Daughter of Xanadu - Dori Jones Yang [112]
HOORAY: English word that is believed to have come from the Mongolian word for “amen,” used as a cry of bravado and encouragement (see Jack Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World).
IL-KHAN OF PERSIA: The Mongol ruler of Persia, subordinate to the Great Khan. The area he ruled included modern-day Iran, as well as parts of Iraq and neighboring countries. The first Il-khan was Khubilai Khan’s brother Hulegu.
KHAGAN OR KHA’AN: Mongolian for “emperor,” “Great Khan,” or “Khan of all Khans.” Marco Polo translated this word as “Great Lord of Lords.”
KHAIDU: A descendant of Chinggis Khan through his son Ogodei, the second Great Khan. Khaidu believed that Ogodei’s line should have inherited the right to rule the Empire, so he challenged Khubilai Khan’s right to be Great Khan.
KHAN: Mongolian for “king,” “commander,” or “ruler.”
KHANBALIK: “Khan’s capital” in Mongolian, this city was built by Khubilai Khan to be the capital of the Mongol Empire. It was formerly known as Yenjing, and then as Peking, and is now known as Beijing. Marco Polo called it Cambaluc, a variation on Khanbalik. The Chinese refer to Mongol-era Beijing as “Yuan Dadu,” which means “main capital of the Yuan dynasty.”
KHATUN: Mongolian for “queen” or “empress,” used for wives of the khan or khagan.
KHUBILAI KHAN: The fifth Great Khan, born in 1215, who ruled the Mongol Empire from 1260 to his death in 1294. Commonly known in the West as Kubla Khan or Kublai Khan. During his reign, the Mongol Empire reached its greatest size. For details of Khubilai Khan’s life, the author found the best source to be Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times, by Morris Rossabi.
KINSAY: Name used by Marco Polo for Hangzhou, capital of the Southern Sung dynasty. Kinsay is a variation on the Chinese words “jing shi,” “capital city.”
MAFFEO POLO: Marco Polo’s uncle, who traveled to China twice, once with Marco’s father only and again with both Marco and his father.
MARCO POLO: A young Venetian who traveled to the capital of the Mongol Empire in China, leaving home in late 1271 and arriving in 1275 at the age of twenty-one. After returning home to Venice in 1295, he wrote a book about his travels, becoming the first European to write about China for a Western audience. Many versions of Marco’s book exist; the author of Daughter of Xanadu relied on The Travels of Marco Polo: The Complete Yule-Cordier Edition.
MIAOYAN: A daughter of Khubilai Khan who became a Buddhist nun. At a Buddhist temple outside Beijing, called Tanzhe Temple, there are indentations on the stone where it is believed she knelt and prayed.
MONGOL EMPIRE: Founded by Chinggis Khan in 1206. At its peak in 1279 the Mongol Empire included all of Mongolia, China, Tibet, Korea, Central Asia, Iran, and Russia. It was the largest contiguous land empire in history, rivaled only by the nineteenth-century British Empire. The Mongols ruled China and Iran for about one hundred years, and Mongols continued to rule Russia for about three hundred years.
MONGOLIA: Homeland of the Mongols, now an independent country north of China. It included parts of China known today as Inner Mongolia.
NICCOLO POLO: Marco Polo’s father, who made his first journey to China from 1260 to 1269, and his second journey to China with his son, Marco Polo, from 1271 to 1295. Both times, Niccolo Polo traveled with his brother, Maffeo.
OVOO: In Mongolian custom, a heap of stones that marks a sacred place.
POPE: The head of the Christian religion in Rome. When Marco Polo left for China in 1271, the new Pope was Gregory X, whom his father and uncle had befriended earlier, during their travels.
SOUTHERN CHINA: Before the Mongol era, in 1127, China was divided into two countries, north and south. The north was ruled by the Jin dynasty