Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [32]
Ahead lay a trek of three thousand miles across the Steppe and arid desert of Mongolia. The travelers covered the distance in fifteen months to reach the Mongol capital of Karakorum as a new khan, Güyük, was about to receive his title. Güyük welcomed the two missionaries from the West, heard their summons to Christianity, and replied that he would oblige only if the pope and all the secular leaders of Europe came to Karakorum to swear allegiance to him. Or, in the words of the new khan, “You must come yourself at the head of all your kings and prove to us your fealty and allegiance. And if you disregard the command of God and disobey Our instructions, we shall look upon you as Our enemy. Who ever recognizes and submits to the Son of God…will be wiped out.” It was a dispiriting conclusion to their arduous journey.
In November 1246, the two monks made their way back through wind-whipped snowstorms bearing disappointing news for Pope Innocent IV. Although the mission failed to achieve its stated purpose, it had been a remarkable journey of exploration. Carpini is believed to have been the first Westerner since AD 900 to travel east of Baghdad and return safely from the great no-man’s-land that was Asia.
CARPINI compiled the first comprehensive description of Mongol life for Western audiences, a work called Historia Mongalorum (History of the Mongols), or occasionally Liber Tartarorum (Book of the Tartars). No match for the drama animating Marco’s account, Carpini’s has the benefit of clarity and simplicity. The first eight chapters cover the country, climate, manners, religion, character, history, policies, and military tactics of the Mongols; the ninth is devoted to the other regions Carpini visited along the way. The account helped to explain and humanize the Mongols for Western readers by characterizing them as a remarkable and resourceful people.
Carpini vividly evoked the strange but noble appearance of the people who seemed destined to rule Asia and possibly Europe: “In appearance, the Tartars are quite different from all other men, for they are broader than other people between the eyes and across the cheekbones. Their cheeks also are rather prominent above their jaws; they have a flat and small nose, their eyes are little, and their eyelids raised up to the eyebrows. For the most part, but with a few exceptions, they are slender about the waist; almost all are of medium height. Hardly any of them grow beards, although some have a little hair on the upper lip and chin and this they do not trim.”
He was also alert to the most distinctive feature of Mongol grooming, the tonsure: “On the top of the head they have a tonsure like clerics, and as a general rule all shave from one ear to the other to the breadth of three fingers, and this shaving joins on to the tonsure. Above the forehead also they all likewise shave to two fingers’ breadth, but the hair between this shaving and the tonsure they allow to grow until it reaches their eyebrows, and, cutting more from each side of the forehead than in the middle, they make the hair…long; the rest of the hair they grow like women, and they make it into two braids which they bind, one behind each ear.”
He provided a close-up of Mongol dress: “The married women have a very full tunic, open to the ground in front. On their head, they have a round thing made of twigs or bark…and on the top there is a long and slender cane of gold or silver or wood, or even a feather, and it is sewn into a cap which reaches to the shoulders. The cap as well as the object is covered with buckram, velvet, or brocade, and without this headgear they never go into the presence of men and by it they are distinguished from other women.”
Despite his observation