CHAPTER EIGHT
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
THE SEAT OF Kublai Khan’s power was “the great city called Cambulac,” where he wintered over. This was a recent development in his empire. Ever since 1220, the Mongols, led by Genghis Khan, had considered Karakorum, on the Mongolian Steppe, to be their capital. Kublai Khan later decided to move the center of authority to the south, as if to superimpose Mongol might on Chinese civilization.
Kublai Khan chose a Muslim architect to oversee the construction of Cambulac, even though it was designed to demonstrate to the Chinese that Kublai’s dynasty drew inspiration from them and identified with them. Work commenced in 1267. When it was completed several years later, the city featured eleven gates guarded by imposing three-story towers that served as observation platforms.
In the multilingual Mongol Empire, the new capital was known by several names. The Chinese called it Ta-tu, “Great Capital.” The Turks knew it as Khanbalikh—which Marco spelled “Cambulac”—“City of the Khan.” And the Mongols, adapting the Chinese name, called it Daidu. Today the city is known as Beijing.
BY THE TIME OF Marco’s visit, the new city’s eastern section was devoted to the study of astronomy, which held a special fascination for Kublai Khan, with his capacious vision of the world. Kublai, inspired by a Persian center at Maragheh, Azerbaijan, renowned for its discoveries of celestial objects and for the sophisticated stargazing instruments devised there, had long wanted his own observatory.
To realize his vision, Kublai sent for a Persian astronomer, Jamal al-Din, who brought with him a trove of plans for state-of-the-art devices: the sundial, the astrolabe, celestial and terrestrial globes, and an armillary sphere—a skeletal celestial sphere with a model of Earth or the Sun in the center, often used for instruction. All of these mechanisms were more advanced than their European counterparts.
Modern astronomy in the West owes much to its Chinese and Arab precursors. In the traditional Chinese model, which the West eventually came to adopt, the equator is conceived as a circle around the globe, and the north pole as the uppermost point—a model that seems natural and obvious these days. European astronomers of Marco’s time employed a different configuration, one based on the horizon and the Sun’s motion through the heavens (the “ecliptic”). They gave the equator short shrift until Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer active in the late sixteenth century, adopted the Chinese approach, which had been in use at least since 2400 BC.
In the Chinese system, the heavens radiated from a central stem in twenty-eight distinct segments known as xiu, or lunar mansions. Each xiu had its complement of stars and constellations. For the Chinese, the heavens were orderly rather than random. As early as the seventh century—nearly a thousand years before their European counterparts—they observed that comet tails always point away from the sun; thus they anticipated the discovery of the solar wind. And they discovered craters on the moon long before Europeans, who, until the Copernican revolution, considered the moon, along with all other heavenly bodies, to be a perfect sphere.
In 1271, the year before Marco’s arrival, Kublai Khan, recognizing the achievements of Persian astronomers, established the Institute of Muslim Astronomy. With the cross-cultural fertilization that would become typical of the Yüan dynasty, he enlisted the efforts of an esteemed Chinese engineer and astronomer, Guo Shoujing, who in turn employed Persian diagrams to build instruments and develop formulas to calculate a new Mongol calendar, similar to the Chinese lunar calendar. In the Mongol calendar, based on a twelve-year cycle, each year is named for a particular animal meant to characterize it: mouse, cow, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, cock, dog, or pig. In this scheme, the year of the monkey exhibits simian traits; it is rambunctious and high-strung, a difficult year indeed.
The subtleties of Mongol and Chinese astronomy were lost on Marco, concerned as he was with earthly matters. Like other Europeans, the young man considered astronomy and astrology synonymous, and the refinements of Kublai Khan’s astronomers failed to engage his curiosity. He was far more intrigued by the ubiquitous wizards and soothsayers. In Cambulac alone, he estimated, no fewer than five thousand “astrologers and diviners” plied their trade, according to their religious beliefs and cultural background—Muslim, Christian, or Chinese.
MARCO FAMILIARIZED himself with the various lunar calendars in use throughout the Mongol Empire. He reported that every year Christian, Muslim, and Chinese astrologers searched the heavens to watch “the course and arrangement of the whole year in this astrology according to the course of each moon. For they see and find what sort of weather each moon of that year will produce according to the natural course and arrangement of the planets and signs and their properties. Namely, in such a moon there will be thunders and tempests; in such, an earthquake; in such, thunderbolts, lightning, and many rains; in such, sicknesses and plagues and wars and infinite quarrels, and so on with each moon.”
The astrologers gathered their celestial predictions into “little pamphlets into which they write everything that shall happen in each month that year”—the Asian version of Poor Richard’s Almanack, the compendium of weather forecasts and other practical information assembled and published by Benjamin Franklin during the eighteenth century.
According to Marco, anyone planning “some great work”—a trip, a business venture—“will go to find one of these astrologers and say to him, ‘See in your books how the sky stands just now, because I wish to go do such business or trade,’ telling him the year, month, day, hour, and minute of his birth; because everyone as soon as he is born is taught about his nativity.” After finding the planet under which his supplicant was born, the astrologer proceeds to “foretell him everything that will happen to him on that journey in order, and how his proposal will prosper in his doings, whether well or ill.” A merchant such as Marco Polo might be cautioned to postpone his travels until a planet opposing trade moved out of range, or, to avoid its harmful influence, might be advised to leave the city by a gate facing away from the invisible planetary threat.
Marco’s descriptions of “pamphlets” and “books”—although not found in all early manuscripts—confound skeptics of his presence in China who claim he never mentioned them. He was, in fact, aware of printing, but he overlooked the significance of this potent technology. His lapse is understandable because the invention of movable type lay almost two centuries in the future for Europe, and he could not have foreseen its role in disseminating the Bible and other important works. As a merchant, he immediately grasped the significance of paper currency, but books devoted to astrology remained a mere curiosity. For Marco, location was paramount, and no place on earth fascinated him more than Cambulac, the sudden center of Mongol civilization.
“THE PALACE IS square in every way,” says Marco. “First, there is a square circuit of wall, and each face is eight miles long, round which there is a deep moat; and in the middle of each side is a gate by which all the people enter who gather here from every side. Then there is a space of a mile all around; there the soldiers are stationed. After that space is found another circuit of wall, of six miles for a side.” The scale of this city, and its walls, was enough to make Marco’s European audience gasp with astonishment. Instead of the quaint capital they may have imagined, a giant fortress rose as testimony to the strength of the Mongol Empire.
With this centralized capital, Kublai Khan attempted to alter the Mongol tradition, and the course of Mongol history, from nomadic to pastoral. The marvel of Cambulac and Kublai Khan’s great experiment was that it worked. Marco witnessed this metropolis at its zenith, and he recorded a vivid description of Kublai’s palace of the Mongols, a forerunner of the Chinese royal residence that came to be known as the Forbidden City, later built on the same site and incorporating some of the buildings and outdoor spaces that Marco had scrupulously chronicled. “At each angle of this wall, and in the middle of each of the faces, is a beautiful and spacious palace,” Marco continues, “so that all around about the wall are eight palaces, in which are kept the munitions of the Great Khan, that is, one kind of trappings in each; as bridles, saddles, stirrups, and other things which belong to the equipment of horses. And in another bows, strings, quivers, arrows, and other things belonging to archery. In another cuirasses”—armor, especially breastplates—“corselets, and similar things of boiled leather.”
A wall surrounded the entire complex, with “a great gate which is never opened except when the Great Khan comes out of it to make war.” Kublai’s palace, concealed within these walls, “is the greatest and most wonderful ever seen,” a dwelling of unsurpassed luxury, shimmering and dreamlike in Marco’s soaring description. “The walls of the halls and of the rooms are all covered with gold and with silver, and there are portrayed dragons and beasts and birds and fair stories of ladies and knights and other beautiful things and stories of wars, which are on the walls; and the roof is also made so that nothing else is seen there but gold and silver and paintings. The hall is so great and broad that it is a great marvel, and more than six thousand men would well feed there at once, sitting at table together. In that palace there are four hundred rooms, so many that it is a marvel to see them. It is so beautiful and large and rich and so well made and arranged that there is not a man in the world who would know how to plan it better nor make it.” Although Marco seems to overstate yet again, he is accurately describing the size of the Mongol palace.
When he raised his eyes to the sky, he saw more wonders, which presaged the grandeur of the Forbidden City. “The roofs above are all red and green and azure and peacock blue and yellow and of all colors, and are glazed so well and so cleverly that they are bright like crystal, so that they shine very far round the palace. And you may know that the roof is so strong and so firmly put together that it lasts many years.” He displays a thorough knowledge of the interior as well, writing, “In the part behind the palace there are large houses, rooms, and halls, in which are the private things of the lord, that is, all his treasure, gold, silver, precious stones, and pearls, and his vessels of gold and of silver; where his ladies and concubines stay, and where he has his affairs done conveniently and when he pleases; into which other people do not enter.”
The grounds of this precursor to the Forbidden City offered a spectacular complement to the buildings. Where Venice consisted of treacherous canals and narrow, refuse-filled streets, the Mongol capital offered broad, clean, safe avenues; a sophisticated drainage system to channel rainwater for irrigation; and lakes and rivers generously stocked with fish—all combined with pleasing prospects at every turn. No wonder that Marco raves about “very beautiful large lawns and gardens and beautiful and good trees of different sorts of fruits in which are many kinds of strange beasts.” To these creatures he gives special attention: “These are white stags, the animals that make the musk, roe-deer, fallow deer, and squirrels, and ermines, and many kinds of other strange beautiful animals in great abundance.”
The landscape within the city walls also receives his praise: “The meadows have grass in abundance, because all the streets are paved and raised two cubits above the ground, so that no mud ever collects on them nor is the rain water caught there, but running through the meadows it fattens the land and makes the grass grow abundantly. At one corner…is a very large lake (of the earth from which was made the hill mentioned below), in which are many kinds of fish…and every time the great lord [Kublai Khan] wishes some of those fish he has them at his will.”
There seemed no end to Cambulac’s marvels. “Moreover,” he writes, “I tell you that a great river flows in there and makes a kind of fish pond; and there the animals go to drink; and flows out of the lake afterwards, passing through a conduit near the said hill…. It is so planned that no fish can escape, and this is done and is closed with nets of iron wire and of brass both at the entry of the river into the lake and also at the exit…. There are also swans and other waterfowl.”
The sights were marvelous, and Marco insisted that his audience believe his account down to the smallest detail.
THE SCIENCE OF urban planning, Marco hastens to inform his readers, was far advanced in China. He points out how the city of Cambulac consisted of broad main streets “drawn out straight as a thread,” running from one gate to the next, and bordered by “stalls and shops of every kind.” Wherever he looked, he saw beautiful inns, houses, and palaces. Behind it all, a rigorous logic ruled. “The city is laid out by squares, as a chessboard is, and is so beautiful and so skillfully planned that in no way would it be possible to tell of it.” The plan was not merely esthetically pleasing; it was also intended to discourage criminal activity. Gates could be swung shut to isolate a street or square, and hiding places were scarce.
Marco thrilled to the striking of Cambulac’s great “town clock” three times every evening, “so that none may go about the town after it has sounded.” In fact, no one even dared to leave his house “except for the nurses who go for the needs of women in childbirth and physicians who go for the needs of sick men.” And even these caregivers had to bring lanterns with them on their errands of mercy.
Sentries, a thousand of them at every gate, guarded the entire city against the depredations of robbers and marauders. “Besides this,” Marco reports, “the guards always ride through the city by night, by thirty and by forty, searching and inquiring if anyone is going about the city at an unusual hour, that is, after the third sounding of the bell.” The guards immediately arrested and jailed any suspicious person. “In the morning, the officials deputed for this examine him, and if they find him guilty of any offence, they punish him, according to the degree of it, with more or less blows of the rod, by which they sometimes die.” All the while, within his gigantic palace, the khan and his wives, family retainers, and concubines slept in peace, and Marco felt more secure in this strange city than the average citizen did in Venice.
This utopian city planning stood in contrast to Marco’s Venice, where sinuous streets and canals concealed vice and sedition, and where predators hid under bridges and in the shadows of irregular buildings. It is as though Marco were compiling astonishing bulletins from the future for the benefit of his countrymen, mired in the past. The future, he advised, was China.
IN HIS DESIRE to impress Europeans with the grandeur of the Mongol court, Marco told of feasts whose excess far exceeded their European counterparts. “When the Great Khan keeps his table in his hall for any great court and feast and rejoicing that he may wish to hold, he is seated in this way,” Marco explains in three-dimensional detail. “For first the table of the great lord is set before his throne very high above all the others. He sits in the north part of the hall with the shoulders toward the tramontane”—the land beyond the mountains—“so that his face looks toward midday, and his first wife sits beside him on the left side, and on the right side, but at another table which is lower, sit his sons in lordly fashion, and likewise his grandsons, according to their ages, and his kindred and others who are connected by blood,…so low that I tell you their heads come to the feet of the great lord…. And it goes in the same way with the women, that at the feet of the first queen is the table of the other queens and of the younger children of the Great Khan; for all the wives of the sons of the great lord and of his grandsons and of his kindred sit on the left side, namely, of the empress, also more low; and next sit all the wives of the barons and of the knights, and they also sit lower.” The pleasing arrangement means that the “great lord can see all the feasters, and they are always a very great number.”
An incalculable number of revelers participated. At first Marco hesitates to offer an estimate, then he succumbs to temptation: “The greater part of the knights and barons eat in the hall on carpets, because they have not tables. And outside this hall are other halls at the sides; and in these royal banquets there sometimes feed more than forty thousand, besides those who are of the lord’s court, who always come in numbers to sing and to make various sport. And many more times than ten thousand persons eat at the tables that are outside the great hall.” Though sincere, Marco did not expect his readers to believe his figures, but he relished challenging Western ideas of Mongol life.
In the midst of this enormous festive hall stood a “most beautiful structure, large and rich, made in the manner of a square chest.” Decorated with gilded carvings of animals, it contained a “great and valuable vessel in the shape of a great pitcher of fine gold that holds quite as much wine as a common large butt.” It was surrounded by a number of smaller silver vessels containing “good spiced drinks,” including the inevitable fermented mare’s milk, supplemented with camel’s milk.
The honored guests drank from “lacquered bowls” large enough to accommodate the thirst of eight or ten, using golden ladles. Once again Marco leaps ahead of his readers: lacquer was another technology raised to a high level of refinement in Asia, yet it was unknown in the West. Lacquer is, essentially, a sophisticated varnish made from resin extruded by an Asian sumac, Rhus verniciflua, known in China as the varnish tree. When the resin, similar to that of poison ivy, is layered as a thin film, it hardens into a tough skin, but only in the dark; exposed to sunlight, it remains tacky. Although Marco does not appear familiar with how lacquer was produced, he takes care to explain the vessel for Europeans unfamiliar with it: “The ladles are made like a gold cup with a foot and a golden handle, and with that cup they take wine from that great golden lacquer bowl and are able to drink.” He says that there were so many of these “golden bowls” and “other things of great value” that “all those who see them are dumbfounded.”
These exotic feasting customs could be confusing to the many “foreigners” who were guests at the court, so Kublai Khan obligingly assigned several of his barons the task of acquainting visitors with Mongol ways. “These barons go continually here and there through the hall asking those who sit at table if they want anything, and if any there wish for wine, milk, or meat, or anything else, they have it brought to them immediately by the servants.”
Stranger still, those who served the khan food and drink had “their mouths and their noses wrapped in beautiful veils or napkins of silk and of gold, so that neither their breath nor their smell should come into the food and the drink of the great lord.” Musicians, “of which there [were] a vast quantity,” awaited the moment when the khan brought food to his lips, and then they began to perform. At that point, a boy presented a cup of wine to the khan, then walked backward three paces and knelt, whereupon “all the barons and all the other people who are there kneel down and make a sign of great humility; and then the great lord drinks.” Even after all this ritual, feasting commenced only when the knights and barons in attendance brought food to their first wives.
The entertainment offerings were hypnotic. Dressed in iridescent attire, musicians played bewitching melodies on stringed instruments, lulling everyone present into a state of pleasant stupefaction. Mongolian music, so repetitive and insistent, was haunting and beguiling; it numbed the mind even as it awakened the soul with intensely pleasurable, even sexual sounds. The musicians were followed by highly theatrical, spectacularly costumed troupes of jugglers and acrobats, who in turn gave way to itinerant actors reciting poetry and soothsayers spouting whatever they pleased. “And all make great enjoyment and great festivity before the great lord,” Marco comments, “and make much joy of it and laugh at it and enjoy it much.”
MARCO REMINDED his audience that even in the midst of revelry, the Mongol barons observed a strict code of behavior. For example, two “great men like giants,” each holding a rod in his hands, guarded every door to the feasting hall. The forbidding sight reminded everyone present that “no one is allowed to touch the threshold of the door, but he must stretch his foot beyond. And if by accident he touches it”—a mere accident—“the guards take away all his clothes, and then again he must redeem them; and if they do not take his clothes, they give him as many blows as are appointed him.” At least foreigners received a warning about this rule from the barons, who explained that touching the threshold was considered an ill omen. But the Mongols were realistic as well as superstitious; if any man became too drunk during the feasting to cross the threshold as he left the hall without tripping all over it, he was excused.
“And when it is all done, the people leave and each goes back to his lodging and to his house as he pleases.”
KUBLAI KHAN, Marco explains, was born “on the twenty-eighth day of the moon of the month of September,” according to the Mongol calendar. (This date is reckoned as September 23, 1215, in the modern calendar.) At that time, his grandfather, Genghis Khan, was busy laying siege to the city of Cambulac. Later, Kublai’s birthday became the greatest feast of the entire lunar year. In preparation for the event, the khan dressed “in the most noble cloth of the purest beaten gold.” In his honor, no less than twelve thousand barons emulated him by also dressing in silk and gold, although their clothes were not so valuable as the Great Khan’s. Marco the merchant could not help but put a price on the festive attire. “Some of these robes,” he calculated, “are worth ten thousand bezants of gold”—especially those with the pearls and gems sewn into them.
These cherished costumes went on display thirteen times a year, “for the solemn feast-days that the Tartars keep with great ceremony according to the thirteen moons of the year.” They bore a total of 156,000 gems, by his estimate. “And when the lord wears any robe those barons and knights are likewise dressed in one of the same color; but those of the lord are of more value and more costly ornament.” With frequent use, the raiment lasted ten years, at the very most. Then the costumes were retired.
INUNDATED with descriptions like these, Western readers assumed that Il Milione was engaging in embellishment to flatter Kublai Khan, or simply weaving fantasies to amuse himself. Yet the annals of the Yüan dynasty confirm the accuracy of Marco’s eyewitness account, including the pearls sewn into the royal garments.
“The headdress and costume are made of fine black silk,” begins the official description of Kublai Khan’s exquisitely detailed wardrobe.
The top part of the headdress or ceremonial bonnet is a flat piece covered with the same cloth, and from which ribbons dangle. The outer garment is azure; it is lined with skin-colored cloth. Four ribbons encircle it with dragons and clouds. The opening of the bonnet or headdress is rimmed all around with a band of fine pearls. In front and behind are twelve pendants also made with twelve strung pearls. Left and right are two knots of raw yellow silk, from which hang tassels bearing earrings in jade and precious stones; strands of raw yellow silk, decorated with pearls, circle all the way to the top of the headdress. Dragons and clouds made of pearls sewn on with silk thread cover its surface. One can also see representations, here and there, of female swallows and small willows, and strings of pearls across the top form the picture of a river. The belt, to the right and left, descends to the floor. Flowers made of embroidered pearls are hidden in its knotted folds, as well as swallows and willows made of pearls. From two silk cords hang—or are fastened—all the pins that hold in place the dangling tassels of the headdress or crown; yellow strands of raw silk are employed to represent swallows and willows sprinkled with pearls. Jade pins are placed crosswise on the headdress or crown…. The under-garment is made of red or scarlet silk; it is cut like a skirt; it is decorated with a variety of embroideries, sixteen in number, arranged in rows; on each row there are two kinds of floating water-plants, one rice-stalk, two embroidered axes, and two Chinese characters. The ordinary garment or dress is of sheer white silk, edged with yellow leather thongs stitched with silk. The garment covering the knees (the upper-boot) is of red silk, and around the legs the red silk is elastic. Its shape is like that of a short skirt, at the top of which is embroidered a dragon with two bodies….
The leggings are made of red silk. The shoes are made of silk with various decorations enriched with gold; they have two pairs of flaps, and are edged with stitching and with pearl ornaments. The stockings are made of fine red silk.
Here was the Kublai Khan whom Marco beheld. No wonder the glorious sight dazzled the impressionable young Venetian.
ON KUBLAI KHAN’S BIRTHDAY, Marco notes, all the “kings and princes and barons who are subject to his jurisdiction” held feasts and bestowed gifts in his honor. Some bearers requested large favors of the khan, such as a domain to rule. Displaying his usual foresight, Kublai appointed a committee to assign domains to worthy petitioners. Marco again stresses that Kublai Khan’s appeal transcended religious and cultural boundaries, especially on this day, when “all people of whatever faith they are, all the idolaters and all the Christians or the Jews and all the Saracens and all the other races of the Tartar people”—here Marco appears to paraphrase a Mongol formula—“who are subject to the rule of the Great Khan must make great petitions and great assemblies and great prayers, each to the idols and to their God with great chants, great lights, and great incense, that he may be pleased to save and protect them.”
For all its detail, Marco’s offhand account only hints at the actual complexity of the Great Khan’s birthday rites. Despite his immersion in the Mongol lifestyle, Marco inevitably missed many subtleties, or they eluded his memory when the time came to describe them to Rustichello. The section of the Mongol annals known as the “General Ceremonial for the Receptions at the Mongolian Court” relates the full story of Kublai Khan’s extraordinary birthday festival.
“When the day of the reception arrives,” reads the official account,
the aides of ceremonies introduce those invited, starting at daybreak, and conduct them to their assigned places. The “Chiefs of the Guards,” all dressed in their special costumes, enter the great “room of rest.” First, they take in their hand their ivory tablets (which each brought on his way to court) and make the prescribed genuflections. Then the “Informers of the Exterior” and the “Stewards of the Interior” enter and communicate the program that prescribes the formalities that must be observed during the ceremony. They bow, prostrating themselves, and rise. The emperor comes out of his interior apartments and gets onto his imperial chariot. Then cries are heard, together with the whips of the guardians. Three aides make the spectators align themselves left and right, and take them by hand to their places. The “Chiefs of the Guards” open the procession, preceded by heralds carrying hatchets, and they go outside of the “Room of the Great Light.” The “Hatchet-Bearers” place themselves in front of the entrance and remain standing there, facing north, directing the crowd to prostrate itself; then they place themselves in the open apartments, east and west. This done, they conduct the crowd, in sections, outside the wall, to wait.
In the official account, Kublai Khan and his first wife, referred to as the emperor and empress, in Chinese fashion, ascend to their rest couch. At that moment, “cries of joy and lashes of whips are heard. Three arms heralds, carrying hatchets, open a passage through the crowd and return to place themselves east of the ‘Steps of the Dew’”—the stairs leading to the palace.
There followed hours of carefully choreographed praying and bowing, led by the designated functionaries. For sheer size and complexity, nothing like this display existed in any European court of Marco’s day, and he was properly awed. The ritual relied heavily on Chinese models, and sentiment among the Mongols accused Kublai Khan of exchanging basic Mongol ways, especially nomadism, for rarefied and very un-Mongol behavior. That was an exaggeration. Although he mastered the outward forms of Chinese court ceremonies with the help of Chinese advisers, who were imbued with tradition, he remained a Mongol at heart, and on the battlefield.
MARCO PERCEIVED the Mongol hierarchy as one based on performance in war rather than behavior within the confines of the court. Kublai Khan, he relates, “has chosen twelve very great and powerful wise men and barons to watch over whatever questions may arise about the armies, that is, to change them from the place where they are and to change the officers, or to send them where they see it is necessary” as well as “to make the distinction of the valiant and manly fighters from those who are mean and abject, promoting them to greater rank, and on the other hand demoting those who are of little use and cowardly.” Accordingly, if a captain of a thousand men behaved badly in action, he was demoted to captain of a hundred, and if he behaved with great valor, he could be promoted to captain of ten thousand.
The twelve barons who made up the Great Court served directly under Kublai Khan. They formed a closely knit band, living together in Cambulac in a palace described by Marco as “large and beautiful and rich.” Each of these barons had “for each province under his rule a judge and many writers or notaries under him, who all stay in this palace each in his house by himself.”
MARCO ESTEEMED the same sense of logic and orderliness in the celebrated Mongol post system, a necessity for administering the diverse empire. “The manner of the messengers of the Great Khan is wonderful,” he exults. Displaying even greater attention to detail than usual, he describes the intricate Mongol operation: “I assure you the messengers ride 200 miles in a day, sometimes even 250. Let me explain how it is done. When a messenger wishes to travel at this speed and cover so many miles a day, he carries a tablet with the sign of the falcon as a token that he wishes to ride posthaste. If there are two riders…, they tighten their belts and swathe their heads, and off they go with all the speed they can muster till they reach the next post-house twenty-five miles away.” On arrival, he says, they change horses, and “without a moment’s breathing space,…off they go again.” It was thunder and lightning on the hoof.
Each road leaving Cambulac was named for the province to which it led. At a distance of twenty-five miles, the messengers reached a “post with horses” as well as a “very great palace…where the messengers and envoys of the great lord may lodge with dignity, and these lodgings have very rich beds furnished with rich silk cloths and have all the things that are right for exalted messengers.” Even a king visiting one of these remote palaces would feel comfortable, Marco claims.
The principal function of the post was to stable fresh horses; each had no less than four hundred mounts at the ready, “that they may be able to dismount there, leaving the tired horses, and take fresh ones.”
To Marco’s eye, the complex system, with its many interdependent parts, worked flawlessly, transmitting vital information across great distances, as well as disparate cultures and languages. “In this way it goes through all the principal provinces and realms, cities and places of the great lord up to the borders of the neighboring provinces.” Even off the main road, Kublai Khan had established smaller posts, thirty-five or even forty miles apart in remote areas. Marco claims that ten thousand of these posts, built at the khan’s expense, dotted the landscape, each of them luxuriously furnished and capable of stabling twenty or so horses. These way stations provided safety and shelter for the footmen engaged in the essential task of directing messages to the proper recipients. The occupation called for a distinctive costume. “They wear a great and broad girdle all full round about of great balls, that is, of sounding bells, so that when they go, they may be heard from quite far.”
Marco made a close study of these wonderful little outposts. He reports: “When the king wishes to send a letter by courier, the letter is given to one of the runners, and these go always running at great speed, and they go not more than three miles…. The other who is at the end of the three miles who hears him clearly by the bells coming from afar, stays all ready; and as soon as that one is come he takes the thing that he carries and takes a little ticket that the writer gives him and sets himself running and goes as far as the second three miles, and does just as the other had done. And so I tell you that in this way from these footmen the great lord has news from ten days’ journeys in one day and in one night, for they go running by night as well as by day.”
To cover longer distances, footmen yielded to horses trained for the task. “Messengers on horseback go expressly to tell the great lord news from any land which may be in rebellion against him.” Each of these messengers carried special identification in the form of a tablet bearing the image of a falcon, as a sign that he wished to go “at express speed.” The messengers “never have any but good animals and fresh for their needs. They take horses from the post, where they are ready for them, and if they are two, they set out from the place where they are on two good horses strong and swift; they bind up their belly and wrap up their heads, and set themselves to ride at full gallop to the utmost of their power, and gallop until they come to the next post at twenty-five miles, and then they find two other horses ready, fresh, and rested and swift.”
Marco praised the system as a model of efficiency. “They mount so quickly that they do not rest themselves, and when they are mounted they set themselves immediately at full gallop, and do not cease to gallop till they are come to the next post; and there they find the other horses and men ready to change for the others, and they mount themselves as quickly and set themselves on the road. And so they do till the evening. And in this way,” Marco concludes with vicarious pride and satisfaction, “messengers like these go two hundred and fifty miles in one day to carry news to the great lord speedily from distant parts, and also when there is need they go three hundred. And if it is a very grave case they ride at night; and if the moon does not shine, the men of the post go running before them with torches to the next post.”
THERE WAS STILL more that Marco wished his readers to appreciate about Kublai Khan’s splendid realm. Rows of towering trees marked the straight roads traveled by Kublai’s messengers. Marco himself studied the sight as he followed in their tracks at a more leisurely pace. “The [trees] are so large that they can well be seen from very far,” he reports. “The Great Khan has this done so that each may see the roads, and that merchants may rest in the shade, and that they may not lose their way either by day or by night when they go through desert places.” And there was one other surprising benefit, according to Marco. “The Great Khan has [the trees] planted all the more gladly because his diviners and astrologers say that he who has trees planted lives a long time.”
In the midst of surveying the Mongols’ practical accomplishments, Marco pauses to praise the local rice wine, boiled and mixed with potent spices. He says it has “such a flavor that it is better than any other wine. It is clear and beautiful. It makes a man become drunken sooner than other wine because it is very hot.” It is easy to imagine the young Venetian in an alcoholic daze gleefully admiring Kublai Khan’s messengers, his trees, and all the other wonders of his realm—the perpetually burning stones, for instance.
Wherever he traveled in China, Marco came across “large black stones that are dug from the mountains as veins, which burn like logs.” Everywhere, people put them to use. “They keep up the fire better than wood does,” he notes. “If you put them on the fire in the evening and make them catch well, I tell you they keep fire all the night so that one finds some in the morning.” These black stones gave off long-lasting, intense heat. They were so useful that Kublai Khan’s subjects rarely resorted to burning wood, which was in short supply. “So great is the multitude of people, and stoves, and baths, which are continually heated, that the wood could not be enough” in a country where everyone bathed “at least three times a week, and in the winter every day if they can do so,” in stark contrast to Mongols and Venetians.
The plentiful black stones making possible all this cooking, heating, and bathing were lumps of coal, a source of energy that had been used throughout China for at least a thousand years. Yet in Marco’s day, the notion of burning coal rather than wood for heat was practically unheard of in Europe. The existence of this black, dusty, carbon-rich substance had been noted at infrequent intervals throughout Western history, beginning with the Roman occupation of Britain and continuing to Marco’s time, but not until the eighteenth century did coal become a common source of energy in European countries.
WITH TOUCHES LIKE THESE, Marco revealed Kublai Khan’s splendid realm not as a static, remote fantasyland populated by savages, but as a vital state constantly on the alert for danger—an empire that never slept, where swift messengers moved by night if necessary, their way marked by reassuring rows of trees and lit by flickering torchlight. What could Venice do to equal such vigilance? So ran Marco’s unspoken question. Could Venetians muster the same ingenuity, even if their lives depended on it?
The network of posts and messengers and fast horses reaching far and wide throughout the Mongol realm struck Marco as a grand achievement. “The greatest pride and greatest grandeur that any emperor has or might ever have,” he exclaims. “A thing so wonderful and of so great cost that it could hardly be told or written.” So wonderful, in fact, that it inspired Marco to deliver a stinging attack on Christianity.
WITH BLASPHEMOUS GUSTO, Marco explains to his readers that the key to maintaining this network of posts—and, by extension, the Mongol Empire—was the wonderful custom of polygamy. “If anyone were to doubt how there are so many people to do so many duties,” he writes, “it is answered that all the idolaters and Saracens take six, eight, and ten wives each, provided that they can pay the expense, and beget infinite”—infinite!—“sons; and there will be many men of whom each will have more than thirty sons, and all follow him armed; and this is because of the many wives.”
Nor did they starve, even with so many mouths to feed. Marco reports that they freely indulged their appetite for “plenty of victuals”—usually abundant grain combined with “milk or flesh.” They also devoured “macaroni,” a food that, contrary to Polo mythology, was already known in Italy. Their endless need for sustenance kept them busy. “With them, no land that can be ploughed lies fallow; and their animals increase and multiply without end, and when they go to the field, there is not one who does not take with him six, eight, and more horses for himself.”
Christians could only envy the satisfying and fertile ways of these heathens. “With us,” Marco laments, “one has but one wife, and if she is barren, the man will end his life with her and beget no son; therefore we have not so many people as they.” It was now apparent where Marco’s sympathies lay. He had become the most enthusiastic of converts.
Yet he saw the Mongols from a European perspective. Outwardly conventional, Marco subscribed to the medieval assumption that one’s identity in life was determined by religion, place of birth, gender, social station, and birth order. In much the same way, he regarded the Mongol Empire as a fixed hierarchy with Kublai Khan at the top, and the khan’s barons arrayed beneath him in predictable descending ranks. Marco and his collaborator stuck to their familiar categories even when experience strongly suggested otherwise. As nomads, the Mongols were less hierarchical than Marco suggested; their authority derived from their adaptability and their ability to take on the characteristics of the host culture in which they embedded themselves. Even though Marco was observant enough to describe their doing so, he remained at least partially oblivious to some aspects of their way of life. They were not simply the Asian equivalent of European nobility, but a drastically different type of society, living off the land, perpetually on the hoof, disconcertingly egalitarian and heterogeneous.
ON THE STEPPE, where the climate was harsh, and sustenance limited, Kublai Khan’s ministers managed the food supply with a sensitivity unknown in Europe. When grain was abundant, they bought large quantities, which they stored for as many as four years. “When it happens that some grain fails and that the dearth is great,” Marco reports, “then the great lord makes them take out some of his grain of which he has so much.” Kublai sold grain to the needy at low prices for as long as the shortage lasted. And if famine threatened the populace, Marco says, Kublai Khan “does great charity and provision and alms to the poor people of Cambulac.” Marco was referring to those families of six, eight, ten, or more crammed into one small dwelling, all with nothing to eat. In these dire cases, Kublai provided sufficient grain to feed them all for an entire year, if necessary.
Like other aspects of their government, the Mongols’ welfare state was remarkably well organized. The afflicted families reported to officials appointed for this purpose. “Each shows a note of how much was given them in the past year for living, and according to that they [the officials] provide them [for] that year,” Marco explains. “They provide them also with their clothes, because the Great Khan has the tenth of all the wool and silk and hemp of which clothes can be made.” Drawing on a practice whereby all craftsmen were bound to give the khan the fruits of one day’s labor every week, he was able to distribute clothing to the needy in winter and summer.
Marco recognized that among Europeans the Mongols carried a reputation for avoiding charity in any form. “The Tartars,” he admits, “according to their customs, before they knew idol law, did no alms. When some poor man went to them they drove him away with abuse, saying to him, ‘Go with the bad year that God gave thee, for if he had loved thee as he loves me, he would have done some good.’” According to Western beliefs, the Mongols let their hungry, sick, and elderly die—at least until Kublai Khan made public assistance part of his ruling style.
Wherever Marco looked, he found striking instances of Kublai Khan’s innovative charity: “Those who wish to go to the court for the lord’s bread daily can have a hot loaf; it is refused to none, but some is given to all who go, and it is sold to none.” He estimates that twenty or thirty thousand people received their bread, as well as bowls of grain, every single day of the year. Based on this description, one can picture the Mongol indigent lining up at the distribution stations, their faces drawn with hunger, expectation, and anxiety, knowing that the loaf provided by Kublai Khan was all that stood between them and extinction. One can imagine the reverence these people felt for the beneficent ruler on whom their lives depended.
Kublai Khan reaped great loyalty for his good works. Marco asserts: “All the people are so fond of him that they worship him as God.”
DURING MARCO’S TIME in the Mongol Empire, Kublai Khan extended his charity throughout his realm. Each year, he dispatched inspectors to check the grain supply. If an inspector should discover that rain, wind, caterpillars, locusts, or some other calamity has ravaged the crop, “he does not take the tax from them…for that season or that year, but he gives them his own corn from his granaries—as much as they need, that they may have it to sow and eat that year.” In the winter, Kublai Khan “has inquiry made, and if he finds in some province a man whose animals are dead…, he has some of his own animals, which he has from the tithe of other provinces, given to him and sold to him cheaply and has him helped, and has no tax taken from him that year.”
Nor did Kublai Khan’s beneficence end with this gesture. On the largely treeless Steppe inhabited by Mongols and Chinese alike, lightning posed a constant hazard against which there was little defense. “If by accident lightning strikes some flock of ewes or sheep or other animals of whatever kind,” Marco says, “be the flock as large as you like, the Great Khan would not exact tithe for three years. And equally if it happens that lightning strikes some ship full of merchandise, he does not wish any share of rent of it, because he thinks it a bad omen when lightning strikes anyone’s goods.” The reason for this leniency had more to do with superstition and fear of the unknown than with charity. “The Great Khan says, ‘God hated him, therefore he has struck him with lightning,’ and so he does not wish such goods struck by the divine to enter the treasury.”
Fully in Kublai Khan’s thrall, Marco emphasizes selfless motives on the part of the leader of the Mongols: “All his thought and chief anxiety is to help the people who are under him, that they may be able to live, work, and multiply their goods.” At the same time, the Venetian never loses sight of the strict social order and rituals underlying Mongol family structure, agriculture, and military life.
NOWHERE WAS THE Mongol love of orderliness and opulence more evident than in their calendar. The Mongol New Year, which began in February, “by the Tartar computation,” was called simply “White.” In honor of the occasion, “Kublai Khan and his subjects dress themselves in white robes, both men and women.” They did so, Marco explains, “because white dress seems to them lucky and good, and therefore they wear it at the beginning of their year so that they may take their good and have joy all year.”
In their festive attire, Mongol barons bestowed still more presents upon the khan, “of gold and of silver and of pearls and of precious stones and of many rich white cloths,” in addition to a hundred thousand (five to twelve thousand in some manuscript versions) camels and horses, all of them white. “And if they are not altogether white, they are at least white for the greater part.”
Everyone embraced and kissed, exclaiming, “Good luck to you this year and may everything that you do turn out well.” Kublai Khan then displayed his elephants, which were “quite five thousand, all covered with beautiful clothes worked richly in gold and in silk with many other beasts and with birds and lions embroidered.” Each animal bore a coffer filled with items required for feasting, gold and silver utensils, and other trappings. His camels came next, draped in “very beautiful cloth of white silk.” The glittering spectacle moved Marco to exclaim, “It is the most wonderful and beautiful sight that was ever seen in this world.”
On the day of the White festival, all the prominent people of the realm appeared—kings, princes, dukes, marquesses, counts, barons, astrologers, philosophers, physicians, and falconers, along with other officials—to fill the “great hall before the great lord.” Kublai Khan sat on a throne situated so that he could see them all. The overflow crowds arrayed themselves around the walls and prepared to worship there. Marco relates: “When they are all seated each in his proper place a great wise ancient man, as one might say a prelate, stands up in the middle and says in a very loud voice, ‘Now all bow down and worship at once your lord.’ And as soon as he has so said they all rise up and bow themselves immediately and bend the knee and put their foreheads on the ground and make their prayer towards the lord and worship him just as if he were their God. Then the prelate says, ‘God save and keep our lord long with joy and gladness.’…And in such a way they worship him four times. And then, this done, they stand up and go all in their order to an altar which is there very well adorned, and on that altar is a red table on which is written with letters of gold and of precious stones of great value the proper name of the Great Khan.”
Marco specifies that Kublai Khan presided over twelve thousand barons upon whom he bequeathed thirteen robes apiece, each robe of a different color and decorated with precious stones, as well as a belt “of crimson cunningly worked with threads of gold and of silver, very rich and very beautiful and of great value,” and boots of similar luxury.
These statistics were simply too large for Europeans to credit, but Mongol and Chinese annals confirm their accuracy. The barons wore a different robe to each of thirteen great feasts throughout the lunar year. In all, Marco estimates that the Mongol court possessed “156,000 robes so dear and of great value.”
They served as a backdrop for the singular spectacle of Kublai Khan presiding over his court. At feasts, “a great lion is brought before the great lord. As soon as he sees him, the lion throws himself down lying before him and makes signs of great humility, and seems to know him for lord. He is so tame that he stays thus before him, with no chain, lying quietly at the king’s feet like a dog”—a sight that, Marco concedes, “makes one wonder.”
THE PRONE LION before the khan reminded Marco of Kublai’s immense appetite for hunting game in Cambulac during the clear, cold, dry winter months. According to custom, Marco notes, any game caught during this period, “wild-boar and stags and bucks and roe-deer and bears, lions, and other sorts of large wild beasts [must] be brought to him.” These came in the form of entrails displayed on carts, as if to whet Kublai’s appetite for the hunt, for he preferred to conduct his own hunting, employing leopards and lynxes “all trained to beast catching and…very good at the chase.” Marco explains that the Great Khan relied on a “little dog for companion” during these exercises. For safety’s sake, the lions were caged “because they would be too ferocious and ravening in the case of the beasts, nor could they be held. And it is necessary that they should be carried against the wind, because if the animals should perceive the scent, they would flee at once.”
TWO BROTHERS, Bayan and Mingan, served as the khan’s royal dog handlers (“called cuiucci in the Tartar tongue, which means ‘master of the hunt’”), who maintained mastiffs, retrievers, and greyhounds. Each brother commanded an army of ten thousand men devoted solely to the khan’s dogs, the handlers serving one brother dressed in red, and those serving the other in sky blue. “They are very great multitudes,” Marco states. “One of these brothers, with his ten thousand men of one color, and with five thousand dogs (for there are a few who have not dogs), goes on one side of him to the right hand, and the other brother with his own ten thousand of the other color and with their dogs goes on the other side, to the left of him.”
The brothers had to perform to high standards, because, as Marco explains, they were “bound by contract to give to the court of the Great Khan every day beginning from the month of October until the…month of March a thousand head between beasts and birds, excepting quails.” The requirement kept them busy nearly around the clock, and when March arrived, they fell into a profound stupor to recuperate.
KUBLAI KHAN himself hunted on an equally grand scale, accompanied by “ten thousand falconers” and “five hundred gerfalcons, and peregrine falcons and saker falcons and other kinds of birds in very great abundance,” in addition to “goshawks in great quantity to catch birds on rivers.” His falconers were well trained and well equipped for the hunt, so as to reflect well on their lord and master.
Birds belonging to Kublai Khan carried a “little tablet of silver tied to their feet for recognition.” If a bird strayed, it was immediately returned to its master, and the same rigorous policy applied to all the other paraphernalia of the hunt, horses and swords and other equipment. Anyone who found a misplaced item was “held for a thief” unless he promptly returned it to its rightful owner—in most cases a baron. According to Marco, the system, reinforced by drastic penalties, worked efficiently: “No things can be lost that are not soon found and returned.”
Lesser citizens of the Mongol realm were not entitled to own or hunt with birds of prey: “No merchant nor any craftsman nor any citizen or villager nor any person, whoever he might be, dares keep any goshawk, falcon, nor hawking bird nor hunting dog for his pleasure through [out] all the domain of the Great Khan.” Even Mongol barons and knights had to observe limitations set down by the khan. None “dares to hunt or hawk unless he is enrolled under the captain of the falconers, or has a privilege in this matter.”
ON THE MORNING of the hunt, the royal party proceeded along a road leading in a southerly direction from Cambulac toward the hunting grounds. Barons and lesser officials traveled on horseback, or walked, while Kublai Khan loomed over all atop one of his four elephants, which were adept at working their way through narrow passes. Befitting his station, he sat within an enclosure (“a beautiful wooden room,” Marco calls it) decorated with the finest silk and beaten-gold ornaments. Kublai rarely strayed from his luxurious perch, Marco confides, because of the painful gout from which he suffered. All the while, twelve barons accompanied him, together with twelve attractive women. “There is no amusement in the world equal to it,” Marco sighs.
Shielded by the drapes surrounding his private chamber, Kublai Khan conversed with his guests, as barons and knights rode alongside, acting as spotters. Whenever they saw cranes or pheasants overhead, they immediately cried out, “Sir, cranes are passing.” At that, Kublai flung back the curtains and let loose his gerfalcon.
Looking up, Kublai and his minions squinted to see the streamlined creature streaking like a meteorite across the heavens, tucking its wings and diving until a hapless crane or other bird took notice and vainly tried to elude its attacker. The falcon’s speed always won out, and as the two creatures collided, the falcon sank its razorlike talons into its stunned and helpless prey, engaging it in an intricate airborne dance of death. Locked in their fatal embrace, the birds plummeted to earth, and hunters galloped toward the spot where they fell to recover the falcon as it ravished its prey.
Lolling atop his elephant, Kublai Khan savored the spectacle of avian combat. “It is a very great amusement and a great delight to him,” Marco attested, “and to all the other barons and knights who also ride round the lord.”
FATIGUED from his hours of sport, Kublai Khan sought refuge amid the “beautiful and rich” tents and pavilions where his barons, knights, and falconers, together with their wives and concubines, numbering as many as ten thousand, congregated. Some of the tents were large enough to shelter a thousand knights, and each, regardless of size, had its door opening “toward midday,” in accordance with Mongol custom.
The largest tent connected to the khan’s private lodging, which consisted of two halls and a chamber. Marco left a sumptuous description of the furnishings of Kublai Khan’s splendid dwelling on the remote plain: “Each hall has three posts of spice wood very well worked. They are all covered outside with lion skins that are very beautiful, for they are all striped with black and with white and with red. They are so well arranged that [neither] wind nor rain nor anything else can hurt those inside nor do harm to that skin, because they keep it off very well. And inside those halls and rooms they are all lined with ermine and with sable skins. These are both the most beautiful furs and the most rich and of greater value than any furs that may be…. The skin of the sable, as much as may be lining for one man’s robe, is worth two thousand bezants of gold,…and the Tartars call it in their tongue ‘the king of skins.’…The cords that hold the halls and the room are all of silk. They are of so great value and cost so much, these three tents, that a small king could not pay for them.”
But Kublai Khan was no “small king.” He was the emperor of the Mongols, the most powerful ruler alive.
IN FALCONRY, Marco Polo found striking similarities between East and West. In both cultures, falconry had been the sport of the nobility for more than a thousand years. A “swift dog and a splendid hawk,” as one ancient Western phrase has it, were the perquisites of a well-equipped gentleman. Kings and commoners in Asia and Europe alike thrilled to the sight of a bird of prey soaring across a grassy plain as hunters below rode furiously toward their quarry.
Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen was the most influential of all European falconry enthusiasts. In 1229, he returned to Europe from the Sixth Crusade with a retinue of skilled Arab falconers, who helped to spread the diversion across Europe. During the decades Marco Polo was abroad, Frederick compiled the sport’s bible, De arte venandi cum avibus, or The Art of Falconry, among the earliest works to consider the anatomy of birds. His passion for falconry appears to have exceeded even Kublai Khan’s; Frederick once lost an important military campaign because he decided to go hawking. Dedicated falconers understood his priorities.
IF MARCO EXPERIENCED disenchantment with Kublai Khan’s excesses and lapses in judgment, he did not admit to it, but he realized that as long as he remained in China he was just another minion of a large-hearted but capricious ruler. Nor did he know how long he would stay. His father and uncle had planned to maintain their steady pace, deliver the message from the pope to Kublai Khan, and return with young Marco to Venice with their gems and silk and other valuable items. But now all three were ensnared in the intrigue of the Mongol court.
It had taken the Polos more than three years to travel from Venice to the court of Kublai Khan, but they came to realize that it would take much longer to return home. They would have to remain in China for as long as Kublai wished. Although he was nearing seventy, and was grooming his son to succeed him, he gave no sign of relinquishing power. And if he were to die suddenly, his death might pose a serious threat to the Polos, who would lose his personal protection and become vulnerable to the raw violence just below the surface in the Mongol Empire. So they were caught, privileged guests who were also prisoners in the largest kingdom on earth, doomed to serve the Great Khan for an incalculable length of time.
To survive in this strange land, Marco would have to find a way to make himself useful to the khan, and become a student not just of Mongol women and horsemanship but of the exercise of power. If he succeeded in making a place for himself, there was no telling how high he could rise. For all its peculiarities, Mongol society was open to foreigners who could be useful. He might wind up winning a lordship, or even the governorship of a wealthy province, as other trustworthy foreigners had done. He might rule over thousands as Kublai Khan’s emissary, and even have his own court, with endless opportunities to enrich himself, or keep concubines for his personal pleasure. Or he might fall victim to crude Mongol justice, and never see his homeland again.
Just when it seemed Marco might have no place at all in the Mongol Empire, Kublai Khan sent him on the road to collect taxes and, more important, gather information about the realm, so much of which remained unexplored. Within the confines of the empire, Marco’s occupation would bear an eerie similarity to his career before he encountered Kublai Khan: traveler.