Kublai Khan (called by the Chinese CHITSU), more properly KHUBILAI KHAN, the Grand Khan of the Mongols and emperor of China, was the grandson of Genghis Khan through his fourth son Tuli. During the reign of his brother Mangü (1251–59) Kublai completed the conquest of the northern Chinese (Kin) empire (begun by Genghis) and took possession of north China. On the death of Mangü, Kublai was proclaimed khakhan or
Great Khan, but had a formidable rival in his own brother Arikbuka, and after he had suppressed him, in Kaidu, a descendant of Genghis Khan's third son Oghotai, who struggled against Kublai throughout the whole of his reign. Kublai, who was an able and energetic prince, adopted the Chinese mode of civilisation, greatly encouraged men of letters, made Buddhism the state religion, creating the office of Great Lama in Tibet, and manifested an enlightened care for the welfare of his subjects. But he was also an ambitious sovereign and a prince who loved magnificence. He overthrew the Sung dynasty of southern China, compelled Corea, Cochin China (Champa), Burma (Mien), Java, and some Malabar states in India to acknowledge his supremacy. An attempt to invade Japan ended in disaster. He established himself at Tatu or Khan-baligh (Cambaluc, the modern Peking), and there founded a new dynasty—that of Yuen—the first foreign race of kings that ever ruled in China. Including the western Mongol states of the Golden Horde on the Volga and the Ilkhans in Persia, Kublai's dominions extended from the Arctic Ocean to the Strait of Malacca, and from Corea to Asia Minor and the confines of Hungary—an extent of territory the like of which had never before, and has never since, been governed by any one monarch in Asia. The splendour and pomp of his court inspired the graphic pages of Marco Polo (q.v.)—who spent some time at the residence of the Mongol emperor of China—and at a later date the imagination of Coleridge. See Yule's Marco Polo (1875), and Howorth's History of the Mongols (part i. 1876).