Kublai Khan (23 September 1215-18 February 1294) was the Emperor of the Yuan dynasty from 1260 to 1294, succeeding Mongke Khan and preceding Temur Khan. Kublai ruled Mongolia and China from 1260 onwards, and he faced opposition from his nephew Kaidu and his brother Ariq Boke. Kublai was a Mongol, but he adopted China as his country and culture, building the new Yuan dynasty of China after conquering the Song dynasty. Under his rule, the Mongol Empire reached its largest size.
Biography[]
A grandson of Genghis Khan through his son Tolui Khan, who was Khagan when Kublai was born, Kublai grew up as a part of an elite ruling empire that stretched from Europe to China. His old grandfather would die in 1227 at age 65 when Kublai was 12, and his uncle Ogedei Khan ascended the throne 2 years later as Khagan. Kublai grew to manhood under his uncles reign, though he lost his father at age 17 in 1232. When Ogedei died prematurely in 1241, it was his son, Kublai’s cousin, Guyuk Khan, that succeeded him in 1246. Kublai was only 29 then.
Kublai in 1271
When like his father, Guyuk died prematurely in 1248, his successor, who was Kublais brother Mongke, ascended 3 years as Khagan. Kublai put in control of northern China, taken from the Jin two decades earlier under their grandfather Genghis. It was then he lost his formidable mother, Sorghaghatani Beki, by now an elderly lady at 62. When Mongke died in 1259, Kublai fought a war against his brother, Ariq Boke, for the title of Great Khan. Kublai won, but the unity of the Mongol Empire was never fully restored. Indeed, Kublai mutated from a Mongol khan into a Chinese emperor. Throughout the 1260s, he campaigned on an expanding scale against the Song dynasty that still ruled prosperous, densely populated southern China. Showing the usual Mongol gift for bringing in foreign skills and adopting new forms of warfare, Kublai developed a river fleet to contest control of the Yangtze and its tributaries, as well as deploying powerful catapults and primitive powerful catapults and primitive gunpowder weapons in sieges. The fall of the key city of Xiangyang in 1273 was soon followed by the collapse o the Song state. In 1279, the last remnants of the regime were destroyed at the naval batte of Yamen.
The End of an Era[]
Kublai became ruler of all China and founder of the Yuan dynasty, but this did not sate his appetite for empire-building warfare. He sent invasion forces south into Vietnam, Burma, and Java, and twice attempted to invade Japan, in 1274 and 1281. These expeditions were far from successful, however. The Japanese ventures, involving the dispatch of large troop-carrying fleets, were beaten by a mix of vigorous samurai resistance and bad weather. In Vietnam Kublai's forces suffered a series of defeats, culminating in the battle of Bach Dang in 1288. In reality, with Kublai's takeover of Song China, the era of Mongol conquests had reached its limit.