Rise of Kublai Khan ''-glazed
Chinese ceramic incense burner,
Yuan dynasty Genghis Khan united the Mongol and Turkic tribes of the steppes and became
Great Khan in 1206. He and his successors expanded the Mongol Empire across Asia. Under the reign of Genghis' third son,
Ögedei Khan, the Mongols
destroyed the weakened
Jin dynasty in 1234 and conquered most of northern China. Ögedei offered his nephew Kublai a position in Xingzhou,
Hebei. Kublai was unable to read Chinese, but had several Han Chinese teachers attached to him since his early years by his mother
Sorghaghtani. He sought the counsel of Chinese Buddhist and Confucian advisers.
Möngke Khan succeeded Ögedei's son,
Güyük, as Great Khan in 1251. He granted his brother Kublai control over Mongol held territories in China. Kublai built schools for Confucian scholars, issued paper money, revived Chinese rituals, and endorsed policies that stimulated agricultural and commercial growth. He made the city of Kaiping in
Inner Mongolia, later renamed
Shangdu, his capital. Many Han Chinese and Khitan defected to the Mongols to fight against the Jin. Two Han Chinese leaders,
Shi Tianze,
Liu Heima (, Liu Ni), and the Khitan
Xiao Zhala defected and commanded the 3 Tumens in the Mongol army. Liu Heima and Shi Tianze served Ogödei Khan. Liu Heima and Shi Tianxiang led armies against Western Xia for the Mongols. There were 4 Han Tumens and 3 Khitan Tumens, with each Tumen consisting of 10,000 troops. Shi Tianze was a Han Chinese who lived in the
Jin dynasty (1115–1234). Interethnic marriage between Han and Jurchen became common at this time. His father was Shi Bingzhi (, Shih Ping-chih). Shi Bingzhi was married to a Jurchen woman (surname Na-ho) and a Han Chinese woman (surname Chang), it is unknown which of them was Shi Tianze's mother. Shi Tianze was married to two Jurchen women, a Han Chinese woman, and a Korean woman, and his son Shi Gang was born to one of his Jurchen wives. His Jurchen wives's surnames were Mo-nien and Na-ho, his Korean wife's surname was Li, and his Han Chinese wife's surname was Shi. The Yuan dynasty created a "Han Army" () out of defected Jin troops and army of defected Song troops called the "Newly Submitted Army" (). Möngke Khan commenced a military campaign against the Chinese
Song dynasty in southern China. The Mongol force which invaded southern China was far greater than the force they sent to invade the Middle East in 1256. He died in 1259 without a successor. Kublai returned from fighting the Song in 1260 when he learned that his brother,
Ariq Böke, was challenging his claim to the throne. Kublai convened a kurultai in the Chinese city of
Kaiping that elected him Great Khan. A rival kurultai in Mongolia proclaimed Ariq Böke Great Khan, beginning a civil war. Kublai Khan depended on the cooperation of his Chinese subjects to ensure that his army received ample resources. He bolstered his popularity among his subjects by modeling his government on the bureaucracy of traditional Chinese dynasties and adopting the Chinese era name of Zhongtong. Ariq Böke was hampered by inadequate supplies and surrendered in 1264. All of the three western khanates (
Golden Horde,
Chagatai Khanate and
Ilkhanate) became functionally autonomous, although only the Ilkhans truly recognized Kublai as Great Khan. Civil strife had permanently
divided of the Mongol Empire. The conflicts between Kublai Khan and the khanates in
Central Asia led by
Kaidu had lasted for a few decades, until the beginning of the 14th century, when both of them had died.
Hülegü, another brother of Kublai Khan, ruled his
Ilkhanate and paid homage to the Great Khan but actually established an
autonomous khanate, and after
Ilkhan Ghazan's enthronement in 1295, Kublai's successor
Emperor Chengzong sent him a
seal reading "" in Chinese script to symbolize this. The four major successor khanates never came again under true one rule, and border clashes also frequently occurred among them, although Yuan dynasty's nominal supremacy was recognized by the other three after the death of Kaidu. of the Ilkhan Ghazan in a 1302 letter to
Pope Boniface VIII.
Founding of the dynasty ,
Genghis Khan's grandson and founder of the Yuan dynasty Instability troubled the early years of Kublai Khan's reign. Li Tan, the son-in-law of a powerful official, instigated a revolt against Mongol rule in 1262. After successfully suppressing the revolt, Kublai curbed the influence of the Han Chinese advisers in his court. He feared that his dependence on Chinese officials left him vulnerable to future revolts and defections to the Song. Khublai's government after 1262 was a compromise between preserving Mongol interests in China and satisfying the demands of his Chinese subjects. He instituted the reforms proposed by his Chinese advisers by centralizing the bureaucracy, expanding the circulation of paper money, and maintaining the
traditional monopolies on salt and
iron, but rejected plans to revive the Confucian
imperial examinations. In 1264, he transferred his headquarters to the
Daning Palace northeast of the former
Jin capital
Zhongdu. In 1266, he ordered the construction of his new capital around that site's
Taiye Lake, establishing what is now the central core of
Beijing. The city came to be known as
Khanbaliq ("City of the Khans") and Daidu to the Turks and Mongols and Dadu (, "Great Capital") to the Han Chinese. As early as 1264, Kublai decided to change the
era name from Zhongtong () to Zhiyuan (). With the desire to rule all of China, Kublai Khan formally claimed the
Mandate of Heaven by proclaiming the new Yuan dynasty in 1271 in the traditional Chinese style. This would become the first non-Han dynasty to rule all of
China proper. The official title of the dynasty, Da Yuan (, "Great Yuan"), originates from a
Chinese classic text called the
Commentaries on the Classic of Changes (I Ching) whose section regarding
Qián () reads "" (dà zai Qián Yuán), literally translating to 'Great is Qián, the Primal', with "Qián" being the symbol of the Heaven, and the Emperor. Therefore, Yuan was the first
dynasty of China to use Da (, "Great") in its official title, as well as being the first Chinese dynasty to use a title that did not correspond to an ancient region or noble title in China. In 1271, Khanbaliq officially became the capital of the Yuan dynasty. In an edict titled "Proclamation of the Dynastic Name" (), Kublai announced the name of the new dynasty as Da Yuan and claimed the succession of former Chinese dynasties from the
Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors to
Tang dynasty. In the early 1270s, Kublai began
his massive drive against the
Southern Song dynasty in southern China. By 1273, Kublai had blockaded the
Yangzi River with his navy and besieged
Xiangyang, the last obstacle in his way to capture the rich Yangzi River basin. In 1275, a Song force of 130,000 troops under
Chancellor Jia Sidao was defeated by the Yuan force. By 1276, most of the Southern Song territory had been captured by Yuan forces. In 1279, the Yuan army led by the Chinese general
Zhang Hongfan had crushed the last Song resistance at the
Battle of Yamen, which marked the end of the Southern Song and the onset of a unified China under the Yuan. The Yuan dynasty is traditionally given credit for reuniting China after several hundred years of fragmentation following the fall of the
Tang dynasty. After the founding of the dynasty, Kublai Khan was put under pressure by many of his advisers to further expand the sphere of influence of the Yuan through the traditional
Sinocentric tributary system. However, the attempts to establish such tributary relationships were rebuffed and expeditions to
Japan (twice),
Dai Viet (twice during Kublai's rule), and
Java, would later meet with less success. Kublai established a puppet state in
Myanmar, which caused anarchy in the area, and the
Pagan Kingdom was broken up into many regions warring with each another. In order to avoid more bloodshed and conflicts with the Mongols, Annam and
Champa later established nominal tributary relations with the Yuan dynasty.
Rule of Kublai Khan Kublai Khan was seen as a martial emperor, reforming much of China and its institutions, a process that would have taken decades to complete. For example, he consolidated his rule by centralizing the government of China — making himself (unlike his predecessors) an
absolute monarch. He divided his empire into
Branch Secretariats (), or simply
provinces (), in addition to the regions governed by the
Zhongshu Sheng or the
Bureau of Buddhist and Tibetan Affairs. Each province governed the areas of approximately two or three modern-day Chinese provinces, and this provincial-level government structure became the model for later
Ming and
Qing dynasties. Kublai Khan also reformed many other governmental and economic institutions, especially the tax system. Kublai Khan sought to govern China through traditional institutions, and also recognized that in order to rule China he needed to employ
Han Chinese advisers and officials, though he never relied totally on Chinese advisers. Yet, the Hans were discriminated against politically. Almost all important central posts were monopolized by Mongols, who also preferred employing non-Hans from other parts of the Mongol domain in those positions for which no Mongol could be found. Hans were more often employed in non-Chinese regions of the empire. In essence, society was divided into four classes in order of privilege: Mongols,
Semu ("Various sorts", for example: Central Asians), Northerners, and Southerners. During his lifetime, Kublai Khan built the capital of the Yuan,
Khanbaliq at the site of present-day central Beijing and made
Shangdu (, "Upper Capital", known to
Marco Polo as Xanadu) the summer capital. He also improved the agriculture of China, extending the
Grand Canal, highways and public granaries. Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant who served under Kublai Khan as an official, described his rule as benevolent: relieving the populace of taxes in times of hardship; building hospitals and orphanages; distributing food among the abjectly poor. He also promoted science and religion, and strongly supported the
Silk Road trade network, allowing the contacts between Chinese technologies and the western ones. It is worth mentioning that prior to meeting Marco Polo, Kublai Khan had met Niccolò Polo, Marco Polo's father and Matteo Polo. Through conversation with the two merchants, Kublai Khan developed a keen interest in the Latin world especially Christianity and sought to invite a hundred of missionaries through a letter written in Latin to the Pope so that they may convince the masses of idolators the errors of their belief. Thus Niccolò and Maffeo Polo served as ambassadors for Kublai Khan to the West. After having completed their mission of accompanying a young Mongol princess to marry the Mongol ruler Arghun, their perilous journey would end with them returning to Venice and meeting young Marco Polo of seventeen in 1271. The three returned to the East and once again met with Kublai Khan, and it was said that Marco Polo served as an emissary of Kublai Khan throughout his domain for seventeen years. Although Niccolò and Maffeo failed to bring back any missionaries with them or a letter from the Pope due to the Great Schism, they were successful in returning with oil from the lamp of God in Jerusalem. The
Prince of Liang,
Basalawarmi established a separate pocket of resistance to the Ming in
Yunnan and
Guizhou, but his forces were decisively defeated by the Ming in 1381. By 1387 the remaining Yuan forces in
Manchuria under Naghachu
had also surrendered to the Ming dynasty.
End of Yuan rule The Yuan remnants retreated to Mongolia after the fall of Yingchang to the Ming in 1370, where the name Great Yuan () was formally carried on, and is known as the
Northern Yuan dynasty. According to Chinese political orthodoxy, there could be only one legitimate dynasty whose rulers were blessed by
Heaven to rule as
Emperor of China (see
Mandate of Heaven), and so the Ming and the Northern Yuan denied each other's legitimacy as emperors of China, although the Ming did consider the previous Yuan which it had succeeded to be a legitimate dynasty. Historians generally regard
Ming dynasty rulers as the legitimate emperors of China after the Yuan dynasty, though Northern Yuan rulers also claimed to rule over China, and continued to resist the Ming under the name "Yuan" or "Northern Yuan". The Ming army pursued the ex-Yuan Mongol forces into Mongolia in 1372, but were defeated by the latter under
Biligtü Khan Ayushiridara and his general
Köke Temür. They tried again in 1380, ultimately winning a
decisive victory over the Northern Yuan in 1388. About 70,000 Mongols were taken prisoner, and
Karakorum (the Northern Yuan capital) was sacked. A few months later, the Mongol throne was taken over by
Jorightu Khan Yesüder, a descendant of
Ariq Böke, instead of the descendants of
Kublai Khan. The following centuries saw a succession of Genghisid rulers, many of whom were mere figureheads put on the throne by those warlords who happened to be the most powerful. Periods of conflict with the Ming dynasty intermingled with periods of peaceful relations with border trade. Sources by the Ming dynasty claimed
Örüg Temür Khan (Guilichi) abolished the name "Great Yuan" in 1402; he was however defeated by
Öljei Temür Khan (Bunyashiri), protege of
Tamerlane (Timur Barulas) in 1403. A few decades later the new khan
Batumongke (1464–1517/43) took the title
Dayan, some scholars believe it meaning "Da Yuan" or "Great Yuan". Contrary to this, other views hold that the title "Dayan" is derived from the Mongolian word means "origin" or "whole", and symbolizes the reunification of the Mongols. His successors continued to rule until the submission to the
Qing dynasty in the 17th century. == Notes ==