Yuan dynasty

The Yuan dynasty ruled China from 1271 to 1368, proclaimed by Kublai Khan of the Borjigin clan, who took the imperial name Emperor Shizu and governed from the primary capital of Dadu, on the site of modern Beijing, with Shangdu serving as a summer capital. As the successor state to the Mongol Empire after its division among Genghis Khan's descendants, the Yuan completed its conquest of China by defeating the Southern Song dynasty at the Battle of Yamen in 1279, becoming the first dynasty founded by a non-Han people to rule all of China proper under the traditional Mandate of Heaven that Kublai Khan proclaimed in 1271. Yuan rule ended in 1368 after military defeat by the rising Ming dynasty, when the Genghisid rulers retreated to the Mongolian Plateau and continued for a time as the Northern Yuan, which lasted until 1635.