The Travels of Marco Polo

Time and again, the peoples that Polo visits are described as Muslims: “They are all followers of the Mahometan religion” (964­–965). In many cases, as here, this is stated simply as a fact. In one instance, the religion of a people has no bearing on the way they act: “In the mountainous parts there is a race of people named Kurds, some of whom are Christians and others Mahometans. They are all an unprincipled people whose occupation it is to rob merchants” (816-18).

In other descriptions, Polo includes the religion of the peoples he visits as a means of comparing their religious practices to those of European Christians.

The primary religious difference is between Christians and Muslims. However, Polo makes more than one reference to an Asian sect of Christianity: “Besides the Mahometans, there are among the inhabitants several Nestorian Christians” (1303). The teachings of this church would have been slightly different than Venetian Christians.

A great many peoples whom Marco Polo visited had their own religion entirely. Polo often referred to these peoples as idolaters. He found a wide variety of practices and hierarchies. The people of one province are “"skilled in the art of magic and in the invocation of demons" (1250). The people in another province possess strong magic skills, "to such a degree that they can compel their idols, although dumb and deaf, to speak" (1256-57). This attention to idols extends to one set of people who:

live in communities, observe strict abstinence in regard to eating, drinking, and the intercourse of the sexes, and refrain from every kind of sensual indulgence in order that they may not give offense to the idols whom they worship (1263-65).