* 1281 – Mongol invasion of Japan: The Mongolian fleet of Kublai Khan is destroyed by a " divine wind " for the second time in the Battle of Kōan.

Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, wanting to adopt the customs of China, established the Yuan Dynasty.

Both Confucian ideas and Confucian-trained officials were relied upon in the Ming Dynasty and even the Yuan Dynasty, although Kublai Khan distrusted handing over provincial control.

During 1252, Kublai Khan granted an audience to Drogön Chögyal Phagpa and Karma Pakshi, the 2nd Karmapa.

* 1271 – Kublai Khan renames his empire " Yuan " ( 元 yuán ), officially marking the start of the Yuan Dynasty of Mongolia and China.

The Yuan dynasty under Kublai Khan waged three wars against Vietnam to force it into a vassalage relationship but after successive failures, Kublai Khan's successor, Temur Khan, finally settled for a tributary relationship with Vietnam.

He and his grandson, Kublai Khan, controlled lands in China, Burma, Central Asia, Russia, Iran, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.

* 1287 – Kublai Khan defeated the force of Nayan and other traditionalist Borjigin princes in East Mongolia and Manchuria.

According to Coleridge's Preface to Kubla Khan, the poem was composed one night after he experienced an opium influenced dream after reading a work describing Xanadu, the summer palace of the Mongol ruler and Emperor of China Kublai Khan.

The book contained a brief description of Xanadu, the summer capital of the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan.

As for specific places, the main character is Kublai Khan the Tartar king from China, the river is Alpheus in Greece and is similar to the Nile, and the Abyssinian woman sings of Mount Amara, and the caves are like those in Kashmir.

Scientology accounts present a different version of events, saying that Hubbard " made his way deep into Manchuria's Western Hills and beyond — to break bread with Mongolian bandits, share campfires with Siberian shamans and befriend the last in the line of magicians from the court of Kublai Khan.

He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently met Kublai Khan.

According to The Travels of Marco Polo, they passed through much of Asia, and met with the Kublai Khan.

* 1260 – Kublai Khan becomes ruler of the Mongol Empire.

As soon as he was elected in 1271, Pope Gregory received a letter from the Mongol Great Khan Kublai, remitted by Niccolo and Matteo Polo following their travels to his court in Mongolia.

In the Middle Ages, the Mongol Empire's campaign against China ( then comprising the Western Xia Dynasty, Jin Dynasty, and Southern Song Dynasty ) by Genghis Khan until Kublai Khan, who eventually established the Yuan Dynasty in 1271, with their armies was extremely effective, allowing the Mongols to sweep through large areas.

* 1215 – Kublai Khan, Mongolian emperor ( d. 1294 )

One such event is the saving of Japan from invasion by the Mongol fleet of Kublai Khan by the Kamikaze winds in 1281.

* 1281 – Kublai Khan orders the burning of sacred Taoist texts, resulting in the reduction in number of volumes of the Dao Zheng ( Taoist Canon ) from 4, 565 to 1, 120.

Kublai called a conference of Taoist and Buddhist leaders in early 1258.

At the conference, the Taoist claim was officially declared refuted and Kublai forcibly converted their 237 temples to Buddhism and destroyed all copies of the fraudulent texts.

When Kublai returned for an election in 1260, rival factions could not agree, and elected simultaneous claimants Kublai and Ariq Boke to the throne, resulting in a war for succession which marked the beginning of civil war in the Mongol Empire.

Included among their number are representations of Kublai Khan and Marco Polo.

Kublai was asking for the dispatch of a hundred missionaries, and some oil from the lamp of the Holy Sepulcher.

The two Polos ( this time accompanied by the young Marco Polo ) returned to the Mongol Empire and remitted the oil from the Pope to Kublai in 1275.

* 1264 – Kublai Khan, supreme leader of the Mongol Empire, moves the empire's capital from Karakorum in Mongolia to the Chinese city of Khanbaliq ( now Beijing ).

* 1271 – Marco Polo departs from Venice with his father and uncle on his famous journey to Kublai Khan's China.

* February – The court of the Southern Song Dynasty of China and hundreds of thousands of its citizens flee from Hangzhou to Fujian and then Guangdong in an effort to escape an invasion by Kublai Khan's Yuan Dynasty.

* November 20 – Kublai Khan's Yuan Dynasty attempts the first of several invasions of Japan ( 30, 000 soldiers and support personnel sails from Korea ); after the Mongols capture outlying islands, they are repulsed on the main island at the Battle of Bun ' ei by amassed Japanese warriors and a strong storm which batters their forces and fleet.

* Marco Polo departs from Venice with his father and uncle on his famous journey to Kublai Khan's China.

His death sparks a succession crisis in the Mongol Empire, while his brothers Ariq Böke and Kublai soon convene their own kuriltai to elect themselves as the next Khan of Khans, opening the path to a four – year-long civil war from 1260 to 1264.

* Kublai Khan, who became a Khagan claimant in the previously year, releases 75 Song Dynasty Chinese merchants from captivity after they had been captured along the border of his Empire and the Southern Song Dynasty of China.

* Kublai Khan decides to move his capital from Shangdu in Inner Mongolia to the Chinese city of Dadu ( now Beijing ).

Fronds of the raffia palm may have been brought to Kublai Khan under the guise of roc's feathers ; a stump of a roc's quill was said to have been brought to Spain by a merchant from the China seas ( Abu Hamid of Spain, in Damiri, see below ).

Kublai Khan and his descendants and followers would rule China for 97 years until the rise of the Ming Dynasty under the Hongwu Emperor of the House of Zhu, effectively leading the Chinese regain control of their lost territory from the Mongols.

After the surviving forces returned to Mongol territory, Kublai was not dissuaded from his intentions on bringing the Japanese empire under Mongol control, and once again sent a message to the bakufu to submit, which infuriated the Hōjō leadership, who had the messengers executed.

In Venice, these books were kept in an abbey whose library henceforth " sparked the Renaissance ", inspired " Leonardo and Michelangelo ", and motivated Marco Polo and his father to journey to the Orient, paying back the library by adding the Great Books from Kublai Khan's Empire of Cathay to it upon Marco's return.

As a direct descendant of Kublai Khan ( r. 1260-1294 ), Mandukhai had him ascend to the throne at the Royal shrine kept by the Chakhar and he became known by the title " Dayan Khan " ( meaning the " Great Khan of the Great Yuan ", from 大元可汗 ), although one of the editors of chronicle in the 17th century mis-interpreted the meaning of Dayan of Dayan Khan as " whole " instead of the " Great Yuan ").

In 1288, General Tran Hung Dao stopped Mongol ships from sailing up the nearby Bach Dang River by placing steel-tipped wooden stakes at high tide, sinking the Mongol Kublai Khan's fleet.

In 1265 a Mongol delegation arrived from Kublai Khan, ruler of the Mongol Empire.

When one Great Khan died, rival kurultai councils would simultaneously elect different successors, such as the brothers Ariq Boke and Kublai, they were both elected and then not only had to defy each other, but also deal with challenges from descendants of other of Genghis's sons.

In order to outflank the Song from three directions, Mongke dispatched Mongol armies under his brother Kublai to Yunnan, and under his uncle Iyeku to subdue Korea and pressure the Song from that direction as well.