Pereira-McKenzie: Marco Polo and the Mongolian Emperor

Introduction:

My project will focus on Marco Polo’s The Diversity of the World, as it is listed in The Norton World Anthology, Volume B.  The Norton text contains excerpts from the prologue of Marco Polo’s tales, which have been documented by Rustichello of Pisa, with whom Polo shared a jail cell. The overall sampling describes how Marco Polo arrives in China and becomes an ambassador and close friend to Kublai Khan of the Mongol Empire. It also mentions some of his embassies for the Khan, specifically in south Asia. Polo’s time serving the Mongols is very important, simply because he was there so long: “Know in truth that my Lord Marc remained with the Great Khan a good seventeen years; and in all this time he never stopped going on embassies.” (Norton 924: 18-20). Since Marco Polo was known for his travels and journeys, 17 years of such exploits should not go unnoticed.

I will be analyzing Marco Polo’s journey with his father and uncle, to China and into some of the islands of South-Asia: Lesser Java and Seilan. His route will be projected onto the 12th century Al-Idrisi world map, one of the most accurate world maps of the middle ages, as was mentioned in-lecture. This map is orginally oriented with South at the top, but has been flipped for this project, so it is more easily comparable with a modern map. The Norton text does not always describe whether a journey was by horse, foot, ship, or otherwise, but I think it is safe to assume a mixture of all methods. My project includes seven points of interest, each one outlined within the Neatline exhibit.

 

Space:

Although Rustichello is the narrator of The Diversity of The World, I find it very easy to slip into the idea that Marco Polo himself is the one directly relating his tales straight to the reader. Within his text, he describes spaces using physical and social descriptors. He goes into great detail when describing cultural practices, food preparation, animals, and lands. This is probably one of the reasons Kublai Khan considered him as such a valuable asset for embassies of the empire.These details come together to form an image in the reader’s mind of the place that Polo is visiting, as well as the sensations and activities he experiences there. In this way we can exist in the space as if we are actually there. Consider Polo’s description of palm wine preparation, or the cliffs of Seilan (Ceylon): the detail he provides conjures images of slow and methodical, resourceful people, and of looming, windswept, unscalable terrain rather than a simple bucket of tree sap and a large rock outcrop.

Marco Polo on Palm Wine:

“They have no wine, except as I’ll describe to you. Know in truth that they have a kind of tree; they cut it’s branches and put a large pot under the remaining stump; and I tell you that in a day and a night it fills up with wine that is very good to drink. The trees look like small date trees and have four branches; lop it off, and get the wine I’ve described to you, which is very good. I’ll tell you something else as well: when this branch no longer give wine, they water the foot of the trees; and it doesn’t take long for the tree to give wine, which I tell you, is white and red.”

-Norton 926: 7-14

Polo/Rustichello often uses the phrase “I tell you” when describing a situation. This phrase adds a personal touch to the tale and engages the reader emotionally with the story. When considering such a vast amount of space that was travelled within Marco Polo’s tales, these detailed descriptions of the lands and the people who occupy them help to raise and cement these spaces as tangible in the reader’s mind. The overall use of space in the narrative is well thought out, which feels strange to say when describing what is in many sense a travel journal.

 

Digital Map:

The digital map in my project acts just as Rustichello of Pisa once did: it logs Marco Polo’s journeys and travels. However, the digital map is able to provide visual representation as well as text, which greatly enhances the ability of the original text to educate the reader. From Italy to Clemeinfu, to Lesser Java and Seilan; Polo’s experiences have been plotted onto the Al-Idrisi world map, and accompanied by images and items that enable to reader to more accurately place themself into the footsteps of the great traveller.

Neatline as a system is an excellent tool to use for this project. Plotting points and lines, and embedding Omeka items and descriptions are all simple tasks, which make it easier to focus on the quality of the content itself, rather than worrying about learning a complex mapping system.

When creating the digital map, I had a somewhat difficult time deciding on how exactly to plot the actual journey between points of interest. The text does not always explicitly describe how Marco Polo travelled between areas, so I do not know the path of his journey. There are some cases where it is explained: “My lords Nicolau and Mafeu, and Marc, Nicolau’s son, set out on the road and rode, winter and summer, until they came to the Great Khan, who was then in a large and very rich city called Clemeinfu.” -Norton 923: 1-3. In this excerpt it is clear that they are travelling by horseback, but still it does not divulge which road they took, or what they encountered along their season-spanning journey. For reasons like this, I simply used a straight line to mark the path, symbolizing that the text states he is in one location, then suddenly in another, without detailing the process. I also had an issue in adding more than one Omeka item, or at least additional images to a feature on the map. For example, I would have liked to have my Aloewood and Treasure record to have been located alongside my Island of Lesser Java record, but to add the Omeka item of agarwood, I needed to create another record.

Overall I enjoyed creating the exhibit, and I had a lot of fun translating and interpreting Al-Idrisi’s world map from the Book of Roger. I was very interested to find that the Arabic used on the map is seemingly not the same as modern written Arabic, although it is doubtful that certain spellings were widespread in the middle ages (it was most likely sounded-out, than a defined spelling). It was also surprising to find German captions written on the map. In my exhibit, the viewer moves through real world spaces that have been retold through the lens of a 13th century adventurer. I am excited to take a look at other Neatline exhibits that center on fictional tales and locations, like that of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The purpose of this exhibit is to help others better understand some of Marco Polo’s journeys during his time as an ambassador to Kublai Khan (which makes up more than half of his 30 year voyage in Asia). Seeing the narrated locations in a real-world setting with actual examples helps us see that these were real events and real people, not just an entertaining adventure novel.

 

Works Cited

 

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Marco Polo Marco Polo, Rustichello of Pisa. From The Norton Anthology: World Literature: 4th Edition, Volume B. New York: W.W. Norton and Co. 2018. Pp. 922-929.

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