into four khanates beginning with the succession war in 1260. The Mongol leaders Genghis Khan, Ögedei Khan, Möngke Khan, and Hulagu Khan were able to conquer the Tangut-led Western Xia dynasty and the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty in northern China, as well as invading Korea under the Goryeo dynasty, turning it into a vassal state that was ruled indirectly. The Mongols withdrew after Korean monarchs agreed to move its capital back to the mainland from Ganghwa Island. It was the Yuan founding emperor Kublai who finally conquered the Southern Song dynasty in 1279. Kublai was an ambitious leader who used ethnic Korean, Han, and Mongol troops to invade Japan on two separate occasions, yet both campaigns were ultimately failures. The Yuan dynasty continued the maritime trading legacy of the Tang and Song dynasties. The Yuan ship captain known as Wang Dayuan (fl. 1328–1339) was the first from China to travel by sea through the Mediterranean upon his visit to Morocco in North Africa. One of the diplomatic highlights of this period was the Chinese embassy to the Khmer Empire under Indravarman III, led by the envoy Zhou Daguan (1266–1346) from the years 1296 to 1297. In his report to the Yuan court, Zhou Daguan described places such as Angkor Wat and everyday life of the Khmer Empire. It was during the early years of Kublai Khan's reign that Marco Polo (1254–1324) visited China, presumably as far as the previous Song capital at Hangzhou, which he described with a great deal of admiration for its scenic beauty. Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty (1368–1644), after the Han and Tang dynasties, was another high point in Chinese power. The first Ming emperor, the Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368–1398), was the head of the Red Turban Rebellion when he routed the rival rebel Chinese leaders and then forced the Mongols of the Yuan dynasty to flee north, back into the Mongolian steppe. The Ming dynasty made a string of conflicts with the Mongols thereafter, some of which were successful, and others of which were not. An example of the latter would be the Tumu Crisis in 1449, where the Zhengtong Emperor was captured by the Mongols and not released until a year later. The Hongwu Emperor allowed foreign envoys to visit the capitals at Nanjing and Beijing, but enacted strict legal prohibitions of private maritime trade by Chinese merchants wishing to travel abroad. After the death