Khan-Baliq [peking, Beijing] Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

‘That land of China is of vast extent, and abounding in produce, fruits, grain, gold and silver.
In this respect there is no country in the world that can rival it. It is traversed by the river called
‘Water of Life’, which rises in some mountains, called the ‘Mountain of Apes’, near the city of Khan-Baliq.’ Travels of Ibn Battuta

Thus the name derives, from some heard about,
And might have been placed, in some misnomeric
Gesture of unknown times, or who retains the title,
Of ‘Khan’, when the great khan called a someone,
He said, ‘he was the bigger khan than the khan’,
A Pashtun, and as it is said, the turban of great khan,
From head slipped down to the shoulder, the shoulder
As bent, and was as strong before, and still is spined,
In the wrought iron of times, heading forth, although
Nowhere, but today’s winds could not hold, drops
Of rain, as it got too pregnant with terrible heaviness.


The name Khanbaliq comes from the Mongolian and Uyghur words khan and balik ('town', 'permanent settlement') : 'City of the Khan'. It was actually in use among the Eastern Turks and Mongols before the fall of Zhongdu, in reference to the Jin emperors. It is traditionally written as Cambaluc in English, after its spelling in Rustichello's retelling of Marco Polo's travels. (The Travels also uses the spellings Cambuluc and Kanbalu.) In 1264, Kublai Khan visited the Daning Palace on Jade Island in Taiye Lake and was so enchanted with the site that he directed his capital to be constructed around the garden. The chief architect and planner of the capital was Liu Bingzhong, who also served as supervisor of its construction. His student Guo Shoujing and the Muslim Ikhtiyar al-Din were also involved.

Yeheidie'erding (也黑迭兒丁, Yěhēidié'érdīng, ? - 1312) , also known as Amir al-Din (Arabic: أمير الدين‎, Amīr al-Dīn) , was a Muslim architect who helped design and led the construction of the capital of the Yuan Dynasty, Khanbaliq, located in present-day Beijing, the current capital of the People's Republic of China. Source: Wikipedia

Sadiqullah Khan
Gilgit
June 9,2015.