Kublai Khan dies at Dadu

February 18, 1294

The first Yuan emperor, increasingly obese and grieving his favorite wife and son, died at eighty in his palace. His funeral cortege carried him in secret back to Mongolia for burial in an unmarked grave near Genghis Khan's. The Yuan dynasty entered a period of dynastic drift. His death ended the last realistic hope of Mongol unity, as the western khanates had long since gone their own ways.