National Palace Museum, Taipei

Chabi (Dates of birth/death unknown)
Second Principal Wife of Khubilai Khan

Chabi, Khubilai Khan's second and most influential wife, is portrayed here wearing the elaborate dress and jewelry required of an empress of China, and the unique Mongol headdress known as the boghtagh (worn by many women of the Mongol elite and reputedly in the shape of an inverted boot).

This portrait was probably painted by the Nepalese architect and artist Aniko, who designed a number of buildings in the Mongol's second capital Daidu (present-day Beijing), as well as Shangdu (also known as Xanadu), the site of Khubilai's summer palaces, of which we have many detailed descriptions in the accounts of Marco Polo.

Read two passages about Chabi from the book Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times

Further Reading
"Khubilai Khan and the Women in His Family," by Morris Rossabi
(in Studia Sino-Mongolica: Festschrift fur Herbert Franke, edited by W. Bauer, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, GMBH, 1979, pp. 153-180)