The Chinese historians of the reign of Qūbīlāy Khān make it a ground of complaint against this monarch that he did not employ Chinese officials in place of the immigrant Turks and Persians. [977] The exalted position occupied by Sayyid Ajall and the facilities of communication between China and the West established by Mongol conquest, attracted a number of such persons into the north of China, and it was probably as a result of these immigrations that those scattered Muhammadan communities began to be formed, which have grown to large proportions in most of the provinces of China. Marco Polo, who enjoyed the favour of Qūbīlāy Khān and lived in China from 1275 to 1292, notes the presence of Muhammadans in various parts of Yunnan. [978] At the beginning of the fourteenth century, all the inhabitants of Talifu, the capital of Yunnan, are said by a contemporary historian to have been Musalmans; [979] and Ibn Baṭūṭah, who visited several coast towns in China towards the middle of the fourteenth century, speaks of the hearty welcome he received from his co-religionists, [980] and reports that “In every town there is a special quarter for the Muslims, inhabited solely by them, where they have their mosques; they are honoured and respected by the Chinese.” [981] Up to this period the Muhammadans appear to have been looked upon as a foreign community in China, but after the expulsion of the Mongol dynasty in the latter part of the fourteenth century they received no fresh addition to their numbers from abroad, in consequence of the policy of isolation which the Chinese government now adopted; and being thus cut off from communication with their co-religionists in other countries, they tended, in most parts of the empire, gradually to become merged into the mass of the native population, through their marriages with Chinese women and their adoption of Chinese habits and manners. The founder of the new Ming dynasty, the emperor Hungwu, extended to them many privileges, and their flourishing condition during the period that this dynasty lasted (1368–1644) is shown by the large number of mosques erected.