Pagan kingdom of Burma falls to Mongol invasion

1287

A Yuan army marching south from Yunnan overthrew the kingdom of Pagan, whose king had provoked Kublai Khan by executing Mongol envoys. The vast temple-city of Pagan, with its two thousand brick stupas and pagodas spread across the Irrawaddy plain, was abandoned to monks and cattle within a generation. The kingdom's fall left a power vacuum in mainland Southeast Asia that smaller successor states would contest for centuries.