Mongols sack Pagan

1287

A Yuan expedition into Burma drove King Narathihapate from his capital at Pagan. He earned the nickname the king who ran from the Chinese. The vast temple-city, left without royal patronage, slipped toward abandonment as smaller successor states fought over the Irrawaddy plain. Over two thousand temples and pagodas, many of extraordinary refinement, still stand in the dusty landscape as testament to Pagan's vanished grandeur.