Travel in the Yuan Dynasty

Sources

Mongols. Genghis Khan and his successors united all of Central Asia under one empire. The Mongol rulers took a liberal attitude toward religion, national allegiance, and social customs, and travel within and outside the empire became possible. The establishment of the great Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) and the increase in trade along the Silk Road facilitated the creation of the first direct contacts between China and the West. For the early travelers the most ordinary motivation was commerce, but some had political purposes in seeking allies against the Muslims. Meanwhile, for some travelers, proselytism was the major reason for their trips.

New Route. By 1279 the lands of East Asia had been in touch with the Indo-Iranian world via sea lanes and a land route following a group of oases in the Tarim basin. The Mongol expansion in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries helped to revive the old steppe route, which had connected Mongolia with the lower Volga valley via Dzungaria and Kazakhstan since the New Stone Age (circa 8000 B.C.E.). Beginning in 1229 the Mongols thoroughly reorganized this route, which stretched to the plains of Eastern Europe and extended the Chinese postal relay stations.

Travelers. The Mongol territory was traversed by a variety of travelers, such as Muslims of Central Asia and the Middle East, Russian Orthodox subjects of the Chagatai, Il-Khan, and Golden Horde empires, subjects of the former Liao and Jin dynasties of North China, and Genoese and Venetian merchants whose trade relationships with Russia and the Near East involved trips to the Far East. In 1219 Yelu Chucai, minister of Genghis Khan, accompanied his master across Turkestan to the West. The next year an envoy of the emperor of North China traveled to Persia and the Hindu Kush to meet Genghis Khan. In 1221 a Daoist monk traveled across China to Uliassutai, Urumchi, and on to the Hindu Kush, ending his travels in 1224. By 1259 imperial messengers made regular trips to Hulagu, then near Baghdad.

Europeans. During the Mongol occupation, most Russian princes and grand-dukes were required to travel to Karakorum, the Mongol capital, for their submission and investiture. For this reason, Prince Yaroslav II and Alexander Nevsky crossed the Tarbagatai area in the mid 1200s. Most of these people obviously followed the North Road of the Silk Route. After the Mongol campaigns in Eastern and Central Europe in the thirteenth century, many European prisoners were sent as slaves via the northern route and Turkestan to Karakorum as well as other cities.

Languages. Because of the relations between business and administration in the Mongols’ political institution, some foreigners even served as officials in the Yuan court. The Mongols began to adapt the Uigur alphabet as the official language of administration in China and to abandon the quadrangular script created by the Tibetan lama Thags-pa and adopted in 1269. Persian was the most popular language in commercial circles and on the caravan route connecting Tabriz to Beijing.

John of Piano Carpini. The kings and the Popes of Western Europe were determined to dispatch Franciscan missionaries to Karakorum and Beijing in an effort to become allies with the Mongols and to convert them. The first European to China was a Franciscan monk, John of Piano Carpini, sent by Pope Innocent IV. Accompanied by Benedict of Poland, Piano Carpini left Lyon in 1245, traveling from the Tarbagatai via Lake Zaisan to Karakorum. His mission accomplished little, but after his return he wrote an account of the enthronement of Guyug Khan in 1246 and the manners and customs of the Mongols.

Franciscans. Unsatisfied with the achievements of earlier expeditions, Louis IX, the king of France, and as Pope Innocent IV tried again in 1253, sending William of Rubruck, a native of Flanders, to Mongolia in order to seek military assistance against the Muslims in the Crusades. He crossed the Black Sea and the Crimea and reached the steppe route. He was interviewed by the Khan Mongke in Karakorum, where he stayed until 1254. Another Franciscan, the Italian Giovanni di Monte Corvino, took a different route. After arriving in Iran, he took ship in 1291 at Hormuz, which was then the point of departure of the sea routes to East Asia, and landed at Chunzhou in southern China. In 1307 Pope Clement V appointed him Archbishop of Beijing because of his successful mission. The Italian Franciscan, Odoric of Pordenone, left for East Asia in 1314. After visiting Constantinople he crossed the Black Sea and arrived in Iran, where he boarded a ship to India and finally to Guangzhou, where he took another vessel to Fuzhou. After leaving Fuzhou for Hangzhou by the inland roads, he traveled to Beijing by the Grand Canal and stayed there for three years. Returning to Europe through the interior of Asia, he did not arrive in Italy until 1330.

Venetian Merchants. In addition to these Catholic missionaries, some merchants of Western Europe also traveled to China. Among them were the famous Venetian merchants Niccolo, Maffeo, and Marco Polo. Marco Polo’s father and uncle—Niccolo and Maffeo— left Venice in 1254. After arriving in Constantinople, Niccolo and Maffeo Polo took advantage of the Mongols’ relaxed attitude toward trade to travel along the Silk Road to Khanbalik. They continued their journey in 1260 through the Mongol Khanate of southern Russia. From there they made their way to China through Bukhara and Chinese Turkestan. In China, Kublai Khan offered them a pleasant welcome. Before they returned home, the Grand Khan asked them to take a message to the Roman Catholic Church, asking that the Pope send to China one hundred Latin scholars. Leaving China in 1266, the Polos crossed Central Asia again and arrived in Italy in 1269 through Syria. The Roman Catholic Church, however, refused the Khan’s request.

Trip to China. At the end of 1271 the Polos left for China again, together with Marco. The three this time passed through the Mongol Khanate of Persia and northern Afghanistan, followed the old Silk Road, crossed the Pamirs and southern Kashgaria, Yarkand, Khotan, and Lob Nor Basin, and finally arrived in Kanzhou, called by Marco Polo “Canpchu,” a city they identified as a Nestorian community. After staying in the city for one year, they continued their trip to China, visiting the former Tangut capital of Ningxia. In that city they once again discovered a Christian community among the Buddhist population. From there they went into the Ongut country (Suiyuan) and then North China, which Marco Polo, like the Turks of those days, called “Cathay,” a word derived from the name of the Qidan people, who dominated the region in the eleventh century. Eventually the travelers arrived at Chandu, the summer palace of Kublai Khan, 160 miles north of Beijing. The Polos there submitted a letter from Pope Gregory X to Kublai Khan. In 1275 Marco Polo went to Beijing, then called “Dadu.”

Homecoming. Kublai Khan was impressed with Marco Polo and appointed him to a position in the salt tax administration at Yangzhou. Given the task of governing this big trade city, Marco found himself entrusted with a variety of missions by the Yuan court. In 1291 the Polo family decided to go home and were entrusted with the care of a princess intended for the Mongol king of Persia. This time they wanted to return home by water. Early in 1292, Marco Polo, his father, and his uncle boarded a ship at Quanzhou. They visited Vietnam, Java, Malaya, Ceylon, the Malabar coast, Mekran, and the southeast coast of Iran. They arrived at Ormuz in 1294 and returned to Venice the next year, after twenty-five years of living abroad.

Memoirs. Taken prisoner by the Genoese, Marco Polo dictated his memoirs in French to Rustichello da Pisa. These memoirs later became a famous book, II Milione (Travels), describing two itineraries in China: one in the West, from Beijing to Yunnan via Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Sichuan; the other in the East, from Beijing to Fujian via Shandong, the lower Yangzi (Yangtze) River, and Zhejiang. Presenting a brief economic survey of North China and South China, this book mentioned navigable waterways and the significance of the Yangzi River, the main artery of Chinese economy. Marco Polo wrote that each year two hundred thousand boats sailed up the river. He also observed the economic significance of the Grand Canal, repaired and completed by Kublai Khan, which made the shipment of rice from the lower Yangzi River to Beijing much easier.

Friar Odoric. In 1325 Franciscan Friar Odoric of Pordenone traveled to Beijing by the sea route, remained there for three years, and returned home by land, crossing the southwest corner of Turkestan. He began dictating his memoirs to a fellow monk, but he died before completing it and his story was not published until 1513.

Travel to the West. While many foreigners traveled to China in the Mongol era, some Chinese went to the West. They traveled from North China to the Middle East or even to Europe. Among them was the Daoist monk Chang Chun, patriarch of the Zhuan Zhen sect. Genghis Khan ordered him to Afghanistan in 1219. Beginning his journey from Shandong in 1220, Chang Chun and his eighteen disciples traversed Outer Mongolia and the Altai, crossed Samarkand, went around the south of the Hindu Kush, and appeared in 1222 at Genghis Khan’s camp in the Kabul area. Leaving Genghis Khan near Tashkent the next year, Chang Chun returned to Beijing and thereafter completed a book on his journey. In 1259 the Khan Mongke sent another Chinese scholar, Chang De, on a mission to Iran. Beginning his journey from Karakorum, he crossed the north of the Tian Shan, Samarkand and Tabriz, and returned home in 1263. Liu Yu left a written record of Chang De’s journey titled Record of a Mission to the West.

Nestorian Monks. Born in Beijing, the Chinese Nestorian monk Rabban Bar Suma and his disciple Mark decided to embark for the Holy Land in 1275. They visited the Nestorian pope in the main city of northwestern Iran, to the south of Tabriz. From the city, Khan Argun sent Suma on a mission to Rome and the kings of France and England. After visiting Constantinople and Rome between 1287 and 1288, he saw the king of England in Gascony and Philip the Fair in Paris. His travel to Rome encouraged Pope Clement III to dis-patch Giovanni di Monte Corvino to Beijing.

Chinese Influence. The Mongol domination promoted the transmission of certain Chinese techniques in the empire of the Il-Khan. Chinese influence was noticeable in Persian miniatures as well as in Iranian ceramics, music, and architecture of the Mongol age. The introduction in the fourteenth century of playing cards, printed fabrics, and paper money was clearly associated with the emergence of wood engraving in Europe and therefore of printing with movable type.

Aftermath. Immediately following the fall of the Yuan dynasty, turmoil ensued and travelers temporarily became rare in western China. In 1419 the Shah Rukh, emperor of Persia, tried to reopen broken communications by dispatching an embassy. The ambassadors reached the Tianshan and followed the Tien Shan Nan Lu on to Turfan, Hami, and Lanzhou. They spent somewhat over one year on their journey. They remained in Beijing five months and started back in May 1422 by crossing the Pamirs, probably along the Silk Road in the vicinity of Kashgar. They reached Heart again on 1 September.

Sources

Thomas T. Allsen, Mongol Imperialism: The Policies of the Grand Qan Mongke in China, Russia, and the Islamic Lands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).

Ch’en Yuan, Western and Central Asians in China under the Mongols, translated by Ch’ien Hsing-hai and L. Carrington Goodrich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966).

Chih-Ch’ang Li, The Travels of an Alchemist, translated by Arthur Waley (London: Routledge, 1931).

Jack Dabbs, History of the Discovery and Exploration of Chinese Turkestan (The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton, 1963).