China: e) The Yuan Dynasty

 

THE YUAN DYNASTY


[click 
here for an American-European view, here for a post-Communist Chinese (no, I’m joking, the url is .de and the author is Ulrich Theobald)]



Note: 
The green, or for some titles red, text is the original Wikipedia timeline, frequently corrected by me for grammar and spelling errors. The blue text is my gradual development of the timeline into a fuller history and commentary (with follow-up notes in amber).  Because I am interested in the positives of human history, and can only find negatives in most of the politics, I have reduced most of the political history from green to grey, so it is still there, and you are obviously free to follow the links and find out more, but I honestly cannot imagine why you would want to.

 

1273 CE: 14 March: Battle of Xiangyang: The Yuan army breached and captured Xiangyang

 

1274 CE: 12 August: Duzong died. He was succeeded by his young son Gong of Song

5 October: Mongol invasions of Japan: A Yuan fleet landed at Tsushima Island

 

1275 CE: The Yuan general Bayan of the Baarin defeated a Song army led by the chancellor Jia Sidao

 

1276 CE: 4 February: Gong and his great aunt the grand empress dowager Xie Daoqing surrendered themselves to the Yuan army besieging the Song capital Lin'an City

 

14 June: Gong's older brother Duanzong was crowned emperor of the Song dynasty at Fuzhou

 

Qian Xuan retired [who was he? a painter and calligrapher: click here]

 


[as per the link, the painting shown here, "Ode On Returning Home", is either a copy or a forgery, and not an original]


The Gaocheng Astronomical Observatory was built [where? Gaocheng presumably: click here, and here for its UNESCO page]

 

1278 CE: The Song general Wen Tianxiang was captured by Yuan forces

 

8 May: Duanzong died

10 May: Duanzong's younger brother Bing became emperor of the Song dynasty

 

1279 CE: 19 March: Battle of Yamen: A Yuan fleet destroyed a vastly superior Song force near Yamen. The Song chancellor Lu Xiufu drowned himself with Bing [that doesn't make sense; if it lost that heavily, then it was clearly a vastly inferior force: or does he mean superior in  numbers and needs someone at Wikipedia to oversee his skills at English as well?]

 

1287 CE: The Zhongdu-born Rabban Bar Sauma left for Europe as an ambassador of Arghun, the khan of the Ilkhanate [with a name like that he surely has to be Jewish;  but no, a Nestorian Christian ecclesiastic, which means his name comes from Aramaic, even though he was Chinese, but thence the parallel/overlap: his full tale is told here, and then he needs to be added to my Marco Polo et al list]

December: Battle of Pagan: Yuan forces captured the Pagan capital Bagan [for correct pronunciation, think of those heathen "a"s as being driven backwards, as "cars can", not only able to move forwards, like "hay-wagons"]

 

1288 CE: Battle of Bạch Đằng: Đại Việt decisively defeated a numerically superior Yuan invasion fleet on the Bạch Đằng River


1289 CE:
Europeans in Medieval China: Franciscan friars first conducted missionary work in China

 

1294 CE: 18 February: Kublai died [now that is a man whose life achievements are worth following up, even if, inevitably, he was as much a saurus as he was a pulchra; just a shame that this timeline of Chinese history doesn’t include any: click here for the broad and general, here for the more specific]


10 May:
Kublai's grandson Temür became emperor of the Yuan dynasty

 

1293 CE: John of Montecorvino arrives in China and is appointed Archbishop of Khanbaliq (Beijing)

 

1298 CE: Wang Zhen invented moveable wooden type [so what was the one in 1041 CE made of? or is the difference the moveability? click here] [there is another Wang Zhen, dates around 1426, with whom this one should not be confused: click here for the later one]

 

1307 CE: 10 February: Temür died

21 June: Temür's nephew Külüg became emperor of the Yuan dynasty

 

1311 CE: 27 January: Külüg died

7 AprilCE: Külüg's younger brother Ayurbarwada Buyantu became emperor of the Yuan dynasty

 

1316 CE: Guo Shoujing died [who was he? a Chinese astronomer who worked on spherical trigonometry and the calendar: click here]

 

1320 CE: 1 March: Ayurbarwada died

19 April: Ayurbarwada's son Gegeen became emperor of the Yuan dynasty

 

1323 CE: 4 September: Gegeen was assassinated by the Asud in a coup led by the Khongirad grand censor Tegshi

4 October: Yesün Temür became emperor of the Yuan dynasty

 

1324 CE: Zhongyuan Yinyun was published [what was it? literally “Rhymes of the Central Plain”: yet another dictionary focused on rhyme-words; click here]

 

1328 CE: 15 August: Yesün Temür died

October: Yesün Temür's son Ragibagh was appointed emperor of the Yuan dynasty in Shangdu [in flight? in exile? or had the capital moved? I ask because of the next two items]

 

16 October: The Yuan general El Temür crowned Jayaatu Khan Tugh Temür emperor in Khanbaliq [which I believe was their name for Bei-Jing though the map at the top of the page has it as Dadu]

14 November: Forces loyal to El Temür captured Shangdu and may have executed Ragibagh

 

1329 CE: 27 February: Tugh Temür's brother Khutughtu Khan Kusala crowned himself emperor of the Yuan dynasty in Karakorum with the support of the Chagatai Khanate

3 April: Tugh Temür abdicated in Khutughtu's favour [by force or by choice?]

30 August: Khutughtu died, probably after being poisoned by Tugh Temür [which rather answers my question on 3 April, provided that the allegation has evidence to substantiate it]

8 September: Tugh Temür was crowned emperor of the Yuan dynasty

 

1330 CE: The Pagoda of Bailin Temple was completed [where is that? 240 miles south of Khanbaliq/Dadu/Bei-Jing: click here: nothing but a photo here, but what a website! the full “China Pilgrimage” as he calls it, in photos]

 

1332 CE: 2 September: Tugh Temür died

 

23 October: El Temür crowned Khutughtu's young son Rinchinbal emperor of the Yuan dynasty

14 December: Rinchinbal died

 

1333 CE: 19 July: Rinchinbal's older brother Toghon Temür became emperor of the Yuan dynasty

 

1334 CE: Wang Dayuan travelled to North Africa [who was he and why? paying a return visit to ibn Battita probably! no, it was very slightly too early for that, but it’s possible ibn-B heard about him and through him China and... trade turns out to be the answer here for his bio: here and here for a piece about Singapore through his eyes]

 

1342 CE: Papal missionary Giovanni de Marignolli leaves Europe for Khanbaliq (Beijing) [here]

 

1351 CE: Red Turban Rebellion: The millenarian White Lotus sect first plotted armed rebellion against the Yuan dynasty [“millenarian” needs defining: click here: clearly a consequence of these Jesuist missionaries and papal envoys: some use nationalism as their flag of convenience, some use religions whether clerical or secular, some use but all alpha males want to conquer the world under some flag of convenience]

 

1352 CE: Red Turban Rebellion: The Hongwu Emperor joined the rebellion

 

1356 CE: Red Turban Rebellion: The rebel army captured Nanjing

 

1363 CE: 30 August: Battle of Lake Poyang: A Red Turban fleet commanded by the Hongwu Emperor met a fleet led by Chen Youliang, the self-proclaimed king of the rebel state of Han, on Poyang Lake [so yet again we see that Chinese history is only one of several Chinese histories, and those of the lands not at the centre at the time simply get no mention unless there is a civil war... and if the outsider wins!]

4 October: Battle of Lake Poyang: The Han navy was destroyed. Chen Youliang was killed

 

1368 CE: 20 January: Red Turban Rebellion: The Hongwu Emperor declared himself emperor of the Ming dynasty

September: Toghon Temür fled Khanbaliq for Shangdu in the face of a Ming advance

 

 

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