Primary Source Analysis: Marco Polo - Essay Example

?Primary Source Analysis: Marco Polo Travel writings have never been innocent in their implications about the described territories. Indeed, map creation and description is a perfect allegory for conquest: geography establishes and assesses borders, securing them materially and spiritually1. The conquests of Middle Ages often found their reason (or justification) in religious dictates. Thus, Christian travellers often referred to the Muslim territories as to rich and dangerous land inhabited by inferior “others”; Muslim authors did so about Christian territories as well. Both Muslim and Christian authors aimed to re-create the social and spiritual order to which they adhered on the foreign territories, the fact that determined the central and peripheral roles of the described cities and the tone of writing about their own culture. The entries about Baghdad (Baldach) in The Travels of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta’s Travels in Asia and Africa are the example of two ways of spiritual justification of the claims for land, protective in Ibn Batutta’s case and active, “conquering” in Marco Polo’s. Of course, Marco Polo himself is not to be blamed for the imperialist overtones of the text. Having been originally written in several languages (Franco-Italian and Venetian), it has undergone considerable changes later, when numerous translators and scriptors removed and added content freely2. Moreover, some of the editors of his Travels (such as Francesco Pipino) are notorious for “abuse of Muslims or adherents of other non-Christian religions”3. He might have plainly described the conquest of Baghdad by the “Tartar Prince” Alau in 1225 and a legend about the “grain of mustard” of Christian faith that moved the mountain4, while the story of a greedy caliph and other textual elements that praise Christianity and disapprove of the foreigners might have been added later. But even in this case, there were global historical trends in which Marco Polo was personally involved. He was the last Christian author to witness comparative religious freedom under the rule of Mongols after the fall of caliphate of Baghdad (which meant that different Christian and Buddhist groups had been feeling more or less comfortable in the land that after Marco Polo closed its borders to Christians)5. His family, like many Venetians, benefited from the crusades, namely, the Fourth Crusade re-directed to Constantinople6. Ibn Battuta’s circumstances also made this refined scholar the participant of the Muslim conquest, though merely in the field of literature. He specialized in law in the time when law experts (shurafa’ and sayyids) were needed to justify the borderline rulers’ rights for territories; he planned to travel to India, “the most dynamic borderline of Islam” of the time and was sympathetic to sufi, travelling sages who actually transmitted Islam in rural areas7. Both of the travel writers share the tendency to affirm their own cultural values. This affirmation is mediated by land. Ibn Battuta regrets the ruined state of “the Abode of Peace and Capital of Islam”: the western part and madrasas of Baghdad are all “in ruins” 8. Clearly, he mourns the loss of previous glory of the city when it had been the capital of literacy and enjoyed some freedom under the Turkish rule (when the Abbasid dynasty was actually in charge of the city)9. Marco Polo witnessed one of the attacks upon Baghdad; Ibn Battuta wrote his Travels many years after Hulagu Khan began to control the region in 1252, weakening Muslim rule and damaging the city10. Ibn Battuta emphasizes the integrity and organization of Baghdad baths: “In no town other than Baghdad have I seen all this elaborate arrangement, though some other towns approach it in this respect”11. Baghdad, the capital city, is the place where spiritual and material fortune is accumulated: “This pitch is brought from a spring between Kufa and Basra, from which it flows continually. It gathers at the sides of the spring like clay and is shovelled up and brought to Baghdad”12. This accumulation of goods contributes to gratification of the city, unlike the role it has in Marco Polo’s writing. The latter speaks about the khalif’s avarice, that prevented him from employing his treasures in the formation of an army for the defence of his capital against the powerful invasion with which it had long been threatened, gave orders for his being shut up in this same tower, without sustenance; and there, in the midst of his wealth, he soon finished a miserable existence13. Next Marco Polo’s passages tell the reader that such behavior is against Christian ethic; the caliph is, so to speak, punished for this behavior, which is notable in the light of subsequent passage about the victory of Christians. The story about the captive Jacobite community also connects the victory of Christianity with land, territory. The description of moving mountain is rich in psychological details showing the triumph of Christians and humiliation of Muslims: “and the earth at the same time trembled in a wonderful and alarming manner. The khalif and all those by whom he was surrounded, were struck with terror, and remained in a stare of stupefaction”14. This way, Christian God takes up the control over the foreign land and the minds of the foreigners. As it is Marco Polo for whom Baghdad is the foreign land, his writing is more, metaphorically speaking, invasive. It is remarkable that he describes the waterways to the sea (external transportation system) rather than internal water resources (on which Ibn Battuta concentrates). Ibn Battuta writes about bazaars (the markets, the places of goods exchange), while Marco Polo presents the overview of the city resources (silk, gold, and damask production and educational resources, the latter implicitly criticized: for a Christian, neither “Magomethan law” nor “magic… geomancy, and physiognomy”15 associated with it were favorable). Of course, Marco Polo is not a conqueror, just an admiring observer: “It is the noblest and most extensive city to be found in this part of the world”16. Still, his outside vision of Baghdad is remarkable when compared with the insider attitude of Ibn Battuta. In comparison with Ibn Battuta’s description of Baghdad, Marco Polo’s chapter VIII (Book 1) devoted to this city appears to represent European imperial views. While the personal attitude of the traveler seems neutral, even friendly, certain rhetorical elements of his writing look like a sort of symbolical conquest of the Muslim capital: its caliph is portrayed as a mean and sinful person, its material resources are depicted as connected with wicked scientific and administrative practices, and finally, the legend about the mustard grain with its quotes of Gospel grants the victory of Christianity. Ibn Battuta also affirms his spiritual values by means of geography, but in a different way: describing the insider perspective, mourning the destruction of the city, and glorifying its spirit. Bibliography Dunn, Ross E. “International Migrations of Literate Muslims in the Later Middle Period: The Case of Ibn Battuta.” In Golden Roads: Migration, Pilgrimage and Travel in Mediaeval and Modern Islam, edited by Ian Richard Netton, 62-71. Richmond: Curzon Press, 2005. Grady, James A. “Baghdad during the Middle Ages.” In Encyclopedia of World History: The Expanding World, 600 CE to 1450, vol. 2., edited by Marsha E. Ackermann, Michael Schroeder, Janice J. Terry, Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur, and Mark F. Whitters, 42. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2008. Haw, Stephen G. Marco Polo’s China: A Venetian in the Realm of Khubilai Khan. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Ibn Battuta. Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354. Translated and edited by H. A. R. Gibb. London: Broadway House, 1929. Available from Internet Medieval Source Book. The Travels of Marco Polo the Venetian. Translated and edited By William Marsden; re-edited by Thomas Wright. New York: Garden City, 1854. Available from http://archive.org/details/travelsmarcopol00pologoog. Tomasch, Sylvia. “Introduction: Medieval Geographical Desire.” In Text and Territory: Geographical Imagination in the European Middle Ages, edited by Sylvia Tomasch and Sealy Gilles, 1-12. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. Read More