Khanbaliq (Dadu): Kublai Khan's Capital at Beijing (1267)

Khanbaliq, known in Chinese as Dadu (“Great Capital”), was the capital that Kublai Khan began building in 1267 on the site of modern Beijing. A planned city of straight streets and walled palaces, it served as the main seat of the Yuan dynasty until 1368. Its layout became the framework of Ming and Qing Beijing, so the heart of China’s capital still follows a plan drawn up for a Mongol emperor.

Background: why Beijing?

The area of Beijing had been a capital before. The Jurchen Jin dynasty ruled northern China from Zhongdu, a city just south-west of the later centre, until the Mongols took it in 1215 (see Mongol siege of Zhongdu).

After winning the war against his brother Ariq Böke in 1264, Kublai wanted a capital closer to the heart of China than Karakorum, but still near the steppe. Beijing lay at the northern edge of the North China Plain, close to the passes into Mongolia. Rather than rebuild the damaged Jin city, Kublai ordered a new one built to its north-east, around lakes and a former Jin pleasure palace on Qionghua Island.

Building the city

Construction began in 1267. The plan is credited to Liu Bingzhong, the adviser who had also planned Kaiping, later Xanadu. Chinese records name a Muslim official, usually rendered Ikhtiyar al-Din, as supervisor of the palace works, an example of the many peoples who served the Mongols.

In 1272 the city was officially named Dadu. The walls, made of rammed earth, formed a rectangle about 28 kilometres around, with eleven gates. Within it the Imperial City and the Palace City stood towards the south, along a north-south axis. The design loosely followed an ancient Chinese ideal for a royal capital, described in the classic Rites of Zhou, with the ancestral temple to the east of the palace, the altar of soil and grain to the west and the markets to the north.

Water was a problem for a large city on a dry plain. The engineer and astronomer Guo Shoujing brought water from springs in the western hills, and the Tonghui Canal, completed in 1293, linked Dadu to the Grand Canal so grain barges from the south could reach the lake at the city’s centre.

Life in Khanbaliq

Dadu was a cosmopolitan city. Mongols, Chinese, Central Asian Muslims, Tibetans and Europeans lived there. The White Dagoba of Miaoying Temple, designed by the Nepalese artist Araniko and completed in 1279, showed the court’s patronage of Tibetan Buddhism. The Franciscan John of Montecorvino arrived in 1294, built churches and was named the first Catholic archbishop of Khanbaliq in 1307.

Marco Polo, who called the city Cambaluc, described its streets so straight that one could see from gate to gate, its great palace and the thousands of carts of goods arriving every day. Population estimates for the Yuan capital vary widely, but it probably held several hundred thousand people at its height.

The palaces were grouped around the Taiye Lake, which survives today as the lakes of Beihai and Zhongnanhai. Kublai’s halls on Qionghua Island have long disappeared, but a huge carved jade wine vessel made for him in 1265, known as the Dushan Great Jade Bowl, is still displayed in Beihai Park.

The emperors spent winter in Dadu and summer at Shangdu. Government offices, the imperial academy and the observatory were all based in the capital, and its markets drew merchants from across Asia.

Fall and transformation

In 1368 the forces of the new Ming dynasty under the general Xu Da advanced on Dadu. The last Yuan emperor, Toghon Temür, fled north to the steppe, and the Ming entered the city in September 1368. They renamed it Beiping (“North Pacified”) and moved the northern wall south.

In the early 15th century the Yongle Emperor made the city his capital, renamed it Beijing and built the Forbidden City on the site of the Yuan palaces. The Ming walls and palaces replaced most of the Yuan buildings, but the central axis and the grid of lanes, called hutongs, kept much of the earlier pattern.

Timeline

• 1215: The Mongols capture the Jin capital Zhongdu.
• 1264: Kublai makes the Beijing area his main capital, named Zhongdu.
• 1267: Construction of the new city begins north-east of the old Jin capital.
• 1272: The city is named Dadu.
• 1279: The White Dagoba of Miaoying Temple is completed.
• 1293: The Tonghui Canal links Dadu with the Grand Canal.
• 1368, September: Ming forces take Dadu; the Yuan court flees north.
• 1421: Beijing formally becomes the Ming capital.

Why it matters

Dadu was the first time a capital of all China stood at Beijing, and it set the pattern that later dynasties followed. Its creation reflects Kublai’s decision to rule China from China, and its remains are woven into the layout of one of the world’s great cities.