How do we account for “missing” parts of Marco Polo’s work. He does not, for example, even mention the Great Wall of China?
This omission is indeed curious, but chances are good that Marco Polo never saw it. The Wall was already in disrepair when the Mongols invaded in 1211, and they had probably let it decay even further in the half century since. The modern Great Wall was mostly the work of the Ching dynasty in the seventeenth century.
How long did Marco Polo and his father and uncle remain in China?
Tradition has it that they departed in 1292 and were back in Venice by 1295. Their relatives did not recognize them at first, and the stories they told were so wild and fantastic that many people chose not to believe them. Marco Polo had a rare opportunity, however. Fighting for his native city of Venice, he was taken prisoner in a naval battle and thrown into a Genoese prison. There, he met a cellmate, Rustichello, who was an accomplished writer.
That Marco Polo and Rustichello exaggerated in their book is undisputed. If one chops a “zero” or two off each significant number, the truth begins to emerge, however. Of course, the Great Khan did not have 12,000 falconers, as Marco Polo declares, but he may well have had 1,200.
Meanwhile, what had Kublai accomplished?
Kublai was not the ruthless warrior his grandfather had been, but by 1280 he ruled over the largest and greatest empire the world had ever seen; at its height, the Mongol Empire was more than twice as large as imperial Rome. Equally impressive, Kublai was able to enforce Mongol law throughout the vast empire; it was said—perhaps in exaggeration—that an unmarried woman could travel over the Mongol roads in safety.
The Italian explorer Marco Polo wrote of his meetings with Kublai Khan and his travels in China, providing historians with a helpful—though sometimes exaggerated—view of Asia in the thirteenth century.
Kublai had achieved all this by consolidating the conquests of Genghis and Mongke. His only failure came in Japan.
Why was Japan able to keep the Mongols at bay?
The Mongols were still primarily horse-warriors; the very thought of traveling at sea filled them with some anxiety. When Japan would not acknowledge Mongol supremacy, Kublai ordered the Koreans, who were among his subject peoples, to build ships for an invasion of Japan.
In 1274, a Korean fleet brought perhaps 10,000 Mongols to Japan’s east coast. A storm blew up at sea, and the Mongols were quickly re-embarked. The Japanese marked the very spot where the Mongols had come ashore, and they built a massive sea wall so as to prepare for the next coming of their foes. When a much larger Korean fleet, carrying perhaps 20,000 troops, arrived in 1281, the Mongols encountered stiff Japanese resistance behind that sea wall. Given the Mongols’ ability at maneuver, this seems like a relatively easy obstacle for them to manage.
On land, that would certainly be the case. But the Mongols showed much less imagination when traveling at sea. While the Japanese dug in their heels to resist, the Mongols noticed yet another major storm on its way. They re-embarked and sailed away, never to return.
Was it a genuine typhoon that kept the Mongols away from Japan?
Historians believe so, and many of the Korean-built ships may have sunk on the way home. This was, in some ways, an equivalent to the Spanish Armada of 1588 (see chapter six), but Mongol histories—not surprisingly—made little of it. The Japanese, on the other hand, built it into their mythology, claiming that the weather had worked on their behalf and that a typhoon would rescue them if anyone else attempted to invade. For this reason, the word kamikaze (meaning “divine wind”) became part of the Japanese belief system, as the Americans discovered when they invaded the Philippines in 1944.
Who was Tamerlane, and how did he get that name?
He was born in Central Asia, not far from the city of Samarkand, around the year 1336. Due to a wound he received early in life, Timur walked with a limp, and a corruption of his Turkic name became known in the West as Tamerlane: “Timur the Lame.” His career was anything but lame, however.
Timur grew up at a time when the great Mongol kingdoms and subkingdoms of Central Asia were in disarray. About the only exception to the rule was the Golden Horde, based out of the city of Sarai on the Volga River. The descendants of Jochi and Batu still ruled the Golden Horde, and it controlled much of what we now label as European Russia, or Russia east of the Ural Mountains. Timur left no diary—he could neither read nor write—but we suspect that from his earliest days he aspired to become the new Great Khan, the one who would restore the Mongols and Turks to their former glory.
A sixteenth-century illustration shows Tamerlane besieging the city of Urganj (now in Turkmenistan).
Was there—and is there—much difference between a Mongol and a Turk?
In the time of Genghis, and even in that of Tamerlane, there was little racial or ethnic difference: the two peoples were cousins. They have spent enough time out of each other’s company, however, that today we would assert there is a considerable difference.
What was the richest city of Central Asia?
It was Samarkand, located southeast of the Aral Sea and directly west of the Tien Shan Desert, the traditional route to China. To say that Samarkand was a merchant city is not going far enough; Samarkand was the great merchant city along what we call the Silk Road, extending from western China to the Mediterranean Sea. Tamerlane understood the importance of trade, and during his rule he made Samarkand much more beautiful, but he was—from his teenage years—devoted to war.
Tamerlane started life as the eldest son of a chief of the far-flung Barlas tribe. This did not mean he was destined for leadership, however; like Genghis Khan—whom he clearly admired and sought to emulate—Tamerlane had to ascend, rung by rung. He started life as a small-time brigand, stealing sheep (the same can be said for many men who later became great leaders), and worked his way up to lead a small army of nomadic people in the Samarkand region. Very likely, he persuaded them to follow him by saying he would lead them as Genghis had previously done, but Tamerlane had to appeal to a more mixed audience: he led Mongols, Turks, Iranians, and all sorts of half-breeds.
Was Tamerlane’s style of warfare different from that of his competitors in Central Asia?
Not at the outset. Tamerlane seemed on his way to becoming one of the major leaders of Central Asia, but not the predominant one. It was only when he began fighting against the Mongols to the north—the so-called Golden Horde—that he demonstrated the savagery that made him feared throughout the world. We do not really know how many mounds of skulls were created during his many conquests, but at least one neutral witness—who traveled to the region fifty years later—testified that he saw at least thirty piles of skulls outside one central Asian city.
How can one person inflict so much destruction, yet remain safe and secure himself?
Tamerlane scorned safety: throughout life, he prized the hunt and warfare more than rest and ease. Even during the few times that he was at rest, he engaged in heated discussions, especially on theological matters, and the modern-day reader is struck by Tamerlane’s intelligence. He was a child of the Eurasian steppe, an unlettered nomad, but he understood great matters of war and peace, life and death, very well. This was testified to by an ambassador who came all the way from Spain to Samarkand shortly before Tamerlane’s death.
But as to physical danger, Tamerlane commanded such respect, veneration even, from his men that it was unlikely anyone could get close enough to thrust a sword or dagger in his direction. He was a pious Muslim, who added the words “Timur, servant of God” to every letter that was sent by his secretaries. The combination of ferocious military skill and devout religious