The History of China - #183 - Yuan 6: Cultural Hot-Pot for the Soul

Episode Date: January 21, 2020

Khubilai Khan is a man astride multiple worlds - trying to be both the Khan of the Great Mongol Nation, and the Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty. This will take quite a bit of accommodation, and between Mongolian shamanism, Chinese Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, and Christianity... more than a little behaving like a cultural chameleon to square those civilizational circles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. The French Revolution set Europe ablaze. It was an age of enlightenment and progress, but also of tyranny and oppression. It was an age of glory and an age of tragedy. One man stood above it all. This was the Age of Napoleon. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast. Join me as I examine the life and times of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic

characters in modern history. Look for the Age of Napoleon wherever you find your podcasts. Hello and welcome to the History of China. Episode 183, Cultural Hot Pot for the Soul. But it is the religion of Zingas that best deserves our wonder and applause. The Catholic inquisitors of Europe, who defended nonsense by cruelty, might have been confounded by the example of a barbarian who anticipated the lessons of philosophy and established by his laws a system of pure theism and perfect toleration. Many of the Tartars and Mughals had been converted by the foreign missionaries to the religions of Moses, of Muhammad, and of Christ. These various systems in freedom and concord were taught and practiced within the precincts of the same camp, and the banza, the imam, the rabbi, the Nestorian, and the Latin priest enjoyed the same honorable exemption from

service and tribute. From Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 64 Last time in our Yuan Suite, we looked at the political, financial, and social changes wrought by Kublai Khan's total domination over China, and his own ongoing transformation from the son of a conqueror of the steppe to an emperor and world leader in his own right in a much more Chinese tradition. Now, I'd said before that I meant to move on directly into the final years of Kublai's life and reign last time, but sitting down and looking over the materials, it became apparent that there was just more there there, especially in terms of the unique blend of cultures, ideas, beliefs, and religions that

was truly one of the hallmarks of the Mongolian apex. So today we're going to take a deeper look at those, and their complex interplay with and around China, the Yuan imperial court, the wider Mongol empire, and even beyond. We begin in the new imperial center, the nexus and beating heart of Kublai's grand and cosmopolitan empire, Da Du, also known as Daidu or Khanbalik, the great capital and city of the Khan. It would serve in both concept and form as emblematic for Kublai's realm as a whole. The Khan's decision to move his main capital, first from Karakorum, the city of his grandfather along the Altai Mountains, to a city of his own capital, first from Karakorum, the city of his grandfather along the Altai Mountains, to a city of his own design, Shangdu, on the southern edge

of the Gobi, and now even further south to the site of the long-destroyed Jin capital, Zhongdu, where modern Beijing now sits, was no accident. Rather, it was a conscious attempt by Kublai to signal to his Chinese subjects, northern and southern alike, that he was willing and able to behave as they understood a ruler should, a Chinese emperor, rather than mere Mongol Khan. As his inconclusive and ongoing war against his dear cousin Kaidu continued to remind him, after all, he could no longer count on holding claim over the steppes and its riders. The future for his dynasty, it seemed ever more clear, lay in China rather than Mongolia. Like Shangdu before it, Dadu was built in a thoroughly Chinese conception and style.

Quote, Rectangular and enclosed by a wall of rammed earth. Within this outer wall, there were two inner walls surrounding the imperial city and Kublai's residences and palaces, to which ordinary citizens were denied entry. The city was laid out on symmetrical north-south and east-west axes, with wide avenues stretching in geometric patterns from the eleven gates that permitted access to the city. The avenues were broad enough so that horsemen could gallop nine abreast. On all gates were three-story towers that served to warn of impending threats or dangers to the city. End quote. Man-made lakes, canals, and rivers crisscrossed the city, filled with varieties of fish. The constructed waterways were themselves crossed by dozens of bridges, leading to and

through carefully tended gardens stocked with all manner of birds, plants, and wildlife. The most well-known was the Beihai Park. It was, in every one of these respects, a typical Chinese capital city, in the Tang style and earlier. Yet for all that, there were certain notable variances. For one, the city's very designer and architect, a man referred to in the Chinese records by what can only be an approximate phoneticization of his name, Yehet-ye-ar, was not only a Muslim, but by at least some accounts, an outright Arab. Near the eastern wall wall there was constructed an imperial observatory that was staffed with the Khan's Persian astronomers.

Incubalized personal and sleeping chambers hung curtains and screens made not of silk, but of snow-white stoat pelts and other prized game native to Mongolia, a constant reminder of the pastoral life that he and his kinsmen came from. The main reception hall and throne room is written to have featured intricate figures of reclining tigers, which could through some unseen mechanism move and appear to come to life. Outside of the palace and scattered all across the imperial city amidst the Chinese-style buildings and parks, traditional, if admittedly ornate and lavish, Mongolian Gur tents, in which many of Dadu's Mongol nobility, including several of Kublai's sons and cousins, chose to live, rather than the palace walls.

Even one of Kublai's Mongol wives is recorded as, in the final stages of her pregnancy, having moved into a gur and given birth there, rather than the palace. Perhaps most sacred to Kublai, though, was a piece of Mongolia itself. Razavi writes, Finally, Kublai assigned underlings to gather grass and dirt from the Mongol steppes for his royal altar, another reminder of his pastoral heritage. Here, the Chinese motifs of the dragon and phoenix intermingled with the Mongolian wolf and falcon, while silk and jade rubbed up against leather, fur, and bone.

In his mind and heart, as with his palace, Kublai was a man astride two vastly different worlds, and attempting to bridge them both. In an early attempt to win the favor of the Confucian courtiers to his rule, he had a great ancestral temple constructed to the Confucian masters of old, and then invited them to pay due homage to their ancestors. In a similar Chinese style, he had a temple for his own Borjigin family ancestors constructed, and by 1266, it stretched on for eight chambers, each for one of the honored dead who watched over him and the great nation from the world beyond. The first of the chambers were for his great-grandparents, Mother Hoelun and Yesugei, then one for his lord

grandfather, the great Genghis, who was given the posthumous imperial title of Yuan Taizu, the dynastic founder, then four others for Zhouzhi, Chagatai, Ogade, and his father, Tolui, honored as Ruizong, the visionary. The final two chambers were for his two immediate predecessors as Great Khan, Guiyue, entitled as Dingzong, the steadfast, and finally his elder brother, Mongke, Xianzong, the lawgiver. Quote, once tablets had been installed in the chambers, the ceremonies and sacrifices of ancestor worship were performed. Kublai abided by the Chinese belief that the ancestors could intercede in human affairs and needed to be consulted on questions of great importance. Likewise, he had altars to soil and grain constructed and then sacrificed, too.

Even so, he rarely took part in such ceremonies himself, typically instead sending his Chinese advisors and other princes in his stead while he attended to more pressing business of state. In spite of the unmistakable marks left by its Mongolian overlords, Dadu was conceived as, and would remain in form and function, overall a Chinese-style city. Its residents would see and participate in mostly Chinese rites and ceremonies, thereby allowing Kublai to portray himself to them as one of their own. It was further away from the eyes of the southerners, back in Shangdu, that the Mongol nobility really continued to honor their own traditional customs and beliefs. With its function as capital city largely abrogated by the completion of Dadu, Shangdu largely emptied out and became little more than a hunting preserve and retreat where the Mongols could get away from the hustle and bustle of China and really let their hair down,

so to speak. It was there that the shamanism and Tangrius practices lived on and were honored. And there that Kublai, as the years dragged on, still felt like he could be his old self every once in a while, away from the strictures and expectations of being a Chinese emperor. In his personal life, Kublai kept to the old ways. The traditional Tengriism was practiced by Genghis. Yet from birth, teachers, advisors, and servants of almost every creed and faith had surrounded him. And this had been by design. His mother, Sor Khaktani Beki, famously an historian Christian herself, had impressed on her sons from the outset the political necessity of offering support, patronage, and respect

for the beliefs of the newly conquered lands and peoples that they ruled. Growing up, and across his early career and rise to power, Kublai had hated his mother's lessons well, and had done his best to entertain, accept, and tolerate men of all faiths, so long as they did not break the law. Now with the grand opening of Dadu, his imperial capital in China proper, he would need to lean into that omnitolerant lesson all the more. He well understood that it would be the Confucian officials who could either effectively make or break his government. At least from the outset, he needed them on board,

as they had all the necessary skills and learned understanding to manage a Chinese government, whereas his own kinsmen did not. Ever sensitive to the strictures of ritual and propriety, the Confucians would carefully consider the actions and meaning of everything and anything Kublai did before deciding whether they would help or hinder him, and so he needed to win them over. One of the first great tasks would be to find a suitable name for this new ruling dynastic order. Though not universally the case, the most typical naming convention for dynasties past had been to assume the name of the title or region from which the new ruling household had previously held power. Zhou, Han, Sui, Tang, and Song had all been named based on this principle. But that would not work for the Borjigins,

since they could claim no stake of an ancient state or seat of power in China's history. A clearly Mongol name would obviously win him no favor among the Chinese or the Confucians, instead forever marking his reign and descendants as outsiders. Rather, he consulted with his Chinese advisors and sought out a name that would be deeply rooted in China's past and symbolism. At the advice of his minister, Liu Bingzhong, in 1271, Kublai chose and announced the name of his new dynasty, Yuan. Directly meaning origin, Yuan held the deeper significance of stemming from the Book of Changes, the I Ching itself,

meaning the primal origin and force of the universe. At least as important as that symbolic meaning, however, was the simple fact that its use tied the dynasty to a canonical work of ancient Chinese tradition and origin. That is to say, it was a truly Chinese name for what was trying to be a Chinese dynasty. A further indication of his adoption, or at least acceptance, of Confucian Chinese customs and traditions was in the naming of his own second son, who he would eventually designate as his successor and heir. Born circa 1243 to his empress Chabi, the boy would, with the assistance of the Buddhist monk Haiyun, be bestowed with the name

Zhenjin, meaning true gold, rendered in a Mongolian as jingim. Prince Zhenjin would receive a first-rate Chinese education, tutored by the finest Confucian scholars in the realm. He would be schooled in the great classics and of the history and rulers of China's ancient past. Yet, like his father before him, Kublai made sure to see that his favored son was not locked too tightly into Chinese thought and ideology. Zhenjin would concurrently receive instruction from no less than the Fagspa Lama himself, who came to refer to the prince as the Bodhisattva Imperial Prince, in what seems to have been a clear instance of pandering, but a rather successful one. He would likewise receive lessons from Taoism and its mysteries, though Junjin was apparently far more partial to Buddhism, much like his mother Chabi. Obviously pleased with the ultimate results of such an extensive and carefully managed education

for the prince as he grew into a man, Kublai gave Zhenjin repeated promotions, created him as the Prince of Yan at just 20 years old in 1263, and given jurisdiction over the region around the former Jin capital and eventual new capital, Dadu. The same year, Zhenjin was given the further responsibility of sitting in on his father's privy council, where he learned ever more about the important matters of state and governance, eventually in order to take his father's place as ruler over the whole empire. This was made official a decade later, in 1273, with Zhenjin's formal promotion to crown prince. Such a move was wholly expected and proper in the Chinese tradition, but was a startling break with Mongol laws and rights. A successor to a great Khan had only ever been chosen by the

ancient tradition of the Karl Thai, never by simple fiat. Yet it was now so. Whatever his Mongol brethren might think of it, or whisper behind his back while in their cups, Kublai was done with the idea of leaving succession up to the wiles of unpredictable family elections that could take years to work out, if indeed they ever were worked out, as his own still-ongoing dispute with Kaidu Khan proved beyond doubt. Mongolian versions of the great Chinese classics were ordered translated, with early focus on copies of the classics such as the Xiaojing and the Shujing, as well as some more recent works like the Neo-Confucian tome the Da Shui Yan Yi.

This project was overseen by the scholar named Xu Heng, who impressed Kublai so much that he had the man promoted to the chancellery of the Imperial College in 1267. Rossaby writes that Xu achieved this feat with his Mongolian patron, "...because in his teachings he concentrated on practical affairs. He succeeded because he did not go into speculative, metaphysical matters of things on the higher level. In his advice to Kublai, he emphasized pragmatic considerations, an attitude certain to gain him favor at the Mongolian court. Kublai would also seek, and gain, support from the Confucians by backing the collection and writing of a new official imperial history that would cover not only the Yuan, but also the Liao and Jin dynasties before it.

Though the Mongols had seen little need in keeping extensive histories before now, the Chinese officials were thrilled to be able to officially catalog all the historical sources and documents that they could from the previous eras, thereby preserving their lessons and warnings for future use. Indeed, though the Great Khan would never live to see any of these histories completed, he did not personally appear to take significant interest in them anyway, he did understand that by backing them, he was ingratiating himself to those under his rule. For similar reasons, he likewise approved the founding of an imperial office of histories. Yet another expectation that Confucians were keen for any true emperor to uphold was the encouragement of ritual music and dance.

This was no idle patronage of the arts, however. Quote, The ancient Chinese believed that the proper performance of music and dance had magic powers over nature, and that the court's neglect or improper conduct of these rituals created an imbalance in nature that led to floods, earthquakes, droughts, and other catastrophes. One imagines that if they were ever asked what proof they offered as to the necessities of these rituals, the Confucians of Kublai's era would have likely gesticulated broadly at everything in the last couple of centuries. The new Yuan emperor dutifully supported the reintroduction and encouragement of these ceremonies and songs.

Apparently with enthusiasm on his part, as it's recorded that even before his enthronement at Dadu, when he was still in Shangdu, he had ordered an official of his to devise a whole new set of suitable and proper music and dances for his august reign. Beyond his obvious appeal to the sensibilities and sensitivities of the Confucian elites, whose cooperation he needed, Kublai was also mindful of the necessity of extending his appeal further, to other religions and cults across the realm. This he would accomplish by displaying a commendable panache for appearing to be whatever seemed most placating to those before him at the moment. Before his Chinese subjects, he was the Confucian Emperor. To Tibet and Chinese monks, he played the ardent Buddhist alongside his devout wife. When conversing with Christians who arrived from Europe, such as the Polos, he appeared

genuinely interested in this distant faith and predicted that further intercourse between Great Yuan and Western Christendom would lead in due course to mass conversion to the faith once his subjects were instructed in its ways. And to his Muslim subjects, he portrayed himself as protector of their persons, their faith, and their lucrative trade contracts. Especially early in his reign, it was this last group, the Muslims, who most interested Kublai, and who he was most anxious to influence. Islam was certainly nothing new within China. Indeed, it had existed within the empire since at least the Tang Dynasty, especially along the western frontiers and the southern coasts where Arab and Persian traders plied their wares, along with a relatively small but significant number of Chinese who inevitably opted to convert

to Islam over time. Kublai, however, envisaged a much more central and centralized role for the Muslims among his peoples. Beginning in 1261, Muslims were exempted from regular taxation, and more and more adherents found positions of high status and rank at the Khan's court. Moreover, they were largely free to manage and live among themselves in accordance with their own lifestyle, dietary, and even legal habits. These semi-autonomous Islamic communities were overseen by one of their own, a Shaykh al-Islam, who served as a liaison between the Muslim community and the Mongol overlords. Legally, they were overseen by a khadi, that is, a magistrate of the sharia law code governing the faithful. From Razabi, quote,

Kublai did not, except briefly, prevent the Muslims from following such dictates of Islam, such as circumcision and abstention from pork. The reason for this special favor was straightforward enough. The Muslims were among the most useful to him in effectuating his role over the whole of China. They were capable advisors, governors, and officials, well-versed in the governance and oversights of large population centers and the day-to-day bureaucratic necessities of large settled empires. And of course, there was the fact that, as strangers in a strange land, they were and would always remain utterly dependent on Mongol largesse and support for their continued position and power. This meant that they had at least the appearance of being more loyal, as compared to Chinese officials, who Kublai would never be certain that he could fully trust. Another group whose support Kublai knew he needed to cultivate were the Buddhists of the realm.

Even before he descended as Great Khan, he'd been well-versed in the tenets of several of the Buddhist schools of thought. As early as 1240, in fact, Kublai had been instructed in the ways of Chan Buddhism, better known in the West by the name it received once it had migrated to Japan, the School of Zen. He was instructed by the monk Haiyun. True to form, though, Kublai found the meditative and metaphysical exercises of Chan unsuited for his far more grounded and worldly sensibilities. When one such Chan master had instructed the Mongol Khan that all things are nothing but the mind only, that had struck Kublai not so much as enlightened wisdom as much as fortune cookie philosophizing.

Rather, it was the school of Buddhism that his own empress, Chabi, was devoted, the Saskya sect of Tibetan Buddhism, which Kublai found best suited to his own political needs. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History, the French Revolution, is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past. By contrasting both the experiences of contemporaries and the conclusions of historians, Grey History dives into the detail and unpacks one of the most important and disputed events in human history. From a revolution based on hope and liberty, to its descent into the infamous reign of terror, there's plenty to discuss and plenty of grey to explore.

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The Tibetan religious leaders had long held dual roles as political leaders and players as well, meaning that they were far more attuned to the shifting currents and changing needs an astute leader of men would require of a favored religious leader. And Kublai had found his chosen champion for just such a role, the Thagspah Lama, nephew of one of the most revered leaders of Saskia, and himself a well-respected figure even before Kublai's rise to power. The Thaksba Lama's own innate political sensibilities made him tractable to suitable persuasion when Kublai's own rise to power commenced. Beginning in 1260, the religious leader was promoted time and again and had honors and titles heaped upon him by the Khan. State preceptor, then placed in charge of all Buddhist

clergy, tax exemption for all Buddhist monasteries, director of the state-control commission to administer Tibet in the name of the Khan, and of course, what Mongol alliance would be complete without a suitable set of intermarriages? Phagspa's younger brother was arranged to be married to a Mongol princess, then as was his nephew, and later on, one of his grandnephews. Apparently, by 1264, the Phagspa Lama had become so assimilated into the Mongol locus of power and authority that he had forsaken his own Tibetan garb in exchange for Mongol-style clothing, for which he faced no shortage of backlash from his own people. Finally, Fogspot's younger brother, who had, like him, also been raised among the Mongols since childhood, was

granted the title of Head of All Tibet and dispatched from the imperial court back to his homeland. This rule would be briefly challenged following the unexpected death of this Head of All Tibet in 1267, leading to a brief uprising by the rival Brigunpas sect, but it was swiftly and mercilessly crushed by Mongol forces the following year. Thereafter, Fagswalama was restored to power over the region, but this time with a Mongol pacification officer to assist him in keeping control over the country. In exchange for his meteoric rise to power and position, Kublai wanted from the Phagspa Lama Manisasaka sect their official religious sanction and heavenly justification for his absolute rule,

an exchange that Phagspa was only too happy to make. The cleric devised a delineation between state and religious rulers, stating, quote, Secular and spiritual salvation are something that all human beings try to win. Spiritual salvation consists in complete deliverance from suffering and worldly welfare in secular salvation. Both depend on dual order, the order of religion and the order of state. The order of religion is presided over by the lama and the state by the king. The priest has to teach religion and the king to guarantee the rule which enables everyone to live in peace. The heads of the religion and of the state are equal, though with different

function." Thus, there was no conflict of interest in Buddhist adherents paying due homage to their secular leader, Kublai, while paying spiritual loyalty to their lama or other cleric. But Phogspot then went one better, helping Kublai become something more than mere secular ruler. He began associating Kublai with great figures of the Buddhist pantheon, eventually coming to identify the great Khan as an incarnation of Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, with a flaming sword in his right hand to cut through ignorance and a lotus blossom in his left signifying the attainment of perfect enlightenment and universal wisdom. He would be deified in time among the Buddhists and referred to as Kakravartin, the Universal Emperor. Such iconography would catch on even outside of Tibet and Buddhist circles,

with Kublai becoming widely known in Mongolian in his later years as Seijin Khan, the Wise Khan. For Kublai, this was first and foremost a useful business arrangement, not a true spiritual rebirth. Certainly, he never threw off his own inborn shamanism to truly devote himself to the Eightfold Path or anything, nor even allowed the rites and ceremonies of Tibetan Buddhism to do any more than exist alongside the still preeminent Confucian rituals at court. Yet, however cynical or worldly his objectives might have been, they undoubtedly paid dividends and convinced many of the faithful that the Great Khan was one of them, and the legitimate and divinely ordained ruler of all. A later account that reflected the popular sentiments of the time reads,

Thus he, Kublai, made to shine the sun of religion on the popular sentiments of the vast world, in this wise he became famous in all directions as the wise Kakravarti king who turns the thousand golden wheels. End quote. In return for this elevation and adulation, the Buddhists under Kublai were rewarded with special privileges, monks in monasteries granted tax-exempt status for much of his reign, and with imperial funds set aside specifically for the construction and restoration of Buddhist temples and monasteries, including several of those that had been badly damaged during the Buddhist-Taoist disputes that Kublai had arbitrated years prior. In addition, the UN court provided artisans and slaves to work in the shops and lands owned by the monasteries.

Though Taoism had lost the great debate with Buddhism back in 1258, Kublai was not willing to turn his back on that faith either. This was due in large part to the fact that, while he understood that Buddhism tended to appeal to the upper echelons of Chinese society, Taoism and its magics and mysticism appealed strongly to the lower classes. Indeed, it seems that even the great Khan himself was not immune to the draw of the Taoists' flashy performance arts. As such, he allotted funds to assist the Taoist monasteries and for construction of new temples for them as well, albeit not near to the extent of those provided to the Buddhists. This would prove sufficient to ensure that the Taoist notables were willing to sponsor the requisite sacrifices and ceremonies

at Kublai's imperial court, especially to the worship of Taishan. This, and a generally favorable outlook by the clergy, at least ensured that the Taoists and their adherents remained peaceable for the first two decades of Kublai's reign. The last of the significant religions that Kublai sought out influence with was by far the least significant within China itself. The number of practicing Christian sects within the Middle Kingdom remained vanishingly small. Yet even so, he had vital reasons in seeking out good relations with the Western religion in both his capacity as Mongol Great Khan and as Chinese Yuan Emperor. For the former, maintaining and expanding relations with

this distant and yet undeniably powerful European faith was important to sustaining the pretense that he was a universal leader of the Great Mongol nation, rather than just a Chinese ruler, as his distant kinsmen liked to sneer. As for the latter, being able to attract relations and visitors from far beyond China's borders was instrumental in establishing and maintaining his credentials as a truly meritorious and legitimate Confucian-style emperor. To be accepted as a truly great emperor, he needed foreign dignitaries, or at the very least foreign visitors whom he could portray as dignitaries to his Chinese subjects who would bow down in his presence. European Christians, still largely unknown within China and not directly associated

with the Mongol regime like the Persians and Muslims, filled that role spectacularly. Certainly the most famous of these sojourners from the West was none other than the Venetian tradesman and spinner of fanciful tales, Marco Polo. Reading through his collected stories, it is definitely difficult to take much of what Polo says as especially accurate or literal, and in no few number of cases he makes statements with such glaring inaccuracy, or misses seemingly unmissable details about the country and people around him, or plays fast and loose with both events and times as a whole, and his own place in them, then it becomes difficult to take what he says very literally or seriously at all. Indeed, again and again, the question has been raised over

time. Did Marco Polo ever actually go to China at all? Or was it just a tall tale of a tradesman who heard amazing stories along the Black Sea of a far more distant land than he would ever venture? How could a man who claimed to spend more than a decade in the Yuan court as an imperial official, sent on important tasks across the realm as the eyes and ears of the Great Khan, have never once so much as mentioned the Great Wall? Or tea? Or acupuncture? Or foot binding of women?

How seriously can one take the claims that he and his father and uncle were instrumental in the construction of the manganels at the siege of Xiangyang, when it's well established that the Polos did not arrive into Yuan territory, if they did at all, until at least two years after the city fell? Still, there is sufficient evidence that there was indeed a courtier of the emperor known as Bolo in the history of Yuan, as noted by the Chinese scholar Peng Hai. He's noted as having been arrested in 1274, after being accused of walking on the same

side of the road as a female courtesan. He was subsequently released by the request of Kublai himself, and thereafter dispatched to Ningxia the following spring, which does seem to line up with the dates Polo gives for his first official mission on behalf of the Khan. Supporters of the historicity of Polo's stay in China note, with some degree of convincingness, that many of the mistakes and omissions can largely be explained by the fact that the Polos would have spent virtually all their time among the Mongol court and not among the Han Chinese or their customs. While the Great Wall certainly is big and long, it was also long out of use and in

disrepair by the 1270s, and could easily have been bypassed completely. And as for the exaggerations of his importance and the events in which he supposedly took part, that can perhaps be explained as a storyteller seeking to zest up his tale rather than wholesale fabrication. Regardless, in the absence of some definitive proof that Polo did not reach China at all, but instead took his stories wholesale from a Persian or other source, most historians are still inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt that he did in fact make the trip. By his own account, Marco's journey was preceded by that of his father and uncle, Niccolo and Maffeo Polo, who set out from Venice in 1252.

After first a trade stop in Constantinople, the pair continued through the territories of the Golden Horde and then for Kublai's court, which they reached in late 1265 or early 1266. Marco wrote that the Khan, delighted with the visitors, "...beamed with the greatest kindness and received them with great honor and makes them joy and very great festival. Kublai was apparently deeply curious about the Western lands and its peoples, customs, laws, warfare, and religion. Ultimately, he asked the Polo brothers to return to Italy, and then to bring him 100 Catholic priests, monks,

and other learned men of the cloth to his imperial court. The Polo certainly thought, and Kublai let them believe, that he was interested in converting to the Church of the Faith, and in converting his realm as well. In fact, Rossi writes, With his eclectic attitude towards religion, Kublai was probably not as interested in recruiting learned clerics to convert his subjects to Christianity as he was in gathering learned men to help him administer his domains in China. His request to the Polos was a ploy to obtain such experts. End quote. The Polos made their way back to Europe,

arriving back in Italy by 1269, where they faced immediate disappointment. The year prior to their return, the previous Pope, Clement IV, had died, and the College of Cardinals could not settle on a successor, leading to an interregnum. This was finally resolved in mid-1271 with the election of Gregory X to the Holy See. The Polos were at last granted an audience with

the new pope, but he proved unwilling to provide them with the hundred men of the cloth that the eastern potentate had requested of the church. Nevertheless, they set out eastward once more later that year, this time with Niccolo's 17-year-old son, Marco, in tow. They arrived back at Kublai's court in Dadu as of 1275. Though the Khan must have been disappointed that they had not returned with the hundred scholars as requested, he nevertheless received the now three polos warmly and with a fine reception. Here was additional proof, after all, that foreigners would travel great distances to pay him tribute. In short order, Kublai realized that though he did not have a hundred European scholars, he had received in young Marco something perhaps as

valuable, a capable and clever young man who was intelligent enough to have become proficient in several languages, including Persian and possibly Mongolian, en route to China. Polo claimed that he and the Khan had numerous personal conversations at length, and details Kublai, with the height of his potency and power, in an exceedingly flattering light. He stated outright, quote, Physically, Polo described the Khan as neither too small nor too large, with black eyes and a prominent and well-made nose. His face was white, though occasionally his features, perhaps when he drank, became rose-colored. For his part, Kublai must have realized that Marco, upon his eventual return to Europe after nearly two decades in the Khan's

court, would be the mouthpiece by which he might best attract additional foreign visitors to his realm. As such, it was in the best interest of the realm to treat this boy with all due grace and decorum. We'll end off today, however, with another journey, not of Marco Polo to the east, but of an eastern traveler to the far west. Apart from the Church of Rome and its makeshift emissaries in the Polos, Kublai's nearest experience with Christianity was that curious branch of the faith known as Nestorianism, which broke with the rest of the Christian church far back in the mid-5th century. Now, it's beyond my purview or expertise to say much more than that about the tenets of the Nestorian faith, and for our purposes here, it's enough to know that it had been the religion of

Kublai's own mother, Sorhaktani Beki. It's little wonder, then, that the great Khan would have sought to remain on good terms with the Nestorian church and bring them and their flocks across Asia into the wider fold of his claimed empire. The practice of the faith was allowed without restriction across the Yuan, and Nestorians were employed at the imperial court by the Great Khan himself. As he done with the other faiths of the realm, Kublai likewise exempted Nestorian clerics and church properties from regular taxation. But probably his most significant action regarding the Church of the East was to dispatch in 1275 two Nestorian prelates on a journey to Jerusalem and the rest of Christendom beyond. Aimed at being half holy pilgrimage and half global PR tour, the trip was undertaken by the Uyghur or Ongud monk Rabban Bar-Sauma,

and his student Rabban Marcos, who left Dadu along the Western Road late that year. The pair would make the expected stops along Central Asia, paying due respects and homage to the Ilkhan Abakha in Persia, and there being held up for more than a decade due to the military unrest across the region. When the old Nestorian Patriarch of Baghdad, Denha I, died in 1281. Rabban Marcos was elected by the bishops as his replacement, Patriarch Yabalaha III. When at last the way westward was made open, Salma's old student entrusted him with the desires of the new Ilkhan, the old one had also died,

to negotiate an alliance with the Europeans on behalf of the Ilkhanate against the Mamluk Sultanate of Cairo. Salma departed in 1287, with a large retinue of retainers, assistants, archons, and translators, who was able to converse with Salma in Persian, in which he was fluent. The journey took them through Armenia, the Sultanate of Rum, to the Black Sea, and then via ship to Constantinople to meet with the Emperor of the East, Andronicus II Palaeologus. Thereafter, he sailed onward to Italy, witnessing first-hand the eruption of Mount Etna on Sicily in mid-June of 1287. Ravon Salma arrives in Rome shortly thereafter, but unfortunately just after the Pope Honorius IV had died.

Instead, he met with the cardinals and visited St. Peter's Basilica. His next stops were at Tuscany and Genoa, all while on his way towards Paris and his awaited Peter's Basilica. His next stops were at Tuscany and Genoa, all while on his way towards Paris and his awaited meeting with its king. After overwintering in Genoa, he made his way into what he called Frangistan and met for one month with King Philip IV the Fair. The French monarch seemed to respond well to the Mongol overtures of an alliance against the Mamluks and sent along with an Astorian monk one of his own noblemen, Gobert de Helville, along with two clerics and a crossbowman, all of whom would accompany him on his return trip to the Ilkhanate. After departing the King of France, the monk would encounter the King of England, Edward I, the Longshanks, in Gascony,

which was then in English control. Repeating his offer of alliance against the Mamluks, Salma was pleased to hear that Edward was enthusiastic about the prospect, only to learn that the English monarch was actually too tied up back at home dealing with internal problems from Welsh and Scott noblemen, especially a certain Robert the Bruce and an incorrigible rebel called William Wallace. Departing back to Rome, Rabban Salma was at last able to meet with a pope, the newly elected Nicholas IV, who gave the monk communion on Palm Sunday of 1288, and entrusted him to deliver a tiara as a gift from the Vatican to the Patriarch of the East

upon his return to Baghdad later that year, among many other gifts. He would live out the rest of his days in the city of the Ilkhan, writing of his incredible travels before dying in 1294. The Ilkhan, Argun, would respond in 1289 to the King of France's stated interest in pursuing an alliance with the Mongol Empire against the Egyptian Mamluks. He wrote from the French archives, Under the power of the Eternal Sky, the message of the great king, Argun, to the king of France, said, I have accepted the word that you forwarded by my messenger under Rabban Bar-Salma, saying that if the warriors of the Ilkhan invade Egypt, you would support them. We would also lend our support by going there at the end of the tiger year's winter, 1290,

worshipping the sky, and settle in Damascus in the early spring, 1291. If you send your warriors as promised and conquer Egypt, worshipping the sky, then I shall give you Jerusalem. If any of our warriors arrive later than arranged, all will be futile and no one will benefit. If you care to please give me your impressions, I would be very willing to accept any samples of French opulence that you care to burden your messengers with.

End quote. Unfortunately for Argun Khan, his attempts at such a Euro-Mongol alliance ultimately proved fruitless, and he eventually gave up trying. Baghdad seems as good a place as any to rest and water our horses and camels after this multi-round trip across Asia and Europe and then back again. Next time, we'll be back in the court of Kublai, as we get back to the latter years of the Great Khan's reign over Great Yuan and his less-than-stellar attempts to make Mongolia a maritime power. Thanks for listening.

400 years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax.