Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis, completed
the conquest of China. He defeated the Southern
Song Dynasty, which had held out for decades
behind the Yangtze River and mountain curtain.
The final battle was at sea — the Battle of Yamen
in 1279. The loyalist Song fleet was destroyed.
The last boy emperor of Song was carried
by a loyal minister, who leapt with him into the void.
With the emperor's death, the Song was finished.
Kublai established the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368),
the first foreign dynasty to rule all of China.
His capital was Khanbaliq, "City of the Khan," patented
on the site of modern Beijing. He adopted
Chinese administrative forms but maintained Mongol
social hierarchy: Mongols at the top, then
Central Asians and other foreigners, then North Chinese holl-
owed out of power, then Southern Chinese at the bottom.
This ethnic stratification was resented and
contributed to the dynasty's instability.
Marco Polo served Kublai in his land.
Polo's account of Khanbaliq's splendor,
the paper money, the coal burning for fuel,
the postal relay system, the canals and roads,
astonished European readers when finally full.
(Whether Polo actually reached China, or whether
his book is a composite of Persian sources, is debated.
But the information it contained was mostly accurate,
and fueled European interest in the East, newly inflated.)
Kublai attempted to invade Japan twice,
in 1274 and 1281. Both fleets were destroyed
by typhoons, which the Japanese named kamikaze,
"divine winds," sent by the gods to defend their void.
(The second typhoon in 1281 was especially devastating.
The Mongol fleet was caught in harbor and shattered.
Four thousand ships and over 100,000 men were lost.
The kamikaze belief entered Japanese culture, mattered.)
The Yuan also attempted to invade Vietnam and Java
with similar lack of success. The Mongol military
machine, built for steppe warfare, was less effective
against tropical jungle and sea-based military.
The Yuan Dynasty declined in the fourteenth century
due to plague, flooding of the Yellow River,
economic collapse from overprinting paper money,
and the factional disputes between Mongol nobles whither.
The Red Turban Rebellion erupted in 1351.
The peasant leader Zhu Yuanzhang emerged as
the dominant rebel commander, took Nanjing in 1356,
took Khanbaliq (renamed Beiping) in 1368, was
proclaimed the Hongwu Emperor, founder of the
Ming Dynasty. The Mongols were expelled back
to the steppes. Native Chinese rule was restored.
The Yuan had lasted less than a century, off the track.
Meanwhile, in the western Mongol realms:
the Ilkhanate ruled Persia and Iraq.
Hulagu Khan, Kublai's brother, had sacked
Baghdad in 1258, ending the Abbasid Caliphate.
The last Abbasid caliph was rolled up in a carpet
and trampled to death by horses (by Mongol
tradition, royal blood should not touch the ground).
The books of the House of Wisdom were thrown into the Tigris, the role'
of four centuries of Islamic scholarship
was destroyed. The Tigris ran black with the ink
of uncounted manuscripts. This was the end
of the classical Islamic Golden Age, a great sink.
Hulagu continued west toward Egypt. The Mamluks
of Egypt defeated him at Ain Jalut in 1260.
This was the first major defeat of the Mongol army.
It saved Egypt and the Muslim West from conquest, relieved.
The Ilkhanate eventually converted to Islam under
Ghazan in 1295. Persian culture absorbed the Mongol overlords.
Persian literary flourishing continued: Saadi, Rumi,
Hafez — the great Persian poets working through swords.
The Golden Horde ruled the western steppes and Russia.
They converted to Islam under Uzbeg Khan in the fourteenth century.
They ruled Russia indirectly through the princes,
demanding tribute and acknowledgment, religious centuries.
The Chagatai Khanate ruled Central Asia.
Eventually fragmented and was partly absorbed
into the Timurid Empire in the late fourteenth century.
Timur would emerge from its ruins, scorned.
The Mongol conquests changed world history forever.
They killed perhaps forty million people in the course
of their conquests — a staggering portion of the world
population at that time, a genocide at source.
But they also connected Eurasia as never before.
Technologies transmitted both east and west.
The Black Death would transmit west along Mongol routes.
The whole world was becoming connected for its test.
Stand.