Yuan Dynasty
When Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, visited Yanjing in 1261, much of old Zhongdu, including the imperial palace, lay in ruin. He stayed in the Taining Palace located on Qionghua Island in the Gaoliang River northeast of Zhongdu. The palace was built by the Jin in 1179 as a country retreat,much like the later Summer Palace of the Qing. Unlike other Mongol leaders who wanted to retain the traditional tribal confederation based in Karakorum in Outer Mongolia, Kublai Khan was eager to become the emperor of a cosmopolitan empire. He spent the next four years waging and winning a civil war against rival Mongol chieftains and in 1264 ordered advisor Liu Bingzhong to build his new capital at Yanjing. In 1260, he had already begun construction of his capital at Xanadu, some 275 km due north of Beijing on the Luan River in present-day Inner Mongolia, but he preferred the location of Beijing. With the North China Plain opening to the south and the steppes just beyond the mountain passes to the north, Beijing was an ideal midway point for Kublai Khan's new seat of power. In 1271, he declared the creation of the Yuan Dynasty and named his capital Dadu (大都, Chinese for "Grand Capital", or Daidu to the Mongols). It is also known by the Mongol name Khanbaliq (汗八里), spelled Cambuluc in Marco Polo's accounts. After the construction of Dadu, Xanadu, also known as Shangdu, became Kublai Khan's summer capital.
Rather than continuing on the foundation of Zhongdu, the new capital Dadu was shifted to the northeast and built around the old Taining Palace on Qionghua Island in the middle of the Gaoliang River. This move set in place Beijing's current north-south central axis. Dadu was nearly twice the size of Zhongdu. It stretched from present-day Chang'an Avenue in the south to the earthen Dadu city walls that still stand in northern and northeastern Beijing, between the northern 3rd and 4th Ring Roads. The city had earthen walls 24 m thick and 11 city gates, two in the north and three each in the other cardinal directions. Later, the Ming Dynasty lined portions of Dadu's eastern and western walls with brick and retained four of the gates. Thus, Dadu had the same width as the Beijing of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The geographic center of the Dadu was marked with a pavilion, which is now the Drum Tower.
The most striking physical feature of Dadu is the string of lakes in the heart of the city. These lakes were created from the Gaoliang River inside the city. They are now known as the six seas ("hai") of central Beijing: Houhai, Qianhai and Xihai (the Rear, Front, and West Seas) which are collectively known as Shichahai, Beihai (North Sea) Park, and the Zhongnanhai (South Central Seas) compound. Qionghua Island is now the island in Beihai Park on which the White Dagoba stands. Like today's Chinese leaders, the Yuan imperial family lived west of the lakes in the Xingsheng and Longfu Palaces. A third palace east of the lakes, called the Danei, in the location of the Forbidden City, housed the imperial offices. The city's construction drew builders from all over the Mongols' Asian empire, including local Chinese as well as those from places such as Nepal and Central Asia. Liu Bingzhong was appointed as the supervisor of the construction of the imperial city and a chief architect was Yeheidie'erding. The pavilions of the palaces took on various architectural styles from across the empire. The entire palace complex occupied the south central portion of Dadu. Following Chinese tradition, the temples for ancestral rites and harvest rites were built, respectively, to west and east of the palace.
The inclusion of the Gaoliang River in the city gave Dadu a larger supply of water than the Lotus Pool which had nourished Ji, Youzhou and Nanjing for the previous two thousand years. To boost water supply even more, Yuan hydrologist Guo Shoujing built channels to draw spring water from the Yuquan Mountain in the northwest through what is today the Kunming Lake of the Summer Palace through the Purple Bamboo Park to Jishuitan, which was a large reservoir inside Dadu. The expansion and extension of the Grand Canal from Dadu to Hangzhou enabled the city to import greater volumes of grain to sustain a larger population. In 1270, Dadu had a population of 418,000 and another 635,000 in the surrounding region. By 1327, the city had 952,000 residents with another 2.08 million in the surrounding region.
The city's residential districts were laid out in a checkerboard pattern divided by avenues 25 m in width and narrow alleyways, called hutongs, 6–7 m wide. One of the best surviving examples of such a district is Dongsi, which has 14 parallel hutongs, called the 14 tiao of Dongsi. The name hutong is unique to Yuan-era city. In older neighborhoods that date to the Liao and Jin eras, narrow lanes are called jie or streets. Each of the large avenues had underground sewers which carried rain and refuse to the south of the city. The main markets were located in Dongsi, Xisi and the north shore of Jishuitan.
Construction of Dadu began in 1267 and the first palace was finished the next year. The entire palace complex was completed in 1274 and the rest of the city by 1285. In 1279, when Mongol armies finished off the last of the Song Dynasty in southern China, Beijing became for the first time, the capital of the whole of China.
As Kublai Khan had intended, the city was a showcase of the cosmopolitan Yuan Empire. A number of foreign travelers including Giovanni di Monte Corvino, Odoric of Pordenone, Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta left written accounts of visits to the city. Some of the most famous writers of the Yuan era including Ma Zhiyuan, Guan Hanqing and Wang Shifu, lived in Dadu. The Mongols commissioned the building of an Islamic observatory and Islamic academy. The White Stupa Temple near Fuchengmen was commissioned by Kublai Khan in 1271. Its famous white stupa was designed by Nepali architect Araniko, and remains one of the biggest stupas in China. The Confucius Temple and Guozijian (Imperial Academy) were founded during the reign of Emperor Chengzong, Kublai's successor.
Read more about this topic: History Of Beijing