MARCO POLO’S SILK ROAD
Jul 18, 2019
4 minutes
1 NATIONAL MUSEUM OF IRAQ
BAGHDAD
Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, led the Mongol’s brutal siege of Baghdad in 1258, massacring and raping its people while destroying and looting some of its most precious buildings including mosques, palaces, hospitals and the Grand Library.
Little wonder, then, that Marco Polo is said to have skirted the city as he headed East around 1272. It certainly remained a dangerous place and Polo would write of the unfortunate end suffered by a Muslim caliph who had converted to Christianity after supposedly seeing a man move a mountain. In his travelogue, , he claimed the man had starved to death. Historians, however, believe he was rolled in a rug and
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