Overview

In 1206, the Mongolian leader Genghis Khan founded a country in the north of the Gobi desert and successively destroyed the Liao, Western Xia, and Jin dynasties. After Kublai succeeded to the throne, he changed the name of the state to “Great Yuan” and moved the capital to Dadu (now Beijing) in 1271. In 1279, after conquering the small Southern Song Dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty became a unified dynasty that unified the Central Plain for ninety-eight years until 1368 when it was replaced by the Ming Dynasty.