Henry Yule and Charles Raymond Beazley

“ No genuine portrait of Marco Polo exists. There is a medallion portrait on the wall of the Sala dello Scudo in the ducal palace, which has become a kind of type; but it is a work of imagination no older than 1761. The oldest professed portrait is one in the gallery of Monsignor Badia at Rome, which is inscribed Marcus Polus venetus totius orbis et Indie peregrator primus. It is a good picture, but evidently of the 16th century at earliest. ”

“ Sir Henry Yule’s edition, which in its final shape, as revised and augmented by Henri Cordier (. . . Marco Polo . . . London, 1903) , is the most complete storehouse of Polo learning in existence, embodying the labours of all the best students of the subject, and giving the essence of such works as those of Major P. Molesworth Sykes (Ten Thousand Miles in Persia, &c.) so far as these touch Marco Polo; the Archimandrite Palladius Katharov’s “Elucidations of Marco Polo” (from vol. x. of the Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (1836) , pp. 1–54 ”

“ Within the traveller’s own lifetime we find the earliest examples of the practical and truly scientific coast-charts (Portolani) , based upon the experience of pilots, mariners, merchants, &c. In two of the most famous of the 14th century Portolani, we trace Marco Polo’s influence—first, very slightly in the Laurentian or Medicean Portolano of 1351 (at Florence) , but afterwards with clearness and in remarkable detail in the Catalan Atlas of 1375 (now at Paris) . ”

“ Both of these represent a very advanced stage of medieval knowledge, a careful attempt to represent the known world on the basis of collected fact, and a disregard for theological or pseudo-scientific theory; in the Catalan Atlas, as regards Central and Further Asia, and partially as regards India, Marco Polo’s Book is the basis of the map. His names are often much perverted, and it is not always easy to understand the view that the compiler took of his itineraries. Still we have Cathay placed in the true position of China, as a great empire filling the south-east of Asia. ”

“ The truth of his visit to these two cities, and especially to the last, has been questioned. The traveller’s history, not least in China, singularly illustrates the free masonry of Islam, and its power of carrying a Moslem doctor over the known world of Asia and Africa. ”

“ Here they fell in with certain envoys who had been on a mission from the great Khan Kublai to his brother Hulagu in Persia, and by them were persuaded to make the journey to Cathay in their company. Under the heading China the circumstances are noticed which in the last half of the 13th century and first half of the 14th threw Asia open to Western travellers to a degree unknown before and since—until the 19th century. Thus began the medieval period of intercourse between China and catholic Europe. ”

“ The only literary works we know of the 14th century which show acquaintance with Polo’s book or achievements are Pipino’s Chronicle, Villani’s Florentine History, Pietro d’Abano’s Conciliator, the Chronicle of John of Ypres, and the poetical romance of Baudouin de Sebourc, which last borrows themes largely from Polo. ”

“ The onward journey lay by Kiev; the Tatar posts were entered at Kanev; and thence the route ran across the Dnieper (Neper, Nepere, in Carpini and Benedict) to the Don and Volga (Ethil in Benedict; Carpini is the first Western to give us the modern name) . Upon the last-named stood the Ordu or camp of Batu, the famous conqueror of eastern Europe, and the supreme Mongol commander on the western frontiers of the empire, as well as one of the most senior princes of the house of Jenghiz. ”

“ Columbus possessed a printed copy of the Latin version of Polo’s book made by Pipino, and on more than seventy pages of this there are manuscript notes in the admiral’s handwriting, testifying, what is sufficiently evident from the whole history of the Columbian voyages, to the immense influence of the work of the Venetian merchant upon the discoverer of the new world.
When, in the 16th century, attempts were made to combine new and old knowledge, the results were unhappy. ”

“ They had not yet left Lajazzo, Layas, or Ayas on the Cilician coast (then one of the chief points for the arrival and departure of the land trade of Asia) , when they heard that Tedaldo had been elected pope. They hastened back to Acre, and at last were able to execute Kublai’s mission, and to obtain a papal reply. But, instead of the hundred teachers asked for by the Great Khan, the new pope (styled Gregory X.) could supply but two Dominicans; and these lost heart and turned back, when they had barely taken the first step of their journey. ”

“ Diverging to Hamath and Aleppo, on his return to Damascus, he found the Black Death raging, so that two thousand four hundred died in one day. Revisiting Jerusalem and Cairo he made the haj a fourth time, and finally reappeared at Fez (visiting Sardinia en route) on the 8th of November 1349, after twenty-four years’ absence. Morocco, he felt, was, after all, the best of countries. “The dirhems of the West are but little; but then you get more for them.” ”

“ Rubrouck and his party landed at Soldaia, or Sudak, on the Crimean coast, then a centre of intercourse between the Mediterranean world and what is now S. Russia. Equipped with horses and carts for the steppe, they travelled successively to the courts (i.e. the nomad camps) of Scacatai (Kadan?) , Sartak and Batu, thus crossing the Don and arriving at the Volga: of both these rivers Friar William gives vivid and interesting sketches. Batu kept the travellers for sometime in suspense, and then referred them to the Great Khan himself, an order involving the enormous journey to Mongolia. ”

“ IBN BATUTA, i.e. Abu Abdullah Mahommed, surnamed Ibn Batuta (1304–1378) , the greatest of Moslem travellers, was born at Tangier in 1304. He entered on his travels at twenty-one (1325) and closed them in 1355. He began by traversing the coast of the Mediterranean from Tangier to Alexandria, finding time to marry two wives on the road. After some stay at Cairo, then probably the greatest city in the world (excluding China) , and an unsuccessful attempt to reach Mecca from Aidhab on the west coast of the Red Sea, he visited Palestine, Aleppo and Damascus. ”

“ It introduces changes of its own, and is worthless as a text; yet Andreas Müller, who in the 17th century took so much trouble with Polo, unfortunately chose as his text this fifth-hand version. The French editions published in the middle of the 16th century were translations from Grynaeus’s Latin. Hence they complete this curious and vicious circle of transmission—French, Italian, Pipino’s Latin, Portuguese, Grynaeus’s Latin, French. ”

“ He appointed the traveller to be kazi of Delhi, with a present of 12,000 silver dinars (rupees) , and an annual salary of the same amount, besides an assignment of village lands. In the sultan’s service Ibn Batuta remained eight years; but his good fortune stimulated his natural extravagance, and his debts soon amounted to four or five times his salary. At last he fell into disfavour and retired from court, only to be summoned again on a congenial duty. The emperor of China, last of the Mongol dynasty, had sent a mission to Delhi, and the Moor was to accompany the return embassy (1342) . ”

“ These paint for us an honest, pious, stout-hearted, acute and most intelligent observer, keen in the acquisition of knowledge, the author of one of the best narratives of travel in existence. His language indeed is dog-Latin of the most un-Ciceronian quality ”

“ Yet this sagacious observer is denounced as an untruthful blunderer by Isaac Jacob Schmidt (a man of useful learning, of a kind rare in his day, but narrow, wrong-headed, and in natural acumen and candour far inferior to the 13th-century friar) simply because Rubrouck’s evidence as to the Turkish dialect of the Uighurs traversed a pet heresy, long since exploded, which Schmidt entertained, viz. that the Uighurs were by race and language Tibetan. ”

“ The camp of Batu was first reached near the northernmost point of his summer marches, therefore about Ukek or Uvyek, near Saratov (see Marco Polo, Paris ed. of 1824, p. 3) . Before the camp was left they had marched with it five weeks down the Volga. The point of departure would lie on that river somewhere between 48° and 50° N. The route taken lay E. by a line running N. of the Caspian and Aral basins; then from about 70° E. to the basin of the Talas river ”

“ Touching the coast of Arakan or Burma, he reached Sumatra in forty days, and was provided with a junk for China by Malik al Dhahir, a zealous disciple of Islam, which had recently spread among the states on the northern coast of that island. Calling (apparently) at Cambodia on his way, Ibn Batuta reached China at Zayton (Amoy harbour) , famous from Marco Polo ”

“ But, on the other hand, there are a number of new circumstances certainly genuine. which can hardly be ascribed to any one but Polo himself. Such is the account which Ramusio’s version gives of the oppressions exercised by Kublai’s Mahommedan minister Ahmad, telling how the Cathayans rose against him and murdered him, with the addition that Messer Marco was on the spot when all this happened. ”

“ Many a traveller other than Marco Polo might have brought home the block-books, and some might have witnessed the process of making them. This is the less to be ascribed to Polo, because he so curiously omits to speak of the process of printing, when, in describing the block-printed paper-money of China, his subject seems absolutely to challenge a description of the art.
See the Recueil of the Paris Geographical Society (1824) , vol. i., giving the text of the fundamental MS. (Nat. Libr. Paris, Fr. 1116; see above) , as well as that of the oldest Latin version; G. Pauthier’s edition, Livre . ”

“ He must therefore have received his commission at Acre, where the king was residing from May 1252 to the 29th of June 1253; but he had travelled by way of Constantinople, as has just been indicated, and there received letters to some of the Tatar chiefs from the emperor, who was at this time Baldwin de Courtenay, the last of the Latin dynasty.
The narrative of the journey is everywhere full of life and interest. ”

“ Like some other famous medieval itineraries it shows an entire absence of a traveller’s or author’s egotism, and contains, even in the last chapter, scarcely any personal narrative. Carpini was not only an old man when he went cheerfully upon this mission, but was, as we know from accidental evidence in the annals of his order, a fat and heavy man (vir gravis et corpulentus) , insomuch that during his preachings in Germany he was fain, contrary to Franciscan precedent, to ride a donkey. ”

“ The court in which it stands was known in Ramusio’s time as the Corte del millioni, and now is called Corte Sabbionera. That which remains of the ancient edifice is a passage with a decorated archway of Italo-Byzantine character pertaining to the 13th century. ”

“ The party travelled through central India to Cambay and thence sailed to Calicut, classed by the traveller with the neighbouring Kaulam (Quilon) , Alexandria, Sudak in the Crimea, and Zayton (Amoy harbour) in China, as one of the greatest trading havens in the world—an interesting enumeration from one who had seen them all. The mission party was to embark in Chinese junks (the word used) and smaller vessels, but that carrying the other envoys and the presents, which started before Ibn Batuta was ready, was wrecked totally ”

“ Their bodies were tightly bandaged to enable them to endure the excessive fatigue of this enormous ride, which led them across the Jaec or Ural river, and north of the Caspian and the Aral to the Jaxartes or Syr Daria (quidam fluvius magnus cujus nomen ignoramus) , and the Mahommedan cities which then stood on its banks ”

“ Thence the party travelled S. by Derbent, and so by Shamakhi to the Araxes, Nakhshivan, Erzingan, Sivas and Iconium, to Lajazzo, Layas, or Ayas, where they embarked for Cyprus and Syria. St Louis had returned to France a year before.
We have alluded to Roger Bacon’s mention of Friar William. Indeed, in the geographical section of the Opus Majus (c. 1262) he cites -the traveller repeatedly and copiously, describing him as “frater Wilhelmus quem dominus rex Franciae misit ad Tartaros, Anno Domini 1253 . . . ”

“ At the same time, Rubrouck may be considered inferior as a politician and diplomatist to Carpini; and the latter's remarkable work has in its turn suffered from undiscriminating eulogy of his successor's Itinerarium. An attempt has been made to strike a balance in the judgment of these two great pioneers in the Dawn of Modern Geography, ii. 375-81.
The narrative of Rubrouck, after Roger Bacon's copious use of it, seems to have dropped out of sight, though five MSS. are still known to exist: the chief of these are (1) Corp. ”