ABSTRACT
Following Genghis Khan's death in 1227, his son ōgōdei became khan. ōgōdei is said to have built many of Karakorum's first permanent structures (his father had relied primarily on caravan wagons to house his followers). About 1254 Friar Willem van Ruysbroeck, an envoy of King Louis IX of France, made a 5,000-mile journey to the Far East to meet with Asian leaders on behalf of his monarch. Inspired at first to meet Sartach, a leader of Tartar troops in Russia who had converted to Christianity, Ruysbroeck went on to visit ōgōdei Khan at his court in Karakorum as well. His account of the visit, written upon his return to France in 1255 as a report to King Louis, predates that of Marco Polo by almost fifty years.
