Do The Travels of Marco Polo belong in the non-fiction section, or fantasy?

That man began telling Rustichello an extraordinary story. It was a tale of an epic journey to China – of encounters with unimaginably rich and powerful rulers, of strange and exotic lands, of brushes with creatures that would make your heart race and skin crawl. And it triggered in Rustichello an idea.

The Italian writer soon saw the potential of turning the memoirs of his well-travelled cellmate into a book. And so he set about writing them up in the default language of medieval romance: Old French, but with a smattering of Italian. The result – The Travels of Marco Polo, or Le Divisament du Monde (‘The Diverse Parts of the World’), as it was originally known – was Rustichello’s crowning achievement.

And it would turn his cellmate, Marco Polo, into one of the most famous figures of the entire Middle Ages.

Can we trust The Travels of Marco Polo?

Le Divisament transformed perceptions of the far east across medieval Europe, introducing generations of readers to a world that they could barely conceive of, let alone visit. But look beyond its remarkable impact, and how much credence should we give to the text that Rustichello committed to paper following his incarceration with Polo?

How useful is the book in understanding life in Asia – especially China – in the Middle Ages? In short, can we really trust Marco Polo’s word?

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To answer this question, we first need to untangle what kind of book Le Divisament was, and what it aimed to do. At its heart is the tale of how – in the early 1270s, at the age of just 17 – Marco embarked on an extraordinary journey to China with two other Polos: his father, Niccolò, and his uncle Maffeo.

The trio, so Le Divisament tells us, travelled to the far east at the end of a superlative period of imperial expansion triggered by the rise of the great Mongol leader Genghis Khan (c1162–1227). So formidable was Genghis as both a warlord and a conqueror that the empire he established would, at its peak, extend all the way from eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan.

Le Divisament transformed perceptions of the far east across medieval Europe, introducing generations of readers to a world that they could barely conceive of, let alone visit

However, by the time Marco and his companions arrived on the scene, the Mongol empire had split into a number of virtually autonomous states – and the age of rapid expansion was all but over. Only to the east – in the dominion of Genghis’s grandson, Kublai Khan – were major wars of conquest being fought, notably when, in 1279, Kublai extinguished the rule of southern China’s indigenous Song dynasty emperors

Sadly, the original text of Le Divisament, describing the world that greeted Marco and his companions on their arrival in China, is lost. But there’s enough consistency between the various manuscripts to indicate that what we’re reading is essentially the same book. However, this is not necessarily the book you might expect.

For all that its English title talks of Polo’s travels, Le Divisament is emphatically not a travelogue. Rather, it is a description of the known world, based loosely around Marco’s experiences. As descriptions go, it’s often an unsatisfactory one. The text is rambling and discursive.

It is also given to maddeningly artificial changes of direction, such as when it embarks on a description of the Black Sea, before – having recalled that Marco has already given an account of this – heading off abruptly in another direction.

There are other irritations. Despite repeatedly promising to confine himself to describing lands he had seen – and to distinguish personal observation from hearsay – the book includes regions, such as the coast of east Africa, that it’s highly unlikely Marco ever visited. For the most part, there is little sense of an itinerary. And yet, despite these limitations, there are extraordinary details to be found.

What do we learn about the Mongols in the book?

Le Divisament states that, having arrived at the court of Kublai Khan, Marco swiftly made a favourable impression on the Mongol ruler, who recruited him into his service. The Great Khan apparently despatched Marco as his representative on missions within China – and, in a number of cases, around the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.

The Venetian was often charged with securing exotica for Kublai’s collection, such as the alms-bowl of the Buddha, and drafting interesting reports on these journeys. Marco’s accounts of his interactions with the Great Khan are remarkable.

• Read more | What was life like under the Mongol empire?

Yet arguably more astonishing to his contemporaries were his descriptions of the marvels he had witnessed on his travels. Some of these are undoubtedly in the tradition of the fantastic – take, for example, the giant bird called the ruc, which could drop elephants from a great height.

Many others, however, use exaggeration – and explore the remarkable within nature – rather than employ pure fabrication. So we read of a king of Champa (the southern part of present-day Vietnam) who has 326 children, and of a giant ruby in the possession of the king of Ceylon, a jewel Marco allegedly saw at first hand.

Marco also describes huge Chinese ships, and invites us to marvel at the enormous populations of Chinese cities – not to mention the vast number of islands to be found in the Indian Ocean and the China Sea. The book sings the praises of a great island lying due east of China, named Cipingu, which abounds in gold and pearls. That island is now known as Japan – and Marco’s book was the earliest western source to mention it.

Marco (or Rustichello) seems to take a positive pleasure in demolishing common misconceptions about the east back in western Europe. The mythical salamander is not a living creature but asbestos, an incombustible substance mined from earth. The corpses sold in India as dead pygmies are, in fact, dried monkeys. The unicorn is identified as a rhinoceros – not at all the kind of creature, the book assures us, that allows itself to be ensnared by virgins.

Did Marco Polo make up details in his Travels?

So Marco witnessed some extraordinary sights on his travels – and he was all too happy to share them with his readership. Yet, to return to the question posed earlier: can we trust Marco’s word? When he lectured his fellow Europeans on the intricacies of life in the far east, how far was he dipping into the well of lived experience, and how much was make-believe?

Certain details in the Le Divisament are undeniably questionable on historical grounds. Prominent among these is the claim that the Polos rendered invaluable assistance to Kublai’s forces in the capture of the city of Xiangyang. This is known to have occurred in 1273, a year or two prior to the Venetians’ arrival in China. In fact, Chinese sources give Muslim siege experts the credit for assisting Kublai’s assault on the city.

This is not the only passage that stretches credulity. Niccolò and Maffeo had already travelled to China (in the early 1260s), and Le Divisament tells us that, during this first visit, they had been commissioned by Kublai to bring back to China 100 Christian missionaries together with some holy oil from Jerusalem.

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The book also claims that Pope Gregory X appointed the Polos as his ambassadors to the Mongol Ilkhan in Iran following a meeting in Acre. Both are great stories; neither is likely to be true.

Many historians have also questioned the credibility of Marco’s co-author. Rustichello was known from his other writing to have been a habitual name-dropper – once claiming, for example, that the Lord Edward (the future Edward I of England) had lent him a book of Arthurian romance.

Were Marco Polo's Travels believed at the time?

Such scepticism has a long history. Le Divisament started making waves across western Europe from as early as the second decade of the 14th century – and it wasn’t long before rave reviews were being counter-balanced by the voicing of doubts.

In particular, Marco’s contemporaries struggled with the contrast between the received image of the Mongols – a people customarily portrayed in 13th-century Europe as nomadic barbarians – and the book’s depiction of the wealth and impressive organisation of Kublai’s empire. In short, while Europeans could accept the existence of a sophisticated polity in the east, the idea it was presided over by the Mongols was far more difficult to swallow.

Europeans were all too willing to lap up the fictional story of the Christian king Prester John, who, according to the traditional legend, ruled over a kingdom in the east. However, the version of Prester John’s life in Le Divisament – which described him as a minor prince overthrown, paradoxically, by Genghis Khan with the help of astrologers – was much less to their liking.

What is the modern assessment of The Travels of Marco Polo?

Modern critics are more troubled by what seem like glaring omissions from the Venetian’s text than his depiction of the Mongols. Marco’s failure to mention the Great Wall of China shouldn’t be held against him because, contrary to popular belief, the continuous structure that exists today had not yet been built.

But it is more difficult to account for his silence regarding tea-drinking, the use of fingerprinting for authentication of documents, or the way Chinese women bound their feet. Other critics have pointed to the fact that, although Marco is at great pains to depict himself as a highly valued agent of the Great Khan, no reference to him has been found in Chinese sources.

In the eyes of some modern academics, such omissions fundamentally undermine Marco’s entire story. One has even gone as far as to claim that he never made it further east than the Black Sea.

Do I agree with this assessment? No.

In my opinion, there is nothing intrinsically improbable about a Venetian finding employment in China under the Great Khan. Kublai is known to have recruited men of diverse talents to serve him. In fact, this seems to have been a trait of Mongol rulers: by 1289, the Ilkhans were employing Italians as envoys, interpreters and mercenaries.

Marco’s failure to mention the Great Wall of China shouldn’t be held against him... but it is more difficult to account for his silence regarding tea-drinking, the use of fingerprinting for authentication of documents, or the way Chinese women bound their feet

Marco’s maritime voyages on the Great Khan’s behalf fit easily within the burst of diplomatic activity that took Kublai’s representatives to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and peninsular India between 1278 and 1294.

One explanation for the Polos’ absence from Chinese sources is that they would simply have been classed in the same category as all the many other foreign agents drawn from lands to the west of China. So numerous were these visitors that the Chinese had two terms for them: xiyu (‘westerners’) or semu (‘people of various nations’).

What of the accusation that Marco grossly inflated the role he played in Kublai’s court and exaggerated his adventures? Even his most vigorous of defenders would have to concede that it’s highly likely that he did both. Yet he’d hardly be the first traveller to be guilty of such a ‘crime’. This doesn’t mean that he didn’t have any adventures at all.

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Maybe the best way to make any significant headway in the quest to determine the veracity of Marco’s writings is to locate documentary evidence to support his presence in the Mongol world. Unfortunately, this is in vanishingly short supply. Marco’s later life, in which he became a successful merchant, is comparatively well documented. But firm proof of his travels remains elusive.

In fact, the nearest we get to documentary evidence is his uncle Maffeo’s will. This refers to “the three tablets of gold that were from the magnificent Chan of the Tartars”, a term that could mean either the Great Khan or one of his relatives. It is presumably one of these tablets that is mentioned in an inventory of Marco’s property drawn up decades after his death, during a dispute among his notoriously litigious kinsfolk.

Why were Marco Polo's travels so significant?

Ultimately, given the difficulties of the sources, and the doubts swirling around Marco’s account, perhaps we have to make an admission – that the most remarkable thing about the Polos’ travels is not so much that they happened, but when they happened.

Their long journey to China fell several years before an Italian presence in Asia is even documented. It would be up to 30 years before the great age of Italian settlement in China’s coastal cities would get under way. That makes the Polos true pioneers.

In the 13th century, Venetian and Genoese traders established footholds in Crimea and the chief camp-cities of Mongol princes in Iran and in the western steppes. Yet no one ventured nearly as far east as Marco and his two relatives. Is it any wonder, then, that generations of western Europeans read his accounts of his travels with slack-jawed wonder?

As the 14th century went on, European voyages to China began to decline. Then, in 1368, a native Ming dynasty less ready to welcome foreign merchants kicked out the Mongol rulers from China.

But the western imagination never lost sight of the image of a fabulously wealthy empire lying to the east. When Christopher Columbus embarked on his transatlantic journeys in the 1490s, which led to the ‘discovery’ of the New World, he was seeking an alternative route to ‘Cathay’. Before he boarded his ship on one of his famous voyages, Columbus packed an indispensable guide. It was a copy of Marco Polo’s book.

Peter Jackson is emeritus professor of medieval history at Keele University. His books include The Mongols and the West (Routledge, 2018)

This article was first published in the January 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine