Serindia (Google Books ⧉, Amazon ⧉, Bookshop ⧉)

The Travels of Marco Polo

In Chap. III., pp. 64–66, of his Serindia, Sir Aurel Stein has the following on Marco Polo’s account of Wakhan:— “After Wu-k’ung’s narrative of his journey the Chinese sources of information about the Pāmīrs and the adjoining regions run dry for nearly a thousand years. But that the routes leading across them from Wakhān retained their importance also in Muhammedan times is attested by the greatest of mediæval travellers, Marco Polo. I have already, in Ancient Khotan [pp. 41 seq.], discussed the portion of his itinerary which deals with the journey across the Pāmīrs to ‘the kingdom of Cascar’ or Kāshgar, and it only remains here to note briefly what he tells us of the route by which he approached them from Badakhshan: ‘In leaving Badashan you ride twelve days between east and north-east, ascending a river that runs through land belonging to a brother of the Prince of Badashan, and containing a good many towns and villages and scattered habitations.”