Khubilai Khan and Chabi on a Cookout (detail), Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

The Mongol Way of Life

This is a fanciful depiction of Khubilai Khan and Chabi, his second wife (he had four principal wives), preparing a cookout.

In reality, their many retainers and cooks would have prepared the actual cookouts and elaborate feasts associated with the Mongol empire. But the image does offer a fairly accurate view of a ger (also called yurt, in Turkish) — the tent that was so indispensable to the Mongols' pastoral-nomadic way of life.