The Polo Brothers
In 1260, the Polo Brothers (Maffeo and Niccilo Polo) went to Sudak (a city in Ukraine) to trade. They lived along the Volga River and traded for a year. Shortly, a civil war broke out between Barka, and Hulagu. The Civil war forced the Polo's to take a different route home, to the same one that they took on the way. Therefore, they decided to take a wider route back home, stretching more east to avoid the civil war. This detour was a big mistake because it would have taken the men 3 years to get back home.
The abandoned Polo's were suddenly rescued by the arrival of a VIP emissary from Hugalu Khan in the west. The ambassador convinced the brothers to visit the Great Khan. The Great Khan had always wanted to meet a Latin person, so they then journeyed eastward. On the way, they passed through the Gobi desert. Through the northern route, they reached Turfan and Hami, they then headed south-east to Dunhuang. Along the Hexi-Corridor, they reached the Capital of Great Khan, Beijing in 1266.
The Great Khan was indeed hospitable. He had just set up his court at Beijing, an impressive city built by Kublai as his new capital city after the Mongols took over China in 1264 and established Yuan dynasty (1264-1368). Kublai asked them all about their part of the world, the Pope and the Roman church. Niccolo and Matteo, who spoke Turkic dialects perfectly, answered truthfully and clearly. The Polo brothers were well received in the Great Khan's capital. One year later, the Great Khan sent them on their way with a letter in Turkic addressed to Pope Clement IV asking the Pope to send him 100 learned men to teach his people about Christianity and Western science. He also asked Pope to procure oil from the lamp at the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.
To make sure the brothers would be given every assistance on their travels, Kublai Khan presented them with a golden tablet a foot long and three inches wide and inscribed with the words: "By the strength of the eternal Heaven, holy be the Khan's name. Let him that pays him not reverence be killed." The golden tablet was the special VIP passport, authorizing the travelers to receive throughout the Great Khan's dominions such horses, lodging, food and guides as they required. It took the Polos three full years to return home, in April 1269.
Although the Polo brothers blazed a trail of their own on their first journey to the East, they were not the first Europeans to visit the Mongols on their home ground. Before them Giovanni di Piano Carpini in 1245 and Guillaume de Rubrouck in 1253 had made the dangerously journey to Karakorum and returned safely; however the Polos traveled farther than Carpini and Rubrouck and reached China.
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