Marco polo biography wikipedia wikipedia

Marco was a Croatian man. His father and uncle returned from their Silk Road travels when Marco was about 15 years old. Two years later, the three of them started their journey to Cathay China. His family were well-known merchantsnot explorers. He learned about writing, reading, and arithmetic, and how to do business. Polo went on a year trip to China with his father and uncle during the Mongol Dynasty.

He left Venice at the age of 17 on a boat that went through the Mediterranean Sea, to Acreand later to Tabriz and Kerman. Then he travelled across Asia getting as far as Beijing. On the way there he went over mountains and through deserts, across scorching hot lands and places where the cold was unbearable. Arriving in Cathay at age 21, he served in Kublai Khan 's court for 17 years.

He left the Far East and returned to Venice by sea. ISBN S2CID Notable foreigners who visited pre-Qing China. Narsieh 7th c. Ono no Imoko 7th c. Takamuko no Kuromaro 7th c. Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas 7th c. Awata no Mahito 8th c. Kibi no Makibi 8th c. Yamanoue no Okura 8th c. Hyecho 8th c. Abu Zayd Al-Sirafi 9th c. Egaku 9th c. Sulaiman al-Tajir 9th c.

Vairocanavajra 12th c. The Polo party left Venice in The journey took three years after which they arrived in Cathay as it was then called and met the grandson of Genghis KhanKublai Khan. They left China in late or early [ 15 ] and were back in Venice in The tradition is that Polo dictated the book to a marco polo biography wikipedia wikipedia writer, Rustichello da Pisawhile in prison in Genoa between and Rustichello may have worked up his first Franco-Italian version from Marco's notes.

The British scholar Ronald Latham has pointed out that The Book of Marvels was in fact a collaboration written in — between Polo and a professional writer of romances, Rustichello of Pisa. Rustichello wrote Devisement du Monde in the Franco-Venetian language. Latham also argued that Rustichello may have glamorised Polo's accounts, and added fantastic and romantic elements that made the book a bestseller.

For example, the opening introduction in The Book of Marvels to "emperors and kings, dukes and marquises" was lifted straight out of an Arthurian romance Rustichello had written several years earlier, and the account of the second meeting between Polo and Kublai Khan at the latter's court is almost the same as that of the arrival of Tristan at the court of King Arthur at Camelot in that same book.

Apparently, from the very beginning Marco's story aroused contrasting reactions, as it was received by some with a certain disbelief. He also relates that before dying, Marco Polo insisted that "he had told only a half of the things he had seen". According to some recent research of the Italian scholar Antonio Montefusco, the very close relationship that Marco Polo cultivated with members of the Dominican Order in Venice suggests that local fathers collaborated with him for a Latin version of the book, which means that Rustichello's text was translated into Latin for a precise will of the Order.

Since Dominican fathers had among their missions that of evangelizing foreign peoples cf. At the time, there was open discussion of a possible Christian-Mongol alliance with an anti-Islamic function. At the council, Pope Gregory X promulgated a new Crusade to start in in liaison with the Mongols. The Travels is divided into four books.

Marco polo biography wikipedia wikipedia

Book Two describes China and the court of Kublai Khan. Book Four describes some of the then-recent wars among the Mongols and some of the regions of the far north, like Russia. Polo's writings included descriptions of cannibals and spice-growers. The impact of Polo's book on cartography was delayed: the first map in which some names mentioned by Polo appear was in the Catalan Atlas of Charles Vwhich included thirty names in China and a number of other Asian toponyms.

A heavily annotated copy of Polo's book was among the belongings of Columbus. Marco Polo was accompanied on his trips by his father and uncle both of whom had been to China previouslythough neither of them published any known works about their journeys. The book was translated into many European languages in Marco Polo's own lifetime, but the original manuscripts are now lost.

A total of about copies in various languages are known to exist. During copying and translating many errors were made, so there are many differences between the various copies. The oldest surviving Polo manuscript is in Franco-Venetianwhich was a literary language which mixed Old French with the Venetian languagespread in Northern Italy in the 13th century; [ 6 ] [ 7 ] [ 34 ] for Luigi Foscolo Benedetto, this "F" text is the basic original text, which he corrected by comparing it with the somewhat more detailed Italian of Ramusio, together marco polo biography wikipedia wikipedia a Latin manuscript in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana.

It is found in the Italian National Library in Florence. Other early important sources are the manuscript "R" Ramusio's Italian translation first printed in The version in Venetian dialect is full of mistakes and is not considered trustworthy. The first attempt to collate manuscripts and provide a critical edition was in a volume of collected travel narratives printed at Venice in The editor, Giovan Battista Ramusio, collated manuscripts from the first part of the fourteenth century, [ 40 ] which he considered to be " perfettamente corretto " "perfectly correct".

The edition of Benedetto, Marco Polo, Il Milioneunder the patronage of the Comitato Geografico Nazionale Italiano Florence: Olschki,collated sixty additional manuscript sources, in addition to some eighty that had been collected by Henry Yulefor his edition. It was Benedetto who identified Rustichello da Pisa, [ 41 ] as the original compiler or amanuensisand his established text has provided the basis for many modern translations: his own in Italianand Aldo Ricci's The Travels of Marco Polo London, The first English translation is the Elizabethan version by John Frampton published inThe most noble and famous travels of Marco Polobased on Santaella's Castilian translation of the first version in that language.

Moule and Paul Pelliot published a translation under the title Description of the World that uses manuscript F as its base and attempts to combine the several versions of the text into one continuous narrative while at the same time indicating the source for each section London, ISBN New York: Robert Appleton Company. The Travels Of Marco Polo.

Mineola: Dover Publications. ISBN Moule, Arthur Christopher; Pelliot, Paul Marco Polo: The Description of the World. Byzantium and Venice: a study in diplomatic and cultural relations. Cambridge University Press. Wood, Frances Westview Press. Burgan, Michael Marco Polo: Marco Polo and the silk road to China. Mankato: Compass Point Books. Parker, John The World Book Encyclopedia.