Born on September 23, 1215, Kublai Khan was the grandson of Genghis Khan Temujin and the fourth son of Tuolei. Kublai Khan lived in the golden age of the Mongol Empire. At the time of his birth, the Mongols began to expand their territory; by the time he grew up, the Mongol army had expanded far to the north and west. During this period of the most glorious period in Mongolian history, Kublai Khan and his grandfather Genghis Khan were undoubtedly the two most prominent Mongols. In the first decades of the 13th century, they continued to encroach on and build the largest empire in the history of the world. Its territory stretches from the Korean Peninsula to western Russia in the north and from Burma to Iraq in the south. Their armies fought all the way to present-day Poland and Hungary. In the process, they eliminated the most powerful dynasties in the world at that time, including the Abbasid dynasty, the Jin and Southern Song dynasties, which ruled the Middle East and Persia, and the Khwarazm in Central Asia. For decades, the Mongols ruled over much of Eurasia and posed a threat to other regions.
Kublai Khan had been acquainted with the Zhonghuan dynasty since his youth, was familiar with the situation in the Central Plains Han Dynasty, and was enthusiastic about learning Han culture. In 1251, the eldest brother Möngke was the Great Khan, and Kublai Khan was appointed as the relative of the imperial brother to govern the military affairs of the Southern Han Dynasty. Relying on the help of a group of Han Confucian aides, Kublai Khan established a ruling order in several regions of the Central Plains within a few years, and collected and trained a number of governing talents. In 1253, Kublai Khan was granted a fiefdom of Jingzhao (present-day Xi'an, Shaanxi), where he established Tuntian, revived the rule of officials, restored agriculture, established schools, and further won the support of the Han landlord class in the north, providing a social foundation for the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty. Over the next decade, the exiled Confucians and the disciples of local warlords continued to gather around him to form a group of staff. At the same time, Kublai Khan also led his troops on the orders of Möngke to launch two wars to destroy the Dali state and invade the Southern Song Dynasty.
Between 1251 and 1260, the mongol kingdom of Möngke's time reached its limits. While the Mongol armies were victorious everywhere, Möngke himself died under diaoyu City during the southern invasion of Sichuan, changing the fate of the entire Mongolian state. Mungo died unexpectedly in his prime, and who would become his heir became a problem. The power of the various factions in Mongolia began to surge, and a civil war was inevitable. According to Mongolian customs and laws, Möngke's younger brother Ali Bu ge should be the first choice. Judging from Möngke's expedition to the Southern Song Dynasty to let Ali Buge stay behind to preside over the government, Möngke himself also had this tendency, but Möngke himself did not give clear instructions, which gave Kublai Khan an excuse to compete for the Khan's throne.
When Möngke died in Sichuan, Kublai Khan was commanding the Eastern Route Army to besiege Ezhou (鄂州, in modern Yueyang, Hunan) on the Yangtze River, and upon hearing of Möngke's death, Kublai Khan returned to Yanjing with his light horse. On March 1, 1260, Kublai Khan was proclaimed Khan at Kaiping, and on May 5, kurink was elected as the Great Khan. But the congress was disputed because most of the Mongol nobles were not present.
Kublai Khan's ascension to the throne marked the dawn of a new era. The previous four Great Mongol Khans had their political centers on the Mongolian Plateau centered on Helin, and the Central Plains Han Dynasty was only a frontier province of the Mongol Empire. After Kublai Khan became Khan in 1260, this pattern began to be reversed, and the Central Plains became the core of the Mongol regime, which inevitably changed the nature of the Mongol regime. It is also for this reason that historians generally regard 1260 as the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, although the Yuan Dynasty officially appeared as a national name, eleven years later.
Kublai Khan's ascension to the throne was not smooth sailing. Almost at the same time as he ascended the throne, his younger brother Ali Bu brother was also proclaimed the Great Khan of the Mongols near Khala and Lin. Mongolia had two Great Khans in both the North and the South. There is no point or necessity in arguing about who is orthodox, and the two sides can only compete on horseback.
Both sides began a struggle for power over the Mongols. Of course, this was by no means a war between two men, each representing two important factions in Mongolia. Kublai Khan was greatly influenced by the culture of the conquered areas, hoping to settle down in the conquered areas and try to find a better management method and model from them. His younger brother Ali Bugo appeared as a defender of traditional Mongol methods and norms, with military conquest and slaughter as the only way he believed.
Initially, Ali Buko had the upper hand in strength and morality. In order to redeem the disadvantage, Kublai Khan adopted a series of means. Kublai Khan first enlisted the support of another younger brother, Hulegu, and relied on the abundant manpower and material resources of the Han Dynasty. In November, the two sides fought a decisive battle at Ximu Tu'er in the north of Kaiping, and Ali was defeated, and most of his troops fell to Kublai Khan. Four years later, the desperate Ali Brother was forced to surrender to Kublai Khan.
The fight between the brothers of the Tore family, Kublai Khan laughed to the end. However, the infighting among the Tuolei forces broke away from the four Mongol khanates that already had strong independence. In the spring of 1269, representatives of Genghis Khan's three sons, Shuchi, Chagatai and Wokoutai, held a kuritai assembly in the Talasi steppe and formed an alliance against the Yuan Dynasty and the Ilkhanate under the leadership of Genghis Khan's younger son, the Tuolei clan. The meeting marked the final division of the Mongol Empire. After the division of the Mongol Empire, the northwestern khanates established by the Mongols: the Chincha Khanate, the Chagatai Khanate, and the Ilkhanate, successively moved towards the road of Islamization. The Yuan Dynasty, founded by Kublai Khan, also deviated from the development track of the nomadic empire and moved closer to the Han Dynasty in the Central Plains.
In November 1271, more than a decade after the founding of the State, Kublai Khan's dominance had been gradually consolidated, and the name of the country was rebuilt as "Dayuan", and the capital was Set as Dadu (Beijing), from the Great Khan to the Emperor. The name "Dayuan" comes from the phrase "Dazha Qianyuan" in the Confucian classic "I Ching", which is a praise for the vast universe without beginning and end and without end. After that, he spent nearly a decade to eliminate the Southern Song Dynasty, unify the Central Plains, and China entered the era of the Yuan Empire. The Yuan Dynasty was the first dynasty in Chinese history where ethnic minorities ruled the country, and it initially laid the scale of China's territory.
As the French Mongol historian René? As Grusey points out: "In fact, although Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, conquered China, he himself was first conquered by Chinese civilization. ”