Now in another part of the city there was another marvel. There was an open place near the palace of Boukoleon which was called the Games of the Emperor. This place was a good bowshot and a half long and nearly a bowshot wide. Around this place there were fully thirty rows of seats or forty, on which the Greeks used to mount to watch the games, and above these rows there was a loge, very dainty and noble, where the emperor and the empress sat when the games were held, and the other high men and ladies. And if there were two sides playing at the same time, the emperor and the empress would wager with each other that one side would play better than the other, and so would all the others who watched the games. Along this open place there was a wall which was a good fifteen feet high and ten feet wide. Upon this wall there were figures of men and women, and of horses and oxen and camels and bears and lions and many other kinds of animals, all made of copper, and all so well made and formed so naturally that there is no master workman in heathendom or in Christendom so skillful as to be able to make figures as good as these. […]
All these marvels which I have recounted to you here and still a great many more we could recount, the [Franks] found in Constantinople after they had captured it, nor do I think, for my part, that any man on earth could number all the abbeys of the city, so many there were, both of monks and of nuns, aside from the other churches outside of the city. And it was reckoned that there were in the city a good thirty thousand priests, both monks and others. Now about the rest of the Greeks, high and low, rich and poor, about the size of the city, about the palaces and the other marvels that are there, we shall leave off telling you. For no man on earth, however long he might have lived in the city, could number them or recount them to you. And if anyone should recount to you the hundredth part of the richness and the beauty and the nobility that was found in the abbeys and in the churches and in the palaces and in the city, it would seem like a lie and you would not believe it.
IA2 Giovanni di Pian de Carpini (‘John of Carpini’) (c.1185–1252) from his Journey to the Court of Kuyuk Khan
Despite having trade links with Rome and Byzantium via the ‘Silk Road’ that had existed since antiquity, China was little known in the West during the Middle Ages. However, the Pax Mongolica established by Genghis Khan and his descendants briefly enabled new connections to be made before the collapse of the Mongol Empire and the subsequent further expansion of Islam again interrupted direct East–West contact. Marco Polo’s account of China is the most famous of these (see IA3), but he was preceded by some hybrid diplomatic–ecclesiastical missions in the mid‐thirteenth century. ‘John of Carpini’, to give his name in its anglicized form, was an Italian Franciscan monk sent on a mission to the reigning great khan, Güyük (or ‘Kuyuk’), by Pope Innocent IV in 1245–7. The historian Anthony Pagden has described Carpini’s resulting account as ‘the first detailed and perceptive piece of writing about an Asian people to have appeared in Europe since Herodotus’ (Pagden, Worlds at War, 2009, p. 292). The following selection centres on an account of the election/coronation of the great khan in an assembly of three to four thousand delegates from Tartar domains all over Eastern Europe and Asia. This was held close to their capital of Karakorum in the summer of 1246. Carpini’s account mentions the large tents, their painted decoration, golden ornaments and the khan’s ivory throne. Our extracts are from Manuel Komroff (ed.), Contemporaries of Marco Polo, London: Jonathan Cape, 1928, pp. 40–3, 45.
When we had arrived at the court of Kuyuk, he caused, after the Tartars’ manner, a tent and all expenses necessary to be provided for us. And his people treated us with more regard and courtesy than they did any other ambassadors. However, we were not called before his presence, because he was not as yet elected, nor had they settled about the succession….
After five or six days, he sent us to his mother [the Regent Empress Turakina], under whom there was maintained a very solemn and royal court. When we came there we saw a huge tent of fine white cloth, which was, in our judgment, so great that more than two thousand men might stand within it, and round about it there was set up a wall of planks, painted with divers designs. We, therefore, with the Tartars assigned to attend upon us, went to this tent, and there were all the chiefs assembled, each one of them riding up and down with his train over the hills and dales. The first day they were all clad in white, but on the second they wore scarlet robes. Then came Kuyuk to the tent. On the third day they were all dressed in blue robes, and on the fourth in most rich robes of baldakin [brocade] cloth.
In the wall of boards about the tent were two great gates; by one of these, the emperor only was to enter, and at that gate there was no guard of men appointed to stand, although it stood continually open, because none dared go in or come out by it. All that were admitted, entered by another gate, at which there stood watchmen, with bows, swords, and arrows … There were many who, in our judgment, had upon their bridles, trappings, saddles, and such like trimmings, to the value of twenty marks in pure gold. […]
To our remembrance, we remained there about the space of four weeks. The election was, we thought, there celebrated, but it was not published and proclaimed there. Kuyuk came forth out of the tent, he had a noise of music, and was bowed to, or honoured with inclined staffs, having red wool upon the tops of them, and that, so long as he remained, which service was performed to none of the other chiefs. This tent or court is called by them Syra orda.
Departing, we all with one accord rode three or four leagues to another place, where, in a fine plain by a river’s side, between certain mountains, another tent was erected, which was called the Golden orda. Here Kuyuk was to be placed on the imperial throne upon the day of the Assumption of Our Lady [August 15]. But, because of the abundance of hail which fell at the same time, the matter was deferred. There was also a tent erected upon pillars, which were covered with plates of gold and joined to other timber with golden nails. It was covered inside with baldakin cloth, but there was other cloth spread over it on the outside. We remained there until the feast of St Bartholomew [August 24], when there was assembled a huge multitude standing with their faces towards the south. And a certain number of them, a stone’s cast distant from the rest, were making continual prayers, and kneeling upon their knees, went farther and farther towards the south. But we, not knowing whether they used enchantments, or whether they bowed their knees to God or to some other, would not kneel upon the ground with them. And having done so a long time, they returned to the tent, and placed Kuyuk on his imperial throne, and his chiefs bowed their knees before him. […]
Leaving this place, we came to another, where was pitched a wonderful tent, all of red purple, presented by the Cathayans. We were admitted into that also, and always when we entered there was given us ale and wine to drink, and cooked flesh when we desired to eat. There was also a lofty stage built of boards, where the emperor’s throne was placed, being very curiously wrought out of ivory, wherein also there was gold and precious stones, and there were certain stairs to ascend to it. And it was round at the back.
IA3 Marco Polo (1254–1324) from The Travels
The Travels of Marco Polo is one of the famous books of the world and needs little introduction here. Suffice to say that Polo was a Venetian merchant whose father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, taking advantage of the Pax Mongolica, travelled from Venetian trading outposts in the Black Sea area overland to China in the 1260s. A second journey in the 1270s and 1280s included Marco Polo. After returning to Venice in 1292, Marco became involved in the wars between Venice and Genoa and briefly became a prisoner of war in c.1298–9. It was at this point that he told his story to Rusticello of Pisa, a professional writer of romances, who subsequently turned Marco’s story into the tale that has lived down the centuries. It was originally called ‘A Description of the World’. Various parts of it are obviously fabricated from legend and other travellers’ tales, and indeed it has been claimed that the whole thing is a concoction and that Polo never went to China