Marco Polo
1254 – 1324 · 70 years · Khanbaliq (Beijing) · Asia
Venetian merchant who spent 17 years in China at Kublai Khan's court; his book opened Asia to European imagination.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 13th century
Portrait: Salviati · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Dante Alighieri — poet, author of the Divine Comedy, 11 years younger
- Edward I Longshanks — conqueror of Wales, called the Hammer of the Scots, 15 years older
- Philip IV the Fair — king who destroyed the Knights Templar, 14 years younger
- Rudolf I — first Habsburg king, who won Austria for his house, 36 years older
- Thomas Aquinas — theologian and philosopher, 29 years older
- Saint Louis (Louis IX) — crusader king canonised as a saint, 40 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Ivan Kalita — prince who began the gathering of Russian lands around Moscow, 34 years younger
- Sergius of Radonezh — saint and abbot, 60 years younger
- Yury of Moscow — first Moscow prince to become grand prince of Vladimir, 27 years younger
- Daniel of Moscow — first prince of Moscow, founder of the Moscow line of the Rurikids, 7 years younger
Middle East
Africa
- Mansa Musa — ruler of the Mali Empire, 26 years younger
- Ibn Battuta — traveller, 50 years younger
Asia
- Kublai Khan — Great Khan, founder of the Yuan dynasty, 39 years older
- Emperor Go-Daigo — emperor who overthrew the Kamakura shogunate, 34 years younger
- Ashikaga Takauji — founder of the Muromachi shogunate who turned on Go-Daigo, 51 years younger
- Gajah Mada — prime minister of Majapahit, 36 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1257 Samalas eruption — aged 3, Asia
- 1258 Mongol sack of Baghdad — aged 4, Middle East
- 1271 Kublai Khan founds the Yuan dynasty — aged 17, Asia
- 1271–1295 Travels of Marco Polo — aged 17, Asia
- c. 1280 Polynesians settle New Zealand — aged 26, Oceania
- 1281 Kamikaze, the divine wind — aged 27, Asia
- 1293 Founding of Majapahit — aged 39, Asia
- c. 1300 Onset of the Little Ice Age — aged 46, Europe
- 1309–1377 Avignon Papacy — aged 55, Europe
- 1315–1317 Great Famine — aged 61, Europe
- 1324 Hajj of Mansa Musa — aged 70, Africa