Khanbaliq

Khanbaliq or Dadu of Yuan () was the winter capital of the Yuan dynasty of China in what is now Beijing, the capital of China today. It was located at the center of modern Beijing. The Secretariat directly administered the Central Region () of the Yuan dynasty (comprising present-day Beijing, Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, and parts of Henan and Inner Mongolia) and dictated policies for the other provinces. Kublai (Emperor Shizu of Yuan) and his successors also claimed supremacy over the entire Mongol Empire following the death of Möngke (Kublai's brother and predecessor) in 1259. Over time the unified empire gradually fragmented into a number of khanates. Khanbaliq is the direct predecessor to modern Beijing. Several stations of Line 10 and Line 13 are named after the gates of Dadu. The name Khanbaliq comes from the Mongolian and Old Uyghur words khan and balik ("town", "permanent settlement"): "City of the Khan". It was actually in use among the Turks and Mongols before the fall of Zhongdu, in reference to the Jin emperors of Manchuria. It is traditionally written as Cambaluc in English, after its spelling in Rustichello's retelling of Marco Polo's travels. The Travels also uses the spellings Cambuluc and Kanbalu. The name Dadu is the pinyin transcription of the Chinese name 大都, meaning "Grand Capital". The Mongols also called the city Daidu, which was a transliteration directly from the Chinese. In modern Chinese, it is referred to as Yuan Dadu to distinguish it from other cities which have similar names. History of Beijing and Europeans in Medieval China Zhongdu, the "Central Capital" of the Jurchen Jin dynasty, was located at a nearby site now part of Xicheng District. It was destroyed by Genghis Khan in 1215 when the Jin court began contemplating a move south to a more defensible capital such as Kaifeng. The Imperial Mint (诸路交钞提举司) established in 1260 and responsible for the printing of jiaochao, the Yuan fiat paper money, was probably located at nearby Yanjing even before the establishment of the new capital.