Kublai Khan

• 1. Introduction

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  Kublai Khan was nine years old in 1224 when he rode out on his first hunt, near the Ili River. He and his older brother Möngke killed a rabbit and an antelope between them. Their grandfather, the aging Genghis Khan, then followed a Mongol tradition and smeared fat from the animals onto the boy's middle finger. Genghis said of the child: "The words of this boy Kublai are full of wisdom, heed them well."

  That boy lived to be 78. Along the way he took the title of Great Khan, founded a dynasty, and became the first non-Han ruler to hold all of China proper.

  How did a grandson of the steppe's greatest conqueror come to govern a land of farms, canals and walled cities? What did it cost him among his own people? And why did the same ruler win so completely on land and fail so badly at sea?

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• 2. Brother Against Brother

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  In 1259, Kublai was besieging Wuchang on the Yangtze when word reached him that his brother Möngke, the Great Khan, had died. He kept the death secret and pressed the attack near Wuhan. There the Song minister Jia Sidao approached him in private. Jia offered 200,000 taels of silver and 200,000 bolts of silk each year if the Yangtze became the border. Kublai refused at first, but he later agreed to a peace with Jia.

  A message from Kublai's wife then warned him that his younger brother Ariq Böke was raising troops, so Kublai turned north. Before he arrived, a kurultai, a great council of the Mongols, had met at Karakorum. It named Ariq Böke Great Khan with the backing of most of Genghis Khan's descendants. Kublai and their brother Hulagu, the Il-Khan, opposed the choice. Kublai's Han staff urged him to claim the throne, and nearly all the senior princes of northern China and Manchuria stood with him.

  On the 15th of April 1260, Kublai's own kurultai proclaimed him Great Khan. Few members of the royal family attended, though every Borjigin line except Jochi's sent someone. War followed, and it ended with the destruction of the Mongol capital at Karakorum. Kublai starved the city of food with the help of his cousin Kadan, a son of Ögedei Khan, and his large army took it. Ariq Böke briefly won it back in 1261.

  The war turned on captures and reversals. Kublai sent Abishqa to rule the Chagatai Khanate, but Ariq Böke seized him and crowned his own man, Alghu, instead. After Ariq Böke lost the first armed clash and his commander Alamdar died, he had Abishqa executed in revenge. By 1262, Alghu had changed sides and declared his loyalty to Kublai.

  A revolt nearer home rattled Kublai in February 1262, when Li Tan, the governor of Yizhou, rose against Mongol rule. Armies under Shi Tianze and Shi Shu crushed the rising within a few months, and Li Tan was executed. They also put to death his father-in-law, Wang Wentong, who had been one of Kublai's most trusted Han officials. The episode left Kublai suspicious of ethnic Han, and once he was emperor he banned granting titles and tithes to Han warlords.

  Ariq Böke surrendered to Kublai at Xanadu on the 21st of August 1264. Kublai pardoned him but executed his chief supporters. Hulagu and Berke, the khan of the Golden Horde, first accepted an invitation to a new kurultai and then declined to come.

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• 3. A Mind Drawn Toward China

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  Kublai was born on the 23rd of September 1215, a grandson of Genghis Khan through his father Tolui. His mother was Tolui's chief wife, Sorghaghtani Beki. Following Genghis Khan's advice, she chose a Buddhist Tangut woman as the boy's nurse, and Kublai honored her highly in later life. He was almost 12 when Genghis died in 1227.

  In 1236, after the conquest of the Jin dynasty, Ögedei gave Tolui's family the region of Hebei, with 80,000 households attached. Tolui himself had died in 1232. Kublai received a private estate of 10,000 households, and because he lacked experience, he let local officials run it freely. Corruption and heavy taxes drove many Han peasants off the land, and tax revenue fell. Kublai hurried to the estate and ordered reforms. Sorghaghtani Beki sent new officials, the tax laws were revised, and many of the people who had fled came back.

  In 1242, at Karakorum, Kublai met Haiyun, the foremost Buddhist monk of northern China, and questioned him about Buddhist philosophy. When Kublai's son was born in 1243, Haiyun gave him the name Zhenjin. Haiyun also introduced Liu Bingzhong, a former Taoist then living as a Buddhist monk. Liu was a painter, calligrapher, poet and mathematician, and he became Kublai's adviser once Haiyun returned to his temple in what is now Beijing. The Shanxi scholar Zhao Bi joined the circle soon afterward. Kublai also employed people of other nationalities, Turkic among them, to balance local and imperial interests.

  The Selection of Yuan Poetry holds just one Chinese poem by Kublai, though he wrote a great deal of verse that is now lost. It is titled "Inspiration recorded while enjoying the ascent to Spring Mountain." Tradition says he wrote it after worshipping at a Buddhist temple at the Summer Palace in western Khanbaliq and then climbing Longevity Hill. In an English version of a Mongolian translation, its last line reads: "And on the way back I rode a Blue Dragon in the royal carriage."

  In 1251, Möngke became Great Khan and sent Kublai to China proper, together with the Khwarezmian Mahmud Yalavach. Kublai became viceroy of northern China and moved his ordo to central Inner Mongolia. He raised farm output in Henan and increased welfare spending after he received Xi'an, and Han warlords praised him for it. In 1252 he criticized Mahmud for carelessly executing suspects during a judicial review. Möngke dismissed Mahmud, which met resistance from Han officials trained in Confucian thought.

  Kublai took a special interest in Tibetan monks, whom he admired as healers. In 1253, he added Drogön Chögyal Phagpa of the Sakya school to his entourage, and Phagpa gave Kublai and his wife Chabi an empowerment, a Tibetan initiation ritual. Jealous officials whispered that Kublai was getting above himself and dreaming of a capital to rival Karakorum. In 1257, Möngke sent two tax inspectors, Alamdar, a close friend of Ariq Böke, and Liu Taiping. They listed 142 breaches of regulations, executed some Han officials, and abolished Kublai's new pacification commission. Kublai sent an embassy of two men along with his wives, then appealed in person, and Möngke publicly forgave him.

  In early 1258, Kublai convened a conference of Taoist and Buddhist leaders at Möngke's repeated demand. The Taoists had grown rich partly by seizing Buddhist temples. The conference rejected their claim, and Kublai forcibly converted 237 Taoist temples to Buddhism and destroyed all copies of the Taoist texts. Rulers of the other Mongol khanates later turned to Islam at various times. Berke of the Golden Horde was the only Muslim among them in Kublai's era, and his successor did not convert.

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• 4. The Fall of the Song

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  Dali, the capital of a kingdom in Yunnan, fell to Kublai in 1253 after its ruling Gao family killed the Mongol envoys. The Mongols split into three forces. One rode east into the Sichuan basin, and a second, under Subutai's son Uriyangkhadai, took a hard route through the mountains of western Sichuan. Kublai himself went south across the grasslands. He took the city and spared its residents, despite the murdered ambassadors. The Dali king, Duan Xingzhi, defected, and his troops helped conquer the rest of Yunnan. By the end of 1256, Uriyangkhadai had pacified the whole region.

  In 1260, Kublai sent his adviser Hao Ching to Emperor Lizong of Song with an offer. If Lizong submitted and gave up his dynasty, he would keep some autonomy. Lizong refused and imprisoned Hao Ching. When Kublai sent a delegation to free him, Lizong sent it back. Kublai tried diplomacy once more by sending envoys to Hangzhou, but Jia Sidao broke his earlier promise and arrested them.

  Xiangyang fell in 1273, and two siege engineers had helped bring it down. Kublai had called two Iraqi specialists from the Ilkhanate to destroy Song fortresses. Sources name Ismail and Al al-Din as the men who built what became known as the Muslim trebuchet. Afterward, the commanders Aju and Liu Zheng proposed a final campaign against the Song, and Kublai made Bayan of the Baarin supreme commander.

  The war drew on resources far beyond China. Kublai ordered Möngke Temür to revise the census of the Golden Horde to supply men and materials for the conquest. The count covered every part of the Horde, including Smolensk and Vitebsk, in 1274-1275.

  The Song imperial family surrendered in 1276. Three years later, Yuan marines crushed the last Song loyalists, and at the Battle of Yamen the final Song emperor, Zhao Bing, died by jumping into the sea. Kublai and his generals had fought a measured campaign in the south, and they had adopted the naval techniques of the Han people. That gave the Yuan army the speed to conquer the Song so quickly.

  The Song Empress Dowager and her grandson, Emperor Gong, were settled in Khanbaliq with tax-free property. Kublai's wife Chabi took a personal interest in their welfare. Kublai later had Emperor Gong sent away to Zhangye to become a monk.

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• 5. Canals, Cities, and Cash

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  Dadu, the Grand Capital, was proclaimed in 1272, a year after Kublai formally created the Yuan dynasty in 1271. The Mongols called it Khanbaliq, and it stood where Beijing stands today. His summer capital was Shangdu, also known as Xanadu, near what is now Dolon Nor.

  The move to Khanbaliq nearly cost him the old heartland. An uprising broke out in Karakorum, and Kublai barely contained it. Traditionalists sent him a message: "The old customs of our Empire are not those of the Han Chinese laws... What will happen to the old customs?" His rival Kaidu declared himself the rightful heir of a Genghis Khan whom Kublai had abandoned. Defections swelled the forces of the Ögedeids.

  Ikhtiyar al-Din, a Turkestani architect also called Igder, designed the buildings of Khanbaliq. Araniko, a Newar artist, built the White Stupa, the largest structure in the city.

  In 1260, an official named Zhang Wenqian went to Daming to deal with unrest, and his friend Guo Shoujing came with him. Guo was an astronomer, an engineer and a skilled instrument maker, and he built water clocks and armillary spheres. Zhang told Kublai that Guo was a leading expert in hydraulic engineering. Guo found the Baifu spring on Mount Shen and had a channel 30 km long built to carry its water to Dadu. He also built canals with sluices to control water levels. In 1264, Kublai sent him to Gansu to repair irrigation systems damaged by years of war, and Guo reported straight to the Khan.

  Kublai also rebuilt the Grand Canal, repaired public buildings and extended the highways. The Mongol records list 20,166 public schools founded during his reign. Salt production was a government monopoly and the main source of revenue. In 1268, Kublai set up the Office of Market Taxes to supervise the merchants who partnered with the Mongols, and in 1286 it took over maritime trade.

  In August 1260, Kublai created the Jiaochao, the first unified paper currency of his realm. The Mongols had issued paper money since 1227, but these bills circulated everywhere in the Yuan domain and had no expiration date. To guard against devaluation, they could be exchanged for silver and gold, and the government accepted them for taxes. Paper made collecting taxes easier and spared the cost of hauling coins. Kublai is often called the first maker of fiat money.

  A new series of state bills in 1273 paid for the conquest of the Song, and it turned into an economic disaster. Spending was undisciplined and inflation followed. The government confiscated gold and silver from private citizens and foreign merchants, who received government notes in return. Between 1273 and 1276, the war against the Song and Japan pushed the amount of paper issued from 110,000 ding to 1,420,000 ding.

  In 1287, his minister Sangha, a Tibetan monk who had risen to high office, created a new currency called Zhiyuan Chao to cover a budget shortfall. It could not be exchanged for metal and was denominated in copper cash. Gaykhatu of the Ilkhanate tried to copy the system in the Middle East. The experiment failed completely, and he was assassinated soon afterward.

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• 6. A Court of Many Peoples

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  Thirty Muslims served as high officials at Kublai's court, and eight of the dynasty's twelve administrative districts had Muslim governors. One was Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, administrator of Yunnan, who was learned in the Confucian and Taoist traditions and is believed to have spread Islam in China. Others included Nasr al-Din and Mahmud Yalavach, who served as mayor of the capital.

  The astronomer Jamal ad-Din introduced seven new instruments and concepts that allowed the Chinese calendar to be corrected. Muslim astronomers also helped build an observatory in Shaanxi. Muslim cartographers drew accurate maps of the nations along the Silk Road, and Muslim mathematicians brought Euclidean geometry, spherical trigonometry and Arabic numerals to China. In Beijing, the Guang Hui Si, the "Department of extensive mercy," taught Hui medicine and surgery. The works of Avicenna were published in China in this period.

  Drogön Chögyal Phagpa became Kublai's Imperial Preceptor, with authority over all the empire's Buddhist monks. After he created the 'Phags-pa script, he was promoted to imperial preceptor in 1270. Kublai set up the Supreme Control Commission under him to manage Tibetan and Chinese monks. While Phagpa was away in Tibet, the monk Sangha rose to high office and had the body renamed the Commission for Buddhist and Tibetan Affairs. In 1286, Sangha became the dynasty's chief fiscal officer.

  Kublai's edicts against Taoists did not stop him from respecting the Taoist master Zhang Liushan. He named Zhang patriarch of the Xuanjiao, the "Mysterious Order." On Zhang's advice, Taoist temples were placed under the Academy of Scholarly Worthies. Kublai also invited the southern Duke Yansheng, Kong Zhu, a descendant of Confucius, to return to Qufu. Kong Zhu refused, the southern branch lost the title, and the northern branch kept it. Confucius's descendants in Quzhou alone are said to number 30,000.

  The Italian Marco Polo reached the empire in the 1270s. He was appointed an emissary of the Khan and lived in Kublai's lands for 17 years. Under Kublai, direct contact between East Asia and Europe grew, helped by Mongol control of the Central Asian trade routes and by efficient postal services. According to Marco Polo, Kublai also sent an envoy to spy on the Sultanate of Mogadishu in Africa. The delegation was captured and imprisoned, so Kublai sent a second envoy to negotiate its release.

  Kublai's tolerance had limits. In 1279-1280 he decreed death for anyone who slaughtered cattle by Islamic dhabihah or Jewish kashrut rules, because they offended Mongolian custom. Circumcision was also strictly forbidden. The corruption of Sangha and his circle later embittered Kublai, and he came to rely wholly on younger Mongol aristocrats. Antong of the Jalairs and Bayan of the Baarin had served as grand councillors since 1265, while Oz-temur of the Arulad headed the censorate.

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• 7. Fleets That Failed

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  In 1274, a fleet of 900 ships carried Kublai's first attempt to invade Japan. It is believed that bad weather, or a flaw in the ships' design, partly thwarted both of his attempts. The vessels were based on river boats without keels, and the fleets were destroyed.

  The second invasion came in 1281, in two forces. One sent 900 ships with 40,000 Korean, Han and Mongol troops from Masan. The other was 100,000 men aboard 3,500 ships from southern China, each close to 240 ft long. The Mongols easily took Tsushima Island and then Iki Island. The Korean fleet reached Hakata Bay on the 23rd of June 1281 and landed its troops and animals, but the ships from China were nowhere in sight.

  Mongol landing forces were then beaten at the Battle of Akasaka and the Battle of Torikai-Gata. Around 3500 Mongols died when the samurai Takezaki Suenaga attacked and reinforcements under Shiraishi Michiyasu arrived. The samurai rode out for single combat in their custom, but the Mongols held formation and answered with exploding missiles and volleys of arrows. The Japanese were outnumbered, yet they had fortified the coast with walls two meters high. The Mongols did not chase the survivors inland, since they lacked reliable intelligence about the ground.

  The maritime archaeologist Kenzo Hayashida led the investigation that found wreckage of the second fleet. His team's findings strongly suggest that Kublai rushed. A fleet that should have taken up to five years to build was assembled in one, so any available ships were pressed into service, riverboats included. Hayashida theorizes that well-built ocean-going ships with curved keels might have survived the voyage and conquered Japan as intended. In October 2011, a wreck that may be one of the invasion craft was found off the coast of Nagasaki.

  The historian David Nicolle wrote in The Mongol Warlords: "Huge losses had also been suffered in terms of casualties and sheer expense, while the myth of Mongol invincibility had been shattered throughout eastern Asia." Nicolle adds that Kublai still wanted a third invasion. Only his death, and his advisers' unanimous agreement against it, stopped the attempt.

  Goryeo on the Korean Peninsula paid heavily for these campaigns. Kublai made it a tributary "son-in-law" state in 1260, and after another intervention in 1273 it became a Mongol military base. Its court supplied Korean troops and an ocean-going naval force for the Mongol campaigns.

  Kublai's forces entered Đại Việt five times between 1257 and 1292, with major campaigns in 1258-1285 and 1287. Several scholars count those three campaigns as a success, because tributary relations were established even though the Mongols suffered major defeats. Vietnamese historians instead see a great victory over invaders whom they called "the Mongol yokes." Both Đại Việt and Champa chose in the end to accept the nominal supremacy of the Yuan, to avoid further bloodshed.

  Three expeditions against Burma, in 1277-1283 and 1287, brought the Mongols to the Irrawaddy Delta. They captured Bagan, the capital of the Pagan kingdom, and Pagan finally became a tributary state. King Jayavarman VIII of the Khmer Empire refused to pay tribute and imprisoned Mongol envoys. Kublai encouraged Prince Mangrai of Chiang Mai and King Ramkhamhaeng of Sukhothai to attack the Khmers, and the Mongols marched into Cambodia in 1283. By 1285, Jayavarman VIII had been forced to pay tribute.

  In 1293, a naval punitive expedition of between 20,000 and 30,000 men sailed against Singhasari on Java. Majapahit forced the invaders to withdraw after they lost more than 3,000 troops. Even so, by 1294 the Thai kingdoms of Sukhothai and Chiang Mai had become vassals of the Yuan.

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• 8. The Last Years

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  Chabi died in 1281, and Kublai began to pull away from his advisers. His first wife, Tegulen, had died very early, and Chabi had been his most beloved empress. He married Chabi's young cousin Nambui, presumably as Chabi would have wished, and issued instructions through her. Unlike the formidable women of Genghis Khan's day, Kublai's wives and daughters were an almost invisible presence at court.

  Zhenjin, Kublai's son, had been chosen as heir and ran the Zhongshu Sheng, administering the dynasty in the Confucian fashion. His brother Nomukhan resented the choice after returning from captivity in the Golden Horde, and he was banished to the north. In 1285, an official proposed that Kublai abdicate in Zhenjin's favor. The idea angered Kublai so much that he refused to see his son. Zhenjin died in 1286, eight years before his father, and Kublai regretted the quarrel.

  In 1287, a prince named Nayan, a fourth-generation descendant of one of Genghis Khan's brothers, raised a revolt in Manchuria. Kublai's growing bureaucratic control had threatened the autonomy of the Mongol nobles there. Nayan tried to ally with Kaidu in Central Asia, and Jurchens and Water Tatars, who had suffered a famine, backed him. Early detection and timid leadership crippled the rebellion. On the 14th of June, Oz Temür's force attacked Nayan's 60,000 inexperienced soldiers, while Han and Alan guards under Li Ting protected Kublai.

  After a hard fight, Nayan's men withdrew behind their carts. Li Ting bombarded them and attacked Nayan's camp that night. Nayan was captured and executed without bloodshed, smothered under felt carpets in the traditional way for princes. Kublai approved the creation of the Liaoyang Branch Secretariat on the 4th of December 1287, and uprisings by Nayan's supporters were ruthlessly put down by 1289.

  Trouble in the west and in Tibet did not ease. Kaidu beat a major Yuan army in the Khangai Mountains and briefly occupied Karakorum in 1289, then rode off before Kublai could gather a larger force. In 1285, the Drikung Kagyu sect had revolted in Tibet. Kublai's grandson Buqa-Temür crushed it in 1291, killing 10,000 Tibetans, and Tibet was fully pacified. Bayan took control of Karakorum in 1293, and Kaidu attempted no large operation for the next three years.

  Kublai grew despondent after losing his favorite wife and his chosen heir. The failed campaigns in Vietnam and Japan also haunted him. He turned to food and drink for comfort and became very heavy. He suffered from gout and diabetes, and a meat-rich Mongol diet and heavy drinking may have worsened the gout. He tried every treatment on offer, from Korean shamans to Vietnamese doctors, without success.

  At the end of 1293, Kublai refused to take part in the traditional New Year's ceremony. He passed the seal of Crown Prince to Zhenjin's son Temür, who would become the next Khagan and the second ruler of the Yuan dynasty. Wanting an old companion in his final illness, the palace staff could find only Bayan, more than 30 years younger than the emperor. On the 18th of February 1294, Kublai died at the age of 78. Two days later, the funeral cortège took his body to the burial place of the khans in Mongolia.

  The seat he had chosen outlived him in an unexpected way. Yuan rule over Tibet, Manchuria and Mongolia from a capital at modern Beijing set a precedent that the Qing dynasty would later follow when it expanded into Inner Asia.

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