Kublai Khan
Former Emperor of the Yuan dynastyWikipedia
165
MENTIONS
65
EPISODES
50
PODCASTS
Search complete. 165 mentions across 65 episodes found for "Kublai Khan".
Oct 28, 2026
speaker_0HOST
But Japan had no powerful neighbours with obvious territorial ambitions toward it.
speaker_0HOST
and the surrounding sea provided a natural buffer that the island's inhabitants had never had much reason to think about as either an advantage or a vulnerability that changed in the twelve sixties when letters began arriving from the continent bearing the seal of Kublai Khan Kublai Khan was at this point in the process of assembling the largest contiguous empire the world had ever seen He had inherited the Mongol conquests of his grandfather Genghis Khan and extended them, bringing the southern Song dynasty of China under Mongol control, a campaign that took decades and enormous resources, and establishing the Yuan dynasty as the governing authority over China.
speaker_0HOST
He had vassalized Korea.
speaker_0HOST
He was directing military operations in Southeast Asia.
speaker_0HOST
Tokimune's refusal to engage has been presented in Japanese historical tradition as an act of exceptional courage, which it may well have been.
speaker_0HOST
Though it is also possible that the shogunate was uncertain how to respond, and found continued silence easier than any available alternative.
speaker_0HOST
Eventually Kublai Khan ran out of patience.
speaker_0HOST
The first invasion fleet assembled in Korea and launched in the 10th month of 1274.
Nick NeedhamGUEST
Usually today, it's simply thought of as a romantic poet.
Nick NeedhamGUEST
So, you know, he wrote Kublai Khan, and he wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and that's about it.
Nick NeedhamGUEST
You go back to the 19th century, he was regarded as a top-flight philosopher and theologian.
Nick NeedhamGUEST
And almost everybody's being influenced by him.
Jason ThompsonGUEST
Who the hell is that? He never appears in the story.
Jason ThompsonGUEST
He's not Genghis Khan or Kublai Khan or anything.
Jason ThompsonGUEST
Is it supposed to be Nogai and his army? Possibly, but we never see them on screen.
Jason ThompsonGUEST
I just thought that was a rather odd thing to add to the cover, especially when you had those faces to work with.
Murray GarrardHOST
And from here, the Mongols run an empire stretching from, as you said, Al-Korea to the gates of Europe.
Murray GarrardHOST
But when Kublai Khan shifted the action to Beijing, Karakorum faded and was eventually picked apart stone by stone.
Murray GarrardHOST
Some of those very stones were used to build Erden Zoo in 1585, Mongolia's first Buddhist monastery.
Murray GarrardHOST
It's ringed by a wall studded with 108 white stupas, 108 being a sacred number in Buddhism, and remarkably it survived the brutal Stalinist purges of the 1930s that flattened most of the country's monasteries.
Brooke DeVardNARRATOR
It was August 1296, the height of the rains.
Brooke DeVardNARRATOR
The embassy had left the coast of China in the second month of the year, carrying an edict from the great Khan, the grandson of Kublai Khan, to the king of a country the Chinese knew only from old records and the stories of sailors.
Brooke DeVardNARRATOR
They had sailed south for weeks and waited in Champa, on the coast of what is now Vietnam, before turning into the mouth of the Mekong.
Brooke DeVardNARRATOR
From there they went up river by boat and out across the tumbling sap, which at that time of year swells into a sea of fresh water so wide that the forest along its edges stands drowned to the branches.
Kynan SutherlandHOST
So the first thing he had to do was find a teacher, somebody who could pick up on this great pressing matter that was pushing and pulling at his heart.
Kynan SutherlandHOST
Unfortunately, quite a lot of Zen teachers or Chan teachers had traveled over to Japan from China because they were escaping the pressure of Kublai Khan, the Mongol invasion.
Kynan SutherlandHOST
And they'd heard about how earnestly and sincerely Japanese monks were taking up the practice of Zen.
Kynan SutherlandHOST
And so they found their way over.
Munir HachemiGUEST
But there's also a second way of reading it.
Munir HachemiGUEST
The Invisible Cities is also, if you think about it, a book about Orientalism, because it's Marco Polo going to talk to Kublai Khan.
Munir HachemiGUEST
And it's also this complex relationship where the monarch is the Eastern guy.
Munir HachemiGUEST
And the one who obeys and follows his orders is the Western guy.
TitusHOST
Oh, to be young and, uh, and wild much like how Kuvlai Khan was.
TitusHOST
said today's episode uh recorded yesterday got scratched up so we're doing a new one with a slightly new perspective but yeah kublai khan not kind of a worst history kind of a conspiracy episode blend of the two but eventually i'd like to cover some of the other cons uh and some of the other big mongols because by golly subidai is objectively the best general to have ever lived
DuneHOST
should we do a worst of history on hulagu Oh, we should.
DuneHOST
Destroying the House of Wisdom wasn't that bad.
TitusHOST
I mean, that's like 10% of Asia.
DuneHOST
yeah i think it's
TitusHOST
the actual no it's 10 of humanity i think is somehow descended from the lineage of genghis khan because he slept with so many women but he always held his number one girl borta uh above everyone else yeah so let's uh let's delve into this why was kublai khan really chinese uh and how do the where does this magical chinese power to turn everyone who goes there into chinese people where does that come from uh confucianism is the answer but we'll walk our way to that so setting up the world Kublai is uh born into well a little bit before he's born into so you get Genghis Khan unites all the Mongols in 1206 after murdering his former best friend Jamukha and then at this point China is sort of divided into three or four different areas you got the uh the Dali who are in the southwest you got the Zha Zha not relevant for our story.
DuneHOST
Tangut Tangut realm, if I remember correctly.
Rob CountsHOST
Like you'd have to be an incredible survivor and you're experiencing all kinds of things you can't explain and then you're telling it to some guy named Rustichello who's doing his best to document the things that you've come across.
Rob CountsHOST
i mean think about it he goes to potentially the most violent place in the entire world under the rule of Kublai Khan, and he thrives.
Rob CountsHOST
He earns the favor of Kublai Khan, not a dumb guy as well, arguably even smarter than Genghis in some ways, just a different type of smart.
Rob CountsHOST
He was carrying on the empire, whereas Genghis was a conqueror.
Rob CountsHOST
He earns the favor over there and thrives.
Rob CountsHOST
It's Kublai Khan's favorite guy, sending him out everywhere.
Rob CountsHOST
He can talk to people.
Rob CountsHOST
He's really smart.
Stephen SeidelNARRATOR
In 1260, two of his uncles, named Niccolo and Mafio Polo, started from Constantinople on a trading venture to the Crimea.
Stephen SeidelNARRATOR
after which they were led to visit bokhara and thence on to the court of the great khan kublai who received them very graciously and being impressed with the desirability of introducing western civilization into the new mongolian empire he entrusted them with a message to the pope demanding one hundred wise men of the west to teach the mongolians the christian religion and western arts the two brothers returned to their native place venice in twelve sixty nine but found no pope to comply with the great khan's request for clement fourth had died the year before and his successor had not yet been appointed They waited about for a couple of years till Gregory X was elected, but he only meagerly responded to the great Khan's demands and instructed two Dominicans to accompany the Polos, who on this occasion took with them their young nephew Marco, a lad of seventeen.
Stephen SeidelNARRATOR
They started in November 1271, but soon lost the company of the Dominicans, who lost heart and went back.
Stephen SeidelNARRATOR
they went first to ormuz at the mouth of the persian gulf then struck northward through the khorasan balkh to the oxus and then on to the plateau of palmyre thence they passed the great desert of gobi and at last reached kublai in may twelve seventy five at his summer residence in kaiping fu Notwithstanding that they had not carried out his request, the Khan received them in a friendly manner and was especially taken by Marco, whom he took into his own service, and quite recently a record has been found in the Chinese annals stating that in the year 1277 a certain Polo was nominated a second-class commissioner of the Privy Council.
Stephen SeidelNARRATOR
His duty was to travel on various missions to eastern Tibet, to Cochinchina, and even to India.
Stephen SeidelNARRATOR
The Polos amassed much wealth owing to the Khan's favor, but found him very unwilling to let them return to Europe.
55 more episodes mention Kublai Khan.
Create an account to see the whole feed, search across every transcript, and follow the entities you care about.