March 1297, they accepted the voluntary submission of King Kyawswa of Pagan although he controlled little beyond the capital city of Pagan (Bagan). But Kyawswa was overthrown nine months later, and the Mongols were forced to intervene, leading to their second invasion in 1300–01. Marco Polo reported the first invasions (1277–87) in his travelogue, Il Milione. The Burmese referred to the invaders as the Taruk (after the central Asian Turkic troops that largely made up the Mongol invasion army); today, the term Taruk () refers to the Han Chinese instead. King Narathihapate is unkindly remembered in Burmese history as Taruk-Pye Min, ("the King who Fled from the Taruk"). Background Pagan and Dali In the 13th century, the Pagan Empire, along with the Khmer Empire, was one of the two main empires in mainland Southeast Asia. For much of its history, Pagan's neighbor to the northeast was not China but the independent Dali Kingdom and its predecessor Nanzhao, both with Dali as their capital city. Dali-based kingdoms were a power in their own right, at times allying themselves with the Tibetan Empire to their west and at other times with China's Tang and Song dynasties. Indeed, Nanzhao's mounted armies ventured deep into what is today Burma and may have been behind the founding of the medieval city of Pagan and the Pagan Dynasty itself. Between the newly conquered Mongol territory and Pagan were a wide swath of borderlands stretching from present-day Dehong, Baoshan and Lincang prefectures in Yunnan as well as the Wa and Palaung regions (presumably in present-day northern Shan State), which Pagan and Dali had both claimed and exercised overlapping spheres of influence. Then as now, the borderlands mostly consist of forbidding terrains of high mountain ranges. Mongol conquest of Dali The Mongol Empire first arrived at the doorstep of the Pagan Empire in 1252 by invading the Dali Kingdom in its attempt to outflank Song China. The Mongol armies captured the capital, Dali, on 7 January 1253, and went on to pacify much of the kingdom by 1257. The arrival of the Mongols did not initially upset the existing order at the borderlands as the Mongols were intent on finishing off the Song. For the next dozen years, they consolidated their hold over the newly conquered land, which not only provided them with a base from which to attack the Song from the rear but also was strategically