III: China Crisis: Walking on the Roof of the World
For seven days the Polos traversed Afghanistan, as they began their journey proper towards China. They stayed in the city of Balkh, where Marco related the tale of the attack by Genghis Khan on the city, when, in 1220, with 100,000 men he had killed not just every man, woman and child, but every animal, plant and even pulled down the walls of the city so that nothing would remain of the culture of the previous inhabitants. In Taican, one of the Afghan provinces, the Polos came across great supplies of salt, in which they were able to trade, and followed the Silk Road (not called that for another six hundred years) which stretches from Central Asia to the eastern shores of China.
Stories of how the previous Khan had responded to missionaries only a few earlier makes the willingness of Kublai Khan to engage with Christianity even the more impressive. In 1245, Güyük Khan declared
“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.” That’s nice and clear, then! How had attitudes changed so radically in only twenty years or so? Well, let’s see. His successor, and the direct predecessor to Kublai Khan, had this to say on worship and religion:
"We Mongols believe in one God, by Whom we live and die," he then continued "Just as God gave different fingers to the hand so has He given different ways to men. To you God has given the Scriptures and you Christians do not observe them". He explained God had given the Mongols their shamans. Möngke offered Louis IX his cooperation but warned all Christians that
"If, when you hear and understand the decree of the eternal God, you are unwilling to pay attention and believe it...and in this confidence you bring an army against us-we know what we can do.”
So if Güyük Khan had been, as seems, staunchly anti-Christian, Möngke Khan seemed to think that maybe Christians only paid lipservice to their god, whereas the Mongols honoured theirs. His ultimatum, as such, was slightly less combative. What he was saying, I think, is leave us alone to worship our way. If you don’t, and send an army against us, that will literally be your funeral. But between the time of Möngke and Güyük there were only eight years, and each ruled for a much shorter time than the Great Khan, Kublai. Möngke was emperor for eight years while Güyük only managed two. Kublai Khan would rule for over thirty years, more than three times the reign of both his predecessors combined, and would just have been starting that reign when the Polos originally had their audience with him, so perhaps he was more forward-thinking, and wanted to put the aggressive language and sabre-rattling (possibly literal) of the past behind his people.
Indeed, the true power of the West, and in particular the Pope, was shown here for the failure it was. Nobody cared about the Polos’ letters from Gregory X demanding their safe passage; this Pope meant nothing to them. On the way back, originally, from Asia, as related, Niccolo and Maffeo had been under the protection of Kublai Khan, and nobody had questioned or challenged that. But this was different. The patronage of the Bishop of Rome did not extend to the wild plains and mountains of Afghanistan or Iraq, and the Polos had to make their own arrangements to secure their safety, most like with bribes. Reaching another oasis, Badakhshan, Marco related how rubies were dug out of the ground:
“[they] are produced in the rocks of great mountains, and when they wish to dig them they are gotten with great trouble, for they make great caverns in the mountains with very great expense and trouble to find them, and go far underground as in these parts here they do who dig the veins of gold and silver.”
He also noted how the king ensured the innate value of these gems, by apparently digging for the rubies himself (this seems unlikely at best; I assume he meant his men dug at his instructions), keeping the most precious specimens, and having killed anyone who dared to mine them without permission.
“The king,” Marco says,
“does this for his own honor that the balasci [rubies] may be dear and of great value everywhere as they are, for if he let other men dig them and carry them through the world so many of them would be taken away that all the world would be full of them and they would not be so dear nor of so great value, so that the king would make little or no gain.” Makes sense, I guess.
There seems to be some evidence that Marco got sick in some way while staying in Badakhshan - some suggest it may have been syphilis or tuberculosis - and as a result may have become addicted to opium, the standard cure for such diseases at that time. He may have detoxed here, but rather than admit such a thing in his writings, he credits the high mountains with his recovery, saying
“On the tops of the mountains the air is so pure and the sojourn there so health-giving that if, while he lives in the cities and houses built on the plain and in the valleys near the mountains, a man catches fevers of any kind,…he immediately climbs the mountains and, resting there two or three days, the sickness is driven away.”
His detox and recovery cost the company time though, as they waited a whole year in Badakhshan before they finally moved on in 1273, well behind schedule. They moved into the area known as the Pamir, or “the roof of the world”, where the mighty Himalayas stand, and the giant finger of the world’s tallest mountain, Mount Everest, points up to the clear blue sky. Impressed by the breath-taking beauty of the mountains, so high that not even birds flew around them, Marco was astonished to come across a plateau between them.
“When one is in that high place,” he wrote,
“then he finds a large plain between two mountains in which is very beautiful pasture and a great lake from which runs a very beautiful river, both good and large. Up there in that plain is the best and fattest pasture of the world that can be found; for a thin horse or ox or any thin beast (let it be as thin as you please) put there to graze grows very fat in ten days.” He went on to describe “multitudes of wild sheep,” distinguished by enormous horns,
“some quite six palms long,” from which shepherds made bowls and other vessels, as well as fencing to pen in other animals. Yet nature was not as peaceful as it seemed in the Pamir. By night, wolves descended from the slopes to
“eat up and kill many of those sheep.”
Surviving only on their meagre rations, as there was neither
“dwelling nor inn, but in the course of the road it is desert and nothing is found there to eat,” they travelled across the region for twelve days, but this was only the beginning of their ordeal. For another forty days they moved across the savage, bleak, barren landscape. Marco was not impressed.
“Not in all these forty days’ marches is there dwelling nor inn, nor even food, but the travelers are obliged to carry that which they need with them.” When they did come across other humans, these men were so wild and heathen that the Polos hurried past them without making contact. Probably afraid they’d end up being cooked over someone’s fire!
The oasis town of Khotan finally provided them some respite, though its existence on the very edge of a desert whose name translates as “desert of death” or “place of no return” - the
Taklimakan - could not have inspired much confidence nor provided them with much cheer. Here Marco had his first encounters with Buddhists, but dismissed them, as he had the Muslims, as idolaters. With yet another four thousand miles to journey, the Polos left Khotan and moved onto the Great Eastern Steppe. Crossing this, Marco and his father and uncle became acutely aware of the constantly-moving bands of Mongols attacking both friend and foe, as he wrote:
“if they are enemies they carry off all their goods, and if they are friends they kill and eat their cattle.” With friends like that, huh?
The scale of the desert they had to cross almost defied Marco’s literary powers. Nobody in Europe, certainly nobody in Italy had ever even seen or heard of such a vast wilderness, so he was describing something totally new to them.
“Lengthwise it cannot be passed because of the great length of it, for it would be impossible to carry enough food…. One travels for a month of marches without finding any dwelling. It is all barren mountains and plains of sand and valleys, and nothing to eat is found there. You must always go a day and a night finding nothing before you find water to drink in this way. Moreover, I tell you that in three places in four one finds bitter and salt and evil water.”
He also spoke of the spiritual effect the desert had on him.
“There dwell many spirits that make for the wayfarers great and wonderful illusions to make them perish,” he told his readers.
“For while any company of merchants or others is crossing the desert…, often it happens that they hear spirits malignant in the air, talking in a way that they seem to be their companions, for they call them sometimes by their names, and many times they make them, believing that they are some of them, follow those voices and go out of the right way so they are never reunited to their fellows and found, and news of them is never heard.”
There were also, he insisted, aural versions of that old desert mainstay, the mirage:
“Again I tell you that not only by night does this appear, but often even by day men hear these voices of spirits, and it often seems to you that you hear many instruments of music sounding in the air, and especially drums more than other instruments, and the clash of weapons.” At other times, the singing sands sounded like a
“rush of people in another direction.” Distracted travelers chased after the illusion, hoping to catch up with
“the march of the cavalcade,” only to find by day that they were hopelessly lost, tricked by spirits,
“and many not knowing of these spirits come to an evil end.”
He spoke of the ultimate terror, being separated from one’s fellows and finding oneself alone in the harsh, unforgiving desert.
“Those who wish to pass that way and cross this desert must take very great care of themselves that they not be separated from their fellows for any reason, and that they go with great caution; they must hang bells on the necks of their horses and animals to hear them continually so that they may not sleep, and may not be able to wander. “Sometimes by day spirits come in the form of a company to see who has stayed behind and he goes off the way, and then they leave him to go alone in the desert and perish.” At other times, these spirits
“put themselves in the form of an army and have come charging toward them, who, believing they were robbers, have taken flight and, having left the highway, no longer knowing how to find the way, for the desert stretches very wide, have perished miserably of hunger.”
Odd as it may seem, and indeed as if our Marco had wandered in the blistering sun too much, this does in fact reflect a natural and known phenomenon called “the singing sands” or “the booming sands”, where winds hitting the dunes can be mistaken for anything from a crowd of people chanting to the notes of a harp.