page_title: Ming–Tibet relations
section_title: Mongol Empire
hierarchical_section_title: Ming–Tibet relations / Background on Yuan rule over Tibet / Mongol Empire
caption_attribution_description: English: Kublai Khan on a hunting expedition, painted on a silk handscroll (fragment). This was painted in the year 1280 by the Chinese court artist Liu Guandao. Notice how Kublai Khan is wearing distinct Mongolian-style furs over Chinese Han silk brocades. A description of this image is featured on page 174 of Patricia Ebrey's Cambridge Illustrated History of China. Scroll painting is located at the National Palace Museum, Taipei. Deutsch: Kubilai Khan auf der Jagd, Malerei von Liu Kuan-tao, Liu Guandao, um 1280 Français&#160;: Kublai Khan à la chasse, peint sur un rouleau de soie (fragment). Cette peinture a été réalisée en 1280 par l'artiste chinois han Liu Guandao de la cour impériale. On peut noter que Kubilai Khan, porte une fourrure typique du style mongole, contrairement aux brocades du style Han. Une description de cette image est mise en valeur sur la page 174 de «&#160;Cambridge Illustrated History of China&#160;» de Patricia Ebrey's. Le rouleau est peint est situé au musée national du palais à Taipei. 日本語: 伝 劉貫道「元世祖出猟図軸」　元・至元17年（1280） 絹本着色 （原寸182.9 x 104.1 cm） 台北市、国立故宮博物院 Русский: Охота Хубилай-хана (фрагмент). Картина, атрибутируемая Лю Гуаньдао (конец XIII века). Свиток, тушь и краски по шелку. 182.9 х 104.1 см. Среди северной степи – хан в белых одеяниях на чёрной лошади, его жена и восемь его телохранителей, один из которых чернокожий. Вдали виден караван верблюдов. Свиток хранится в Национальном Дворцовом Музее в Тайбэе, Тайвань.
context_page_description: The exact nature of relations between Tibet and the Ming dynasty of China is unclear. Analysis of the relationship is further complicated by modern political conflicts and the application of Westphalian sovereignty to a time when the concept did not exist. Some Mainland Chinese scholars such as Wang Jiawei and Tibetan scholars such as Nyima Gyaincain, assert that the Ming dynasty had unquestioned sovereignty over Tibet, pointing to the Ming court's issuing of various titles to Tibetan leaders, Tibetans' full acceptance of these titles, and a renewal process for successors of these titles that involved traveling to the Ming capital. Scholars within China also argue that Tibet has been an integral part of China since the 13th century and that it was thus a part of the Ming Empire. But most scholars outside China, such as Turrell V. Wylie, Melvin C. Goldstein, and Helmut Hoffman, say that the relationship was one of suzerainty, that Ming titles were only nominal, that Tibet remained an independent region outside Ming control, and that it simply paid tribute until the Jiajing Emperor, who ceased relations with Tibet.
context_section_description: Tibet was once a strong power contemporaneous with Tang China (618–907). Until the Tibetan Empire's collapse in the 9th century, it was the Tang's major rival in dominating Inner Asia. The Yarlung rulers of Tibet also signed various peace treaties with the Tang, culminating in a treaty in 821 that fixed the borders between Tibet and China.
  During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period of China (907–960), while the fractured political realm of China saw no threat in a Tibet which was in just as much political disarray, there was little in the way of Sino-Tibetan relations. Few documents involving Sino-Tibetan contacts survive from the Song dynasty (960–1279). The Song were far more concerned with countering northern enemy states of the Khitan-ruled Liao dynasty (907–1125) and Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty (1115–1234).
  In 1207, the Mongol ruler Genghis Khan (r. 1206–1227) conquered and subjugated the ethnic Tangut state of the Western Xia (1038–1227). In the same year, he established diplomatic relations with Tibet by sending envoys there. The conquest of the Western Xia alarmed Tibetan rulers, who decided to pay tribute to the Mongols. However, when they ceased to pay tribute after Genghis Khan's death, his successor Ögedei Khan (r. 1229–1241) launched an invasion into Tibet.
  The Mongol prince Godan, a grandson of Genghis Khan, raided as far as Lhasa. During his attack in 1240, Prince Godan summoned Sakya Pandita (1182–1251), leader of the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism, to his court in what is now Gansu in Western China. With Sakya Pandita's submission to Godan in 1247, Tibet was officially incorporated into the Mongol Empire during the regency of Töregene Khatun (1241–1246). Michael C. van Walt van Praag writes that Godan granted Sakya Pandita temporal authority over a still politically fragmented Tibet, stating that "this investiture had little real impact" but it was significant in that it established the unique "Priest-Patron" relationship between the Mongols and the Sakya lamas.
  Starting in 1236, the Mongol prince Kublai, who later ruled as Khagan from 1260–1294, was granted a large appanage in North China by his superior, Ögedei Khan. Karma Pakshi, 2nd Karmapa Lama (1203–1283)—the head lama of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism—rejected Kublai's invitation, so instead Kublai invited Drogön Chögyal Phagpa (1235–1280), successor and nephew of Sakya Pandita, who came to his court in 1253. Kublai instituted a unique relationship with the Phagpa lama, which recognized Kublai as a superior sovereign in political affairs and the Phagpa lama as the senior instructor to Kublai in religious affairs. Kublai also made Drogön Chögyal Phagpa the director of the government agency known as the Bureau of Buddhist and Tibetan Affairs and the ruling priest-king of Tibet, which comprised thirteen different states ruled by myriarchies.
  Kublai Khan did not conquer the Song dynasty in South China until 1279, so Tibet was a component of the early Mongol Empire before it was combined into one of its descendant empires with the whole of China under the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368). Van Praag writes that this conquest "marked the end of independent China," which was then incorporated into the Yuan dynasty that ruled China, Tibet, Mongolia, Korea, parts of Siberia and Upper Burma. Morris Rossabi, a professor of Asian history at Queens College, City University of New York, writes that "Khubilai wished to be perceived both as the legitimate Khan of Khans of the Mongols and as the Emperor of China. Though he had, by the early 1260s, become closely identified with China, he still, for a time, claimed universal rule", and yet "despite his successes in China and Korea, Khubilai was unable to have himself accepted as the Great Khan". Thus, with such limited acceptance of his position as Great Khan, Kublai Khan increasingly became identified with China and sought support as Emperor of China.
caption: Painting of Kublai Khan on a hunting expedition, by the Chinese court artist Liu Guandao, c. 1280
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