Khanbaliq

Coordinates: 39°56′0″N 116°24′0″E / 39.93333°N 116.40000°E / 39.93333; 116.40000
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Khanbaliq (Dadu of Yuan)
Native name
汗八里
Wade-Giles: Han-pa-li
(元)大都
(Yüan) Ta-tu
TypeFormer capital city
LocationBeijing, China
Coordinates39°56′0″N 116°24′0″E / 39.93333°N 116.40000°E / 39.93333; 116.40000
Founded1264
FounderKublai Khan
Khanbaliq
Mongolian Cyrillic
Хаан балгас, Ханбалиг
Mongolian scriptᠻᠠᠨᠪᠠᠯᠢᠺ
Dadu
Chinese name
Hanyu Pinyin
(Yuán) Dàdū
Wade–Giles(Yüan) Ta-tu
Mongolian nameMongolian scriptᠳᠠᠶᠢᠳᠤ
Beiping
Hanyu Pinyin
Běipíng
Wade–GilesPei-p'ing
Ob River and "Cambalu" in "Cataia" north of the Great Wall) and one Beijing ("Paquin", at its correct location in "Xuntien
" prefecture).

Khanbaliq or Dadu of Yuan (Chinese: 元大都Mongolian: ᠻᠠᠨᠪᠠᠯᠢᠺ) was the winter capital[1] of the Yuan dynasty of China in what is now Beijing, the capital of China today. It was located at the center of modern Beijing. The Secretariat directly administered the Central Region (腹裏) of the Yuan dynasty (comprising present-day Beijing, Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, and parts of Henan and Inner Mongolia) and dictated policies for the other provinces. As emperors of the Yuan dynasty, Kublai Khan and his successors also claimed supremacy over the entire Mongol Empire following the death of Möngke (Kublai's brother and predecessor) in 1259. Over time the unified empire gradually fragmented into a number of khanates.

Khanbaliq is the direct predecessor to modern Beijing. Several stations of

Line 13
are named after the gates of Dadu.

Name

The name Khanbaliq comes from the

retelling of Marco Polo
's travels. The Travels also uses the spellings Cambuluc and Kanbalu.

The name Dadu is the pinyin transcription of the Chinese name 大都, meaning "Grand Capital". The Mongols also called the city Daidu,[4] which was a transliteration directly from the Chinese.[5] In modern Chinese, it is referred to as Yuan Dadu to distinguish it from other cities which have similar names.

History

See also: History of Beijing and Europeans in Medieval China

Xicheng District. It was destroyed by Genghis Khan in 1215 when the Jin court began contemplating a move south to a more defensible capital such as Kaifeng. The Imperial Mint (诸路交钞提举司) established in 1260 and responsible for the printing of jiaochao, the Yuan fiat paper money, was probably located at nearby Yanjing even before the establishment of the new capital.[6]

In 1264,

Jade Island in Taiye Lake and was so enchanted with the site that he directed his capital to be constructed around the garden. The chief architect and planner of the capital was Liu Bingzhong,[7][8] who also served as supervisor of its construction.[9] His student Guo Shoujing and the Muslim Ikhtiyar al-Din were also involved.[10]

The construction of the walls of the city began in the same year, while the main imperial palace (大内) was built from 1274 onwards. The design of Khanbaliq followed several rules laid down in the Confucian classic The Rites of Zhou, including "9 vertical and horizontal axes", "palaces in front, markets in back", "ancestral worship to the left, divine worship to the right".[clarification needed] It was broad in scale, strict in planning and execution, and complete in equipment.[11]

A year after the 1271 establishment of the Yuan dynasty, Kublai Khan proclaimed the city his capital under the name Dadu[12] as it is interpreted capital city in Hanzi and named Khanbaliq as referred in the state diplomatic letters in Mongolian. The construction was not fully completed until 1293. His previous seat at Shangdu (Xanadu) became the summer capital.

As part of the

Catholics, and Confucianists were more common.[15]

Confucians and Taoists were extremely well-regarded by most Mongol nobles, and "some of the Mongols' most esteemed advisors were Taoists and Confucians."[15]

It even was the seat of a

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Khanbaliq from 1307 until its 1357 suppression.[citation needed
] It was restored in 1609 as (then) Diocese of Peking.

The Hongwu Emperor of the Ming dynasty sent an army to Dadu in 1368. The last Yuan emperor fled north to Shangdu while the Ming razed the palaces of their capital to the ground.[16] The former capital was renamed Beiping[17] (北平 "Pacified North") and Shuntian Prefecture was established in the area around the city.

The Hongwu Emperor was succeeded by his young grandson the

one brief interruption
, it has borne the name ever since.

Legacy

Ruins of the Yuan-era walls of Khanbaliq are still extant and are known as the Tucheng (

Tucheng Park
preserves part of the old northern walls, along with some modern statues.

A sculpture of a lion with three cubs from Khanbaliq, discovered beneath the Ming-era city wall and now on display at the Beijing Stone Carving Museum

Despite the capture and renaming of the city by the

Northern Yuan dynasty.[20] The lament of the last Yuan emperor, Toghon Temür, concerning the loss of Khanbaliq and Shangdu, is recorded in many Mongolian historical chronicles such as the Altan Tobchi and the Asarayci Neretu-yin Teuke.[19]

Khanbaliq remained the standard name for

Shah Rukh's envoys to the Ming capital. The account remained one of the most detailed and widely read accounts of China in these languages for centuries.[21]

When European travelers reached China by sea via

Marco Polo nor that his "Cambaluc" was the city known to the southern Chinese as Pekin. It was not until the Jesuit Matteo Ricci's first visit to Beijing in 1598 that he encountered Central Asian visitors ("Arabian Turks, or Mohammedans" in his description[22]) who confirmed that the city they were in was "Cambaluc." The publication of his journals by his aide announced to Europe that "Cathay" was China and "Cambaluc" Beijing. The journal then fancifully explained that name was "partly of Chinese and partly of Tartar origin", from "Tartar" cam ("great"), Chinese ba ("north"), and Chinese Lu (used for nomads in Chinese literature).[23]
Many European maps continued to show "Cathay" and its capital "Cambaluc" somewhere in northeast China for much of the 17th century.

See also

Workers moving material to construct Khanbaliq

References

  1. ^ Masuya Tomoko, "Seasonal capitals with permanent buildings in the Mongol empire", in Durand-Guédy, David (ed.), Turko-Mongol Rulers, Cities and City Life, Leiden, Brill, p. 236.
  2. ^ Brill, E.J. Encyclopedia of Islam, Vol. 4, pp. 898 ff. "Khānbāliķ". Accessed 17 November 2013.
  3. ^ Brill, Vol. 2, p. 620. "Bāliķ". Accessed 17 November 2013.
  4. ^ Rossabi, Morris, Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times, p 131
  5. ^ Herbert Franke, John K. Fairbank (1994). Alien Regimes and Border States. Vol. 6. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 454.
  6. ^ Vogel, Hans. Marco Polo Was in China: New Evidence from Currencies, Salts, and Revenues, p. 121. Brill, 2012. Accessed 18 November 2013.
  7. ^ China Archaeology & Art Digest, Vol. 4, No. 2-3. Art Text (HK) Ltd. 2001. p. 35.
  8. ^ Steinhardt, Nancy Riva Shatzman (1981). Imperial Architecture under Mongolian Patronage: Khubilai's Imperial City of Daidu. Harvard University. p. 222. The planning of the Imperial City, along with many other imperial projects of the 1260s, was supervised by Khubilai's close minister Liu Bingzhong. That the Imperial City was Chinese in style was certainly Liu's preference...
  9. ISBN 0-415-34850-1
    . Liu Bingzhong was also charged with overseeing the construction of the Great Khan's other new capital, the city of Dadu.
  10. ^ The People's Daily Online. "The Hui Ethnic Minority".
  11. ^ 《明史紀事本末》. "綱鑑易知錄", Roll 8. (in Chinese)
  12. ^ The New Encyclopædia Britannica (Encyclopædia Britannica, Chicago University of, William Benton, Encyclopædia Britannica), p 2
  13. OCLC 123079516
    .
  14. OCLC 123079516
    .
  15. ^
    OCLC 123079516
    .
  16. ISBN 0-521-66991-X
    .
  17. ^ Naquin, Susan. Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400–1900, p. xxxiii.
  18. ^ "Beijing This Month - Walk the Ancient Dadu City Wall Archived 2008-10-20 at the Wayback Machine".
  19. ^ a b Amitai-Preiss, Reuven & al. The Mongol Empire & Its Legacy, p. 277.
  20. ISBN 978-0-316-85988-2
    .
  21. ISBN 0-933070-37-3
    .
  22. ^ Louis J. Gallagher's translation.
  23. ^ Trigault, Nicolas. De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas (in Latin). Translated by Louis J. Gallagher as China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Mathew Ricci: 1583–1610, Book IV, Chap. 3 "Failure at Pekin", pp. 312 ff. Random House (New York), 1953.

External links

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