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The first trip East in On the trail of Marco Polo
The first trip East in On the trail of Marco Polo
The brothers set out from Constantinople (modern Istanbul) in 1260, and sailed across the Black Sea to Soldaia in the Crimea. Today the city is called Sudak and is in the Ukraine. Soldaia was a largely Greek city at that time and routinely traded with various Mediterranean ports.
It had belonged to the Greek Empire, and had a considerable Greek population. After the Frank conquest of 1204 it apparently fell to Trebizond.
You can still take a boat from Istanbul to Trebizond (now called Trabzon) in eastern Turkey; one variant of the Istanbul to New Delhi over land itinerary uses this. There might also be boats to Sudak or nearby Sevastopol.
It was taken by the Mongols in 1223... about the middle of the century, the Venetians established a factory there... Ibn Batuta... counts Sudak as one of the four great ports of the World.
Ibn Batuta was a Tunisian who set out East in 1325 and also wrote of his travels.
The Genoese got Soldaia in 1365 and built strong defences, still to be seen.
In this period the great trading cities of Genoa, Venice and Pisa dominated the Mediterranean world. One of the tourist sights of modern Sudak is the ruins of a Genoese fortress.
Where the brothers were more daring than most other traders was continuing beyond Soldaia, deeper into Mongol territory. They went into the Caucasus to Sarai, capital of this part of the Mongol empire, near modern Astrakhan, Russia. Then a war between Mongol factions broke out, preventing a return West.
Unable to go West, the brothers headed East to the great city of Bokhara, which like everything else in Central Asia had been conquered by the Mongols a generation earlier.
After they had passed the desert, they arrived at a very great and noble city called BOCARA... The city is the best in all Persia.
... up till the conquest by Chinghiz, Bokhara, Samarkand, Balkh, etc., were considered to belong to Persia.
"Chinghiz" is Genghis Khan.
Today, Bokhara and Samarkand are cities in Uzbekistan, and Balkh is a town with some interesting ruins in Northern Afghanistan. The Persian empire was once much larger than modern Iran, including much of what we now call Central Asia. The brothers lived in Bokhara for three years and became fluent in Persian.
In Bokhara, they learned that the Great Khan, Kublai- grandson of Genghis and, at least in theory, overlord of all Mongols- had never met a European and had expressed curiosity about and goodwill toward them. So they went on, traveling via Samarkand, Kashgar, Turfan and Hami (the Northern branch of the Silk Road) to his summer capital in Xanadu somewhat Northwest of modern Beijing.
The Khan received them warmly and sent them back West with letters for the Pope, expressions of friendship and requests for missionaries and scholars.
The Brothers arrived at Acre in... 1269, and found that no Pope existed, for Clement IV was dead... and no new election had taken place. So they went home to Venice to see how things stood there after their absence of so many years.
The wife of Nicolo was no longer among the living, but he found his son Marco a fine lad of fifteen.
On the second trip, the brothers brought young Marco along.
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On the trail of Marco Polo Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.