Posts from May 5, 2026

Alauddin Khalji's market reforms weren't about welfare—they were about power. A look at the ruthless economics that kept an empire armed and fed.

On 5 May 1260, Kublai Khan was proclaimed Great Khan at Shangdu - the place Coleridge would later imagine as Xanadu. He went on to conquer all of China, found the Yuan dynasty, and invent fiat money. He also started the process that ended his grandfather's empire.