A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

The conquering Mongols 111
though only the southern half had remained to be conquered) but also
to the tenacity of the Sung dynasty and their subjects.Moreover, both
the Great Khan himself and his brother Qubilay took part in the military
operations against the Sung.The campaign cost Möngke his life, for
he died in the province of Szechwan, probably from a wound sustained
during a siege, in 1259.Qubilay hurried home where he knew his
brother Arigh Böke would claim the title of Great Khan.Qubilay had
his troops acclaim him as qaghan even before they reached the ancestral
grounds in Mongolia, while his brother assumed that title at
Qaraqorum.Thus began the first full-fledged civil war in the Mongol
empire, and although by 1264 Qubilay had emerged victorious, he soon
had to wage war against other relatives who were laying similar claims;
the foremost among these was Qaydu (d.1303), a son of Ögedey’s fifth
son Qashi and one of the few members of the Ögedeyid branch who
had survived the purges of 1251–52.
The contest with Qaydu proved to be an even more protracted affair
than the conquest of China, and it presents another significant contrast.
Much as Qubilay cherished the title of Great Khan and demanded submission
from his relatives farther west, his main focus was on China.He
no longer considered Qaraqorum as his headquarters, but moved to a
site where in 1215 his grandfather Genghis Khan had destroyed the
capital of the Chin dynasty.Qubilay built there his own city which
became known by the Chinese name Ta-tu (“The Great City”) and by
the Mongol name Khanbaliq (“The Khan’s City”, Marco Polo’s
Cumbalic; the eventual Beijing).More than one-half of his long reign
was devoted, as we have seen, to the completion of the conquest of
China (1260–79).The remaining years – 1279 to 1294 – were spent
mainly in Beijing, where Qubilay assumed the posture of a Chinese
emperor and an urbanite.He took a keen interest in Buddhism, and had
enough sense to let mostly able and honest officials administer the
country which became a far greater source of wealth for him than any
ulus in Inner Asia could have been.He identified with his vastly
expanded new realm also in the manner characteristic of other conquerors
from the north: in 1271 he adopted for his ruling house a Chinese
dynastic name: Yüan (“Origin”).
Meanwhile his rival Qaydu remained a steppe nomad to the hilt.The
center of the originally Ögedeyid ulus lay between the rivers Emil and
Black (Upper) Irtysh and the Tarbagatai mountains, thus in one of the
geographical cores of Eurasia.From there, he could operate both east
and west to enforce his claim.He met with partial or intermittent success