KUBLAI KHAN

born 1215 died 1294 Kublai also spelled Khubilai, or Kubla Mongolian general and statesman, grandson of Genghis Khan. He conquered China and became the first emperor of its Yan, or Mongol, dynasty. He was thus at one and the same time the overlord of all the Mongol dominionswhich included areas as diverse as that of the Golden Horde in southern Russia, the Il-Khanate of Persia, and the steppe heartlands where Mongol princes were still living the traditional nomadic lifeand the ruler of his own realm of China. To govern China, with its long and individual political and cultural history, demanded statecraft of a special order. Additional reading Morris Rossabi, Khubilai Khan (1987), discusses his life and times. Accounts of his life may also be found in histories of China and of the Mongols, especially in Wolfram Eberhard, A History of China, 4th ed. (1977); Ren Grousset, The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia (1970); and Robert Marshall, Storm from the East: From Genghis Khan to Khubilai Khan (1993). A concise but very competent account of Kublai's reign may be found in J.J. Saunders, The History of the Mongol Conquests (1971), which has an annotated bibliography.