Khanbaliq: Winter Capital of the Yuan Dynasty

Khanbaliq or Dadu of Yuan was the Yuan dynasty's winter capital, constructed by Kublai Khan in Beijing, China's capital. It stood in the heart of urban Beijing. The Yuan Empire's Central Region (which included present-day Beijing, Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, and Henan and Inner Mongolia) was controlled directly by the Secretariat, which also dictated policies for the other provinces. Kublai and his successors claimed authority over the Mongol Empire after Möngke Khan (Kublai's brother and predecessor) died in 1259. The cohesive empire subsequently disintegrated into a series of khanates. Thus, Khanbaliq is the direct forerunner of modern Beijing, and stations honouring the gates of Dadu may be found on Lines 10 and 13.

Khanbaliq is derived from the Mongolian and Uyghur words khan and Balik, which mean "town" and "permanent settlement," respectively: "City of the Khan." Before the fall of Zhongdu, it was in usage among the Turks and Mongols about China's Jin emperors. In English, it's usually spelt Cambaluc after the spelling in Rustichello's account of Marco Polo's adventures. Thus, Cambuluc and Kanbalu are both used in The Travels. Dadu is a pinyin version of the Chinese word Dadu, which means "Grand Capital." The city was also known as Daidu, which was a literal transcription from Chinese. It is known as Yuan Dadu in modern Chinese to distinguish it from other cities with similar names.

Zhongdu, the Jurchen Jin dynasty's "Central Capital," was located in Xicheng District. In 1215, while the Jin court was planning a move south to a more secure city, such as Kaifeng, it was destroyed by Genghis Khan. Even before the new capital was established, the Imperial Mint, which was formed in 1260 and was responsible for printing jiaochao, the Yuan fiat paper money, was most likely based in neighbouring Yanjing. Kublai Khan was so taken with the Daning Palace on Jade Island in Taiye Lake that he ordered his capital to be built around it in 1264. Liu Bingzhong was the capital's principal architect and planner, as well as its construction supervisor. Guo Shoujing, a student of his, and Ikhtiyar al-Din, a Muslim, were also involved. The city's defences were completed the same year, while the great imperial palace was built from 1274 onwards. Khanbaliq was built according to various Confucian principles, including "9 vertical and horizontal axes," "palaces in front, markets in the rear," and "ancestral worship to the left, divine worship to the right." It was large in scope, meticulous in planning and execution, and well-equipped. While European geographers were aware of "Cambaluc," its actual location – or its relationship to Beijing – remained a mystery. This map from 1610 depicts two Khanbaliqs ("Combalich" in the territory of "Kitaisk" on the Ob River and "Cambalu" in "Catania" north of the Great Wall) and one Beijing, which is a fairly normal pattern for the time ("Paquin," at its correct location in "Xuntien" prefecture). Kublai Khan declared the city his capital under the name Dadu a year after the Yuan dynasty was established in 1271, though construction was not completed until 1293. Shangdu, his previous seat, became the summer capital. Khanbaliq had several halls of worship as part of the Great Khans' policy of religious tolerance. From 1307 until its suppression in 1357, it was even the seat of a Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Khanbaliq. In 1609, it was restored as the (then) Diocese of Peking. In 1368, the Ming dynasty's Hongwu Emperor dispatched an army to Dadu. While the Ming demolished the palaces of their city, the last Yuan ruler escaped north to Xanadu. As a result, Beiping was renamed the previous capital, while Shuntian Prefecture was established in the surrounding territory. His young grandson, the Jianwen Emperor, succeeded the Hongwu Emperor. His attempts to rein in his powerful relatives' fiefs prompted the Jingnan Rebellion, culminating in his uncle, the Prince of Yan, usurping his throne. Yan decided to move his capital from Yingtian (Nanjing) to the ruins of Beiping because his power base was in Shuntian. He decreased the city's northern limits and established a new, walled sector to the south. He designated the city his northern capital Beijing after the southern extension of Taiye Lake (now Nanhai), the construction of Wansui Hill over Yuan ruins, and the completion of the Forbidden City to the south. It has carried the name ever since, with one brief hiatus.

The Tucheng, or "earth wall," is the name given to the ruins of Khanbaliq's Yuan-era defences. Part of the historic northern walls and some modern sculptures are preserved in Tucheng Park. Despite the Ming's seizure and renaming of the city, the Mongols of the Mongolia-based Northern Yuan dynasty continued to call it Daidu. The final Yuan emperor, Toghon Temür, is mentioned in many Mongolian historical chronicles, such as the Altan Tobchi and the Asarayci Neretu-yin Teuke, grieving the loss of Khanbaliq and Shangdu. For a long time, Khanbaliq was the common name for Beijing in Persian and Turkic languages of Central Asia and the Middle East. Thus, for example, the name used in both the Persian and Turkic translations of Ghiyth al-dn Naqqsh's account of Shah Rukh's envoys' 1419–22 mission to the Ming capital. Thus, the book was one of China's most extensive and frequently read accounts in various languages for centuries. When Europeans arrived in China by water via Malacca and the Philippines in the 16th century, they had no idea that China was the same country as the "Cathay" they had read about in Marco Polo's "Cambaluc," nor that his "Cambaluc" was the city known to the southern Chinese as Pekin. It wasn't until the Jesuit Matteo Ricci's first visit to Beijing in 1598 that he met Central Asian visitors ("Arabian Turks, or Mohammedans," as he described them) who confirmed that the city they were in was "Cambaluc." His aide's publication of his journals announced to Europe that "Cathay" was China and "Cambaluc" was Beijing. The publication went on to assert that the word was "partly of Chinese and partly of Tartar origin," citing "Tartar" cam ("large"), Chinese ba ("north"), and Chinese Lu (a Chinese literary term for nomads) as origins.  For much of the 17th century, several European maps showed "Cathay" and its capital "Cambaluc", located in northeast China.