Khubilai Khan lived during the height of Mongol power. He was born at the beginning of the Mongol expansion and grew up as Mongol armies spread far to the north and west. Khubilai and his grandfather Chinggis were the most renowned of the Mongols in this glorious period of their and indeed Eurasian history. Eurasian history begins with the Mongols. Within a few decades in the thirteenth century, they had carved out the most sizable empire in world history, stretching from Korea to Western Russia in the north and from Burma to Iraq in the south. Their armies reached all the way to Poland and to Hungary. In the process, they destroyed some of the most powerful dynasties of their age: the 'Abbasid rulers of the Middle East and Persia, the Chin and Southern Sung dynasties of China, the Khwarazmian khanate of Central Asia. For a generation, the Mongols were masters of much of Eurasia and terrorized the rest.

Though their empire lasted less than a century, it inextricably linked Europe to Asia,1 ushering in an era of frequent and extended contacts between East and West. And, once the Mongols had achieved relative stability and order in their newly acquired domains, they neither discouraged nor impeded relations with foreigners. Though they never abandoned their claims of universal rule, they were hospitable to foreign travelers, even those whose monarchs had not submitted to them. They expedited and encouraged travel in the sizable section of Asia that was under Mongol rule,2 permitting European merchants, craftsmen, and envoys, for the first time, to

journey as far as China. Asian goods reached Europe alo