In Xanadu Read online

  William Dalrymple

  was born in Scotland and brought up on the shores of the Firth of Forth. He wrote the highly acclaimed bestseller In Xanadu when he was twenty-two. The book won the 1990 Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award and a Scottish Arts Council Spring Book Award; it was also shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize. In 1989 Dalrymple moved to Delhi where he lived for six years, researching his second book, City of Djinns, which won the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. His third book, the acclaimed From the Holy Mountain, was awarded the Scottish Arts Council Autumn Book Award for 1997; it was also shortlisted for the 1998 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. A collection of his pieces on the Indian subcontinent. The Age of Kali, was published in 1998. Dalrymple was recently elected the youngest Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Asiatic Society. He has written and presented a series about the architecture of the Raj for Channel 4 and is currently working on a major BBC series about the religions of India. William Dalrymple is married to the artist Olivia Fraser, and they have a baby son and daughter.

  By the same author

  CITY OF DJINNS: A YEAR IN DELHI

  FROM THE HOLY MOUNTAIN: A JOURNEY IN THE SHADOW OF BYZANTIUM

  THE AGE OF KALI: INDIAN TRAVELS and ENCOUNTERS

  WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

  Flamingo

  An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  Flamingo

  Special overseas edition 1990

  This edition published by Flamingo 1990

  18 17 16 15 14

  First published in Great Britain by Collins 1989

  Copyright © William Hamilton-Dalrymple 1990

  The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  Author photograph Giovanni Giovannetti Maps by Ken Lewis

  ISBN 0 00 6S4415 0

  Acknowledgements

  This book is already too long but it would be churlish to let it go to press without acknowledging the help and tolerance of a number of people without whom the expedition could never have taken place nor the book have been written.

  Dr Simon Keynes persuaded Trinity to part with £700 to help finance the trip; in the event it proved enough to pay for everything as far as Peking. Sir Anthony Acland and Sir Robert Wade-Gery spared valuable time to help us clear diplomatic hurdles, while Anthony Fitzherbert, the Begum Quizilbash and Charlie and Cherry Parton all entertained us lavishly en route.

  Back in England, Maggie Noach helped me sell the book while Mike Fishwick of Collins was kind enough to buy it; both of them provided great encouragement during the four­teen months it took to write. During that time my girlfriend Olivia Fraser and my flatmate Andrew Berton put up with me and successive drafts of my book with extraordinary tolerance and forbearance. Fania Stoney, Henrietta Miers, Patrick French, Lucy Warrack, my brothers Hewie, Jock and Rob and my long suffering motherand father were all nagged to read it. Lucian Taylor is responsible for many helpful editorial com­ments; on five separate occasions he spared whole days to go over the manuscript word by word. It would be a considerably longer, more pompous and boring book without his advice and cuts.

  Many others have helped and I apologize if I have not men­tioned everyone. Most of all, however, it must be obvious to anyone who reads this book that I owe an enormous debt to two people without whom the whole enterprise could never have got off the ground.

  I dedicate this book with love and apologies to Laura and Louisa.

  ONE

  It was still dark when I left Sheik Jarrah. At the Damascus Gate the first fruit sellers were gathered by a brazier, warming their fingers around glasses of sweet tea. The Irish Franciscan was waiting by the door of the Holy Sepulchre. He nodded from under the hood of his habit and without a word led me past the Armenian chapel and under the great rotunda. Around the dome you could hear the echo of plainchant as twelve separate congregations sang their different matins.

  'It's not long now.' said Brother Fabian. 'The Greeks will be finished by eight-thirty.'

  'That's in two hours' time.'

  'Only half an hour. The Greeks don't allow us to put the clocks back. We work on Byzantine time here.'

  He knelt down on a flagstone, folded his hands in his sleeves and began murmuring his devotions. We waited for twenty minutes.

  'What's keeping them?'

  'The rota's very strict. They're allowed four hours in the tomb, and they won't leave until their time is up,' He hesitated then added:

  Things are a bit tense at the moment. Last month one of the Armenian monks went crazy: thought an angel was telling him to kill the Greek patriarch. So he smashed an oil lamp and chased Patriarch Diodorus through the choir with a piece of broken glass.'

  "What happened?'

  The Greeks overpowered him. There's an ex-weightlifter from Thessaloniki who looks after the Greek chapel on Cal­vary. He pinned the Armenian down in the crypt until the police came. But since then the Greeks and the Armenians haven't been on speaking terms. Which means we had to be the go-betweens. Until we broke off relations with the Greeks as well.' 'What do you mean?'

  Last month Diodorus was crossing the bridge into Jordan when the border guards found a big bag of heroin in the air fil­ter of his car. They released him but arrested his driver. Diodorus claimed he must have put the bag there. The driver was a Catholic'

  'So now no one is speaking to anyone?'

  'I think the Copts are still speaking to the Maronites. But apart from that, no.'

  Brother Fabian pulled one arm out of his habit and pointed to the dome of the rotunda.

  'You see the painter's scaffolding? That's been up ten years because the three patriarchs can't agree on a colour. They'd just about settled on black when the Armenian assaulted Diodorus. Now the Greeks are demanding purple. It won't get repainted for another ten years now. By which time,' added Fabian, ' I shall be back in Donegal.'

  At that moment a procession of black-clad Greek monks emerged from the Tomb, a bulbous, kettle-like structure which Robert Byron thought resembled a railway engine. As the monks stepped out some were singing anthems while others sprayed the ambulatory with holy water. They had cascading pepper-and-salt beards and wore cylindrical hats topped with black mortarboards. They scowled in the direction of the Latin chapel then marched off towards Calvary.

  "Wait here,' said Brother Fabian.

  He returned carrying a tin watering can and a tray of what looked like surgical instruments. He handed me the tray then walked up to the tomb, bowed, bent double and squeezed under the low, cusped arch. I followed. We passed through the dim first chamber, then stooped into the inner sanctum. The holiest shrine in Christendom was the size of a small broom cupboard. Raised on a ledge was the Stone of Resurrection and on top of it rested two icons, a tatty Mannerist painting and a vase containing seven wilted roses. Twelve lamps were sus­pended from the ceiling by steel chains. Fabian knelt down, kissed the Stone and murmured a prayer. Then he rose.

  "We've got until twelve-thirty,' he said.

  From a recess in the first chamber he produced a small stepladder. He climbed up onto it, unclipped a hook from the wall-ring then let go of the pulley. The four Catholic lamps descended. They were made of beaten bronze and were very tarnished and very old. Finely incised on the outside were the figures of cherubim and a six-winged seraph. Motioning that I should pass the watering can up to him, the friar arched over the lamps and very carefully poured oil from the can into three of them. As he did so each one guttered.

  'I thought these lamps were miraculous. They're supposed to be eternal flames.'

  'That's what they say,' said Brother Fabian, now struggling with the wick of one of the lamps. 'But you try and change the oil without them going out. Take it from me. It's absolutely impossible. Damn it! This wick's finished. Pass me up the string.'

  He pointed to the tray of surgical instruments. I found a ball of string and passed it to him. 'So there is nothing miraculous about these lamps?' 'Nothing at all. Pass the scissors.'

  'What about the oil itself? Is it chrism? Olive oil from the Mount of Olives?'

  'No it's ordinary sunflower oil. Comes from a box in the sacristy. Damn this lamp! We'll have to have a new float. Pass one up will you?'

  Float?'

  One of those cork things.'

  I passed him a spare from the tray.

  'Where's the girl?' asked Fabian from the ladder.

  'I don't know. Probably asleep.'

  'Is she your... friend?'

  "What do you mean?'

  Fabian winked at me.

  'You know_ '

  'She's not my girlfriend, if that's what you mean.' 'And who's this Italian you were looking for?' 'Polo?'

  That's the one.' 'He's... different.'

  'And he told you this oil was miraculous?'

  'I suppose he did, indirectly.'

  'Well you can tell him from me it's quite ordinary.'

  That would be a little difficult.'

  Fabian let this pass.

  ‘You say he took this oil east with him?' he continued.

  ‘Yes’

  'What did he carry it in?' I don't know. A goatskin flask, perhaps.'

  'He'd be a bit old fashioned then.' 'A bit.'

  Fabian put the finishing touches to his new wick, put it back in the oil then lit it from the one remaining ungunered lamp. 'You still want some of this oil?' Please.'

  I handed him a small p
lastic phial. 'Not goatskin.'

  'No. It comes from the Body Shop in Covent Garden.'

  Fabian took the bottle, removed the top, and carefully dipped it in the sump of the fourth lamp. It filled, slowly. Then he handed it back to me.

  'Good luck finding your friend.'

  Marco Polo came to the Holy Sepulchre in the autumn of 1271. Jerusalem had finally been lost to Islam thirty years pre­viously, and the Sepulchre would have been semi-derelict when Polo saw it. The Turks who captured Jerusalem in 1244 had butchered the priests inside, desecrated the tombs of the Kings of Jerusalem, and burned the church to the ground.

  Since then, the city had passed into the hands of the Mameluke Sultan, Baibars I, an upwardly mobile ex-slave who had once been returned to the market place by a dissatisfied buyer on account of his excessive ugliness. By the time Polo came to the Levant ten years later he had made him­self the most feared and most powerful figure in the Middle East, defeating the Mongols and driving them back east of the Euphrates.

  At the same time Baibars was slowly and methodically evicting the crusaders from their last toe-hold on the coast of Palestine. As I passed through the St Stephen's Gate on my way back to Sheik Jarrah I saw an emblem of Baibars' placed high above the portal. It must have been newly carved when Polo arrived in Jerusalem. The symbol was a pair of lions rampant about to attack a small rat. The lions, which were shown with powerful haunches, long claws and magnificent heraldic tails, represented Mameluke Egypt; the cornered rat, the crusaders. It was a sadly accurate picture: in 1263 Baibars had sacked Nazareth and burned the outskirts of Acre. The following year the crusader fortresses of Caesarea, Arsuf and Athlit all fell before his siege engines. In 1268 Antioch was captured by Baibars after a siege of only four days. But it was in the spring of 1271 that the crusaders received their greatest shock. Krak des Chevaliers, the headquarters of the Knights Hospitallers, was considered by all sides to be impregnable; in 1188 it had defied even Saladin. But on March the third Mameluke troops appeared unexpectedly below the castle, and soon the fortress was invested. Despite heavy spring rains arbalesters were brought up the hill from the valley bottom and after a short bombardment the Egyptians broke into the lower ward. The depleted garrison of three hundred fought on for another month until, on April the eighth, they surrendered, having received a forged order to do so, purporting to come from the Grand Master of the Hospitallers in Tripoli.

  The loss of Krak was as great a boon to the prestige of Baibars as it was a blow to that of the Franks. Yet Acre, the capital of the Crusader Kingdom since the fall of Jerusalem, was at this critical point in a state of vigorous civil war. None of the cru­saders was taking an even remotely responsible attitude to the survival of the Kingdom: this was left to the Papal Legate, Theobald of Piacenza. Theobald was a man of great severity and dignity, a friend of St Thomas Aquinas and a confidant of the kings of England and France. Appointed Archdeacon of Liege, he left his position and retired to the Holy Land after disagreements with his bishop who was attempting to turn the Liege episcopal palace into a bordello. In Acre Theobald suc­ceeded in negotiating a temporary truce between the Genoese and Venetians, and persuading the local nobility to cooperate with Prince Edward of England who had just arrived at the head of an English crusade. But he lacked the authority or the power to do anything more radical to save the Kingdom. Then, in the late August of that year, Theobald was elected to the papacy. He heard of his appointment in early September and took the name Gregory X.

  Gregory realized that the only possible hope for the crusad­ers was to make some sort of pact with the Mongols with whom they shared a common Egyptian enemy. Not only did this make good strategic sense, there were growing indications that Kubla Khan was considering embracing Christianity. This was not as unlikely a proposition as it sounded. There were many Eastern Christians among the Mongol ranks and already there had been military cooperation between Bohemond, the crusader Prince of Antioch, and Hulagu, the Mongol Prince of Persia. But Gregory had conceived a more daring and ambitious plan than simple cooperation. He wished to convert the Mongols to Christianity and to turn the Great Khan Kubla into the spiritual son of the Roman Pontiff. The Mongol Empire ranged from the Euphrates to the Pacific; it was the largest empire the world had ever seen. Gregory understood that if it could be turned into a Christian empire, the days of Islam would be numbered and the Crusader King­dom saved.

  Gregory's first action as Pope was thus to recall to Acre a

  Venetian galley that had just arrived at Ayas in Asia Minor. On board were two Venetian brothers, Niccolo and Maffeo Polo along with Niccolo's seventeen-year-old son, Marco. Two years previously, in the spring of 1269, the two elder Polos had suddenly appeared in Acre. They said they had just returned from Xanadu, the summer palace of Kubla Khan on the Mongolian steppe. They were the first Europeans ever to claim to have travelled so far east, and their tale appeared to be true. When they were brought before Gregory (then still Papal Legate) they told him their remarkable story and showed him the Tablets of Gold given to them by Kubla Khan. On these were inscribed orders that the Polos should be 'supplied with everything needful in all the countries through which they should pass - with horses, with escorts, and, in short, with whatever they should require'. According to the brothers, Kubla Khan was a man of rather different temperament to his grandfather Ghengis. He had shown great interest in Chris­tianity and had given them a letter in which he asked the Pope to send him 'a hundred persons of the Christian faith; intelli­gent men, acquainted with the Seven Arts, and able clearly to prove to idolaters and other kinds of folk, that the Law of Christ was best, and that all other religions were false and nought'. The brothers said that if they could prove this. Kubla Khan and all his subjects would become Christians. The Khan had also asked the brothers to bring back to him what he had heard was the most sacred of Christian relics, a sample of oil from the famous lamps which burned in the Holy Sepulchre.

  The Legate realized that this was a crucial chance for Chris­tendom. But in 1269 there was no Pope, as Clement IV had just died and the cardinals had yet to summon the energy to meet and choose his successor. The Polos had no choice but to go to Venice and wait until a Pope was elected. By the spring of 1271, despite mounting public indignation, the cardinals appeared to be no nearer reaching a decision. Seeing this, the Polos decided to return to Acre, this time with Marco. There they announced to the Legate that Pope or no Pope they were going to return to the Khan 'for we have already tarried long and there has been more than enough delay'. They set off east in the last days of August.

  Meanwhile in Viterbo the papal election had turned into an international scandal. In order to speed a decision, the civic authorities had locked the cardinals in the Papal Palace, threatened a starvation diet and removed the roof to allow the divine influences to descend more freely on their counsels'. This unusual approach to the workings of the Holy Spirit proved a surprising success. The cardinals delegated the deci­sion to a committee of six who, anxious to get away, elected Theobald that same day. A week later news of the decision reached Acre and the Polos were recalled. The new Pope immediately gave them permission to go to Jerusalem to fetch the Holy Oil. He also provided the expedition with, if not one hundred, then at least with two intelligent men of the Chris­tian faith. Friar Nicolas of Vicenza and Friar William of Trip­oli, the two most senior friars in the Holy Land. Pope Gregory gave to the friars extraordinary powers of ordination and abso­lution, and to the Polos letters and presents for the Great Khan. The party, now five strong - the two elder Polos, Marco, and the two friars - finally departed in early November.

  At my primary school we knew all about Marco Polo. He wore a turban, a stripy robe a bit like a dressing gown and he rode a camel with only one hump. The Ladybird book which had this picture on the cover was the most heavily thumbed book on the school bookshelf. One day, my friends and I put some biscuits in a handkerchief, tied the handkerchief to a stick and set off to China. It was an exhausting walk as there were no camels in Scotland, and by tea time we had eaten all our biscuits. There was also the problem that we were not absolutely sure where China was. It was beyond England, of that we were certain, but then we were not absolutely sure where England was either. Nonetheless we strode off man­fully towards Haddington where there was a shop. We could ask there, we said. But when it began to get dark we turned around and went home for supper. After consultation we decided to put the plan on the shelf for a while. China could wait.