Marco Polo marvelled that in Kublai Khan's empire people paid with paper.
Europe got its first banknotes only in 1661, in Sweden — 390 years after his journey began.
The events
- Travels of Marco Polo1271–1295 · Shangdu (Xanadu). The Venetian Marco Polo travelled to China with his father and uncle and spent some 17 years at the court of Kublai Khan. His book of travels became Europe's chief source of knowledge about Asia for centuries.
- Kublai Khan founds the Yuan dynasty1271 · Khanbaliq. Genghis Khan's grandson Kublai proclaimed the Yuan dynasty, with its capital at Khanbaliq (Dadu), on the site of modern Beijing. In 1279 the Mongols completed the conquest of the Song, bringing all of China under foreign rule for the first time.
More amazing facts
- 1258 Chroniclers say that when the Mongols took Baghdad in 1258, the Tigris ran black with ink. So many books from the city's libraries, including the House of Wisdom, were thrown into it.
- 1260 The Middle Ages' most famous children's drawings were left by a Novgorod boy named Onfim.
- 1271 · 1368 Marco Polo never mentions the Great Wall, but that does not prove he lied.
- 1271 · 1287 While Marco Polo served Kublai Khan in China, a monk from Beijing toured Europe.
- 1275 · 1797 Xanadu was real: Kublai Khan's summer capital, Shangdu.
- 1281 · 1944 The word kamikaze is over 660 years older than Japan's suicide pilots. "Divine wind" was the name given to the typhoons that scattered Kublai Khan's fleets off Japan in 1274 and 1281.