Many people may have heard of the Khitan people, mainly in Jin Yong's martial arts novel "Tianlong Babu", because qiao Feng, the protagonist of "Tianlong Babu", is a Khitan.
In ancient mainland times, the Khitan were once a very famous and very powerful minority. In 907, Liao Taizu Yelü Abaoji became the Khan of the Khitan Dynasty, and in 916 he was founded with the name "Khitan", and the capital was Set in Linhuang Province (present-day BalinZuo Banner, Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia). In 947, Emperor Taizong of Liao led an army south to the Central Plains, captured Fenjing (汴京, in modern Kaifeng, Henan), and ascended the throne as emperor in Fenjing, changing the name of the country to "Da Liao" and the era name of "Datong". In 983, it was renamed the Great Khitan (大 Khitan). During the liao dynasty, its territory stretched from the Sea of Japan in the east, to the Altai Mountains in the west, to the Erguna River and the Waixing'an Mountains in the north, and to the Baigou River in central Hebei in the south.
Many countries such as Russia, Greece, Iran, Turkey, etc., still call us China, there is a clear "Khitan" sound in the pronunciation, which is actually the relationship between the powerful Liao state in ancient times. But in modern times, among the 56 ethnic groups on the mainland, there is no Khitan clan, so where has this Khitan clan gone? How did it suddenly disappear?
The original meaning of Khitan is "iron", which means solid. This is a fierce and courageous people who grew up on the northern steppes. They are strong and brave, brave and good at war. The Liao Dynasty they established lasted for more than 200 years in northern China, and at its peak, it once dominated half of China.
According to the Book of Wei, as early as 1400 years ago, the Khitan had already appeared as a people in northern China. The Khitan were originally divided into 8 tribes, and the tribal leaders elected an ally as the leader every 3 years.
During the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang, the Khitan chieftain Brother Goku led his clan to submit to the Tang Dynasty, where the Tang Dynasty set up the Governor's Mansion of Songmo and divided the area into 10 prefectures, and gave the surname of Duke Li. The Khitan regularly paid tribute to the Tang government and received the daily necessities, weapons, etc. they needed from there. However, it is amazing that since the Ming Dynasty, the Khitans have disappeared, and today, among the 56 ethnic groups in China, there is no Great Khitan that was famous in the past.
The Khitan state has disappeared, so where did the Khitan as a nation, with a population of millions, go? In this regard, historians speculate that there are roughly four possibilities.
First, the Khitan people who lived in the ancestral land of the Khitan gradually forgot their ethnic origins and merged with other ethnic groups.
Second, after the fall of the Western Liao, most of the Khitans in northern Mobei migrated westward to Central Asia and were fully Islamized.
Third, after the outbreak of the Jin-Mongolian War, some khitans who "swore not to eat golden millet" defected to the Mongols and scattered throughout the country when they accompanied the Mongol army in their eastern expeditions to the west.
Fourth, after the Jurchen Jin Dynasty replaced the Liao Dynasty of the Khitans, they ordered the elimination of the Khitans who rebelled, and one of the killings seen in the history books lasted for more than 1 month. At the same time that the Khitan nation disappeared, the Khitan script also disappeared, so far no books written in Khitan have been found, and almost all the Khitan scripts are found on inscriptions, all of which are epitaphs.
The Chinese nation was formed by the fusion of many ethnic groups in the land of Shenzhou over thousands of years, and in the long volume of history of these thousands of years, the Khitan nation rose up and mysteriously disappeared. As for the reasons for its disappearance, there is no record in history. This situation has further aroused people's curiosity about what caused these Khitans to disappear en masse, and the question is still being studied.
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