|
|
|
|
The History of Shangdu
Associated to Place:
AncientWorlds >
The Orient >
Mongolia >
Shangdu >
articles
-- by
Shangdu was the creation of Kublai Khan, grandson of Chingis, who created Shangdu as his summer residence, to get away from the crowding of Khanbaliq. Before Kublai Khan became the first Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, he was the Khan of Kaiping prefecture, and decided to build the Kaiping prefecture government offices here, in Shangdu. So years before he founded Beijing, the Great Khan knew – and perhaps loved – this city in the vast, Mongolian plain. It is so many miles from everywhere - 375 kilometers north of Beijing! - that only a great Khan could love it.
The name “Shangdu” means the “Upper Capital” of the Mongols. After the internal wars to reach supreme rule, the Great Khan divided his empire into four khanates, each ruled by a separate khan and overseen by the Great Khan. The Kipchak Khanate (also called the Golden Horde) ruled Russia; the Ilkhanate ruled the Middle East, the Chagatai Khanate ruled over western Asia; and the Great Khanate controlled Mongolia and eventually the whole of China. The empire reached its greatest extent under Kublai with his victory against, and conquest of, the Song Dynasty which was completed by his final victory in 1279. Thus the Upper Capital was literally the second most important city under the Great Khan’s eye. It was the capital in which Kublai was proclaimed Emperor on May 5, 1260. When he was proclaimed Khan, the city was first called Kaipingfu. In 1271, he named his reigning dynasty as Yuan and established the capital of Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) in present Beijing. At the same time as the Great Khan renamed Beijing, he renamed Kaipingfu as Shangdu, his official “upper capital,” as the very name implies. However much the Khan may have enjoyed Shangdu, he could not make it his permanent capital – to the masses of his Chinese subjects, the high Mongolian plains were the territory of fierce nomad raiders from which no good could come. If he lived in Beijing for political reasons, however, the Great Khan lived in Shangdu because he loved it. Yet, to travel from one capital to the other, one simply needed to take a barge upstream by the Yungting River to Shangdu. On the map of China, Inner Mongolia stretches from the center, grassland, to the western desert, and the dense forests of the east. So at Shangdu, you stand in the very center of the Mongol realm, on the high Mongol plain. The "Golden Lily" plain (named for its wildflowers) reveals hardly a tree, no lake, no foliage, nothing except the sky stretching out past the horizon, the endless grass plains, and the icy air coming down from the high country. Since Shangdu was designed to take into account both the Chinese esthetic of its primary architect and the openness of a Mongol camp, it was designed as three increasingly large squares, set one inside the other, rather like a series of three misaligned boxes. Where in the city you lived depended upon your place in the great scheme of things, based on how important you are to the Khan. The wall around the Wen Ching city is 2,200 meters per side – a total of 5.46 miles! Inside this is another wall around the “scribes” or “Imperial” city, 1400 meters per side. Then you will find the third or “Stone” city, where the palace of the Great Khan was built of 500 meters per side - small for a neighborhood, big for a palace. Since the earth in that area was slightly marshy, a foundation was built for the palace and the springs channeled into providing water for city fountains and daily use. The interior of the palace heavily relied upon imported marble, ceramics, and glazed and gilded tiles. The Palace itself is nearly half the size of the entire Forbidden City in Beijing. Prominent buildings were carefully laid with the advice of Chinese sages using principals from the I Ching.
 City within cities at Shangdu: The Palace is in the inner square, lower center in this aerial photograph. A Chinese architect, Liu Bingzhong, is known to have designed Shangdu. Kublai Khan's adviser of Han nationality, a primary architect for the new Yuang Dynasty. Begun in 1252, after four years' construction using tens of thousands of slaves, it was completed in 1256. The design of the capital embodied the layout of a traditional Han city and at the same time took into consideration the habit of Mongolians' nomadic life style. Thus you could live in the city in a massive stone house – or on a vacant lot in the outer square, in the traditional Mongol yurt. Many of the great houses were built of stone – others were built of materials that could be dismantled, packed, and moved as the capital shifted from north to south. But in the old tales and legends, the inner palace itself was probably built first and – since the Mongols seldom, if ever, built in stone – it was simply known as the “Stone City”, before the outer squares were built to enclose and protect it. At its height, an estimated 200,000 persons lived inside the walls of Shangdu. Early urban planning was definitely in effect. Most of the houses, in which the foundations are still visible, were quite large – 100 square meters. In the modern Mongolian language, the word for Shangdu is “108 temples” due to the many temples that were scattered throughout the city. The streets were on an organized grid pattern and were wide for the time, partially to allow movement of armies. The majority of the lower classes lived in the outer square in wooden, semi-permanent structures. It is said that the merging, in Shangdu, of Mongol and Chinese esthetic caused the Chinese mild pleasure, but distressed the more austere Mongols, who were uncomfortable with a city built of stone which could not move around the Steppe lands. For a little more than a decade, the Khan spent only the summer here, as the high country is far cooler than Beijing and he came here to escape the heat of the Dadu (Greater Capital). Naturally, the merchants and diplomats followed him here. The “summer palace” began to expand. In 1272 Shangdu became China's economic, political, military and cultural hub. As your Marco Polo later wrote, he was received by the Khan in "...Shandu (Shangdu), built by the Grand Khan Kublai, now reigning. In this he caused a palace to be erected, of marble and other handsome stones, admirable as well for the elegance of its design as of the skill displayed in its execution. The halls and chambers are all gilt, and very handsome..."
Shangdu is remarkable for its axis being exactly parallel to the Meridian line. The Mongolians, aided by the Chinese, had grasped highly sophisticated military, weather, economic and geologic sciences in the 1200s, centuries before Europe rediscovered them. Shangdu City was zero degrees in a south-north direction. The orientation had more than scientific significance. The fengshui (geomantic omen) of the area was important - located on the Jinlianchuan Plain (Yellow Lilies Plain), south of the upper reaches of the Luanhe River, of which it lies on the north bank. When the summer came, golden liles were in full bloom on the plain and the grass was a moving golden sea. Kublai Khan’s many advisers also knew how to use water to make a great city, and there are tombs showing that he also utilized Arab advisers who, at the time, were highly sophisticated in creating water systems. Shangdu had a man-made water system, including drains and fountains. This, when the solution to public hygiene in Paris and Rome was to throw waste and dead animals into a gutter in the center of their streets! The city was not only strongly fortified and built to last, but it was beautifully decorated. Marco Polo wrote that in Shangdu, “There are a lot of beautiful palaces built out of stone in the city. All the houses are covered with gold and decorated with the pictures of birds, animals and flowers. These buildings and patterns are so beautiful that they are pleasing to the eye." Of course, he probably exaggerated when he also wrote "The greatest palace that ever was … The walls were covered with gold and silver and the Hall was so large that it could easily dine 6,000 people." Shangdu existed for almost precisely 100 years. In 1358, an internal rebellion in China – the “red scarf” rebellion – would destroy the city, which was burned to the ground. All that remained then was a mound of ruins on a grass-topped plain as a reminder of what Xanadu used to be. SOURCES and ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: |
Library
|
