It Runs,
In The Passage Corresponding To The Latter Part Of Ch.
Ix.
Of
Prologue: "i qual do fratelli steteno do anni in Veniezia aspettando
la elletion de nuovo Papa, nel qual tempo Mess. Nicolo si tolse moier
et si la laso graveda." I believe, however, that it is only a
careless misrendering of Pipino's statement about Marco's birth.
[13] [Major Sykes, in his remarkable book on Persia, ch. xxiii. pp.
262-263, does not share Sir Henry Yule's opinion regarding this
itinerary, and he writes:
"To return to our travellers, who started on their second great
journey in 1271, Sir Henry Yule, in his introduction,[A] makes them
travel via Sivas to Mosul and Baghdad, and thence by sea to Hormuz,
and this is the itinerary shown on his sketch map. This view I am
unwilling to accept for more than one reason. In the first place, if,
with Colonel Yule, we suppose that Ser Marco visited Baghdad, is it
not unlikely that he should term the River Volga the Tigris,[B] and
yet leave the river of Baghdad nameless? It may be urged that Marco
believed the legend of the reappearance of the Volga in Kurdistan, but
yet, if the text be read with care and the character of the traveller
be taken into account, this error is scarcely explicable in any other
way, than that he was never there.
"Again, he gives no description of the striking buildings of Baudas,
as he terms it, but this is nothing to the inaccuracy of his supposed
onward journey. To quote the text, 'A very great river flows through
the city,... and merchants descend some eighteen days from Baudas, and
then come to a certain city called Kisi,[C] where they enter the Sea
of India.' Surely Marco, had he travelled down the Persian Gulf, would
never have given this description of the route, which is so untrue as
to point to the conclusion that it was vague information given by some
merchant whom he met in the course of his wanderings.
"Finally, apart from the fact that Baghdad, since its fall, was rather
off the main caravan route, Marco so evidently travels east from Yezd
and thence south to Hormuz, that unless his journey be described
backwards, which is highly improbable, it is only possible to arrive
at one conclusion, namely, that the Venetians entered Persia near
Tabriz, and travelled to Sultania, Kashan, and Yezd. Thence they
proceeded to Kerman and Hormuz, where, probably fearing the sea
voyage, owing to the manifest unseaworthiness of the ships, which he
describes as 'wretched affairs,' the Khorasan route was finally
adopted. Hormuz, in this case, was not visited again until the return
from China, when it seems probable that the same route was retraced to
Tabriz, where their charge, the Lady Kokachin, 'moult bele dame et
avenant,' was married to Ghazan Khan, the son of her fiance Arghun. It
remains to add that Sir Henry Yule may have finally accepted this view
in part, as in the plate showing Probable View of Marco Polo's own
Geography,[D] the itinerary is not shown as running to Baghdad."
I may be allowed to answer that when Marco Polo started for the
East, Baghdad was not rather off the main caravan route.
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