Khanbaliq (Chinese: 汗八里; pinyin: Hánbālǐ; Mongolian: ᠬᠠᠭᠠᠨ ᠪᠠᠯᠭᠠᠰᠤ, Qaɣan balɣasu) or Dadu of Yuan (Chinese: 元大都; pinyin: Yuán Dàdū; Mongolian: ᠳᠠᠶ᠋ᠢᠳᠤ, Dayidu) was the winter capital[1] of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty in what is now Beijing, the capital of China today.

The Secretariat directly administered the Central Region (腹裏) of the Yuan dynasty (comprising present-day Beijing, Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, and parts of Henan and Inner Mongolia) and dictated policies for the other provinces.

Zhongdu, the "Central Capital" of the Jurchen Jin dynasty, was located at a nearby site now part of Xicheng District.

It was destroyed by Genghis Khan in 1215 when the Jin court began contemplating a move south to a more defensible capital such as Kaifeng.

[6] In 1264, Kublai Khan visited the Daming 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.

Yan's powerbase lay in Shuntian and he quickly resolved to move his capital north from Yingtian (Nanjing) to the ruins at Beiping.

Despite the capture and renaming of the city by the Ming, the name Daidu[19] remained in use among the Mongols of the Mongolia-based Northern Yuan dynasty.

[20] The lament of the last Yuan emperor, Toghon Temür, concerning the loss of Khanbaliq and Shangdu, is recorded in many Mongolian historical chronicles such as the Altan Tobchi and the Asarayci Neretu-yin Teuke.

[19] Khanbaliq remained the standard name for Beijing in Persian and the Turkic languages of Central Asia and the Middle East for quite a long time.

It was, for instance, the name used in both the Persian and Turkic versions of Ghiyāth al-dīn Naqqāsh's account of the 1419–22 mission of Shah Rukh's envoys to the Ming capital.

It was not until the Jesuit Matteo Ricci's first visit to Beijing in 1598 that he encountered Central Asian visitors ("Arabian Turks, or Mohammedans" in his description[22]) who confirmed that the city they were in was "Cambaluc."