The History of China - #174 - Yuan 1: In Xanadu Did Kubla Khan...

Episode Date: September 22, 2019

You know it’s hard out there for a prince. The fourth sons of a fourth son, Khubilai of the Borjigin will grow up little recognized, and bound for a life of little more than comfortable obscurity. But between his mother’s machinations, his wife’s guidance, his own skills… and a healthy smattering of good fortune, he’ll find himself suddenly thrust into the spotlight and tasked with overseeing the conquest of the Mongols’ oldest foe. Time Period Covered: 1215-1259 CE Major Historical Figures: Mongol: Tolui [c. 1191-1232] – 4th son of Genghis Khan, Khubilai’s father Sorkhokhtani Beki [c. 1190-1252] – Khubilai’s mother, Nestorian Christian Möngke Khaghan [1209-1259] – Tolui’s eldest son, 4th Great Khan of the Mongols Khubilai, Ilkhan of the Left [1215-1289] – favored grandson of Genghis Hulagu, Ilkhan of the Right [1218-1265] – 3rd son of Tolui and Sorkhokhtani Ariq Böke [1219-1266] – youngest son of Tolui, Otchigin “Hearthkeeper” Chabi Khatun [1225-1281] – Khubilai’s 2nd wife & only love, Tibetan Buddhist North China: Minister Yao Shu Liu Bingzhong, Buddhist Monk, Adviser & Architect of Kaiping/Shangdu city The Phagspa Lama [1235-1280] Dali Kingdom: King Duan Xingzhi [r. 1251-1254, 1256-1260 (as Maharaja)] Prime Minister Gao Taixiang [d. 1253] Major Sources: Atwood, Christopher P. Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire. Broadbridge, Anne F. Women and the Making of the Mongol Empire. Clements, Jonathan. A Brief History of Khubilai Khan: Lord of Xanadu, Founder of the Yuan. May, Timothy (ed.). The Mongol Empire: A Historical Encyclopedia, vol. 1. McLynn, Frank. Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy. Rossabi, Morris. “The Reign of Khubilai Khan” in The Cambridge History of China, v. 6: Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368. Weatherford, Jack. The Secret History of the Mongol Queens. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello, and welcome to the History of China, episode 174, In Xanadu Did Kublai Khan. Welcome back, one and all, to the show, and to the dawn of its new and exciting chapter, the nine-decade-long rule of the Mongol Yuan dynasty under Hublai Khan and his successors. I'm thrilled to be able to, after 33 episodes and change over more than 22 months, at long last be able to switch up my episode title scheme off of song. Now that said, the song has definitely been one of my favorite periods to date, and I will be sad to leave the era behind, as several listeners have already indicated that they would be as well. But time, and the show, move ever onward. The song is dead. Long live the Yuan. Well, not quite yet. I'm going

to take a semi-educated guess here that this series in particular might just attract some new listeners to the show who might not at first be super interested in all that other stuff, aka China, and are just in it for the Mongols. I get that. I totally do. So let me start out with two things. If that describes you, first, welcome, and you should definitely go and check out the five free episodes interspersed within the Song Period

detailing the early life and times of the progenitor of the Mongol Empire, Temujin, a.k.a. Cengiz Khan. That is half of the relevant context and life of the great man that I've put out as of this recording on the formation of the Yek-Mongol-Ulus, or the Great Mongol Nation, with the other half available to people who wish to kick an extra dollar in my direction via Patreon. So, if you decide that you like this and the other Mongol episodes and want more, because there will be more episodes, for instance, I'm currently working on one about the second great Khan, Ogedei, right now, nudge nudge, wink wink, the website is patreon.com

slash thehistoryofchina. The second accommodation I'll be making for any potential neophytes of the show is, well, it's actually not anything that new at all. For a while now, having reached the end of a particular dynasty, I've often done a retrospective or look-back episode, sort of summing everything up that we've all just gone through. What did it all mean? Well, I don't think I'm going to be doing quite that this go-round. At least, I'm not going to be summing up the entire Song Dynasty in one go. Rather, today we're going to take another look back at the 13th century and the latter half of the Song Dynasty,

but today through the eyes and viewpoints of the Mongols and northern China, and the man who would eventually come to rule it all, the grandson of Genghis, Khubilai. This will, therefore, hopefully, be a pretty good place to serve as kind of a launch pad for anyone who wants to just dive right into the Yuan without necessarily feeling like they want to go through 170-something back episodes about the previous dynasties. But I cannot emphasize this enough, the Yuan is no more or less epic or amazing than the rest of Chinese history that we've covered thus far, so you really ought to consider going and giving the other chapters in a show a listen after you're done with this one.

Alright, anyways, let's get going. Kublai had been born in 1215 to Genghis Khan's youngest son by his empress, Borta. This son's name was Tolui, and his eventual wife was named Sorkhaktani Beki. It was the same year that the Great Khan had laid its final siege to Beijing, then known as the Jin Dynasty's south and last capital city. Kublai was Tolui's fourth son and Sorkhaktani's second. As a boy, he met his grandsire Genghis at least once, as recorded in the Secret History of the Mongols, when he was eight or nine in 1224, as the aged Great Khan was making his way back to Mongolia from his subjugation of

the Khwarazmian Empire. Having killed his first big-game animal, along with his elder brother, Mongka, then eleven, along the Ili River, Genghis conducted a traditional Mongol ritual with the boy, taking the fat of the antelope they had killed and smearing it on the boy's middle fingers as a rite of passage into manhood, a symbolic initiation into being a provider and hunter for his family. Genghis is then said to have proclaimed that the young one, Kublai, was full of wisdom, and that those around him would do well to heed his words. Prophetic indeed, though it's likely to have been a later invention of the storytellers to, you know, foreshadow the boy's eventual, and unlikely, rise to power.

Because make no mistake, even for a grandson of the Great Khan, the prospects for a boy of Kublai's rank and position within the Borjigin family virtually ensure that he would only ever be a middling prince of little consequence or recognition. He'd live a comfortable life, sure, but not a great one. The middle son of the youngest son of the great Khan is not, after all, the prime place to rise to the top. This fate of comfortable obscurity, buried deep back in the successional order of the Borjgians, was ensured with the selection, and then in 1229, the formal succession of Ogedei and his family line, rather than Tolui,

as a second great Khan. One of the few, and perhaps the only, person who understood the potential of her sons was who else but their own mother, Suharkahtani Beki. Now this is the first of about two times in this one episode that I'm going to go off and just praise two great women to the high heavens in ways that they've always deserved but rarely ever get. Suharkahtani is one of those women in history that are so singularly brilliant and amazing that in spite of hundreds of years and often pointedly and bitterly spiteful attempts by later historians to discount her and her contributions on account of her sex, she still manages to shine through as one of the prime movers and drivers of the engine

of human history in this era. That's not just me talking from 2019. She was even written about in this way in her own time, in such glowing terms. The Persian-Jewish-turned-Syriac-Orthodox-Christian historian, Gregory Bar-Hebraeus, writing from the late 13th century in his Chronicon, would be sure to include the Great Queen. He wrote, quote, This queen trained her sons so well that all the princes marveled at her administration. And she was a Christian, sincere and true like Queen Helena. And it was in respect to her that a certain poet said, if I were to see among the race of women

another woman like this, I should say that the race of women was far superior to the race of men. End quote. Professor Morris Rosevee likens her to her near-contemporary in Europe, in fact, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was first Queen of France, then Queen of England, and finally the Duchess Regnant of Aquitaine across the 12th century, and was mother to three kings of England, the Duke of Brittany, and the queens of Sicily and Castile. Like Eleanor, Sorkhaktani would be the mother of four sons who would all, in time, become powerful rulers, three great khans and one ilkhan, and they were put in such a position to be able to seize that level of power and prestige almost entirely from the ceaseless labors of their mother. Kublai's father, Tolui, unexpectedly died in 1232 at around 43 years old and under mysterious and

possibly sinister circumstances. Depending on the telling, his death was either as a willing, heroic sacrifice to the angry water spirits of South China that had afflicted the great Khan Ogedei into a death-like state himself, or he was a victim of poisoning by his eldest brother in a dastardly and underhanded scheme to gain his lands and powers, a practice that had become all too common amongst the Borjigin men by the 1230s, or he had simply drank himself to death on powerful Chinese liquors, a habit that would claim the life of his elder brother, Ogade himself, less than a decade later. Really? Any of those

three is about as plausible as the next. Regardless of the actual cause, Ogade Khan, who had miraculously recovered from his near-death coma upon Tolui's own death, moved immediately to capitalize on his younger brother's departure, namely by claiming Tolui's wife, Sorhaktani, to be married to his own son and eventual successor, Goyuk. Though this sort of practice would be considered very strange in our own culture, and was considered very strange and even incestuous in many other cultures even at this time, including the Chinese, such a situation after the death of a husband was actually quite normal amongst the Mongols

to remarry a widowed woman to another close family member. This ensured that she would be taken care of and that the family line would endure. It was likewise fairly typical for an older woman to marry a younger man, even a significantly younger one. Indeed, it was actually more usual of Mongol matches to pair a younger man up with an older and more experienced woman. That had been the case with Genghis Khan and Berta, as well as Tolui and Sorkhaktani, both of whom were at least several years older than their respective husbands.

Even by Mongol standards of normalcy, however, marrying Sorkhaktani Beki, who was now in her mid-forties, to Guyuk, who was around 26 at this time, was stretching it. It was clearly a move by Ogaday to, through ties of marriage, claim the lands and properties of Sorkhaktani and the Toluid household into his own family line. This would have forced her own sons effectively out of their rightful inheritance, as Guyuk would have become the leader of their family branch. Thus, Sorkhaktani politely, but firmly, refused the offer of marriage, insisting that she wished to assert her right to devote herself entirely to the care of her sons instead. This was within her

rights, but it carried a steep cost, for by refusing Ogedei's son, it was understood by all that she had forfeited the right to ever marry anyone again. Yet it was a cost that she would pay gladly, because by so doing, so would the House of Tolui retain their status as the Ojigen line of Genghis, the hearthkeeper tradition of sons, traditionally so would the House of Tolui retain their status as the Ojigan line of jengis, the hearthkeeper tradition of sons, traditionally held by the youngest of a Mongol family, charged with the protection and care of the home and fire, while the rest of the men might be far off on campaign. Thus, through Sorokhaktani's efforts, guile, and personal sacrifice,

though her family might not have the mantle of Khayan that rested with Ogade's house, they still held something of a trump card. They controlled Mongolia itself, and if carefully guarded and maintained with a little luck, that control over the sacred heart of the empire could render them effectively kingmakers, and maybe even kings themselves in time. The specifics of Kublai and his brother's upbringing are sparse, though we do know some key details. Sorkhaktani ensured, for instance, that her sons were trained to be literate in the newly created Mongolian script,

as well as exposing them to Chinese ways, dress, and philosophy through the extensive use of Chinese advisors and tutors. Curiously, though, and we don't really know why, they were never taught to read Chinese script. Sorkhaktani would likewise be responsible for Kublai's first official position within the empire following his uncle Ogedei Khan's final conquest over the remnants of the Jin dynasty in 1236. The Toluid house was given administrative control over Hebei, that is, the region of North China, north of the Yellow River. And with Sorkhaktani's cajoling of her brother-in-law, Kublai, who was now 20 or 21, received his own appanage, or minor estate therein, called Xingzhou, with a resident population of some 10,000 households. Kublai would take after his mother's example in many other respects over the course of his early life. Like her, he surrounded himself with a kitchen cabinet of advisors from just about

every conceivable walk of life. In his youth especially, they would be primarily Chinese Taoists and Confucians, but interspersed with a goodly peppering of Nestorian Christians, like that of his mother, Tibetan Buddhists, and Muslim Turks, as well as, of course, his fellow Mongols for more strategic matters of state and war, and trusted Uyghurs as translators, local administrators, and secretaries. Even so, Rossaby points out that, quote, no other Mongolian noble had recruited so many Chinese Confucians. Such a large retinue was not needed to help him rule his own appanage in Xingzhou.

Clearly, Kublai foresaw a more important role for himself in the Mongolian domains, particularly in China, end quote. Probably the single most important advisor across the whole of Kublai's life was his second wife, and eventual empress consort, Chabi. About a decade or so, Kublai's junior, Chabi was the daughter of the Ongarad Mongol clan's chieftain Al-Chinayan, making her one of Genghis's empress, Berta Khatun's, own decent nieces. And I know I'm getting into a little complex family line tracing here, but bear with me. Back while Genghis was alive, he had made a promise to marry one of the daughters into his own ruling clan to become an empress of the Borjigins in every generation.

And in return, one of their sons would receive a Borjigin princess. So Kublai was the chosen recipient in this generation, of this long-standing alliance. The pair were likely married in or around 1240, when he was 25 and she about 15. Though Kublai had already been married once before, to a girl of arrangement basically since they'd both been born, the two had never really got on together,

and as such, Chabi would quickly come to eclipse Kublai's first wife, who remains of so little importance historically that we don't even know her name or lineage. She would also become his katsun when his first wife died in 1259. Even though he would have four additional wives in the course of his lifetime, as well as innumerable concubines, no one else ever came close to holding his affection, or his ear, as Chabi did. She would ultimately bear him four sons, Dorji, Jingim, also known by his Chinese name Zhenjin, both meaning true gold, Mangala, and Nomokhan, as well as up to five daughters whose names, sadly, are not recorded. Kublai himself had been raised in the kind of milieu of culture and

religion that had, at least for the Borjigin clan, become something of the norm since at least the time of his grandfather. Though ostensibly raised much in the same Tengriist traditions and beliefs of his father, his mother, Sorkhaktani, had surely also imparted a sizable understanding of and sympathy toward her own Nestorian Christianity in the young Kublai, and more generally, other worldviews and spiritual belief systems outside of the Asian steppe. As such, it seems to have been not at all awkward for Kublai to have married Chabi, even though she was, and would remain throughout her life, an ardent Tibetan Tantric Buddhist. Chabi's adherence to her Buddhist faith is likewise evident in the name of her and Kublai's firstborn son, Dorji. Dorji is a Mongolization of the Tibetan term Dorje, itself a derivation

of the Sanskrit word Vajra, and it means a particular emblem similar in form to a double-headed mace, and symbolizing simultaneously the irresistible force of a lightning bolt and the unbreakable nature of a diamond. His name would not prove true of the boy, however, who was throughout his life sickly and weak, and would die sometime after 1263, likely in his mid-twenties. In fact, Chabi seems to have used her faith as a moral guidepost and a means of frequently convincing her husband of a more gentle and enlightened set of policies and provisions than his Mongol roots might have otherwise oriented him toward. It seems to have largely been Chabi, for instance, who, alongside Kublai's own Chinese

Confucian advisors, convinced the Ilkhan to ignore his Mongol peers when they urged him to convert Hebei and its settled farmland. Instead, his fellow Mongols thought, Kublai should do as his grandfather had done with the Ordos region, that is, raise all of the tilled land, drive off the settled population, and let it all just return to natural pasturage to better raise horses and goats. Chabi and the Confucians, however, dissuaded him from such a brash and destructive course of action, convincing the Khan that not only would it engender ill will toward his rule from the native Chinese population, but at least as importantly, that it would disrupt his tax base. After all, in the long run, subservient peasants submissively paying their annual taxes

were of far greater value than mere herds of cattle and horses. The farmlands of Hebei and their resident peasants were, in the end, allowed to continue existing relatively unmolested. Mongol horses and sheep would simply need to graze elsewhere. In spite of his wide and wise counsel, Kublai would remain effectively on the bench of the wider Mongol project of empire building, ensconced as he was in North China, until the surprising accession of his brother, Mongke, in 1251, following Goyukhan's surprising, though little mourned, death. With his brother's assumption, and some have even put it usurpation of absolute power, thanks in no small part to the machinations and diplomacy of their tireless

mother, Sor Khaktani Beki, the Toluid line of the Borjigins suddenly found itself rising to prominence, and with it Kublai and his own personal prospects. Rasubi writes that it seems that Kublai may have played a direct part in convincing Monka to challenge the Ogeded line for control of the wider empire, and his gambit certainly paid off. Shortly after Monk's success at the Kuril Thai and his accession as Great Khan, he created his second and third brothers as his Ilkhans, or Lesser Khans, of the right and left, respectively. Hulagu, as Ilkhan of the right, would oversee the newly acquired territories and the further expansion of the great nation into Persia and

Arabia as it plunged deeper into the heart of Islam's birthplace. Kublai, meanwhile, now the newly created Ilkhan of the left at age 36, would take charge of the reduction and ultimate destruction of the recalcitrant Chinese holdouts south of the Yangtze River, whom he derisively termed Manze, or Southern Barbarian, and to see the tottering vestiges of the Song finally submit before their rightful overlords. There was still the fourth son of Sorkhaktani to take into consideration, though that would prove, at least for the time, a relatively academic question. The youngest brother, Arik Bok, would, as per long-standing Mongol tradition, occupy the place of hearth-keeper and protector of the homeland, the Otygin,

and would therefore rule over and stand to inherit Mongolia itself when his mother eventually passed. Though at this time, this seemed like the easiest and surely most natural state of affairs from the perspective of all involved, in time, Kublai would come to rue his youngest brother's position at the heart of Mongolia itself, but more on that later. In terms of his strategy against Song China, Kublai would pull from one of the oldest Mongol hunting techniques, that is, not to attack the quarry directly at first, for that would invite them either to run away, or for the prey to turn and bear its horns. Instead, he would ring a wide loop around the quarry, and then press in from every direction at once, inexorably cutting off any means of fight or escape. This would mean a series of preliminary campaigns against adjacent

targets prior to turning his full attention to China directly. Though the Mongol armies of northern China would never truly cease their regular broader raids for plunder and to sow further terror amongst the Song populace, as well, as I've noted in a previous episode, to abduct scores of Chinese boys and men to fill out their own military ranks, Pupilai would first level his gaze at the southwestern kingdom of Dali in modern Yunnan. Dali had enjoyed a largely cordial relationship with Song China over the course of the larger dynasty's existence, mostly thanks to the Chinese's own insatiable demand for the warhorses bred in the southern state. Perhaps it was because of these centuries of relative peace and security, then, that when Kublai struck out from Shanxi in late summer of 1253, it scarcely

stood a chance. Before launching his offensive, the Ilkhan sent out a cadre of three emissaries to demand the submission of the southwestern kingdom to the will of the great Mongol nation. They were received by the Dali king, Duan Xingzhe, and his prime minister, who was the true power behind the throne, Gao Taixiang. It would be at the urging of Minister Gao that Dali would seal its own fate, when the king ordered the summary execution of all three ambassadors, which, as we're all well aware by now, was something of a big no-no for the Mongols. Kublai, justifiably enraged, unleashed his armies in a trident attack on the enemy kingdom, swiftly overrunning its forward defensive lines,

and within a month of the campaign's outset, cutting off and laying siege to the capital city itself. When the city's siege threatened to drag out unduly, however, sources credit Kublai's Chinese Confucian advisor, Yao Shu, with suggesting to his lord that he forego the typical Mongol style of justice, and instead offer the people of Dali city an out, should they choose it. Seeing the wisdom, or at the very least the expedience, of Yao's suggestion, Kublai acceded and ordered that large banners be made and flown before the enemy city. Painted on these banners flew a simple deal. Surrender here and now, citizens, and your lives will be spared. Turn on your soldiers and overlords as needed, but throw open the gates and you'll live to

see tomorrow's sunrise. The citizens of the capital were not stupid, and they knew that the offer presented, whether genuine or not, was absolutely their only chance at making it out of this situation alive. And they took it. And so too, it seems, did King Duan Xingzhi. Shortly thereafter, the city capitulated peacefully and was opened to the Mongol Ilkhan's army. 400 years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Listen to Season 1 to hear about England's first attempts

at empire building, in Ireland, in North America and in the Caribbean, the first steps of the East India Company and the political battles between King and Parliament. Listen to Season 2 to hear about the chaotic years of civil war, revolution and regicide which rocked the Three Kingdoms and the fledgling Empire. In Season 3, we see how Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell ruled the powerful Commonwealth and challenged the Dutch and the Spanish for the wealth and power of the Americas and Asia. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax. Now looking back on the widespread treachery of other Mongol commanders when taking a city,

we might well expect that Kublai would have likewise opted for a yes-but-that's-what-we-said-while-we-were-on-the-other-side-of-the-wall response here and now. Yet he did not. He remained a man of his word, a trait that throughout his whole life it seemed that he prided himself in. Ghali's city would suffer no great slaughter or purge, and in the aftermath of the conquest, rather unfathomably, even the royal house of Duan would remain in power over Dali,

having submitted, of course, to becoming vassals of the Mongols in perpetuity, and to rule alongside Kublai's own appointee, his newly created position of Xuanfu Shi, or Pacification Commissioner. Thus it was that in the span of less than three months, Kublai had effected the total capture of Dali and wider Yunnan, and proceeded one giant step closer to his true goal of wringing off the Song dynasty once and for all. With this victory, Kublai's until now tenuous and mostly untested grasp on command and power was now affirmed. No longer was he a mere hanger-on of his brother's rise to power, but a tried and true, respected battlefield commander capable of bringing victory

to his people. In other words, a Mongol to be reckoned with. Here, we might well expect Kublai to have gone on to lead further campaigns directly, in order to add to his battlefield prestige. Instead, he was content to empower his general, Uriankadai, the son of the late great Subutai the Valiant, to continue the southern campaign on his behalf. Kublai himself would return in 1253 to his headquarters in Hebei, northern China, to pursue another form of statecraft, somewhat less well-respected than battlefield plaudits among his kinsmen. Yet he knew both from his mother's lessons and the advice of his Confucian officials that it was, in the long term, even more important to a ruler's overall prosperity and security. I mean, the art of governance and administration.

Rossaby writes, quote, Kublai began to focus his attention on the administration of his lands. With the support and assistance of his Confucian advisors, he had promoted agriculture, issued paper money to encourage commerce, and collected sizable taxes. His domains, in short, became stable and prosperous, allowing Kublai to concern himself with long-range plans. Taking the advice of a Buddhist monk named Liu Bingzhong, Kublai instituted many reforms within his territories, very much in line with the traditional Chinese styles of governance, including the building of schools to train Confucian scholars, whom Liu assured the Khan were national treasures of China, the reintroduction of Chinese rituals and musical ceremonies, fixed levels of taxation assessed to shear the wool from the Chinese

farmers working the land year after year rather than skinning them outright. In fact, except for Liu's suggestion that Kublai reinstitute the imperial civil service examinations to select his officials, which Kublai dismissed since he wanted to choose his own advisors, thanks very much, virtually every one of Liu Bingzhong's suggestions were ultimately taken up and approved of by the Mongol prince. Perhaps the most significant policy that Liu was able to collaborate with the Ilkhan on, however, was the selection of the location and design of Kublai's new regional capital city between 1252 and 1256.

Liu convinced Kublai of the benefits of living among the people that he intended to govern, forgoing a city directly on the steppe, as was the main Mongol capital of Karakorum, for one that bridged the two worlds, straddling both the steppe and the was the main Mongol capital of Karakorum, for one that bridged the two worlds, straddling both the steppe and the agrarian Chinese heartland. The location settled on was north of the Luan River, in modern southern Inner Mongolia, where the current county seat Dolon-Nor now sits. Rasabi says of the area chosen, quote, This site was cooler in summer than was North China. It was surrounded on all sides by mountains, and had sufficient water for a town of moderate size. It lay about ten days' ride, journey, from Peking, along the edges of both the Chinese agrarian frontier and the Mongolian pasturelands.

Traditional Mongols thus could not accuse Kublai of abandoning his heritage and siding with the Chinese, yet he had signaled a change in focus to his Chinese subjects, end quote. As the city was raised up between 1252 and 1256, that change in focus would have become immediately apparent to anyone even first glimpsing the city. Initially called Kaiping, which translates literally as the beginning of pacification or open peace, it was, in the words of Nancy Schatzman Steinhardt, quote, a preconceived and profoundly Chinese scheme for the city's architecture, end quote, and modeled by Liu Bingzhong directly on the ancient capitals of China's past, the likes of Kaifeng, Chang'an, and even ancient Luoyang. The placement and spacing of the buildings and districts was based on the prescriptions of the

I Ching, and the city districts constructed as a series of concentric squares. The outer district, surrounded by a wall of stamped and hardened clay 12 to 18 feet high, would house the majority of the city's eventual population. Here the common people would reside, largely in mud brick or board houses, and with several Buddhist temples scattered throughout. The second ring of the city, the inner city, was surrounded by yet another wall, this one made of brick some 10 to 16 feet high. Here would reside many of the high officials, their offices, secondary palaces, and pavilions. At the very center of this, of course, raised up as though on a dais on a man-made earthen platform, was Kublai's imperial palace itself, the Da'an Ge, or Pavilion of Great Harmony. Within would have been a truly

marvelous feast for the senses. It's actually Marco Polo, the famed Venetian traveler, who would describe in 1298 from his Venetian jail cell this marvelous sight in his description of the world. He said, quote, rooms, and passages all were gilded and wonderfully painted, within which pictures and images and birds and trees and flowers and many kinds of things, so well and so cunningly that it was a delight and a wonder to see. End quote. The final section of the city wasn't really a city at all. Rather, it was an enclosed nature reserve, adjacent and gated to the north of the outer city. Therein, available only to the Ilkan, his family, and his invited guests, were pristine meadowlands, woods, streams, and a variety of types of animals.

Several types of deer and other tame fauna roamed wild, available to Kublai to hunt when the mood struck. Again from Polo, quote, Which the emperor has procured and placed there to supply food for his gerfalcons and hawks, which he keeps there in mew. Of these there are more than two hundred gerfalcons alone, without reckoning the other hawks. The Khan himself goes every week to see his birds sitting in mew, and sometimes he rides through the park with a leopard behind him on his horse's crop,

and then if he sees any animal that takes his fancy, he slips his leopard at it, and the game, when taken, is made over to feed the hawks and mew. He does this for diversion. Moreover, at a spot in the park where there is a charming wood, he has another palace built of cane, of which I must give you a description. It is gilt all over, and is most elaborately finished inside. It is stayed on gilt and lacquered columns, on each of which is a dragon all gilt, the tail of which is attached to the column while the head supports the architrave,

and the claws likewise are stretched out right and left to support the architrave. The roof, like the rest, is formed of canes, covered with a varnish so strong and excellent that no amount of rain will rot them. These canes are a good three palms in girth, and from ten to fifteen paces in length. They are cut across at each knot, and then the pieces are split so as to form from each two hollow tiles, and with these the house is roofed. Only every such tile of cane has to be nailed down to prevent the wind from lifting it. In short, the whole palace is built of these canes, which I may mention serve also for a great variety of other useful purposes. The construction of the palace is so devised that it can be taken down and put up again with great celerity,

and it can be taken to pieces and removed whithersoever the emperor may command. When erected, it is braced against mishaps from the wind by more than 200 cords of silk, end quote. So it seems like he's talking about a sort of combination of the traditional Mongol Gur style tent, but made mostly out of what sounds like bamboo, which is really cool. I'd love to see that. In addition to this menagerie, there were also kept royal herds of special breeds of white mares and cows, whose milk, once again from Polo, quote, no one else in the world dared drink except only the great Khan and his descendants, end quote. It was quite the city, and though it would initially be called Kaiping, less than a decade, in fact only eight years after it was finished, circumstances across

the Mongolian Empire had shifted to the point of necessitating a name change, from the city of opening pacification to a much more regal title, the supreme capital, Shangdu, or as rendered in Polo's characteristic mangling of the language, Xanadu. With all this ado going on in Hebei, it's hardly surprising that word would eventually get back to Monka that, hang on a second, Little Brother's doing what now? Building entire cities with palaces that look like imperial Chinese cities? Authorizing new posts and titles to be created? Sorta kinda going native? And what's this? Forgoing the holy yasa of Great Genghis in favor of Chinese Confucian law? That does sound troubling. And it's at least certainly worth sending someone to check it out and see how much,

if any of these accusations leaking back to Karakorum, were true. Thus, in 1257, Manka sent two aides to investigate the claims against Kublai and the conditions in his lands. After a thorough investigation, one that Kublai was of course powerless to interfere with, they concluded that indeed there had been numerous transgressions and violations of the Great Khan's laws, and that punishment was in order. Enacting their plenipotentiary powers of oversight, the two officials had several members of Kublai's court arrested and executed on sight. Yet the purge stopped there, and never directly touched Kublai himself. Everyone, it seemed, agreed that that would have been a bridge too far. Kublai may have overstepped his

bounds, but he was still useful to the great Khan Mungka, and at least as important, still a prince of the blood. Instead, Kublai would be put into what amounts to kind of a princely timeout, but even this would only last a few months before Manka would find that he needed Little Brother again to resolve first one and then a second important issue. By early 1258, after Kublai had sent a literal apology mission to Manka with several of his top officials as well as his wives to meet with the Great Khan and say, yeah, my bad, sorry. The two brothers at last met in person and were able to fully and publicly reconcile. That ugly business now put firmly behind them, Kublai was tasked with these new marching

orders, something only he would be truly capable of seeing through to completion, since only he really knew much about these Chinese customs and traditions. The first task would be a religious conflict that had been flaring up between the Buddhists and Taoists of the empire, which had already escalated to outright bloodshed, pitched battles, and the destruction of temples and monasteries on both sides. Now, this kind of lawlessness was obviously unacceptable. I mean, the empire had been envisioned as a regime in which all kinds of beliefs might be able to thrive and peacefully practice their ways of thought and worship, provided, of course, that they all paid due deference to the great Khan,

and certainly not as some religious war zone for old rivalries and blood feuds to boil over in. No, this would not do. Thus, it was to the Il-Khan of the left, Kublai, to oversee a great debate and trial in order to conclusively determine which of these competing beliefs, Taoism or Buddhism, was superior and true. And here I'll take a moment to note that though physically present in China at this time, neither Islam nor Christianity in any form was made a part of this proceeding, since they were deemed largely irrelevant and ignorable minor belief systems in this part of the world. 300 Buddhist monks and 200 Taoist practitioners would square off in the epic, knock-down, drag-out, winner-take-all brain-fight of the century.

The arbiter and final judge would be, of course, Kublai himself, who would listen to each and every point on which the competing sects disagreed, cross-examine the arguments, ask whatever questions he desired, and then render his final judgment on the matter. Assisting him in this task would be a panel of some 200 Confucian philosophers and ministers, whom all agreed would be able to do so impartially. Both sects, seeking secular recognition of their own religious supremacy, and of course the power and prestige that went along with such things, agreed to these terms. The date of the great debate approached, and each side prepared to make their case before

the Khan. It was no great secret that Kublai was likely to naturally view Buddhism in a more favorable light, given his beloved wife Chabi and all, then he might naturally want to view the Taoist arguments. It may, therefore, have been in consideration of this fact, and the wish to appear as impartial as he could, that the Taoists were allowed to make their case first. Now, the Taoists, if they were worried at all about the possibility of maybe offending the Buddhist-leaning sensibilities of Kublai, they sure hit it well. They started off by going pretty much straight for the jugular, basing their argument on a theory known as Hua Hu, or converting the barbarians. This line of thought asserted that in the ancient

times of the Zhou dynasty, Lao Tzu took some time off from philosophizing in the warring states and took a trip over to India for a while. While there, he transformed himself into the Buddha, as one does, and began teaching a modified form of Taoism to the Indian natives, obviously finding it necessary to dumb it down a bit to better appeal to the ignorant savages of the Westerlands, i.e. Buddhism. And that was nice and everything, but in the intervening centuries, these ignorant barbarians went and changed it. They further watered it down, vulgarized it, and made it lesser than its pure incarnation which existed in China. To bolster this argument, the Taoist priests relied on two ancient texts, the Hua Hu Jing, or the Book of the Conversion of the Barbarians,

and the Ba Shi Yi Hua Tu, or the Illustrations of the Eighty, and the Basha-i-Huatu, or the illustrations of the 81 conversions. So, to sum up, Buddhism is just a bastardized lesser form of the pure truth of Taoism made for the foreign dum-dums. Vote for us. It was then the Buddhists' turn to rebut this, um, argument. One of the leading voices of the Buddhist side was the Phagspa Lama of Tibet. Phagspa had come up on the Mongolian radar when his own teacher had told off Ogade's son, Khodan Khan, for slaughtering civilians and throwing them into a river in central Tibet. Impressed rather than annoyed, the two had been brought to Khodan's court,

where he further impressed the Mongols by curing the prince of a serious illness. Later, he would be given, at Kublai's request, to the Ilkhan's court. Later on in his career, in fact this very year of the trial, he, at age 23, would become the very first imperial preceptor of the Yuan dynasty and Kublai's personal tantric guru. So you might say the kid has got a bright future ahead of him, a future that he's about to make here and now in this proceeding. Phragpa and the other Buddhists based much of their case around the fact that, well, these two texts that the Taoists were using were obvious forgeries. None of the early Chinese texts, including the exhaustive and exalted Shi Ji, ever made any mention of the Hua Hu Jing or the Ba Shi Yi Hua Tu.

It seemed far likelier that someone along the way got a bit creative with their storytelling and, you know, made them up. This was an assessment that Kublai found that he agreed with. Still, it was only fair to allow the Taoists one further chance to demonstrate the veracity of their beliefs. And when Kublai said demonstrate, he meant it. He had been told time and again that the Taoists were purveyors of powerful magics and incantations and could work great mystical feats. Well then, surely it should be well within the purview of this trial to show some of those magical skills off. So come on, Taoists. Pull a rabbit out of a hat, saw a guy in half, and then put him back together?

Impress me. And surprise, surprise, try though they might, in front of the court, all of those claims of supernatural powers and magical feats wilted like Uri Geller in front of the Amazing Randy. The debate was over. The Taoists had definitively lost, and as such, they would have to pay the forfeit. From Rassabeen, quote, Kublai ordered all copies of the two Taoist texts used in the debate burned, and all the property confiscated by the Taoists to revert back to their Buddhist owners. He did not prescribe

Taoism, but merely curbed what he believed to be Taoist excesses. A vindictive purge would have enraged the Taoists, and their many sympathizers would have impeded the Mongols' efforts to govern North China. His role as the great religious decider satisfactorily concluded, Kublai turned at last to the second little thing that his brother needed him for, to act as his right-hand man in Mongke's long-planned final conquest of southern Song. Kublai would oversee much of the preparatory work, as per Mongke's grand vision, and then the two brothers would lead a tetrafrontal campaign to take Sichuan and then march eastward along the course of the Yangtze

River all the way to the sea, scattering all opposition in their wake. It was a bold plan and boldly enacted, yet it would not ultimately meet expectations. The southern Chinese put up an unexpectedly stiff level of resistance to Monga's attacks against Sichuan, bogging the Mongol advance down time and again and forcing the Great Khan to adjust his timetable as well as his overall strategy more than once. After taking Chengdu in March of 1258, the campaign next stalled out before the defenses of Hezhou and its capital Chongqing. There, the Mongol sieges overseen by Mongke and Kublai lasted through the remainder of the year, as well as the first seven months of 1259. But then, on August 11th, 1259, the great Khan Monka suddenly died. While this was of course a personal tragedy in itself for the family, Monka's untimely death would wind up throwing the entire

Mongol Empire into first paralysis and then chaos, pitting literal brother against brother in an epic clash that, quite frankly, could have been avoided if they'd just worked out a succession order ahead of time. Nevertheless, next time we'll pick back up with the death and funeral of Mongke Khan and the troubling question across all of the Yeke Mongol Ulus. What would come next, and who would lead them? Up until this point, the fragile peace between the great Borjigin houses have held, even if by mere strands of horsehair, and the Mongol Empire has remained at least nominally intact.

But as Kublai calls off his attack and returns north, he'll learn of the audacity of his youngest brother. Arik Bok's decision to claim the mantle of Great Khan out from under both Hulagu and Hubalai will shatter bonds both familial and political, tearing the Mongol Empire asunder forever and ultimately bringing about the declaration of the Great Yuan Dynasty. Thanks for listening. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves.

And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. I'm Tracy. And I'm Rich. And we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history look for the Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts