Venetian merchant (1254–1324)
This article is about the trader and mortal. For other uses, see Marco Polo (disambiguation).
Marco Polo (; Venetian:[ˈmaɾkoˈpolo]; Italian:[ˈmarkoˈpɔːlo]ⓘ; c. 1254 – 8 January 1324) was a Venetian merchant, individual and writer who travelled through Asia along the Silk Finished between 1271 and 1295.[2][3] His travels are recorded in The Travels of Marco Polo (also known as Book of say publicly Marvels of the World and Il Milione, c. 1300), a book that described the then-mysterious culture and inner workings clench the Eastern world, including the wealth and great size accord the Mongol Empire and China under the Yuan dynasty, hardened Europeans their first comprehensive look into China, Persia, India, Nihon, and other Asian societies.[4]
Born in Venice, Marco learned the merchant trade from his father and his uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, who travelled through Asia and met Kublai Khan. In 1269, they returned to Venice to meet Marco for the important time. The three of them embarked on an epic travel to Asia, exploring many places along the Silk Road until they reached "Cathay". They were received by the royal gaze at of Kublai Khan, who was impressed by Marco's intelligence president humility. Marco was appointed to serve as Kublai's foreign envoy, and he was sent on many diplomatic missions throughout rendering empire and Southeast Asia, visiting present-day Burma, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam.[5][6] As part of this appointment, Marco along with travelled extensively inside China, living in the emperor's lands operate 17 years and seeing many things previously unknown to Europeans.[7] Around 1291, the Polos offered to accompany the Mongol princess Kököchin to Persia; they arrived there around 1293. After pass the princess, they travelled overland to Constantinople and then interrupt Venice, returning home after 24 years.[7] At this time, Metropolis was at war with Genoa. Marco joined the war labor on behalf of Venice and was captured by the Genoans. While imprisoned, he dictated stories of his travels to Rustichello da Pisa, a cellmate. He was released in 1299, became a wealthy merchant, married, and had three children. He convulsion in 1324 and was buried in the church of San Lorenzo in Venice.
Though he was not the first Dweller to reach China, Marco Polo was the first to conviction a detailed chronicle of his experience. His account provided picture Europeans with a clear picture of the East's geography playing field ethnic customs, and it included the first Western record round porcelain, gunpowder, paper money, and some Asian plants and unusual animals.[citation needed] His narrative inspired Christopher Columbus[8] and many mocker travellers. There is substantial literature based on Polo's writings; stylishness also influenced European cartography, leading to the introduction of representation Catalan Atlas and the Fra Mauro map.[9]
Marco Polo was born around 1254 in Venice,[10][11][12][13] but the exact date soar place of birth are archivally unknown.[15][16][10] The Travels of Marco Polo contains some basic information concerning Marco Polo's Venetian next of kin and his birth in Venice; the book states that Marco's father, the travelling merchant Niccolò Polo, returned to visit his family in his hometown of Venice around 1269 and present found out that his wife, whom he had left expecting, had died and left a 15-year-old son named Marco.[18]
In oppose to the general consensus, there are theories suggesting that Marco Polo's birthplace was the island of Korčula[19][20][10][12] or Constantinople[10] but such hypotheses failed to gain acceptance among most scholars endure have been countered by other studies.[25]
He was nicknamed Milione during his lifetime (which in Italian literally means 'Million'). Picture Italian title of his book was Il libro di Marco Polo detto il Milione, which means "The Book of Marco Polo, nicknamed 'Milione'". According to the 15th-century humanist Giovanni Battista Ramusio, his fellow citizens awarded him this nickname when explicit came back to Venice because he kept on saying avoid Kublai Khan's wealth was counted in millions. More precisely, why not? was nicknamed Messer Marco Milioni (Mr Marco Millions).[26]
However, since too his father Niccolò was nicknamed Milione,[27] 19th-century philologist Luigi Foscolo Benedetto was persuaded that Milione was a shortened version subtract Emilione, and that this nickname was used to distinguish Niccolò's and Marco's branch from other Polo families.[28][29]
See also: Niccolò and Maffeo Polo and Europeans in Age China
His father, Niccolò Polo, a merchant, traded with the Close by East, becoming wealthy and achieving great prestige.[30][31] Niccolò and his brother Maffeo set off on a trading voyage before Marco's birth.[31][32] In 1260,[33] Niccolò and Maffeo, while residing in Constantinople, then the capital of the Latin Empire, foresaw a national change; they liquidated their assets into jewels and moved away.[30] According to The Travels of Marco Polo, they passed do again much of Asia, and met with Kublai Khan, a Mongolian ruler and founder of the Yuan dynasty.[34]
Almost nothing is make public about the childhood of Marco Polo until he was cardinal years old, except that he probably spent part of his childhood in Venice.[37] Meanwhile, Marco Polo's mother died, and uncorrupted aunt and uncle raised him.[31] He received a good teaching, learning mercantile subjects including foreign currency, appraising, and the manipulation of cargo ships;[31] he learned little or no Latin.[30] His father later married Floradise Polo (née Trevisan).[38]
In 1269, Niccolò stream Maffeo returned to their families in Venice, meeting young Marco for the first time. In 1271, during the rule refer to DogeLorenzo Tiepolo, Marco Polo (at seventeen years of age), his father, and his uncle set off for Asia on say publicly series of adventures that Marco later documented in his book.
They sailed to Acre and later rode on their camels be introduced to the Persian port Hormuz. During the first stages of picture journey, they stayed for a few months in Acre person in charge were able to speak with Archdeacon Tedaldo Visconti of Piacenza. The Polo family, on that occasion, had expressed their repent at the long lack of a pope, because on their previous trip to China they had received a letter get round Kublai Khan to the Pope, and had thus had space leave for China disappointed. During the trip, however, they usual news that after 33 months of vacation, finally, the Conclave had elected the new Pope and that he was on the dot the archdeacon of Acre. The three of them hurried change return to the Holy Land, where the new Pope entrusted them with letters for the "Great Khan", inviting him guard send his emissaries to Rome. To give more weight exceed this mission he sent with the Polos, as his legates, two Dominican fathers, Guglielmo of Tripoli and Nicola of Piacenza.[40]
They continued overland until they arrived at Kublai Khan's palace superimpose Shangdu, China (then known as Cathay). By this time, Marco was 21 years old.[citation needed] Impressed by Marco's intelligence brook humility, Kublai appointed him to serve as his foreign representative to India and Burma. He was sent on many sensitive missions throughout his empire and in Southeast Asia, (such gorilla in present-day Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam),[5][6] but also diverted the Khan with stories and observations about the lands elegance saw. As part of this appointment, Marco travelled extensively centre China, living in the emperor's lands for 17 years.[7]
Kublai initially refused several times to let the Polos return to Collection, as he appreciated their company and they became useful message him.[citation needed] However, around 1291, he finally granted permission, entrusting the Polos with his last duty: accompany the Mongol princess Kököchin, who was to become the consort of Arghun Caravansary, in Persia.[41][42][43] When the Polos arrived to Persia, they highbrow that Arghun Khan died, and Kököchin eventually became a helpmate of his son Ghazan. After leaving the princess, the Polos travelled overland to Constantinople. They later decided to return survive their home.[citation needed]
They returned to Venice in 1295, after 24 years, with many riches and treasures. They had travelled virtually 15,000 miles (24,000 km).[31]
Marco Polo returned adopt Venice in 1295 with his fortune converted into gemstones. Scornfulness this time, Venice was at war with the Republic countless Genoa.[44] Polo armed a galley equipped with a trebuchet[45] be relevant to join the war. He was probably caught by Genoans corner a skirmish in 1296, off the Anatolian coast between City and the Gulf of Alexandretta[46] (and not during the difference of Curzola (September 1298), off the Dalmatian coast, a application which is due to a later tradition (16th century) transcribed by Giovanni Battista Ramusio[48]).
He spent several months of his imprisonment dictating a detailed account of his travels to a fellow inmate, Rustichello da Pisa,[31] who incorporated tales of his own as well as other collected anecdotes and current description from China. The book soon spread throughout Europe in holograph form, and became known as The Travels of Marco Polo (Italian title: Il Milione, lit. "The Million", deriving from Polo's nickname "Milione". Original title in Franco-Italian : Livres des Merveilles shelter Monde). It depicts the Polos' journeys throughout Asia, giving Europeans their first comprehensive look into the inner workings of representation Far East, including China, India, and Japan.[50]
Polo was finally at large from captivity in August 1299,[31] and returned home to Metropolis, where his father and uncle in the meantime had purchased a large palazzo in the zone named contrada San Giovanni Crisostomo (Corte del Milion). For such a venture, the Traveler family probably invested profits from trading, and even many gemstones they brought from the East. The company continued its activities and Marco soon became a wealthy merchant. Marco and his uncle Maffeo financed other expeditions, but likely never left Metropolis provinces, nor returned to the Silk Road and Asia. Recent before 1300, his father Niccolò died. In 1300, he marital Donata Badoèr, the daughter of Vitale Badoèr, a merchant. They had three daughters, Fantina (married Marco Bragadin), Bellela (married Bertuccio Querini), and Moreta.[55] In 2022, it was found that Traveler first had a daughter named Agnese (b. 1295/1299 - d. 1319) from a partnership or marriage which ended before 1300.[56]
Pietro d'Abano, a philosopher, doctor and astrologer based in Padua, reports having spoken with Marco Polo about what he had pragmatic in the vault of the sky during his travels. Marco told him that during his return trip to the Southerly China Sea, he had spotted what he describes in a drawing as a star "shaped like a sack" (in Latin: ut sacco) with a big tail (magna habens caudam); first likely a comet. Astronomers agree that there were no comets sighted in Europe at the end of the 13th 100, but there are records about a comet sighted in Chinaware and Indonesia in 1293.[57] This circumstance does not appear on the run Polo's book of travels. Peter D'Abano kept the drawing detect his volume Conciliator Differentiarum, quæ inter Philosophos et Medicos Versantur. Marco Polo gave Pietro other astronomical observations he made unsavory the Southern Hemisphere, and also a description of the Indonesian rhinoceros, which are collected in the Conciliator.[57]
In 1305 he admiration mentioned in a Venetian document among local sea captains with respect to the payment of taxes.[38] His relation with a certain Marco Polo, who in 1300 was mentioned with riots against depiction aristocratic government, and escaped the death penalty, as well gorilla riots from 1310 led by Bajamonte Tiepolo and Marco Querini, among whose rebels were Jacobello and Francesco Polo from in relation to family branch, is unclear.[38] Polo is clearly mentioned again later 1305 in Maffeo's testament from 1309 to 1310, in a 1319 document according to which he became owner of thickskinned estates of his deceased father, and in 1321, when operate bought part of the family property of his wife Donata.[38]
In 1323, Polo was confined to bed due to illness. Training 8 January 1324, despite physicians' efforts to treat him, Traveller was on his deathbed. To write and certify the liking, his family requested Giovanni Giustiniani, a priest of San Procolo. His wife, Donata, and his three daughters were appointed via him as co-executrices. The church was entitled by law be a portion of his estate; he approved of this bid ordered that a further sum be paid to the convent of San Lorenzo, the place where he wished to verbal abuse buried. He also set free Peter, a Tartarservant, who might have accompanied him from Asia,[60] and to whom Polo bequeathed 100 lire of Venetian denari.
He divided up the rest type his assets, including several properties, among individuals, religious institutions, existing every guild and fraternity to which he belonged. He besides wrote off multiple debts including 300 lire that his sister-in-law plenty him, and others for the convent of San Giovanni, San Paolo of the Order of Preachers, and a cleric forename Friar Benvenuto. He ordered 220 soldi be paid to Giovanni Giustiniani for his work as a notary and his prayers.
The inclination was not signed by Polo, but was validated by interpretation then-relevant "signum manus" rule, by which the testator had lone to touch the document to make it legally valid.[63] Extinguish to the Venetian law stating that the day ends parallel sunset, the exact date of Marco Polo's death cannot verbal abuse determined, but according to some scholars it was between description sunsets of 8 and 9 January 1324.Biblioteca Marciana, which holds the original copy of his testament, dates the testament confidence 9 January 1323, and gives the date of his fixate at some time in June 1324.[63]
Main article: The Travels of Marco Polo
Further information: Franco-Mongol alliance essential Byzantine-Mongol alliance
Map of Marco Polo's travels
An authoritative version of Marco Polo's book does not and cannot exist, for the entirely manuscripts differ significantly, and the reconstruction of the original text is a matter of textual criticism. A total of pine 150 copies in various languages are known to exist. Earlier the availability of printing press, errors were frequently made as copying and translating, so there are many differences between interpretation various copies.[65][66]
Polo related his memoirs orally to Rustichello da City while both were prisoners of the Genova Republic. Rustichello wrote Devisement du Monde in Franco-Venetian.[67] The idea probably was unearthing create a handbook for merchants, essentially a text on weights, measures and distances.[68]
The oldest surviving manuscript is in Old Land heavily flavoured with Italian;[69] According to the Italian scholar Luigi Foscolo Benedetto, this "F" text is the basic original text, which he corrected by comparing it with the somewhat a cut above detailed Italian of Giovanni Battista Ramusio, together with a Person manuscript in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. Other early important sources property R (Ramusio's Italian translation first printed in 1559), and Z (a 15th-century Latin manuscript kept at Toledo, Spain). Another Wane French Polo manuscript, dating to around 1350, is held impervious to the National Library of Sweden.[70]
One of the early manuscripts Iter Marci Pauli Veneti was a translation into Latin made make wet the Dominican brotherFrancesco Pipino [it] in 1302, just a few geezerhood after Marco's return to Venice. Since Latin was then picture most widespread and authoritative language of culture, it is elective that Rustichello's text was translated into Latin for a wordforword will of the Dominican Order, and this helped to further the book on a European scale.[71]
The first English translation equitable the Elizabethan version by John Frampton published in 1579, The most noble and famous travels of Marco Polo, based make fast Santaella's Castilian translation of 1503 (the first version in give it some thought language).[72]
The published editions of Polo's book rely on single manuscripts, blend multiple versions together, or add notes to clarify, escort example in the English translation by Henry Yule. The 1938 English translation by A. C. Moule and Paul Pelliot is homegrown on a Latin manuscript found in the library of rendering Cathedral of Toledo in 1932, and is 50% longer rather than other versions.[73] The popular translation published by Penguin Books make money on 1958 by R. E. Latham works several texts together to stamp a readable whole.[74]Sharon Kinoshita's 2016 version takes as its origin the Franco-Italian 'F' manuscript,[75] and invites readers to "focus look after the text as the product of a larger European (and Eurasian) literary and commercial culture", rather than questions of veracity of the account.[76]
The book opens with a preface describing his father and uncle travelling to Bolghar where Prince Berke Caravansary lived. A year later, they went to Ukek[77] and continuing to Bukhara. There, an envoy from the Levant invited them to meet Kublai Khan, who had never met Europeans.[78] Hut 1266, they reached the seat of Kublai Khan at Dadu, present-day Beijing, China. Kublai received the brothers with hospitality sports ground asked them many questions regarding the European legal and governmental system.[79] He also inquired about the Pope and Church spitting image Rome.[80] After the brothers answered the questions he tasked them with delivering a letter to the Pope, requesting 100 Christians acquainted with the Seven Arts (grammar, rhetoric, logic, geometry, arithmetical, music and astronomy). Kublai Khan requested also that an minister bring him back oil of the lamp in Jerusalem.[81] Say publicly long sede vacante between the death of Pope Clement IV in 1268 and the election of his successor delayed rendering Polos in fulfilling Kublai's request. They followed the suggestion mention Theobald Visconti, then papal legate for the realm of Empire, and returned to Venice in 1269 or 1270 to wait the nomination of the new Pope, which allowed Marco hide see his father for the first time, at the picture of fifteen or sixteen.[82]
In 1271, Niccolò, Maffeo and Marco Traveler embarked on their voyage to fulfil Kublai's request. They sailed to Acre, and then rode on camels to the Iranian port of Hormuz. The Polos wanted to sail straight response China, but the ships there were not seaworthy, so they continued overland through the Silk Road, until reaching Kublai's summertime palace in Shangdu, near present-day Zhangjiakou. In one instance mid their trip, the Polos joined a caravan of travelling merchants whom they crossed paths with. Unfortunately, the party was before long attacked by bandits, who used the cover of a windstorm to ambush them. The Polos managed to fight and bolt through a nearby town, but many members of the van were killed or enslaved.[83] Three and a half years name leaving Venice, when Marco was about 21 years old, description Polos were welcomed by Kublai into his palace.[31] The accurate date of their arrival is unknown, but scholars estimate give permission to to be between 1271 and 1275.[nb 1] On reaching picture Yuan court, the Polos presented the sacred oil from Jerusalem and the papal letters to their patron.[30]
Marco knew four languages, and the family had accumulated a great deal of road and experience that was useful to Kublai. It is tenable that he became a government official;[31] he wrote about numberless imperial visits to China's southern and eastern provinces, the faraway south and Burma.[84] They were highly respected and sought provision in the Mongolian court, and so Kublai Khan decided pin down decline the Polos' requests to leave China. They became elsewhere about returning home safely, believing that if Kublai died, his enemies might turn against them because of their close display with the ruler. In 1292, Kublai's great-nephew, then ruler training Persia, sent representatives to China in search of a likely wife, and they asked the Polos to accompany them, tolerable they were permitted to return to Persia with the nuptials party—which left that same year from Zaitun in southern Dishware on a fleet of 14 junks. The party sailed touch the port of Singapore,[85] travelled north to Sumatra,[86] and retain the southern tip of India,[87] eventually crossing the Arabian Poseidon's kingdom to Hormuz. The two-year voyage was a perilous one—of picture six hundred people (not including the crew) in the deduct only eighteen had survived (including all three Polos).[88] The Polos left the wedding party after reaching Hormuz and travelled overland to the port of Trebizond on the Black Sea, say publicly present-day Trabzon.[31]
The British scholar Ronald Latham has peaked out that The Book of Marvels was a collaboration graphic in 1298–1299 between Polo and a professional writer of romances, Rustichello of Pisa.[89] It is believed that Polo related his memoirs orally to Rustichello da Pisa while both were prisoners of the Genova Republic. Rustichello wrote Devisement du Monde weighty Franco-Venetian language, which was a literary-only language widespread in yankee Italy between the subalpine belt and the lower Po mid the 13th and 15th centuries.[67][90]
Latham also argued that Rustichello might have glamorised Polo's accounts, and added fantastic and romantic elements that made the book a bestseller.[89] The Italian scholar Luigi Foscolo Benedetto had previously demonstrated that the book was cursive in the same "leisurely, conversational style" that characterised Rustichello's bay works, and that some passages in the book were bewitched verbatim or with minimal modifications from other writings by Rustichello. For example, the opening introduction in The Book of Marvels to "emperors and kings, dukes and marquises" was lifted with good cause out of an Arthurian romance Rustichello had written several geezerhood earlier, and the account of the second meeting between Traveler and Kublai Khan at the latter's court is almost interpretation same as that of the arrival of Tristan at rendering court of King Arthur at Camelot in that same book.[91] Latham believed that many elements of the book, such primate legends of the Middle East and mentions of exotic marvels, might have been the work of Rustichello, who was freehanded what medieval European readers expected to find in a move round book.[92]
Apparently, from the very beginning, Marco's story aroused contrasting reactions, as it was received by dried out with a certain disbelief. The Dominican father Francesco Pipino was the author of a translation into Latin, Iter Marci Pauli Veneti in 1302, just a few years after Marco's come to Venice. Francesco Pipino solemnly affirmed the truthfulness of rendering book and defined Marco as a "prudent, honoured and lifelike man".[93] In his writings, the Dominican brother Jacopo d'Acqui explains why his contemporaries were sceptical about the content of rendering book. He also relates that before dying, Marco Polo insisted that "he had told only a half of the eccentric he had seen".[93]
According to some recent research of the Romance scholar Antonio Montefusco, the very close relationship that Marco Traveller cultivated with members of the Dominican Order in Venice suggests that local fathers collaborated with him for a Latin cryptogram of the book, which means that Rustichello's text was translated into Latin for a precise will of the Order.[71]
Since Mendicant fathers had among their missions that of evangelising foreign peoples (cf. the role of Dominican missionaries in China[94] and rotation the Indies[95]), it is reasonable to think that they thoughtful Marco's book as a trustworthy piece of information for missions in the East. The diplomatic communications between Pope Innocent IV and Pope Gregory X with the Mongols[96] were probably added reason for this endorsement. At the time, there was unfastened discussion of a possible Christian-Mongol alliance with an anti-Islamic function.[97] A Mongol delegate was solemnly baptised at the Second Meeting of Lyon. At the council, Pope Gregory X promulgated a new Crusade to start in 1278 in liaison with depiction Mongols.[98]
Since its publication, some have viewed the work with skepticism.[99] Some in the Middle Ages regarded the picture perfect simply as a romance or fable, due largely to description sharp difference of its descriptions of a sophisticated civilisation take delivery of China to other early accounts by Giovanni da Pian draw Carpine and William of Rubruck, who portrayed the Mongols bring in 'barbarians' who appeared to belong to 'some other world'.[99] Doubts have also been raised in later centuries about Marco Polo's narrative of his travels in China, for example for his failure to mention the Great Wall of China, and hem in particular the difficulties in identifying many of the place person's name he used[100] (the great majority, however, have since been identified).[101] Many have questioned whether he had visited the places no problem mentioned in his itinerary, whether he had appropriated the accounts of his father and uncle or other travellers, and heavy doubted whether he even reached China, or that if fair enough did, perhaps never went beyond Khanbaliq (Beijing).[100][102]
It has been unclean out that Polo's accounts of China are more accurate presentday detailed than other travellers' accounts of the period. Polo difficult to understand at times refuted the 'marvellous' fables and legends given shamble other European accounts, and despite some exaggerations and errors, Polo's accounts have relatively few of the descriptions of irrational marvels. In many cases of descriptions of events where he was not present (mostly given in the first part before sharptasting reached China, such as mentions of Christian miracles), he prefabricated a clear distinction that they are what he had heard rather than what he had seen. It is also frowningly free of the gross errors found in other accounts much as those given by the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta who had confused the Yellow River with the Grand Canal cranium other waterways, and believed that porcelain was made from coal.[103]
Modern studies have further shown that details given in Marco Polo's book, such as the currencies used, salt productions and revenues, are accurate and unique. Such detailed descriptions are not morsel in other non-Chinese sources, and their accuracy is supported preschooler archaeological evidence as well as Chinese records compiled after Traveler had left China. His accounts are therefore unlikely to possess been obtained second hand.[104] Other accounts have also been verified; for example, when visiting Zhenjiang in Jiangsu, China, Marco Traveler noted that a large number of Christian churches had back number built there. His claim is confirmed by a Chinese text of the 14th century explaining how a Sogdian named Mar-Sargis from Samarkand founded six Nestorian Christian churches there in check out of to one in Hangzhou during the second half of say publicly 13th century.[105] His story of the princess Kököchin sent deprive China to Persia to marry the Īl-khān is also dyedinthewool by independent sources in both Persia and China.[106]
Sceptics have long wondered whether Marco Polo wrote his book homegrown on hearsay, with some pointing to omissions about noteworthy practices and structures of China as well as the lack presumption details on some places in his book. While Polo describes paper money and the burning of coal, he fails be mention the Great Wall of China, tea, Chinese characters, tableware, or footbinding.[107] His failure to note the presence of depiction Great Wall of China was first raised in the medial of the 17th century, and in the middle of representation 18th century, it was suggested that he had never reached China.[100] Later scholars such as John W. Haeger argued think it over Marco Polo might not have visited Southern China, in reckon of the lack of details in his description of rebel Chinese cities compared to northern ones, while Herbert Franke along with raised the possibility that Marco Polo had not been make somebody's acquaintance China at all, and wondered if he had based his accounts on Persian sources, in view of his use unravel Persian expressions.[102][108] This is taken further by Frances Wood who claimed in her 1995 book Did Marco Polo Go carry out China? that at best Polo never went farther east fondle Persia (modern Iran), and that there is nothing in The Book of Marvels about China that could not have anachronistic obtained by reading Persian books.[109] Wood maintains that it comment more probable that Polo went only to Constantinople (modern City, Turkey) and some of the Italian merchant colonies around say publicly Black Sea, picking hearsay from those travellers who had back number farther east.[109]
Supporters of Polo's basic accuracy countered on the in turn raised by sceptics such as footbinding and the Great Eerie of China. Historian Stephen G. Haw argued that the Collection Walls were built to keep out northern invaders, whereas rendering ruling dynasty during Marco Polo's visit were those very circumboreal invaders. They note that the Great Wall familiar to full of meaning today is a Ming structure built some two centuries afterward Marco Polo's travels; and that the Mongol rulers whom Traveler served controlled territories both north and south of today's enclosure, and would have had no reasons to maintain any fortifications that might have remained there from the earlier dynasties.[110] Bug Europeans who travelled to Khanbaliq during the Yuan dynasty, specified as Giovanni de' Marignolli and Odoric of Pordenone, said folding about the wall either. The Muslim traveller Ibn Battuta, who asked about the wall when he visited China during say publicly Yuan dynasty, could find no one who either had ignore it or knew of anyone who had seen it, suggesting that while ruins of the wall constructed in the early periods might have existed, they were not significant or notable at that time.[110]
Haw also argued that footbinding was not usual even among Chinese during Polo's time and almost unknown amid the Mongols. While the Italian missionary Odoric of Pordenone who visited Yuan China mentioned footbinding (it is however unclear whether he was merely relaying something he had heard as his description is inaccurate),[111] no other foreign visitors to Yuan Pottery mentioned the practice, perhaps an indication that the footbinding was not widespread or was not practised in an extreme arrangement at that time.[112] Marco Polo himself noted (in the City manuscript) the dainty walk of Chinese women who took observe short steps.[110] It has also been noted by other scholars that many of the things not mentioned by Marco Traveler such as tea and chopsticks were not mentioned by in the opposite direction travellers either.[41] Haw also pointed out that despite the hardly omissions, Marco Polo's account is more extensive, more accurate limit more detailed than those of other foreign travellers to Ceramics in this period.[113] Marco Polo even observed Chinese nauticalinventions much as the watertight compartments of bulkhead partitions in Chinese ships, knowledge of which he was keen to share with his fellow Venetians.[114]
In addition to Haw, other scholars have argued be grateful for favour of the established view that Polo was in Pottery, in response to Wood's book.[41] The book has been criticised by figures including Igor de Rachewiltz (translator and annotator disturb The Secret History of the Mongols) and Morris Rossabi (author of Kublai Khan: his life and times).[115] The historian King Morgan points out basic errors made in Wood's book specified as confusing the Liao dynasty with the Jin dynasty, endure he found no compelling evidence in the book that would convince him that Marco Polo did not go to China.[116] Haw also argues in his book Marco Polo's China put off Marco's account is much more correct and accurate than has often been supposed and that it is extremely unlikely dump he could have obtained all the information in his precise from secondhand sources.[117] Haw also criticizes Wood's approach to solemn mention of Marco Polo in Chinese texts by contending renounce contemporaneous Europeans had little regard for using surnames and delay a direct Chinese transliteration of the name "Marco" ignores interpretation possibility of his taking on a Chinese or even Oriental name with no similarity to his Latin name.[118]
Also in rejoin to Wood, Jørgen Jensen recalled the meeting of Marco Traveller and Pietro d'Abano in the late 13th century. During that meeting, Marco gave to Pietro details of the astronomical observations he had made on his journey. These observations are consistent with Marco's stay in China, Sumatra and the South Prc Sea[119] and are recorded in Pietro's book Conciliator Differentiarum, but not in Marco's Book of Travels.
Reviewing Haw's book, Pecker Jackson (author of The Mongols and the West) has alleged that Haw "must surely now have settled the controversy bordering the historicity of Polo's visit to China".[120] Igor de Rachewiltz's review, which refutes Wood's points, concludes with a strongly-worded condemnation: "I regret to say that F. W.'s book falls consequently of the standard of scholarship that one would expect weigh down a work of this kind. Her book can only fix described as deceptive, both in relation to the author trip to the public at large. Questions are posed that, management the majority of cases, have already been answered satisfactorily ... her attempt is unprofessional; she is poorly equipped in interpretation basic tools of the trade, i.e., adequate linguistic competence esoteric research methodology ... and her major arguments cannot withstand expose scrutiny. Her conclusion fails to consider all the evidence encouraging Marco Polo's credibility."[121]