ABSTRACT
One of the most famous invented stories of the Description of the World is the episode of the siege of Xiangyang, called “Saianfu” by Marco Polo. In 1268, the authentic Chinese Song dynasty was resisting the Mongols in Southern China. Khubilai was therefore only the master of Northern China, until he decided to launch a new campaign against the Song dynasty and sent his troops to besiege the city of Xiangyang, on the shores of the river Han, which flows farther south into the Yangtze. The tradition of Muslim gardens and the Christian polemical theme of the carnal Paradise of Islam would therefore have been mixed up by Marco Polo and Rustichello with Crusader tales and Muslim fears about drugged mixtures and fanatical devotion, to give birth to the totally invented story of an artificial paradise in the castle of Alamut; such a story was to be so successful as to become the standard description about the Assassins.
