Khitan people
The Song Dynasty, which had always been regarded as a militarily weak dynasty among the Central Plains Dynasties, had been threatened by the Liao, Jin and Mongols since its founding, and was eventually destroyed by the Mongols. In the confrontation with the northern nomads, the Liao state created by the Khitans was the first enemy of the Great Song Dynasty, and at the same time the enemy with the greatest influence on the Northern Song Dynasty. This vast empire, which stretched across northern China and North Asia, was long recognized by Westerners as the true "China", so much so that the Khitan became the name of China for many years.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="3" >, from legend to reality</h1>
Each ethnic group has its own creation myth, for example, the Han people have always regarded Nuwa as the ancestor of human women, and the Westerners have regarded Adam and Eve as their ancestors. The Khitan also have such a legend, that a human god and a fairy in the heavens knew and fell in love with each other in the beautiful land of northeast China, and they had eight sons, which were the ancestors of the eight major tribes of the Khitan tribe. Since the gods and goddesses rode white horses and green bulls when they met, the green bull and white horses were also sacrifices that the Khitan had to use whenever they made important sacrifices.
The legend of the white horse green cow
After the birth of the Khitan people, they gradually grew stronger during the Tang Dynasty and took advantage of the Anshi Rebellion to develop their own strength. In the hundreds of years of tribal battles, the Yelü Abaoji of the Die thorn tribe came out of nowhere, ending the struggle between the tribes, and in 907, the same year as the fall of the Tang Dynasty, the state was established, and the name of the country was Khitan. During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period when the Central Plains were in chaos, the Khitan seized the opportunity to launch an attack to the south.
In 936, Shi Jingyao, the Duke of Later Tang Zhao, rebelled against Tang, and when he was besieged by the official army, Shi Jingyao asked the Khitan for help, in order to cede the land of Yanzhao, that is, "Yanyun Sixteen Prefectures", as a reward for the Khitan troops, and with the assistance of the Khitan troops, Shi Jingyao successfully raised an army and established the Later Jin. In 947, the Khitan Khan Yelü Deguang led a large army to the south to attack the Later Jin, and changed the Khan to emperor in Kaifeng, and the name of the country was changed to Daliao. Since then, the mountain and river barriers in northern China to resist the invasion of nomadic peoples from the south have been effortlessly acquired by the Khitans, which directly caused the Great Song Dynasty to suffer successive southward invasions by the northern nomadic regime for hundreds of years.
The Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun were ceded to the Khitans
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="9" > second, it quickly declined after its peak</h1>
After the establishment of the Liao State, under the leadership of successive emperors, it formed a confrontation between the north and the south with the Great Song Dynasty. In 962, Yelüxian of Liaojingzong, known as the initiator of the great Liao Dynasty, ascended the throne, and Yelüxian was not eager to establish outstanding military achievements to the outside world, but to promote the external principle of "not taking the initiative to conquer the Central Plains". This was inherited by his successor, Emperor Yelü Longxu of Liao.
"Yan Yuntai" Liao Jingzong
During the reign of Emperor Shengzong, the famous politician Empress Xiao held the supreme power of the Liao for many years, and the Liao state, under the leadership of Emperor Shengzong and Empress Xiao, marched to its peak era and won many battles in the war against the Song. It was not until 1004, after the signing of the Alliance of the Two Kingdoms, that the Song and Liao dynasties ended decades of large-scale war, and the two sides began to enter a period of peaceful coexistence for more than a hundred years.
Empress Xiao
After the death of Emperor Shengzong of Liao in 1031, the heyday of the Liao state was no longer there and entered a period of decline. His successor, Emperor Xingzong of Liao, fought against the Song and Western Xia many times, and although the war was won, it made the imperial court even more impoverished, and the people complained. The subsequent emperors could not be as powerful as Jingzong and Shengzong, and the Jurchens born in the northeast began to rise, just like the rise of the Khitan in those years. In 1114, the Jurchen leader Quanyan Aku raised an army against the Liao, and the following year established the Great Jin State, which was immediately surrounded by the Great Song in the south, the Western Xia in the northwest, and the Great Jin in the northeast. After the Jurchens raised an army, they gradually encroached on the territory of the Liao state, and in 1125 the Liao was destroyed by jin, and at this point, the Khitan Empire, which had dominated northern China and North Asia for hundreds of years, came to an end.
A real actress in a film and television drama
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="16" > third, the final outcome of the Khitans</h1>
After the fall of the Liao state in 1125, the Khitan people did not give up their efforts to restore the country, just as after the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty, Zhao Zhuo established the Southern Song Dynasty in Lin'an, and the Khitan nobles also hoped to reorganize the rivers and mountains in order to make a comeback. At this time, an important Khitan nobleman appeared, and he was Yelü Dashi. As early as 1122, when Emperor Tianzuo fled, Yelü Dashi, out of the consideration that "the country cannot be without a monarch for a day", together with all the ministers, supported Yelü Chun as emperor, which was the "Northern Liao" regime that existed for only one year. In 1125, Yelü Dashi led the Remnants of the Khitan army to flee westward and garrisoned the former northwestern town of Ketun City in the Liao State, where Yelü Dashi gathered officials and tribal leaders of various towns in the western part of Daliao, which had not yet been occupied, gathered tens of thousands of soldiers and horses, and proclaimed himself king at Kedun City. After several years of development, the Khitan controlled parts of present-day Mongolia and Xinjiang.
Khitan nobles in portraits
Yelü Dashi understood that at this time, the founding of the Jin Dynasty was the heyday of the army, so if Daliao wanted to develop, he could only go west, so Yelü Dashi led his troops to the west, hoping to open up new development space in the vast Central Asia. In 1130, Yelü Dashi slaughtered the white horse and green cow to make a pre-conquest sacrifice, which was the most honorable sacrifice ceremony of the Khitans. He then led his troops to the western region and advanced towards the territory that now belonged to the Qarakhanid dynasty. Yelü Dashi knew that the Qarakhanid Dynasty was in a period of decline, which was the perfect time to expand the territory of the Western Liao, and at the most smooth time of the march, Yelü Dashi even led his troops over the Tianshan Mountains and continued to attack the Qarakhanid Dynasty in Central Asia, until the Qarakhanid Dynasty raised the strength of the whole country to resist, and the army led by Yelü Dashi was repelled due to insufficient strength. At the same time as Yelü Dashi marched into the western region, the Western Liao also achieved many victories in the battle against the Jin State in the east. In 1132, Yelü Dashi ascended the throne as emperor at Yemili City in present-day northwestern Xinjiang, marking the official founding of the Western Liao.
After the founding of the Western Liao Dynasty, Yelü Dashi imitated the old system of the Liao State and stipulated Chinese as the official language of the country. In the following 10 years, Yelü Dashi continued to lead troops to fight everywhere, and a large area of the Gaochang Uighur state and the Qarakhanid Dynasty in the western region was occupied by the Western Liao, and in the period of its largest territory, it covered an area of about 3.5 million square kilometers, and it should be known that the Southern Song Dynasty was only 2 million square kilometers at its peak. Yelü Dashi's decades of western expedition career, so that the Western Liao in Central Asia and even Western Europe fame, and even in Europe circulated a large number of legends about the Western Liao, today's Russian, Arabic and other languages, Chinese pronunciation is incomparably close to the pronunciation of "Khitan ", which is the Western European and Arab world of the Western Liao state of the name. In 1143, Yelü Dashi died, and during his 20 years of reign, he not only saved the Khitan tribe from the brink of extinction, but also established such a huge empire in the western region, which can be described as a well-deserved male lord.
The Great Stone of Yerushalayim created the Western Liao
However, more than 30 years after the death of Yelü Dashi, civil unrest broke out in the Western Liao, and the Western Liao Dynasty was invaded and invaded by many countries in Central Asia, especially the Flower Thorn Model State, which became the most troublesome opponent and enemy of the Western Liao. This Central Asian country, which was originally nestled under the powerful Western Liao Empire, has gradually shown signs of hegemony, and in order to get rid of the control of the Western Liao, Hua Thorn Zimo gradually tore his face with the Western Liao and counterattacked the Western Liao. In the decades that followed, many of the states that were originally subordinate to the Western Liao began to rebel like flower thorns, and by 1211, the Western Liao was only a vassal state of the Eastern Qarakhanid Dynasty.
After entering the 13th century, the Mongols began to gallop across the Central and North Asian continents, and in 1218 Genghis Khan led an army to conquer the Western Liao, which was destroyed by the Mongol Iron Horse in the same year. In 1224, the Khitan nobles re-established political power, which was the "Later Western Liao", but it soon collapsed, and the Khitan regime disappeared completely.
"Stop Killing Order" Genghis Khan
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="25" > Wen Shijun said</h1>
As a great empire that has been running rampant in North and Central Asia for hundreds of years, both the Liao State and the later Western Liao Empire have had a major impact on Chinese history. Although the Liao state was destroyed in 1125, no one thought that an exiled nobleman would build another Liao in the west and even survive for a hundred years. It was not until the 13th century that the Mongol Iron Horse swept through Eurasia that the Khitan regime completely withdrew from the stage of history.
However, although the Khitan regime collapsed, the Khitan did not disappear. In fact, after the Liao state was destroyed by the Jin Dynasty, in addition to a part of the Khitan people who migrated west with Yelü Dashi, some of them also stayed in their homeland. Because of their national hatred with the Jurchens, most of these remnants submitted to the later Mongol regime and followed the Mongols on their crusades. For example, in the army of Kublai Khan, the ancestor of the Later Yuan Dynasty, who invaded Dali in the south, there were a considerable number of Khitan soldiers. After the destruction of Dali, some of these people remained in the local area and became the Yuan Dynasty's propaganda envoy in Dali. Their descendants have survived to this day, and according to scholars' research documents, archaeological remains, and DNA comparisons, the "I" of Shidian, Changning, Longling and other counties in the Baoshan region of Yunnan are all Khitan descendants.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="28" > references</h1>
Chengtian: The Khitan Empire, China International Broadcasting Press, 2013.
Su Ling: A Brief History of the Khitan Dynasty, Democracy and Construction Press, 2016.
Huang Zhenyun, "Yunnan 'I' and the Northern Daur and Khitan Ethnic Origins Tongkao", Journal of Eastern Liaoning University, October 2015.
(Author: Haoran Wenshi Little Sun)
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