KHANBALIG. This city, now called Pekin, was founded or at least rebuilt by Kablai Khan after his conquest of Northern China, about A.D. 1280. Marco Polo calls it Cambalu, and says that in magnificence it surpassed every other city he had visited. Khanbalig are two Mongol words signifying the Khan's city. The Chinese capital was still so called by the Turks in the time of I'. Ricci. The city ou this site was originally (ml t= est vetus et antiqua, as Odoric says) the capital of the kingdom of Ian, B.C. 222. This was conquered by the Thsin sovereigns of China, and the city lost its importance A.D. 936. It was taken by the Tartar Khitan, and became their Nan-king or Southern Capital. In 1125 it fell to the Kin, ancestors of the Manchu, who gave it the name of Si-king or Western Capital. In 1153 it received from the fourth Kin sovereign the Lame of Chung-tu or Central Court. It seems also to have been known as Yen-king under this dynasty. It was captured by Chengiz in 1215, and in 1264 his grandson Kablai made it his chief residence. In 1267 he built a new city, three li to the north-east of the old one, to which was given the name of Ta-tu or Great Court, called by the Mongols Daidu, the Taydo of Odoric and Taidu of Polo, who gives a description of its dimensions and the number of its gates. The
Chinese accounts give only eleven gates. The circumference of the present Tartar city appears from the plans to be about 15 miles. Martini speaks of it as having still twelve gates in his time, but he was almost certainly wrong. It has three on the south side, and two on each of the others. The circuit of the two cities together is about 22 miles, according to the scale on the plan given by Panthier, though Timkowski states it at 40 verats, or 26i miles. The route followed on the second journey of the Polo relatives into China was up the Oxus, to its sources, through Badakhshan, whence, crossing the Pamir table land to Khotun, they went across the Hamil or Shamil desert to Cambalu (Kbanbalig) or Pekin. The return was by sea to Singapore, and round Ceylon to the Persian Gulf.—Yule, Cathay, i. p. 127 ; Prinsep's Tibet.