The lands won and held by Alexander comprised a mere fragment of the world, compared to the immensities conquered by Chinghiz Khan, and further enlarged by his conqueror sons, and still further enlarged by his conqueror grandsons, into the unimaginably immense Mongol Empire over which the grandson Kubilai reigned as Khan of All Khans. I believe that not the ancient Pharaones nor the ambitious Alexander nor the avaricious Caesars could have dreamed that so much world existed, so they could hardly have dreamed of acquiring it. As for all the later Western rulers, their ambitions and acquisitions have been even more paltry.
Alongside the Mongol Empire, the entire continent called Europe seems merely a small and crowded peninsula, and all its nations, like those of the Levant, only so many peevishly self-important little provinces. If the history keepers will continue to dignify Alexander as the Great, surely they ought to acknowledge Kublai as the immeasurably Greater, the most far-flung empire ever ruled by one man in all the years in which the world of men has existed.
”- Gary Jennings, The Journeyer
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