Karakorum

Karakorum rose on the grassy upper Orkhon, in the old heartland of the Xiongnu, Turkic and Uyghur steppe empires, where Genghis Khan assembled his army in 1218 and his son Ögedei raised walls and the Palace of Myriad Peace in 1235. Here the Great Khans received envoys from Russian princes and the Flemish friar William of Rubruck, who found a walled town with a Muslim quarter and a Chinese one, twelve temples, two mosques and a Nestorian church, and a silver tree that poured wine for the court.

After Khubilai moved the court to Dadu, Karakorum became the seat of the Yuan administration north of the Gobi. Kaidu seized it in 1277, and Yuan troops drove him out the next year. In 1307 it became the seat of a branch secretariat, later called Lingbei Province, and the city was still being rebuilt in the 1340s, when a commemorative stele was carved and the great stupa temple repaired.

The fall of the Yuan in 1368 ended this prosperity. Biligtü Khan held court at Karakorum in 1370, but Ming armies burned its walls in 1372 and returned in 1380. By the early 15th century the city was largely abandoned. In 1585 Abtai Khan raised the monastery of Erdene Zuu beside the ruins, using stone from the old town.