Marco Polo: In the Court of Kublai Khan
A fifteen-year-old boy meets the father he barely knew — and is soon swept toward the richest court on Earth. Twenty-four years later, he returns home with tales so vast that Venice simply calls him 'Mister Millions'.
In 1269, a ship docked at Venice carrying two merchants long thought lost to distant trade routes: Niccolò Polo and his brother Maffeo. Niccolò had left Venice years earlier, before the birth of his son, and had spent the intervening years crossing Asia, even meeting the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan. Now, returning home, he discovered his wife had died, leaving behind a fifteen-year-old boy named Marco — the son he had never met.
Marco had grown up largely in the shadow of that absence, raised in part by an aunt and uncle, schooled not in Latin but in the practical arts of commerce: foreign currency, appraisal, the handling of cargo ships. It was an education built for a merchant's life, and it would prove essential. In 1271, at seventeen, Marco set off with his father and uncle on a journey that would consume nearly a quarter-century of his life.
They sailed first to Acre, then rode camels across Persian deserts to the port of Hormuz, tracing a path deep into the heart of Asia along what would later be called the Silk Road. Their destination was Cathay — the Mongol Empire under Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan dynasty in China. When they finally reached the royal court, the Khan was struck by young Marco's intelligence and humility. It was the beginning of an extraordinary seventeen-year residence in the emperor's domains.
Kublai Khan did not merely host the young Venetian — he put him to work. Marco was appointed as a foreign emissary, dispatched on diplomatic missions across the vast empire and into Southeast Asia. He travelled to lands corresponding to today's Myanmar, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam, absorbing details of geography, custom, and government that no European before him had recorded so thoroughly.
Around 1291, the Polos took on one final mission before departing Asia: escorting the Mongol princess Kököchin to Persia, where they arrived around 1293, roughly two years later. Their task complete, they turned west, travelling overland to Constantinople and then on to Venice — twenty-four years after they had left.
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