Geography

Location: Northern Asia, between China and Russia

Geographic coordinates: 46 00 N, 105 00 E

Map references: Asia

Area:
total: 1.565 million sq km
land: 1.565 million sq km
water: 0 sq km

Area - comparative: slightly smaller than Alaska

Land boundaries:
total: 8,161.9 km

border countries: China 4,676.9 km, Russia 3,485 km

Climate: desert; continental (large daily and seasonal temperature ranges)

Terrain: vast semidesert and desert plains, grassy steppe, mountains in west and southwest; Gobi Desert in south-central

Natural resources: oil, coal, copper, molybdenum, tungsten, phosphates, tin, nickel, zinc, wolfram, fluorspar, gold, silver, iron, phosphate

Land use:
arable land: 5.7%
permanent crops: 0%
permanent pastures: 81%
forests and woodland: 11.4%
other: 1.9% (2000 est.)

Irrigated land: 800 sq km (1993 est.)

Natural hazards: dust and snow storms, grassland and forest fires, drought and "zud", which is a combination of drought followed by harsh winter conditions

Environment - current issues: limited natural fresh water resources in some areas; policies of the former communist regime promoting rapid urbanization and industrial growth have raised concerns about their negative effects on the environment; the burning of soft coal in power plants and the lack of enforcement of environmental laws have severely polluted the air in Ulaanbaatar; deforestation, overgrazing, the converting of virgin land to agricultural production have increased soil erosion from wind and rain; desertification and mining activities have also had a deleterious effect on the environment

note: landlocked; strategic location between China and Russia

Heading 2Kublai was the fifth Khagan of the Mongol Empire, reigning from 1260 to 1294. He also founded the Yuan dynasty in China as a conquest dynasty in 1271, and ruled as the first Yuan emperor until his death in 1294.

Born: 23 September 1215, Mongol Empire

Died: 18 February 1294, Khanbaliq

Successor: Temür Khan

Reign: 5 May 1260 – 18 February 1294

Children: Zhenjin, Khutugh beki Khan, Togoon, Nangjiazhen, MORE

Parents: Tolui, Sorghaghtani Beki

The Yuan administration followed patterns that had been created by the Song administration, but imposed also their own structure of improvisational government. On the local level, prefectures (zhou 州; in the map abbreviated with the sign ~; only these prefectures are indicated that are not supersided by a route lu 路) and superior prefectures (fu 府) were the mid-level administration units. There were also a few military prefectures (jun 軍) on the island of Hainan.
Capital of the Yuan empire was Dadu 大都 "Great Capital", known as Khanbalik (Qanbaliq "City of the Khan") and today as Beijing; the secondary capital was the Shangdu 上都 "Upper Capital" (Kaiping 開平; known as Xanadu in the western accounts), located near modern Dolonnur 多倫, Inner Mongolia. The old capital of the Mongols, Karakhorum (Qaraqorum, "Helin 和林"), was located in modern Mongolia.
Khubilai Khan and his advisors adopted the institutions of the Chinese central government like the Palace Secretariat (zhongshusheng 中書省) as the core of their central government over China, first only for the territory in the north (the former Jin empire), but in the course of the conquest of China, it became necessary to found ad-hoc secretariats by the various division of the Mongol army. These were called "en-route secretariats" (xing zhongshusheng 行中書省), a term later abbreviated as "secretariats" (sheng 省) and from the Ming period 明 (1368-1644) on used as the word for "province"). The Yuan empire was divided into eleven such "branch secretariates" (in the map in Courier type).

Yuan Dynasty

(1279-1368)

Geography

Heading 2Kublai was the fifth Khagan of the Mongol Empire, reigning from 1260 to 1294. He also founded the Yuan dynasty in China as a conquest dynasty in 1271, and ruled as the first Yuan emperor until his death in 1294.

Geography

Heading 2Kublai was the fifth Khagan of the Mongol Empire, reigning from 1260 to 1294. He also founded the Yuan dynasty in China as a conquest dynasty in 1271, and ruled as the first Yuan emperor until his death in 1294.

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