Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
The year 1998 marks the seven-hundredth anniversary of the initial composition of the book associated with Marco Polo, Le devisament dou monde. As the first European to claim that he had been to China and back (not to mention that he had travelled extensively elsewhere in Asia), Polo has become a household name. He has been credited with the introduction of noodles into Italy and of spaghetti into China. With perhaps greater warrant, he has been cited as an authority onȔinter aliaȔthe capital of the Mongol Great Khan Qubilai, on the Mongol postal relay system, on the trade in horses across the Arabian Sea, and on political conditions on the north-west frontier of India in the mid thirteenth century. The Marco Polo bibliography published in 1986 contained over 2,300 items in European languages alone.
2 Watanabe, Hiroshi (comp.), Marco Polo bibliography 1477–1983 (Tokyo, 1986).Google Scholar
3 Gosman, Martin, ‘Marco Polo's voyages: the conflict between confirmation and observation’, in Zweder von, Martels (ed.), Travel fact and travel fiction: studies on fiction, literary tradition, scholarly discovery and observation in travel writing (Leiden, 1994), 72–84 (see especially pp. 76–7, 83–4)Google Scholar. For earlier views of the Mongols, see Bezzola, Gian Andri, Die Mongolen in abendlandischer Sicht: ein Beitrag zur Frage der Völkerbegegnungen (1220–1270) (Berne and Munich, 1974)Google Scholar; Schmieder, Felicitas, Europa und die Fremden: die Mongolen im Urteil des Abendlandes vom 13. bis in das 15. Jahrhundert (Beitrăge zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters, 16, Sigmaringen, 1994)Google Scholar. Similarly, the delay in the West's absorption of the new information from the ‘sophisticated’ East is compared with the easy assimilation of the material on the relatively ‘uncivilized’ Canary islanders: Hyde, J. K, ‘Real and imaginary journeys in the later Middle Ages’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, LXV, 1982, 138–40.Google Scholar
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5 Wood, Frances, Did Marco Polo go to China? (London, 1995): see especially her ‘Conclusions’ (pp. 140’51).Google Scholar
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7 For example, by Haeger, John W, ‘Marco Polo in China? Problems with internal evidence’, Bulletin of Sung-Yuan Studies, XIV, 1978, 22–30.Google Scholar
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9 Olschki, Leonardo, Marco Polo's Asia, (tr.) Scott, J. A (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1960)Google Scholar, does a good job of placing the Polos' journeys in historical context, though the book is marred by a tendency to be too uncritical and at times excessively eulogistic.
10 Morgan, David, The Mongols (Oxford, 1986), 118–19, 156–8.Google Scholar
11 For what follows, see generally Phillips, chs. 5–7.
12 Petech, Luciano, ‘Les marchands italiens dans l'empire mongol’, Journal Asiatique, CCL, 1962 549–74.Google Scholar
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16 ibid., 9, 139. For an example of a seemingly abridged passage, on ‘Caragian’, see the composite translation by M[oule, [A. C] and Paul], P[elliot, The description of the world,] I, [(London, 1938, 2 vols; it is an edition of the Z version)], 278, n.3: all future references are to this translation.Google Scholar
17 The most recent edition of this text is by Ruggieri, Ruggiero M (ed.), Il Milione (Florence, 1986).Google Scholar
18 See, for instance, the plea of Pizzorusso, Valeria Bertolucci, ‘À propos de Marco Polo et de son livre: quelques suggestions de travail’, in Essor et fortune de la Chanson de geste dans I'Europe et l'Orient latin: Actes du ixe Congrès international de la Société Rencesvals pour l'étude des épopées romanes. Padoue-Venise, 29 août-4 septembre 1982, II, (Modena, 1984), 797.Google Scholar
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26 MP, I, 28, 556 (and cf. 555, n.l).
27 Critchley, 21. This detail is not found in Jacopo d'Acqui, as Wood claims (pp. 42, 142).
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81 Burkhard Roberg, ‘Die Tartaren auf dem 2. Konzil von Lyon (1274)’, Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum, v (1973), 288, n. 268, suggests that Gregory wrote to the Īl-khān Abaqa, at least, from the Holy Land prior to his departure for Italy, in order to notify him of his plans to convene the council.
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