Marco Polo

Background:
1. What historical development facilitated the journey of Marco Polo and his family?

2. What evidence to some historians use to support a theory that Polo may NOT have actually
gotten to China?
He left out alot of key details in Chinese history/culture (such as footbinding, the Great Wall,
etc.)
3. What evidence is there of the ways in which Marco Polo’s writings influenced other Europeans
in the centuries following his book?
Christopher Columbus carried Marco Polo’s marked up book with him.

Marco Polo: The Travels of Marco Polo (1299)

4. How would you describe Marco Polo’s impressions of the city? What did he notice? What
surprised him?
“The city was beyond dispute the finest and the noblest in the world…”

5. Why did Polo describe the city as “the finest and noblest in the world”?
Because of the way China functioned.

6. What marks his account of the city as that of a foreigner and a Christian?
“And you must know they eat every kind of flesh, even that of dogs and other unclean beasts,
which nothing would induce a Christian to eat…”

7. What evidence of China’s engagement with a wider world does this account offer?

Polo mentions Ganfu, a largely known coastal based trade city.

Ibn Battuta
Background:
8. What are the various roles that Ibn Battuta took on during his extensive travels?
A pilgrim, a legal scholar, a religious seeker, and in the company of Muslim Merchants.

9. How did Battuta view the practice of Islam in the far reaches of the frontier of the religion?
He was highly critical of them.

Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia and Africa (1354)

10. How would you describe Battuta’s impression of Mali? What surprised or shocked him? What
did he appreciate?
He was surprised of the fact women and men could have opposite sex companionships. He
appreciated that these people were Muslim.
11. What does Ibn Battuta’s description of his visit to Mali reveal about his own attitudes and
images of himself?
He seemed confused for alot of his journey, being shocked or even weirded out by alot of their
traditions and just everyday activities.

12. What might historians learn from this document about the nature and extent of Islam’s
penetration in this West African empire?
Alot of Islam was heavily based off of West Africa and their traditions.

13. What elements of older and continuing West African cultural traditions are evident in this
document?
Alot of Islam’s slave culture and attitude derived from West Africa.

14. What specifically does Ibn Battuta find shocking about the women he encounters on his
travels of West Africa?
He finds it shocking women can have outside relations or “companions”.

15. What indications of Mali’s economic involvement with a wider world are evident in this
document?
Alot of the views on women’s freedom of rights are still visible today politically and socially.