Machine summary:
· If, as the great Khan of the Mongols, Qubilai strove to assert his authority and thereby preserve the solidarity of the Chingiz khanid em• pire, as the heir to the Chinese Imperial tradition, he established law and order in the country, improved the system of communications, built roads bordered by shady trees and punctuated with caravansarais, reformed the postal service maintained by relays of horses, completed the great canal by which the rice of Central China used to reach the capital Peking, adopted collectivist legislation and the practice of purchasing and stock• ing the crops in years of surplus and distributing them free of cost among the people in periods of drought with a view to fighting the menace of famines, instructed his viceroys to attend to the needs of che aged scholars and of orphans and invalid persons and above all inaugurated a regime of broad tolerance in which all religions could exist and flourish on a footing of equality.
In the period of thirty-eight years, from the death of Qu bilai to the accession of Toghan Timur, though the skeleton of the empire was main• tained, its expansion came to a standstill, that rigorous discipline of the Mongols embodied in the Yassaq which made Jaghatai apologize like a criminal to his younger brother Ogodai, who was the great Khan, for having beaten him in swiftness in a horse-ride 1 .