Synopses & Reviews
In the thirteenth century, Italian merchant and explorer Marco Polo traveled from Venice to the far reaches of Asia, a journey he chronicled in a narrative titled
Il Milione, later known as
The Travels of Marco Polo. While Poloand#8217;s writings would go on to inspire the likes of Christopher Columbus, scholars have long debated their veracity. Some have argued that Polo never even reached China, while others believe that he came as far as the Americas. Now, thereand#8217;s new evidence for this historical puzzle: a very curious collection of fourteen little-known maps and related documents said to have belonged to the family of Marco Polo himself.
In The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps, historian of cartography Benjamin B. Olshin offers the first credible book-length analysis of these artifacts, charting their course from obscure origins in the private collection of Italian-American immigrant Marcian Rossi in the 1930s; to investigations of their authenticity by the Library of Congress, J. Edgar Hoover, and the FBI; to the work of the late cartographic scholar Leo Bagrow; to Olshinand#8217;s own efforts to track down and study the Rossi maps, all but one of which are in the possession of Rossiand#8217;s great-grandson Jeffrey Pendergraft. Are the maps forgeries, facsimiles, or modernized copies? Did Marco Poloand#8217;s daughtersand#151;whose names appear on several of the artifactsand#151;preserve in them geographic information about Asia first recorded by their father? Or did they inherit maps created by him? Did Marco Polo entrust the maps to Admiral Ruggero Sanseverino, who has links to Rossiand#8217;s family line? Or, if the maps have no connection to Marco Polo, who made them, when, and why?
Regardless of the mapsand#8217; provenance, Olshinand#8217;s taleand#151;stretching from the remote reaches of the northern Pacific to early Chinese legendsand#151;takes readers on a journey confounding yet fascinating, offering insights into Italian history, the age of exploration, and the wonders of cartography.
Review
andldquo;A needed, not wildly speculative contribution to the history of cartography, The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps carefully considers the content, context, and translation of these documents, and does not attempt to fill in missing links if the evidence is not sufficient to support a valid conclusion. Olshin presents well-informed speculation considering the implications of this set of maps, whether they are pure fabrication, created at some time after the purported events, or are actually what they appear to be. If the latter is the case, they represent a remarkable survival of fourteenth-century manuscripts that document in part Marco Poloandrsquo;s travels through Asia to China, and possibly a much earlier discovery of North America (than Columbusand#39;s), particularly along its northwestern coast. A very balanced interpretation.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;The maps and documents associated with the Rossi family and the various claims that they date back to the time of Marco Polo have always been a mystery and a problem for historians of cartography, and, as such, they have cried out for a detailed, balanced, and careful scholarly study. Their history, discounted by some as mere fantasy, has scarcely been approached with the tools of serious scholarship. Olshin has finally produced not only a careful and serious study, but also a compelling and fascinatingand#160;story that once again makes these maps objects of serious interest for all those concerned with medieval cartography and the transmission of geographic information through time.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;A remarkable book on a remarkable subject. The conundrum posed by a collection of fourteen old maps and letters of different dates pertaining, or purporting to pertain, to Marco Poloandrsquo;s travels in Asia in the thirteenth century is exquisitely dissected. The transmission of the documents themselves and the information they contain is scrutinized; possible (and impossible) connections are identified; genealogies are traced; and inconsistencies in personal and geographic names written in or coming from Italian, Latin, Chinese, and Arabic are exposed and explanations offered. Olshin wears his learning lightly. His lucid prose and straightforward approach capture from the beginning his readersandrsquo; attention, but they are then left to draw their own conclusions. Impressed by the number of documents involved and the complex ramifications of interconnections spanning seven centuries, even the most skeptical scholar would be hard pressed not to find for their authenticity, even if not all links in the chain are yet fully reforged.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;For a guy who claimed to spend seventeen years in China as a confidant of Kublai Khan, Marco Polo left a surprisingly skimpy paper trail. No Asian sources mention the footloose Italian. The only record of his thirteenth-century odyssey through the Far East is the hot air of his own Travels, which was actually an andlsquo;as told toandrsquo; penned by a writer of romances. But a set of fourteen parchments, now collected and exhaustively studied for the first time, give us a raft of new stories about Poloandrsquo;s journeys and something notably missing from his own account: maps. . . . and#160;But as Olshin is first to admit, the authenticity of the ten maps and four texts is hardly settled. The ink remains untested, and a radiocarbon study of the parchment of one key mapandmdash;the only one subjected to such analysisandmdash;dates the sheepskin vellum to the fifteenth or sixteenth century, a sign the map is at best a copy. Another quandary is that Polo himself wrote nothing of personal maps or of lands beyond Asia, though he did once boast: andlsquo;I did not tell half of what I saw.andrsquo;andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Could rewrite history as we know it.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;The parchmentsandrsquo; existence first came to light in the 1930s when Rossi contacted the Library of Congress, but the collection has never been exhaustively analyzedandmdash;until now. Olshin . . . has spent more than a decade contextualizing the documents and translating their Italian, Latin, Arabic, and Chinese inscriptions. . . . Olshin is the first scholar in decades to see these originals. By painstakingly tracing Rossiandrsquo;s ancestry, Olshin found that his explanation that Polo had bestowed the documents upon a Venetian admiral and that they had been passed down through generations of the Rossi family was credible.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Olshinandrsquo;s book tugs powerfully at the imagination of anybody interested in the Polo story, medieval history, old maps, geographical ideas, European voyages of discovery, and early Chinese legends.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;A valiant attempt to make sense of these documents, applying scholarly analysis from several different points of view: cartographic, mythological, historical, and linguistic. . . . Olshin is a thorough and thoughtful researcher and has successfully avoided speculating on the veracity of these frustrating and intriguing manuscripts. . . . This is a well written book which will be of interest to anyone interested in medieval history, cartography in general and Marco Polo in particular.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;A balanced, detailed, and scrupulously unspeculative work of cartographical scholarship, carefully footnoted and illustrated, not another andlsquo;who discovered?andrsquo; sensationandmdash;a book that after a lapse of more than half a century attempts mainly to andlsquo;lay a foundation for a deeper understanding of the material.andrsquo;andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Olshin . . . brings to The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps linguistic skills acquired during work and travels in the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America, as well as an interest in cartography and in the history of exploration. . . . He is on firm ground when noting the known influence on cartography of Marco Poloandrsquo;s travel tales, starting with the Catalan Atlas of 1375, and he is commendably cautious about the documentsandrsquo; provenance, their interconnections, and their purported relationship to the Polo daughters and other named persons. Moreover, The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps is lucidly written and attractively produced with a number of useful illustrations.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Ibn Battuta was, without doubt, one of the worldand#8217;s truly great travelers. Born in fourteenth-century Morocco, and a contemporary of Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta left an account in his own words of his remarkable journeys, punctuated by adventure and peril, throughout the Islamic world and beyond. Whether sojourning in Delhi and the Maldives, wandering through the mazy streets of Cairo and Damascus, or contesting with pirates and shipwreck, the indefatigable Ibn Battuta brought to vivid life a medieval world brimming with marvel and mystery. Carefully observing the great diversity of civilizations that he encountered, Ibn Battuta exhibited an omnivorous interest in such matters as food and drink; religious differences among Christians, Hindus, and Shia Muslims; and ideas about purity and impurity, disease, women, and sex.
David Waines offers here a graceful analysis of Ibn Battutaand#8217;s travelogue. This is a gripping treatment of the life and times of one of historyand#8217;s most daring, and at the same time most human, adventurers.
About the Author
Benjamin B. Olshin is associate professor of philosophy and the history and philosophy of science and technology at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He lives in Philadelphia, PA.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
and#160;
1 The and#147;Marco Polo Mapsand#8221; and the Polo Family
2 Who Was and#147;Biaxio Sirdomapand#8221;?
3 To the Distant East
4 The Daughtersand#8217; Maps
5 Chronicles and Histories
6 Maps of the New World
7 Conclusions and Future Directions
and#160;
Acknowledgments
and#160;
Appendix 1: An Inventory of the Documents
Appendix 2: A Partial Genealogy of the Rossi Family
Appendix 3: Genealogy of the Family of Marco Polo the Traveller
and#160;
Notes
Bibliography
Index