’s mystique spread far and wide. Tradition holds that the prophet was murdered by nomads at the age of seventy-seven as he worshipped before his fire altar in Balkh. Much later, Arabs swept in and imposed Islam, designating Balkh as the Mother of Cities. And so it remained until the Mongols overran the region, and, in Marco’s words, “ravaged and wickedly damaged it.” Marco was referring to the events of 1220, when Genghis Khan led 100,000 cavalry through Balkh, leveling the city for all time.
His methods were exceptionally brutal. The thirteenth-century Persian historian Juvaini wrote that Genghis Khan “commanded that the population of Balkh, small and great, few and many, both men and women, should be driven out onto the plain and divided up according to the usual custom into hundreds and thousands to be put to the sword.” Returning to Balkh, he ordered that “a number of fugitives hidden in nooks and crannies…be killed. And whenever a wall was left standing, the Mongols pulled it down and…wiped out all traces of culture from the region.”
For the Mongols, these atrocities formed a necessary part of empire building. For their victims, the War of Mongol Aggression, as it might be termed, was a calamity without end. “With one stroke,” Juvaini continued, “the regions thereof became a desert and the greater part of the living [became] dead and their skin and bones [became] crumbling dust; and the mighty were humbled.” A devastated fort in the Islamic city of Bamiyan became known as Sharhr-i-Gholghola, “City of Noise.” It was also known as the Silent City, the Screaming City, or even the Cursed City, in memory of the Mongol massacre that exterminated every man, woman, child, and beast. Not even plants survived the Mongol assault. Although it remained a gateway to the Silk Road and the riches of China, Balkh never recovered from the slaughter.
In Balkh, Marco felt the endless pain of conquest. His powers of empathy growing, he could practically hear the screams of the victims as the Mongol invaders destroyed this once-prosperous enclave, and he recoiled at the spectacle of a civilization reduced to ashes by cruel invaders. He preferred boyish reveries of a prior invader, Alexander the Great, and marveled that he was following in the footsteps of Alexander’s army. It was said, and Marco believed, that blue-eyed inhabitants of the area were descended from Alexander’s soldiers (though the soldiers did not necessarily have blue eyes), and that local sheep and horses had as their ancestors the army’s animals. Alexander’s horse, Bucephalus, had reputedly sired local horses whose descendants still roamed the hills.
Marco took heart from Alexander’s superhuman example: if the young general could survive these treacherous parts, so could he. The Polos, of course, were merchants and traders, not conquerors, but they faced many of the same obstacles in their quest to lay claim to great wealth. Passing through these violent historical currents as if in a slipstream, the Polos were a commercial army in search of great