Marco Polo travelled with his father Niccolò and uncle Maffeo from Venice through the eastern Mediterranean, Iran, Central Asia, and the Mongol-ruled Silk Road networks to Kublai Khan’s court. Years later, the Polos accompanied Kököchin’s maritime escort from China toward Persia and continued home to Venice.
The Moroccan jurist Ibn Battuta left Tangier for the pilgrimage to Mecca and continued through interconnected scholarly, courtly, pilgrimage, and commercial networks across Africa and Eurasia. His journeys took him through the Middle East, East Africa, Central and South Asia, the Maldives, Southeast Asia, and China before later travels in al-Andalus and the Mali Empire.
Sources and further reading
A Venetian Vignette One Hundred Years after Marco Polo, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Museum scholarship on the Polo family, the 1271 departure, Acre and Ayas, their papal mission, Kublai Khan’s court, and the surviving manuscript tradition.
Voyages d’Ibn Batoutah, Cambridge University Press. Bibliographic record and description of the four-volume Arabic text and French translation, with the opening route from Tangier through Egypt, the Levant, and Mecca.
Wikidata Geographic Coordinates, Wikimedia Foundation and Wikidata contributors. CC0 geographic coordinates used to verify unambiguous named places during the July 2026 coordinate audit. This source supports contemporary point placement only, not historical route or chronology claims.