In 1264, Nicolò and Maffio joined up with an embassy sent by the Ilkhan Hulagu to his brother, the Grand Khan Kublai. Instead, they moved further east to Bukhara, in modern day Uzbekistan, where the family lived and traded for three years. Finally, they decided to avoid Crimea, because of a civil war between Berke and his cousin Hulagu or perhaps because of the bad relationship between Berke Khan and the Byzantine Empire. At that time, the city of Sarai - already visited by William of Rubruck a few years earlier - was no more than a huge encampment, and the Polos stayed for about a year. Searching for better profits, the Polos continued their journey to Sarai, where the court of Berke Khan, the ruler of the Golden Horde, was located. The Mongol army sacked it in 1223, but the city had never been definitively conquered until 1239, when it became a part of the newly formed Mongol state known as the Golden Horde. Captured Venetian citizens were blinded, while many of those who managed to escape perished aboard overloaded refugee ships fleeing to other Venetian colonies in the Aegean Sea.Īs their new home on the north rim of the Black Sea, Soldaia had been frequented by Venetian traders since the 12th century. Constantinople was recaptured in 1261 by Michael Palaeologus, the ruler of the Empire of Nicaea, who promptly burned the Venetian quarter.

But the family judged the political situation of the city precarious, so they decided to transfer their business northeast to Soldaia, a city in Crimea.

In 1259, the two brothers lived in the Venetian quarter of Constantinople, where they enjoyed political privileges and tax relief because of their country’s role in establishing the Latin Empire in the Fourth Crusade of 1204. They were partners with a third brother, named Marco il vecchio (the Elder). Marco Polo's father, Niccolò (also Nicolò in Venetian) and his uncle, Maffeo (also Maffio), were prosperous merchants who traded with the East. The Polo name originally did not belong to a family of explorers, but to a family of traders. His travels are written down in Il Milione ('The Million' or The Travels of Marco Polo). Marco Polo ( Septem– January 8, 1324) was a Venetian trader and explorer who, together with his father Niccolò and his uncle Maffeo, was one of the first Westerners to travel the Silk Road to China (which he called Cathay) and visited the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, Kublai Khan (grandson of Genghis Khan).

The journey of marco polo