POLO, the family name of three travellers into Central Asia and China. In the year 1'266, Nicolo and Maffeo Polo, the father and uncle of Marco Polo, were at Constantinople, whither they had gone from Venice with their merchants' wares. Having laid in a store of jewels, they resolved to cross `the Greater Sea' (Black Sea), on a venture of trade, to Soldaia ; and, having stayed there a while, they thought it well to extend their journey farther, and travelled until they came to the court of a certain Tartar prince, Barca Kaan (Barka, a brother of Baton Kkan), whose residences were at Sara and Bolgara.' While here a great war broke out between Barca and Alan (Barka's cousin, Hulaku Khan), the Lord of the Tartars of the Levant,' and in the end Barca, the Lord of the Ponent,' was defeated, and so the two brothers Maffeo and Nicolo could not get back to Venice by the way they had come, nor until they had gone ' across the whole longi tude of Asia.' Leaving Bolgara they went on to Ucaca,' and thence departing, and passing the great river Tigris' (Volga), traversed a desert country for 17 days, until they came to Bocara ' (13okliara). Whilst they were sojourning in that city there came from Alan, Lord of the Levant, envoys on their way to the court of the Great Kaan (Mangu Khan, brother of Hulaku), Lord of all the Tartars in the world.' The two j brothers joined the party, and journeyed a whole year until they reached the court of Kablai Khan, who had now succeeded his brother Mangu as Khakhan of the Tartars. Before the death of Mangu Khan, A.D. 1259, it had been intended to remove the seat of the Tartar capital from Kara korum into Cathay or Northern China ; but this step, which in the end converted the Tartar Khan into a Chinese emperor, was left to be carried out by Kablai Khan. The two brothers were received with great honour and hospitality by Kablai Khan, and when the time came for them to go back to Europe, he charged them with a letter to the Pope, in which he begged that 100 persons of the Christian faith might be sent to him acquainted with 'the Seven Arts,' able clearly to prove that the Law of Christ ' was best,—which, t icy I lid, he declared that he and All under il would become Christians. Kablai Khan also livered into their hands a golden tablet as a port, by showing which they were honourably hied with whatever they wanted, whitherso er they went. The two brothers travelled back tward, and after three years enure to ' Layas Hermenia ' (L'Ayas or Ayes), a port oil the :If of Scanderoon, which was then ' one of the def places for the shipment of Asiatic wares arriving through Tabreez, and was much frequented by vessels of the Italian Republic ' (Yule, Marco l'olo, note to chap. viii. of Prol). In April 12G9
they reached Acre, where, hearing of the death of element iv., they returned to Venice, there to await the end of the long papal interregnum by which it was followed. When Gregory x. was at halt elected Pope, they at once started on their second journey to the court of Kablai Khan, about November 1271, this time taking young Marco Polo with them. From Acre they proceeded by Ayas and Sivas, and then by Mardi°, Mosul, and Baghdad, to Ormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, hoping to go on to China by sea. This they c not able to do, and so, turning their faces.ard, they traversed successively Kirman Khorasan, Balkh and Badakhshan, and ended the Upper Oxus to the Pamir plateau, route not known to have been since followed any European traveller except Benedict Goes 1;02-1607), until the spirited expedition of alt. John Wood, of the Indian navy, in 1838' 'ule, Marco Polo, Introduction). Crossing the .ppe of Pamir, the travellers proceeded by ashgar, Yarkand, and Khoten, and the vicinity of Lake Lob, through the Gobi desert to Tangut, until at length, some time during the mid aummer of 1275, they arrived at the stately pleasure dome of Kablai Khan in 'Nat:atilt' (Shaugtu). They afterwards proceeded with the Khakhan to his capital, ' Cambalu,' now Pekin. They rose rapidly in the great Khan's favour. Marco was entrusted with several missions in different parts of the empire, and in Chiampa or Southern Cochin-China, and the Indian Seas, and Southern India ; while to all the hints of the Venetian merchants to be allowed to return home with their gathered wealth, 'the aged emperor growled refusal.' llulaku, the founder of the Mongol dynasty of Persia (' Lord of the Levant '), was succeeded by his son Ahaka, who married a daughter of the Greek emperor Michael Palwo logus. Ilia brother Nicolas, who succeeded him, became a Muhammadan, but his son Arghun Khan was hostile to the Muhammadans. He seat embassies (conducted by a Genoese named Buscarelli) to the Pope and the kings of France and England, proposing an alliance against the Saracens and Turks ; and in 1290 Edward I. sent Geoffrey de Langley on a return mission to him. Arghnn Khan, having lost his favourite wife in 1286, sent to Kablai Khan to select another for him ; and about the very time that Geoffrey de Langley's mission was setting out for England, the Pubs were commissioned by Kablai Khan to escort the new bride he had chosen for his great I nephew from ' far Cathay,' by sea, to the Persian court.