DOHA: This Sunday, Al Jazeera America will present the first of a three-part documentary series, “Marco Polo: A Very Modern Journey.” Nicolo Agostini, a contemporary Venetian of Marco Polo’s approximate age, provides a visual motif, representing the physical journey undertaken by Marco Polo in the 13th century and asking what his epic journey might look like in modern times, Al Jazeera Network announced yesterday.
In Episode 1, “Another World,” Professor Zhao Qiguang, a historian from China, starts from Venice in search of the “shadow” of Marco Polo today.
In 1271, when Marco Polo set out on his journey, the world was at war and the 200-year-old war between Christians and Muslims for control of the Holy Land in the Middle East was approaching a brutal end.
But the greatest threat confronting Marco Polo’s world came from the East: the Mongol Empire, which extended all the way to the gates of Vienna.
The modern-day “Marco Polo” physically represents the 1271 journey, taking in Acre, then part of the Holy Land, now in Israel. It was in ancient Acre that Marco Polo and his Venetian merchant family met the Pope and agreed to deliver Papal letters to the Mongol emperor, the Great Khan, who shared a similar interest in fighting Islam. Activist Sami Hawary tells Al Jazeera, “Marco Polo (represents) the early colonialism of Europe. They knew that they were coming to see the barbarians, the heretics.”
The series retraces Marco Polo’s travels to Jerusalem and north and east through southern Turkey and Armenia, territory largely controlled by Mongols. Polo navigated carefully away from the battlegrounds of the Middle East — such as Baghdad, recently razed to the ground by Mongols in one of the greatest disasters in the history of Islam.
Along the way, viewers can see roads that Marco Polo travelled in southern Iran, and meet Iranian archaeologist Dr Hamideh Chubak, who contemplates the myths and merits of the story of the Assassins of Alamut and their legendary martyrdom.THE PENINSULA
