Questions to ask Marco Polo

Marco Polo in brief

Marco Polo was born in Venice around 1254 into a family of merchants. His father Niccolò and uncle Maffeo had already travelled to the court of Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor of China, between about 1260 and 1269. In 1271 they set out again, taking Marco, then about 17. According to his book they reached Kublai's summer capital, Shangdu (the Xanadu of later poetry), around 1275, and Marco served the Khan on missions for about seventeen years.

Around 1291 the Polos left by sea, escorting a Mongol princess, Kököchin, to be married to the Mongol ruler of Persia. They reached Venice in 1295. In about 1298 Marco was captured in a war between Venice and Genoa and, in a Genoese prison, dictated his travels to a fellow prisoner, Rustichello da Pisa, a writer of romances. He married Donata Badoer, had three daughters, and died in Venice in January 1324. His will survives and frees a servant described as Peter the Tartar.

The book is the only witness, and it is a tricky one

Everything we know about the journey comes from his book, called in its early French form Le Devisement du monde (The Description of the World) and in Italy Il Milione. It is a description of places more than a diary, it was written down by a romance writer, and no original survives. About 150 manuscripts exist in several languages, and they differ: some include passages others leave out. Chinese records of the time do not name him.

That gives your interview a strong structure. Ask him to describe what he saw, then ask him the questions sceptics ask, and let the evidence decide. For a wax museum, set him in 1298 in the Genoese prison, dictating to Rustichello: he can look back on the whole journey. Our article did Marco Polo go to China sets out the debate in full.

Questions about Venice and the journey east

What the book says: the prologue tells how Kublai sent the elder Polos back with a request to the Pope for a hundred learned men and for oil from the lamp of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The return journey took about three and a half years, overland through Persia and Central Asia, across the Pamirs and the edge of the Gobi desert.

1. Why did your father and uncle take a 17-year-old boy on such a long and dangerous trip?
2. What did the family trade, and how did you plan to make money from the trip?
3. What did the Pope send back in answer to Kublai's request for a hundred learned men?
4. What was the hardest stretch of the road east?
5. How did merchants travel safely across the Mongol empire?

Questions about Kublai Khan's court

What the book says: Marco describes Kublai's palaces at Shangdu and at Khanbaliq (modern Beijing), his hunts, his feasts, and the relay stations of horses and riders that carried messages across the empire. He claims Kublai valued him as a careful observer who reported back on the places he was sent to.

1. What was Kublai Khan like as a person?
2. What languages did you speak at court? (He seems to have known Persian and Mongol, not Chinese.)
3. What exactly did you do for the Khan for seventeen years?
4. How did the relay stations carry messages so fast?
5. Why was Kublai reluctant to let you go home, and how did you finally leave?

Questions about what amazed him in China

What the book says: he was struck that the Khan's paper money, made from the bark of mulberry trees, was accepted everywhere in his lands. He describes black stones dug from mountains that burn like logs (coal), and calls the southern city of Kinsay, modern Hangzhou, the finest and noblest city in the world, with its lake, bridges and markets.

1. Why did paper money astonish a Venetian merchant?
2. What were the black stones that burn?
3. What made Kinsay finer than Venice, in your eyes?
4. What surprised you most in all your travels?
5. How did the Chinese people you met feel about being ruled by the Mongols?

Questions that test the book

The historian Frances Wood argued in Did Marco Polo Go to China? (1995) that he may have drawn on Persian merchants' accounts instead. She pointed to what the book leaves out: the Great Wall, tea, the binding of women's feet, chopsticks and Chinese writing. Others answer that much of the wall standing today was built later, under the Ming, and that Polo moved mainly among Mongols and foreigners. In Marco Polo Was in China (2013), Hans Ulrich Vogel showed that the book's details of currencies, salt production and taxes match Chinese sources closely. A Chinese document found in the 1940s also names the three envoys who escorted the princess Kököchin, matching the names in Polo's account.

1. Why does your book never mention the Great Wall, tea or chopsticks?
2. You say you helped build siege engines for the siege of Xiangyang, but that siege ended in 1273, before you arrived. How do you explain that?
3. Some manuscripts say you governed the city of Yangzhou for three years. Chinese records do not mention it. Did you?
4. How much did Rustichello add to your story?
5. Why does no Chinese record name you?

Most historians today think he did go, while agreeing that the book exaggerates his importance. Present it that way.

Sample answers from his book

Question: What did kings in India look like? On a king of southern India, he reported:

Question: What was the strangest thing about money in China? A sourced answer, in paraphrase: he marvelled that the Khan had money made from the bark of mulberry trees, printed and stamped, and that everyone in his lands had to accept it.

Question: Which was the greatest city you saw? A sourced answer, in paraphrase: he called Kinsay (Hangzhou) the finest and noblest city in the world.

What Marco Polo could not know

• Christopher Columbus, who read a Latin edition of his book and wrote notes in its margins; that copy is kept in Seville.
• The term “Silk Road”, invented by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen in 1877.
• The Ming dynasty, which replaced the Mongols in China in 1368.
• The story that he brought pasta from China to Italy. It is a modern legend with no basis in his book, and pasta was known in Italy before he returned.

Slavery is a fair question too. Slaves were traded in Venice and in the Mongol world, and his own will frees a servant called Peter the Tartar.

Where to read his book

Project Gutenberg has the classic two-volume English translation by Henry Yule, revised by Henri Cordier, with very detailed notes. Wikisource has the same translation and others. For an easy modern read, Ronald Latham's Penguin translation (1958) is in most libraries. If you are comparing travellers, read Ibn Battuta's account alongside it.

Yuga's Marco Polo is an AI recreation built from his book and the record, so you can practise these questions by voice, including the sceptical ones. It is not Marco Polo and can be wrong; cite the book and historians in your project. You can also talk to Ibn Battuta and compare the two in Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta compared, or see the greatest explorers in history.