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Medieval Sourcebook: Marco Polo: The Glories Of Kinsay [Hangchow] (c. 1300) Marco Polo returned to Venice, his hometown, in 1295 after an absence of twenty-five years in the East. He claimed to have spent seventeen years in the service of Kublai Khan, ruler of the Mongols and of the largest empire in the world. He had many stories to tell. These stories were eventually written down by Rustichiello of Pisa, who heard them while sharing a Genoese prison with Polo, sometimes after 1298. Here is the account in the book of Hangchow, called "Kinsay". Although Kublai Khan's capital was in the north, at the city later called Beijing, Hanchow had served as the capital of the Southern Song dynasty until 1279 and was a major cultural and political center. The is some dispute as to the reliability of the Travels of Marco Polo. Several authorities, including Frances Wood of the British Museum, point out that Polo uses Persian words to describe Chinese sights, omits descriptions of p