Kublai Khan, also known as Qibla Khan in the West, seized the Chinese throne in 1260 and ruled for 34 years. During this time he became known as a conqueror who was also interested in culture. But he also cared about his family's reputation, which was simply to attack and fight. He was the grandson of Genghis Khan, who was famous for killing a large number of his opponents instead of making peace efforts.
By the early thirteenth century, Genghis Khan's empire had become as large as the Eurasian continent had never seen before, nor has it ever seen before. However, Kublai Khan built the reputation of a subtle and thoughtful ruler who was slightly different from his grandfather's murderous reputation. But this did not happen suddenly.
Looking at Genghis Khan's wars and extensive Mongol conquests, it is understandable how the rulers changed the alliance in medieval Eurasia to create a new path of change. In the middle of the 13th century, the Mongols, along with the Chinese Song dynasty, formed a successful alliance against their mutual enemy, Jorchen.
But when they defeated the Jorchen people, they also turned against Song. Genghis Khan died in 1227 and after various successors, it was the turn of his grandson Kublai Khan to carry on the mission of conquests.
In the middle of the century, most of China was controlled by the Mongols, and between 1268 and 1273, the commanding general of Kublai, who was not a Mongol but a Chinese, founded the Sang dynasty in the modern central Chinese province of Hubei Had besieged and conquered it. As the city fell into the hands of the Song Dynasty, so did the last chance for the ethnic Song Dynasty to survive.
Ethnicly, the Chinese term is used because by that time another family had formed a government in China, which was actually formed by the Mongols.
After holding the throne for more than a decade in 1271, Kublai Khan formally declared the rule of the Yuan dynasty. Unusually, he kept the title Great Khan (Azeem Khan), which, albeit nominally, maintained his influence over other families in Eurasia.
This was the first time a country was ruled by a family that was not traditionally from the Chinese mainland, and it was not the last. From 1644 to 1912, the Chinese were ruled by the Monchos, who ruled as the Chung dynasty. However, Kublai Khan took a complex balance to maintain his power.
They divided China into different groups, in which the Mongols were often superior to the Chinese, but not in every field. Many of his advisers were Chinese, and they kept the structure of the Chinese bureaucracy very much the same as it was during the Song dynasty.
The empire was also different because it was part of a vast empire that stretched to the Middle East and its influence was evident in its cultural activities. So there were also works of art in Persia with designs of Chinese dragons.
The Mongol Empire improved the postal system between its various parts and also significantly improved the making of carpets or rugs. In the early 1270s, the famous European tourist Kublai Khan came to the capital and he was the famous Venetian tourist Marco Polo.
The capital was then known as Shendo, which in the West was called Zamado, and is now called Beijing. Marco Polo was stunned to see Kublai Khan's palace and its gardens. He praised her as follows:
"You should know that this is the largest palace ever (in the world), so vast, so luxurious and so beautiful that no man on earth can design anything beyond it."
The Kublai family was certainly aware of the need to balance each other's different cultural traditions. But Kublai Khan's instincts did not allow him to sit still. The Mongols themselves believed in Tantric Buddhism. But Islam also flourished in the empire during this period and the governors of many provinces were Muslims.
Traditional local religious beliefs, known as Daoism, were also allowed to be propagated. It all seems cosmopolitan or universal. However, sometimes very harsh decisions were announced. On one occasion, the slaughter of animals in an Islamic manner was banned and there were crackdowns on daoism.
However, Kublai Khan's reign was significantly more tolerant than that of modern empires. But even then, it was a conquered empire, not a collaborative one. And the idea of discipline was always at the forefront of Kublai Khan's mind.
The universal nature of the empire was real, but it must not be romanticized, as we sometimes do with such societies. In the end, like all such structures, this classification was violently controlled.
It was clear that this time the Mongols were ruling over a vast empire with its own arts and systems of governance. It also faced resistance because many Chinese were unhappy with the Mongol rule.
Although the Mongol rulers adopted the Chinese style of governing and some of their values and methods. As a result, art forms such as drama flourished in China. Plays were often based on themes of injustice, with ultimate rewards and punishments. Many of these dramas can also be seen as critical of the Mongols by the Chinese public.
Many of the dramas also feature vengeful characters taking revenge, such as in Chinese playwright Kuan Han Chung's The Injustice to Tao. This is the story of a woman who was wrongly hanged. Much of the drama is anti-Mongol, and it reflects the anger of the literate elite who felt they had been deprived of power and thought it was their right to rule.
The court, for example, refused to use the official system of examinations, which closed a door of traditional progress for the scholarly bureaucrat class. Obviously, it was very dangerous for any playwright to speak openly against the ruling family, so instead they started using the stories of the ancient historical period as metaphors and references. Chinese writers have done the same in many other periods of political oppression.
It is also ironic that the hatred created by the social changes of the Mongol dynasty has given China the best drama. Many plays by Quan Han Chung and others are still performed today.
Another thing that was invented during the Yuan dynasty was the paper currency. Unfortunately, the same thing happened with this currency that happened to many who came after it. The government printed a lot of notes but did nothing to protect them, which led to inflation. In the middle of the twentieth century, China's nationalist government suffered a similar financial catastrophe.
A similar situation arose with the strategy of Kublai Khan's conquests. He wanted the empire to be bigger and wider. They also attacked what is now called Vietnam and Myanmar.
The failed invasion of Japan in 1271 and 1284 is part of that desire. Legend has it that the ships that went to attack Japan were destroyed by the strong winds sent by God. However, it is possible that the technique used to build the boats was not given much consideration and an attempt was made to finish the work in a hurry, with the result being the same.
The failure to conquer Japan not only cost a lot of money but also damaged the reputation of the empire. The burden of subsequent wars and the death of his favorite wife also broke Kublai Khan from within. In his last years, he seemed to have given up his desire to live. As a result, they stopped caring, ate more, became obese and suffered from joint pain.
Kublai Khan died in 1294 at the age of 78. However, his Yuan dynasty ruled China for another 100 years until 1368. And it set a new precedent.
Kublai Khan's declaration of himself as the Emperor of China brought a new interpretation of the Chinese state. This ideology was based on the establishment of common institutions and cultural principles rather than ethnicity. Of course, not all Chinese think so, and in fact not all Mongols acknowledge it. But it is certain that a large part of Inner Asia was brought to China because of Kublai Khan's expansionism. And it opened a new path.
When the Yuan Dynasty was defeated, it was replaced by the Ming Dynasty, whose first rulers actually valued the Mongols. And when the Ming Dynasty was defeated by the Qing Dynasty in the mid-17th century, there was an example of a situation in which a non-ethnic Chinese nomadic family from the north was involved in agriculture and culture. The strong Chinese Empire was controlled.
The Chung dynasty was also divided in such a way that the cultural methods of the ruling class were preferred to the Manchu methods rather than the Mongols, ie, rule by Chinese principles as the Chinese emperor.
