page_title: The Travels of Marco Polo
section_title: Authenticity and veracity
hierarchical_section_title: The Travels of Marco Polo / Authenticity and veracity
caption_attribution_description: English: Illustration from Le livre des merveilles de Marco Polo ("The Adventures of Marco Polo").
context_page_description: Book of the Marvels of the World, in English commonly called The Travels of Marco Polo, is a 13th-century travelogue written down by Rustichello da Pisa from stories told by Italian explorer Marco Polo, describing Polo's travels through Asia between 1271 and 1295, and his experiences at the court of Kublai Khan.
  The book was written by romance writer Rustichello da Pisa, who worked from accounts which he had heard from Marco Polo when they were imprisoned together in Genoa. Rustichello wrote it in Franco-Venetian, a cultural language widespread in northern Italy between the subalpine belt and the lower Po between the 13th and 15th centuries. It was originally known as Livre des Merveilles du Monde or Devisement du Monde. The book was translated into many European languages in Marco Polo's own lifetime, but the original manuscripts are now lost, and their reconstruction is a matter of textual criticism. A total of about 150 copies in various languages are known to exist, including in langues d'oïl, Tuscan, two versions in Venetian, and two different versions in Latin.
context_section_description: Since its publication, many have viewed the book with skepticism. Some in the Middle Ages viewed the book simply as a romance or fable, largely because of the sharp difference of its descriptions of a sophisticated civilisation in China to other early accounts by Giovanni da Pian del Carpine and William of Rubruck who portrayed the Mongols as "barbarians" who appeared to belong to "some other world". Doubts have also been raised in later centuries about Marco Polo's narrative of his travels in China, for example for his failure to mention a number of things  and practices commonly associated with China, such as the Chinese characters,  tea, chopsticks, and footbinding. In particular, his failure to mention the Great Wall of China had been noted as early as the middle of the seventeenth century.  In addition, the difficulties in identifying many of the place names he used also raised suspicion about Polo's accounts. Many have questioned whether or not he had visited the places he mentioned in his itinerary, or he had appropriated the accounts of his father and uncle or other travelers, or doubted that he even reached China and that, if he did, perhaps never went beyond Khanbaliq (Beijing).
  Historian Stephen G. Haw however argued that many of the "omissions" could be explained.  For example, none of the other Western travelers to Yuan dynasty China at that time, such as Giovanni de' Marignolli and Odoric of Pordenone, mentioned the Great Wall, and that while remnants of the Wall would have existed at that time, it would not have been significant or noteworthy as it had not been maintained for a long time. The Great Walls were built to keep out northern invaders, whereas the ruling dynasty during Marco Polo's visit were those very northern invaders. The Mongol rulers whom Polo served also controlled territories both north and south of today's wall, and would have no reasons to maintain any fortifications that may have remained there from the earlier dynasties. He noted the Great Wall familiar to us today is a Ming structure built some two centuries after Marco Polo's travels.  The Muslim traveler Ibn Battuta did mention the Great Wall, but when he asked about the wall while in China during the Yuan dynasty, he could find no one who had either seen it or knew of anyone who had seen it. Haw also argued that practices such as footbinding were not common even among Chinese during Polo's time and almost unknown among the Mongols. While the Italian missionary Odoric of Pordenone who visited Yuan China mentioned footbinding (it is however unclear whether he was only relaying something he heard as his description is inaccurate), no other foreign visitors to Yuan China mentioned the practice, perhaps an indication that the footbinding was not widespread or was not practiced in an extreme form at that time. Marco Polo himself noted (in the Toledo manuscript) the dainty walk of Chinese women who took very short steps.
  It has also been pointed out that Polo's accounts are more accurate and detailed than other accounts of the periods. Polo had at times denied the "marvelous" fables and legends given in other European accounts, and also omitted descriptions of strange races of people then believed to inhabit eastern Asia and given in such accounts. For example, Odoric of Pordenone said that the Yangtze river flows through the land of pygmies only three spans high and gave other fanciful tales, while Giovanni da Pian del Carpine spoke of "wild men, who do not speak at all and have no joints in their legs", monsters who looked like women but whose menfolk were dogs, and other equally fantastic accounts.  Despite a few exaggerations and errors, Polo's accounts are relatively free of the descriptions of irrational marvels, and in many cases where present (mostly given in the first part before he reached China, such as mentions of Christian miracles), he made a clear distinction that they are what he had heard rather than what he had seen.  It is also largely free of the gross errors in other accounts such as those given by the Moroccan trave
caption: Le livre des merveilles, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, fr. 2810, Tav. 84r"Qui hae sì gran caldo che a pena vi si puote sofferire (...). Questa gente sono tutti neri, maschi e femmine, e vanno tutti ignudi, se non se tanto ch'egliono ricuoprono loro natura con un panno molto bianco. Costoro non hanno per peccato veruna lussuria"[48]
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