“In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree…” Kublai Khan is probably best known in the UK for the famous poetic fantasy by Coleridge. However the truth behind the legend of Kublai Khan is even more fantastic than the poem suggests.

Kublai Khan was a thirteenth century Mongolian prince who inherited the largest land empire in history from his grandfather, Genghis Khan – and doubled it! His empire reached from the Pacific to the Urals, from Siberia to Afghanistan – 60% of all Asia, one-fifth of the world’s inhabited land area. He was perhaps the most powerful man who ever lived.

Kublai Khan only seized power in his forties but he never questioned Genghis Khan’s belief that Heaven had given his people the world. His first Capital city was Xanadu on the Mongolian grasslands, but he soon realised that China was the key to a world empire due to its massive population.

He made Beijing his new Capital and after twenty years of war became the first ‘barbarian’ to conquer all of China. I was fascinated by the political and military use of barbarism that the Mongols employed. The Mongolian army would march up to a walled city and send messengers inside.

“Open the gates and your lives will be spared. Resist, and we will slaughter every man woman and child”. If the city fought back, then the Mongolian army would simply camp outside the walls for anything from 3 to 5 years until resistance crumbled. They would then carry out their threat and slaughter the city population.

Word soon spread around China, so the Mongolian army very rarely had to fight!  City gates were opened as soon as the army arrived, and the conquest of China was only delayed by the speed at which the army could march around the vast territory.

If you want to know more about Kublai Khan I can highly recommend the fascinating biography by John Man.

John McNally