{"id":757,"date":"2022-04-13T15:26:59","date_gmt":"2022-04-13T20:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/mapping-the-middle-ages\/?p=757"},"modified":"2022-04-20T19:50:53","modified_gmt":"2022-04-21T00:50:53","slug":"the-travels-of-marco-polo-kaindu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/mapping-the-middle-ages\/2022\/04\/13\/the-travels-of-marco-polo-kaindu\/","title":{"rendered":"The Travels of Marco Polo: Kaindu"},"content":{"rendered":"

Upon Marco Polo\u2019s travel to the province and city of Kaindu, he first noted their environmental surroundings. There is a lake nearby the city that produces an abundance of pearls. The Great Khan won\u2019t let anyone take them because if too many are taken they would become too cheap and lose their value. He may take some for his own use, but if anyone else takes them they suffer the pain of death. There is also a mountain that has stones of turquoise, that the Khan will also not let anyone take unless with his bidding. There are also plenty of beasts that roam around the city\u2019s area for hunting. Lions, lynxes, bears, stags, roebucks, and birds roam around the city for hunting, as well as a lot of good fish. Usually, hunters go after these animals for the acquisition and sale of their musk. The city is also a great source of cloves and ginger. Polo also notes that the people of this city do not have grape wine, but instead make their wine of wheat, rice, and spices, which in his opinion tastes just as good.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Further in his account of Kaindu, he writes about the city\u2019s monetary practices. Their money is contained in gold bars. They value their money by its weight and weigh it out by <\/span>saggi<\/span><\/i>. Aside from their gold bars, the people of Kaindu do not have coined money bearing the Khan\u2019s stamp. However, they boil salt into molds to form blocks where the Great Khan\u2019s stamp is set and the blocks are then used for small change. When their traders travel to other places, they bring about forty blocks and receive a <\/span>saggio<\/span><\/i> of gold for their blocks in exchange because this city is more isolated and cut off from the rest of other civilized villages. Evidently, the natives cannot dispose of their gold for purchases, so they sell it cheap because you can find gold in the rivers and lakes nearby.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Polo also mentions the intertwining of these people\u2019s sexual and hospitality practices. In this city, men do not think it is bad for a stranger to exchange in sexual relations with whomever woman is in a particular man\u2019s home. Instead, they see a stranger\u2019s sexual interest in their woman as a compliment and a blessing on the woman for the gods. As a form of hospitality, if a man sees a stranger looking to lodge in his home, he tells his wife to let the man have his will with her and leaves his home immediately and doesn\u2019t return until the stranger leaves. Though the Khan has forbidden this hospitality\/sexual practice, the people continue to engage in it because \u201cthey\u2019re all addicted to it and there is no one to accuse another\u201d (175).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The extensive mention of the city of Kaindu\u2019s monetary methods is typical for the travel writer that he is. Polo is the descendant of successful merchants and is a respected one himself, so it would be reasonable to anticipate his comments on the monetary practices of the cities he passes through. He finds particular interest in the city of Kaindu\u2019s money as it is a rather isolated city that both makes its own coinage and exchanges its blocks for gold in order to make purchases in other cities. Polo most likely recorded these monetary practices to inform other travelers that they may need to make money exchanges in order to engage in trade in this city.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In Polo\u2019s description of the sexual hospitality practice of this city, he concludes his description noting that the Great Khan had prohibited this practice. Yet, the people of this city had continued to engage in offering women as a form of hospitality for traveling strangers and no one could be prosecuted for these actions because no one would accuse each other. Polo takes interest in the people\u2019s banding together against the prohibition of the Great Khan, seemingly given the respect he is granted by a number of powerful royalty due to his family\u2019s high-ranking merchant status. As a result, Polo may find the resistance against the Great Khan\u2019s prohibition to be an indication of the bad morals of the people of Kaindu.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Upon Marco Polo\u2019s travel to the province and city of Kaindu, he first noted their environmental surroundings. There is a lake nearby the city that produces an abundance of pearls. The Great Khan won\u2019t let anyone take them because if too many are taken they would become too cheap and lose their value. He may […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4878,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marco-polo","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/mapping-the-middle-ages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/mapping-the-middle-ages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/mapping-the-middle-ages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/mapping-the-middle-ages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4878"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/mapping-the-middle-ages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/mapping-the-middle-ages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/mapping-the-middle-ages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/mapping-the-middle-ages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/mapping-the-middle-ages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}