Kublai Khan
1 min readKublai Khan（1215-1294），known as Shizu of the Yuan dynasty，was the founder of the Yuan Dynasty，a division of the Mongol Empire，reigning from 1260 to 1294.Kublai was a grandson of Genghis Khan.
He succeeded his older brother Mongke as Khagan in 1260 and his real power was limited to China and Mongolia.The Mongol Empire at that time reached from the Pacific to the Black Sea，from Siberia to modern day Afghanistan-one fifth of the world’s inhabited landarea.In 1271，Kublai established the Yuan Dynasty，which ruled over present-day Mongolia，China，Korea and some adjacent areas，and assumed the role of Emperor of China.By 1279，the Yuan forces had overcome the last resistance of the Southern Song Dynasty and Kublai became the first non-Chinese Emperor to conquer all of China.
The summer garden of Kublai Khan at Xanadu is the subject ofSamuel Taylor Coleridge’s 1797 poem Kubla Khan.This poem and Marco Polo’s earlier book brought Kublai and his achievements to the attention of a wider audience and today Kublai is a well-known historical figure.
