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40 Awe-Inspiring Facts About Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire

Khalid Elhassan February 3, 2019 24 min

Kublai Khan statue in Ulan Bator. Popular Science

6. The Mongol Empire Reached Its Zenith Under Genghis’ Grandson, Kublai Khan

Genghis Khan’s grandson Kublai Khan (1215 – 1294) completed the conquest of China, and founded the Yuan Dynasty, which unified China under a single ruler for the first time in centuries. By then, the Mongol conquests had been divided amongst Genghis’ descendants into separate khanates, all of which owed allegiance to Kublai Khan. His writ thus extended across history’s greatest contiguous land empire, stretching from the Pacific in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.