Majapahit was founded by Raden Wijaya, who used Kublai Khan's punitive expedition to crush the usurper Jayakatwang and then betrayed the Mongols, driving them from Java with over 3,000 dead and killing the last campaign of Kublai's reign.

97:37As a result of this control, the power and wealth of Singer Sari grew dramatically. But there were much larger empires in the region who had a strong interest in making sure that the flow of goods by sea could pass through these narrow straits. And as the 13th century came to an end, the kingdom of Singari came into direct conflict with one of these much larger powers. In the year 1289,

98:33King Keranagara of the Javanese Kingdom of Singari received a group of ambassadors at his court. They came finely dressed, horty, and proud, and said that they had come to speak on behalf of the world's most powerful man. That was the Mongol Emperor of China, Kubla Khn. As we saw in our 19th episode, from their humble beginnings on the Mongolian step, over the last century, the Mongols had embarked on a remarkable series of

99:20campaigns to conquer all of China, Persia, and the Middle East, along with much of what is today Russia, and Eastern Europe. Founded by the warlord Chingis Khan, the Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous land empire in history and combined the speed and power of Mongol horsemen with the craftsmanship of Persia and the ingenuity and manpower of China. By this point, the enormous Mongol Empire had split into four separate

99:58domains. But the largest of these was still the world's biggest empire at the time. That was the one ruled from China by the grandson of Chingis Khan, the emperor Kubla. This hybrid Chinese Mongolian power was known as the Yuan dynasty. But by this time, the empire had begun to struggle. The emperor Kubli was now well into his 70s and his domain was plagued by political and economic problems.

100:40The Mongol Empire had been built on conquest, but now its terrifying engine seemed to have run out of fuel. 8 years earlier, Kubla's forces had for the second time failed to capture a foothold on the islands of Japan. His invasions of Burma and Vietnam had also fizzled out with the Mongol forces struggling in the tropical heat. The aging Mongol Emperor desperately needed a victory, and he had been

101:15increasingly casting his gaze southwards across the sea and towards the wealthy island of Java. The Chinese chronicle, the Yuani, or History of Yuan, describes this strange and farway land. The customs and products of this land are not much known, but as a rule, the barbarian countries over the sea produce many rare and valuable things which fetch a high price in China. The inhabitants are strange and their nature

101:50and speech are not understood by the Chinese. By that time, Java's kingagara had been defying Kubla Khan for nearly a decade. Two previous ambassadorial visits to his court had been sent home without any tribute for the Mongol Khn, and the defiance of this small island was beginning to make the empire look weak. For this reason, in 1289, Kubla sent a new party of envoys to Java to meet with the king and give him a

102:32final ultimatum. They demanded that King Kerton swear an oath of feelalty to the Mongol Emperor, pay him a hefty tribute, and send members of his royal family to the Mongol court in China to act as hostages. But when these ambassadors arrived, they would not find King Keranagara in an agreeable mood. The Javanese of the time considered repeated requests of this kind to be exceedingly rude. To Perez writes about the proud nature