Forewort Marco Polo 1254 1324 was born in Venice Italy into a distinguished merchant family His fa ther and uncle traveled the Middle East and Asia seeking trade opportunities At age 17 Marco joined them embarking on a three andohol year 5 600 mile voyage to the court of Emperor Kublai Khan The elder Polos had met the powerful Khan before and had been asked to return Marco soon impressed the Khan with his talents for language and observation The em peror sent Marco on special missions to the remote and curious cultures that he himself had never seen In return Marco regaled Kublai Khan with detailed stories for 17 years The Polos become important officials of the court as they earned the Khan s trust The famed explorers had not planned to be gone for so long But by 1292 they found their ticket home they would escort a Mongolian princess to Persia for her wedding Nearly three years later they arrived in Venice Marco was 44 In 1298 Marco engaged in the baitles between Venice and Genoa a neighboring citystate He was captured During his yearlong in prisonment he dictated his novel memoirs to an authors fellow inmate Rustichello da Pisa Marco lived until 1324 but little is known of his later life Although Rosichello s original manuscript of Marco s stories was lost nearly 150 unique editions of his Description of the World exist today Varied in translation length content and style each was copied to suit the tastes of the patron or sponsor the person who paid a scribe to copy down the story Before the invention of printing presses around 1440 a book was cre oted entirely by hand Scribes handledered each word and the pages were then sewn together As Maico s adventures later spread in printed form doubts about their authenticity and accuracy grew Indeed the book come to be known as it milione The million lies in Italian The book you are about to read tells a story about telling Marco Polo s stories That s just what Rusichello and other scribes and translators did Indeed all of history is a collection of such stories we have come to believe Perhaps none is grander than the tales of Marco Polo
Tim so lucky to live here in Venicell can walk down my own street to visit a scribe who copied Marco Polo s stories into a book like the tale about the elephants that brought the world s tallest trees to Kublai Khan s palace Oh I am but one scribe child And you are but one listen or true you are the one who is most captivated and the stories of Polo travel far far beyond our city Does everyone believe themt My father doesn t He says Trees cannot ride on elephants for weeks Yet in the Green Palace where the Emperor spent his sum mers Marco witnessed trees of every green shade forever in leaf Did they appear by magic or by
The Million Stories of Marco Polo
Among the millions of stories ever told, the tales of the legendary explorer Marco Polo are the most renowned. Listen as an old-time scribe tells his curious young neighbor about stories that are worth remembering.
