World roundup: May 5 2025

Stories from Israel-Palestine, India, Romania, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

May 5, 1260: Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, is crowned as the fifth Great Khan (khagan) of the Mongol Empire, a position he held until his death in 1294. Perhaps best known in the West as the Khan who received the Polo family at his court in the 1270s, Kublai is one of the most consequential figures in Mongolian and Eurasian history. On the one hand his accession sparked a civil war that contributed significantly to the ongoing disintegration of the Mongol empire. On the other, Kublai conquered the Southern Song Dynasty, reunifying China for the first time since at least the Jin conquest of northern China in 1115 and arguably for the first time since the fall of the Tang Dynasty in 907. In doing so, Kublai had to reconfigure the Mongolian army on the fly to overcome massive logistical challenges inherent to operating in southern China. He then shifted the imperial court from the Mongolian heartland to the Chinese city of Khanbaliq (modern Beijing) and is therefore considered the founder of China’s Yuan Dynasty.

The Yuan-era artist Araniko’s famous 1294 portrait of Kublai, completed posthumously but depicting him as a much younger man (Wikimedia Commons)

May 5, 1862: A Mexican republican army commanded by Ignacio Zaragoza defeats a larger French force under Charles de Lorencez at the Battle of Puebla. The unexpected Mexican victory delayed a French march on Mexico City, though with reinforcements the French army eventually did take the capital and installed a Habsburg noble as the short-lived Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico. The republican side ultimately defeated the French and overthrew Maximilian in 1867, and this early, morale-boosting victory was made a Mexican national holiday: Cinco de Mayo.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

Unknown gunmen killed at least one person when they attacked a nightclub in Damascus on Monday, marking the second time such a facility has been attacked in the Syrian capital in about a week. While Syrian authorities say they’ve arrested the people responsible for the previous attack, this second incident is likely to raise fears that the country’s jihadist security forces—or their ex-rebel fellow travelers—are carrying out these attacks themselves.