Preface to the First Edition

Abstract

Khubilai Khan was a real person. Though Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem IIKubla Khan" persuaded many readers that Khubilai was a mythical or legendary figure, he was most assuredly an actor on the historical stage, who not only influenced China and much of Asia but also affected the course of European history. Many of his contemporaries throughout the world had heard of him, and he is mentioned in thirteenthand fourteenth-century books written in a variety of languages. Similarly, artists from different lands painted his portrait. He is represented as a Mongol in formal Chinese paintings; as a typical Muslim potentate, with the dress and physical features of a caliph, in Persian miniatures; and as a European king, with a. Caucasian appearance, in manuscripts of Marco Polo's account of his travels. Each civilization depicted Khubilai in its own light. As a result his fame spread throughout the world. His life and career spanned the rise and decline of the Mongol empire. He was born in 1215, the year in which his grandfather Chinggis Khan seized Peking, and his death in 1294 coincided with the deterioration and dismemberment of the Mongol empire that had been gradually created from the early thirteenth century on. He was significant because he was the first of the Mongol rulers to make the transition from a nomadic conqueror from the steppes to effective ruler of a sedentary society. His reign in China witnessed the construction of a capital city, the development of a legal code and a new