Homesickness eventually prodded Marco, Niccolò, and Maffeo to request leave to return to Italy, but years passed before the aging Kublai Khan reluctantly granted their petition. They were honored emissaries of his court, chosen to carry out missions on behalf of the legendary Mongol.
No European had ever observed Kublai Khan's empire from the inside, but Marco Polo and his companions would claim to. Kublai Khan (grandson of Genghis) ruled the powerful Mongol Empire, which included China, the Middle East, and part of Europe. The three globetrotters trekked across Europe and the Middle East, then through the extreme weather of elevated mountain passes to arrive in the land of the Mongols. Upon their return nine years later, Marco jumped at the chance to join their next expedition, which promised to explore further east. Marco Polo was six years old when Niccolò and Maffeo went east for the first time. Marco's is an odyssey worthy of closer investigation.
Were Marco's tales pure fantasy, or were they mostly faithful to his experiences in Asia during the twenty-four prime years of his life? The Adventures of Marco Polo endeavors to find out where the facts lead. These descriptions were recorded by a writer known as Rustichello of Pisa while Marco Polo was imprisoned in Genoa after his adventure was over, and the fantastic stories spread throughout popular culture even before the advent of the printing press.
Russell Freedman leads us on an expedition that is as much mystery as history, asking the ultimate question about Marco Polo's quarter-century journey to China in the 1200s: did it actually happen? When Marco departed Venice, Italy at age seventeen with his father (Niccolò) and uncle (Maffeo) on a trade voyage to the Far East, did they end up going beyond where any European ever had? Marco's claims of what he saw on the road to Asia and within the kingdom of Kublai Khan seem beyond belief: carnivorous monsters in the street, cities of dizzying architectural complexity and outrageous wealth, restless demons moaning in the desert.
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