Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [62]
KUBLAI KHAN seemed to be a law unto himself, feared and omnipotent, capable of dazzling everyone in his realm, but he depended on soothsayers for important decisions. Marco reports: “When the Great Khan was staying in this palace, and there was rain or fog or bad weather, he had wise astrologers with him and wise charmers who go up on the roof of the palace where the Great Khan dwells when any storm cloud or rain or mist rose in the air, and by their knowledge and incantation dispose of all the clouds and rain and all the bad weather, while everywhere else the bad weather went on.”
On second glance, Marco noticed there were actually two types of astrologers in the court, those from “Tebet” and others from “Chescemir” (presumably in present-day Pakistan), who were practitioners of black magic, and, it appeared, cunning manipulators of Kublai Khan. “They know devilish arts and enchantments more than all other men and control the devils,” Marco says, “so that I do not believe there are greater charmers in the world…. They do it all by devil’s art and make the others believe that they do it by their goodness and great holiness and by God’s work.” As if to announce their base character, “they go filthy and unclean, not caring for their own honor, nor for the persons who see them; they keep mud on their faces, nor ever wash nor comb themselves, but always go dirtily.”
The astrologers from Chescimir—“this most evil race of necromancers and charmers”—were, in short, repugnant.
To demonstrate their malevolence, Marco relates a story certain to horrify his listeners: “When they know that a man is condemned to death for ill that he has done and is killed by the government of the land, that condemned man is given to them and they take him and eat him; but if he were to die of his own natural death, they [would] never eat him for anything in the world.”
Photo Insert 1
Marco Polo: a traditional portrait
(Corbis)
The entrance to the Venetian Arsenale, by Canaletto (1732). Here the Republic mass-produced warships.
(Art Resource)
Marco Polo commanded a Venetian galley similar to this in the Battle of Curzola.
(Granger)
Pope Gregory X gives a diplomatic letter to Niccolò and Maffeo Polo.
(AKG)
The departure of Marco Polo from Venice in 1271 depicted in a fifteenth-century illuminated manuscript.
(Imageworks)
The Psalter map of the world from Marco Polo’s era
(Bridgeman)
A detail from the influential Catalan Atlas (1375) depicts the Polo company on their travels.
(Corbis)
In our own time as well as in Marco Polo’s, travel on the Silk Road entailed months of hardship and grueling conditions.
(Yamashita)
The Pamir, also known as the “Roof of the World.” Marco said the air was so thin that no birds flew.
(Corbis)
Marco Polo arrives in Hormuz, near the beginning of his journey.
(Art Resource)
The rugged Taklimakan Desert, which contained the most challenging routes of the Silk Road. The name is said to mean “Those who enter do not return.”
(Corbis)
A Buddhist retreat along a remote stretch of the Silk Road in the Gobi Desert. After repeated exposure to Buddhism, Marco gradually came to appreciate its philosophy.
(National Geographic Society)
On bended knee, Niccolò and Maffeo Polo offer a papal letter to Kublai Khan.
(Imageworks)
Kublai Khan bestows the paiza, a passport permitting travel throughout the Mongol empire, on the Polos.
(AKG)
To demonstrate the full extent of their devilish powers, Marco spins a yarn that has transfixed listeners over the centuries: “When the Great Khan sits at dinner or at supper in his chief hall, at his great table, which is more than eight cubits high, and the golden drinking cups are on a table in the middle of the pavement on the