Xanadu (Shangdu): Kublai Khan's Summer Capital (1256)

Xanadu, known in Chinese as Shangdu (“Upper Capital”), was the summer capital of Kublai Khan, founded in 1256 on the grassland of what is now Inner Mongolia. For about a century the Yuan emperors spent each summer there, hunting, holding ceremonies and running the empire from a city planned on Chinese lines in the heart of the steppe. Destroyed in 1358, it became a byword for luxury in English through Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan.

Background: Kublai in northern China

In 1251 Kublai’s brother Möngke became Great Khan and put Kublai in charge of the conquered lands of northern China. Kublai, who already kept Chinese advisers, needed a base close to both the Mongolian pastures and the farmland of the north China plain.

In 1256 he ordered his adviser Liu Bingzhong, a Buddhist monk turned statesman, to choose a site and plan a city. Liu chose a plain north of the Luan River (now called the Shandian River at this point), at the edge of the steppe. The city was called Kaiping, and the main work was complete around 1259.

The choice reflected Mongol habits. Steppe rulers had always moved between seasonal pastures, spending summers in cool uplands and winters in sheltered valleys. A capital on the grassland let Kublai keep this rhythm, graze the herds that fed and mounted his army, and stay in touch with the Mongol nobility, while governing the Chinese lands to the south.

Kublai’s power base

Kaiping soon became the centre of Kublai’s power. In 1258 he hosted a famous debate there between Buddhist and Daoist clergy, which the Buddhists were judged to have won. When Möngke died in 1259, Kublai’s supporters gathered at Kaiping and proclaimed him Great Khan in May 1260, starting the Toluid civil war against his brother Ariq Böke.

In 1263 Kublai renamed the city Shangdu. After he began building a new main capital at Dadu, today’s Beijing, Shangdu became the summer capital. The founding of the Yuan dynasty in 1271 confirmed this two-capital system.

Plan and buildings

Shangdu combined Chinese city planning with Mongol needs. Archaeologists identify three nested enclosures:

• Palace City: an inner rectangle of roughly 570 by 620 metres containing the main halls, including the Da’an Pavilion.
• Imperial City: a square of about 1,400 metres a side enclosing the Palace City, with temples, offices and residences.
• Outer City: a larger enclosure of about 2,200 metres a side, partly taken up by a walled park and hunting ground.

Beyond the walls lay suburbs, markets and areas where tents could be pitched. The walls were mostly of rammed earth, faced with brick and stone in places. Temples to Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian traditions stood inside the city, reflecting Kublai’s policy of patronising many religions.

Court life

Each spring the Yuan court made the journey of several hundred kilometres north from Dadu, staying at Shangdu from about April or May until September. Officials, guards, craftsmen and merchants followed, so the city filled in summer and emptied in winter.

Summer at Shangdu meant hunting, feasting and Mongol rituals. Marco Polo, who said he first met Kublai there, described a palace of marble, a park stocked with deer and a pavilion of gilded cane held up by silk cords that could be taken apart and moved. He also told of the khan’s herd of white mares, whose milk was scattered in an annual ceremony to honour the spirits. These accounts are hard to check in detail but fit the archaeological plan and Chinese records of the court’s summer rites.

Shangdu after Kublai

Shangdu remained politically important after Kublai’s death in 1294. His grandson Temür was enthroned there that year, and several later Yuan emperors were also proclaimed at the summer capital, where the Mongol princes gathered for assemblies.

The city’s role as a rival seat of power became clear in 1328. After the death of the emperor Yesün Temür at Shangdu, his young son Ragibagh was proclaimed emperor there, while a faction in Dadu led by the commander El Temür backed Tugh Temür. In the brief civil war that followed, known as the War of the Two Capitals, the Dadu side won and the Shangdu forces surrendered.

Through the 14th century the Yuan court continued its annual journeys, but the dynasty was weakening. Famine, floods and rebellion in the south drained its resources, and the summer capital, far from the farmlands that supplied it, was exposed to any enemy that reached the steppe.

Destruction and rediscovery

During the uprisings that ended Mongol rule, Red Turban rebels reached Shangdu and burned the palaces in 1358. The Ming captured the area in 1369 and kept a garrison there for a time, but it was abandoned in the early 15th century. Over the following centuries the city decayed into grass-covered mounds.

European visitors and Chinese scholars identified the ruins from the 19th century onwards. The British physician Stephen Bushell, who visited in 1872, published one of the first descriptions of the overgrown walls, noting the outline of the walls and the mounds of the former palace area. Systematic surveys and excavations by Chinese archaeologists followed in the 20th century, mapping the walls, gates and palace platforms. In 2012 UNESCO inscribed the “Site of Xanadu” as a World Heritage Site, citing its unique fusion of nomadic and Chinese urban culture and the setting of tombs and grassland around it.

Coleridge and the legend

In 1797 the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge fell asleep while reading Samuel Purchas’s travel compilation Purchas his Pilgrimage, which described Kublai’s palace and park at “Xamdu”. On waking he wrote down part of a poem he said had come to him in a dream, until, by his own account, a visitor “from Porlock” interrupted him.

The poem, Kubla Khan, was published in 1816. Its opening, “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree”, made Xanadu a symbol of exotic splendour. The name was later used for Charles Foster Kane’s mansion in the 1941 film Citizen Kane and for many other buildings and works of fiction.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Xanadu was an imaginary place invented by Coleridge. Fact: It was a real city, and its ruins can be visited.
• Myth: It was a single fabulous pleasure palace. Fact: It was a planned city with walls, offices, temples and markets, which also served as a working seat of government in summer.

Timeline

• 1256: Kublai orders Liu Bingzhong to plan a new city, Kaiping.
• c. 1259: Main construction of Kaiping completed.
• 1260, May: Kublai is proclaimed Great Khan at Kaiping.
• 1263: Kaiping is renamed Shangdu, “Upper Capital”.
• 1271: Kublai proclaims the Yuan dynasty; Shangdu becomes its summer capital.
• c. 1275: Marco Polo describes meeting Kublai at Shangdu.
• 1358: Red Turban rebels burn the city.
• 1816: Coleridge publishes Kubla Khan.
• 2012: The Site of Xanadu becomes a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why it matters

Shangdu shows how the Mongol rulers of China tried to live in two worlds at once, keeping the steppe traditions of their ancestors while governing a vast agricultural empire. It also shows how a real place can turn into a legend: for most English speakers Xanadu is a word from a poem, yet behind it lie the ruins of one of the great capitals of the 13th century.