The Silk Road: A Captivating Guide to the Ancient Network of Trade Routes Established during the Han Dynasty of China and How It Connected the East and West (Ancient Asia) by Captivating History

Author:Captivating History [History, Captivating]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-04-03T03:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9 – Marco Polo Visits Kublai Khan’s China

While conquering the southern Chinese and subsequently founding the Yuan Dynasty in 1279, Kublai Khan had to deal with unrest in the far reaches of his empire. In Mongolia, he was constantly threatened by internal warfare. In the west of the Mongol Empire, unrest swept the rulership of the Golden Horde. Kublai’s administrators were pushed aside in a civil war, and the armies of the Golden Horde and those of the Mongol khanate in Persia, known as the Ilkhanate, clashed. In this period of internal strife, traders from the Latin West made inroads in commerce with nearby parts of the Mongol Empire. By 1263, western merchants were established in Tabriz, the leading commercial center of Persia. Under Hulagu Khan, the ruler of the Ilkhanate from 1256 to 1265, and his successor Abaqa Khan, who reigned from 1265 to 1282, the relations between the Christian West and Persia improved. Abaqa had a Christian mother, and among his wives was the daughter of Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus. This meant that Christian missionaries, diplomats, and merchants became prominent in the city of Tabriz. Attempts were made to improve diplomacy between the court of Abaqa and the West, among which was the failed coordination of Persian military action and the Crusade of Prince Edward of England between 1270 and 1272.

The primary source of information on what lay to the east of Europe during the first half of the 14th century was a book entitled The Travels of Marco Polo or the Book of the Marvels of the World, dating from around 1300. Most of what surrounds this account of Polo’s journey to the East is shrouded in mystery, and the truth of its contents has been subject to debate.

In the 1250s, Venetian merchants Niccolò and Maffeo Polo ran a trading business shipping goods from the East to Venice, where they were then transported to European markets. The Polos operated out of the Crimean port of Soldaia (modern-day Sudak). Their major competition came from Venetian trading enterprises operating from Constantinople, which was the center of the Latin Empire, which stretched from the Balkans to the Levant. Among the exotic trade goods that flowed from the East into Constantinople and dependent ports were silk, dyes, furs, pepper, cotton, and slaves. It was to Crimea that Russians delivered amber, honey, wax, and furs. The most important of the Polos trade was in foodstuffs originating in the European steppes.

According to the book that became known as The Travels of Marco Polo, Niccolò and Maffeo Polo set out in 1260 to trade jewels with the merchants of the Golden Horde in Russia. They traveled to Sarai (near present-day Volgograd), where they met and exchanged goods with the grandson of Genghis Khan, Berke Khan, who reigned over the Golden Horde from 1257 to 1266. Because the archenemy of Venice, Genoa, in league with the Byzantines, reconquered Constantinople in 1261, the Polos avoided returning to Venice through Byzantine territory. They might have

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