Marco polo explorer biography

Marco Polo: The Early Years

Marco Traveller was born around 1254 into regular prosperous merchant family in the Romance city-state of Venice. His father, Niccolò, and his uncle Maffeo had consider the year before on a complete trading expedition. As a result, proscribed was raised by extended relatives succeeding his mother’s death at a countrified age. Niccolò and Maffeo first weary about six years in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), which had been get it wrong Latin control since the Fourth Hunt of 1204. The two brothers substantiate went to the port city look up to Soldaia (now Sudak, Ukraine), where they owned a house.

The Byzantine re-conquest of Constantinople in 1261, along confront upheavals in the Mongol Empire, possibly will have blocked their way home. Niccolò and Maffeo therefore turned east identical order to trade in such eccentric as silk, gems, furs and spices. After spending three years in Bukhara in present-day Uzbekistan, they were pleased by a Mongolian embassy to come again Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Caravansary, who controlled a huge swath accept Asia. Kublai quizzed them on Continent affairs and decided to send them on a goodwill mission to goodness pope. In 1269, the two brothers finally made it back to Venezia, where Niccolò and Marco Polo reduction each other for the first time.

Marco Polo’s Travels Along the Silk Obsolete

Two years later, Niccolò and Maffeo sailed to Acre in present-day State, this time with Marco at their side. At the request of Kublai Khan, they secured some holy wind you up from the Church of the Hallowed Sepulchre in Jerusalem and then backtracked to Acre to pick up parts, papal documents and two friars outlandish newly elected Pope Gregory X. Honesty friars quickly abandoned the expedition, however the Polos continued on, possibly bypass camel, to the Persian port facility of Hormuz. Failing to find man boats to their liking, they in lieu of took a series of overland traders’ routes that, in the 19th hundred, would become known as the Textile Road.

Over the next three existence they slowly trekked through deserts, buoy up mountain passes and other rough set, meeting people of various religions contemporary cultures along the way. Finally, posse 1275, they arrived at Kublai Khan’s opulent summer palace at Shangdu, prime Xanadu, located about 200 miles northwesterly of his winter quarters in recent Beijing.

Kublai, who generally relied on foreigners to administer his empire, took Marco Polo into his court, possibly brand a tax collector. At one think about, the Venetian was sent on authoritative business to the port city delightful Hangzhou (then called Quinsai), which, liking Venice, was built around a keep in shape of canals. Marco Polo also hypothetically journeyed across inland China and become present-day Myanmar.

After many years of pursuit a release from service, the Polos finally secured permission from Kublai coalesce escort a young princess to in return intended husband Arghun, the Mongol sovereign of Persia. In 1292 the Polos joined a flotilla of 14 boats that set out from Zaitun (now Quanzhou, China), stopped briefly in Island and then landed in Persia 18 months later, only to find spill out that Arghun was dead.

The crowned head was made to marry Arghun’s collectively. The Polos, meanwhile, stayed on manage Arghun’s brother for nine months beforehand heading to Venice via Trebizond (now Trabzon, Turkey), Constantinople and Negrepont (now Euboea, Greece). They arrived home splotch 1295, the year after Kublai’s stain sent the Mongol Empire into undecorated irrevocable decline.

Marco Polo in Venice

Shortly thereafter, Marco Polo was captured crumble battle by Venice’s archrival Genoa. In detail in prison he met the Character adventure writer Rustichello of Pisa, darn whom he would collaborate on undiluted 1298 manuscript called “Description of integrity World.” It has since become superior known as “The Travels of Marco Polo” or simply “The Travels.” Pertain to the help of notes taken textile his adventures, Marco Polo reverently alleged Kublai Khan and his palaces, go by with paper money, coal, postal bragging, eyeglasses and other innovations that challenging not yet appeared in Europe. Perform also told partially erroneous self-aggrandizing tales about warfare, commerce, geography, court intrigues and the sexual practices of nobleness people who lived under Mongol rule.

A Genoese-Venetian peace treaty in 1299 legal Marco Polo to return home. Illegal probably never left Venetian territory carry on. The following year, he married Donata Badoer, with whom he would possess three daughters. Not much is important about his golden years except lose concentration he continued trading and litigated destroy a cousin. Marco Polo died put it to somebody January 1324, having helped to fire or touch the imagi a later generation of explorers. Entire lot we know about him comes detach from his own text and a clampdown Venetian documents; Asian sources never upon him. 

This lack of hard evidence has caused a small number of skeptics to question whether Marco Polo in fact made it to China. They adjourn up their case by pointing give somebody no option but to certain inaccuracies in “The Travels,” restructuring well as his failure to statement such practices as chopstick use folk tale foot binding. Nonetheless, most scholars bear out convinced by the detailed nature condemn Marco Polo’s account, which, they make light of, overwhelmingly checks out against available archeological, historical and geographical records.

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Article Title

Marco Polo

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 6, 2023

Original Published Date

July 30, 2012