Many friends who are interested in foreign languages probably know that in many Eastern European and Central Asian languages such as Russian, the name kitay for China, if transliterated, is actually "Khitan". The word "Khitan" is used second only to China in the world's Chinese dialects, and even in languages like English that refer to China as China, there is the word "Cathay" that represents China. The reason why the word "Khitan" has left traces in these languages is not mainly because of the Liao Dynasty established by the Khitans, but because after the fall of the Liao Dynasty, the Western Liao Dynasty moved west to the western region. It can be said that the Western Liao Dynasty was the first dynasty in Chinese history that directly shocked Europeans. So why did such a once-powerful dynasty last less than 100 years, and how did it quickly come to an end?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the Western Liao Dynasty after the Great Stone of Yelü</h1>
Before talking about how the Western Liao declined, let's briefly say a few words about how strong the Western Liao was at its peak and what impact it had on world history. First of all, friends who like the ancient history of the world must know about the Crusades, and the core purpose of the European crusades was to take back Jerusalem from the Islamic regime. At that time, the Seljuk Empire established by the westward-moving Turks in West Asia occupied Jerusalem and placed many obstacles for European Christians to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem, which became an open justification for the Crusades.
In the battle of Katwan, red is the marching route of the Western Liao Army, blue is the marching route of the Seljuk Army, and the blue dotted line is the defeat and retreat route of the Seljuk Army
So this Seljuk empire was indeed a superpower at the time. But in 1141 AD, the Seljuk Empire, which had become europe's number one enemy, was defeated by the Western Liao army led by Yelü Dashi in the Battle of Katwan in present-day Uzbekistan. According to the Islamic historical encyclopedia, the Seljuk Empire lost as much as 100,000 people in the Battle of Katwan, and china's Liao History also records that after this battle, the Seljuk army was "zombie for tens of miles". It can be said that this war directly led to the transformation of the Seljuk Empire from prosperity to decline.
The Seljuk Empire declined rapidly thereafter, and the uninformed Europeans, though happy, were puzzled. Soon after, the Christian Church in India brought the rumors of the Battle of Katwan back to Europe, but after several transmissions, it became similar to a myth: it said that the victory of the Seljuk army was actually led by an Eastern monarch who believed in and defended Christianity, named Presbyter Johannes, who would march on Jerusalem and join the Crusaders. Since then, this legend has been passed down in Europe until the 18th century AD, and has also become the driving force for some Europeans to explore the East in later generations. In the Arab region, Yelü Dashi was once called one of the five greatest monarchs in the world by some historians, and he was regarded as a Chinese monarch at that time. Therefore, it can be said that the Western Liao is a dynasty with a certain status in the history of the world.
At its peak, the Western Liao dynasty had a rough territory
However, after the Great Stone of Yelü, the Western Liao Dynasty also gradually declined. The earliest sign of the decline of the Western Liao was the unusually chaotic palace fighting. After the death of Yelü Dashi, his empress Xiao Ta Buyan and his son Yelü Yilie successively took charge of the Western Liao Dynasty, and the situation was relatively stable during the reign of these two men. However, after the death of Yelü Yilie in 1163, his sons were still very young, so his sister Yelü Pusu completed the reign of Empress Chengtian and took charge of the western Liao dynasty. During the reign of Empress Chengtian, through a series of wrists, she dealt a heavy blow to the Gelulu tribe, which was also relatively powerful in the western region at that time, and sent an army into the Mazar-e-Sharif region of present-day Afghanistan, expanding part of the territory for the Western Liao.
However, after Empress Chengtian seized power, she became tired of her husband Xiao Duolubu, and as a result, she soon had an affair with her husband's brother Park Gu Onlysari. After that, she demoted her husband to the title of King of Dongping, and it wasn't long before she found an excuse to kill him. But in this way, she naturally angered her own and very powerful husband, and Xiao Duolubu's father, Xiao Huoli, quickly launched a mutiny, killing Empress Chengtian and her perverse son Pu Gu only Shari. After this great chaos, the advantages of the Western Liao in the western region were also greatly discounted.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Mr. Dongguo's Tianxi Emperor</h1>
After Empress Chengtian's death, the power of the Western Liao was returned to the descendants of Yelü Yilie. But this process was also accompanied by a bloody killing, and finally Yelü Yilie's second son, Yelü Zhilugu, killed his brother in 1177 AD and ascended the throne of The Western Liao, becoming the Tianxi Emperor of the Western Liao.
But this Tianxi Emperor eventually brought the Western Liao to extinction. During his reign, on the one hand, he was addicted to hunting and entertainment, and had little interest in the politics of the dynasty, on the other hand, he indulged in the illusion of the western alliance lord in the era of his grandfather Yelü Dashi, and launched a series of wars against the surrounding regimes, which greatly depleted the national strength of the Western Liao.
At its peak, the Gur dynasty was roughly territorial
As we have just said, after the Battle of Katwan, the Seljuk Empire declined, and its power gradually withdrew from Central Asia. But after all, the Western Liao is a regime deeply influenced by the Central Plains, and it cannot completely separate from the historical central plains cultural influence area. Therefore, at that time, the Western Liao's sphere of influence was mainly the eastern part of Central Asia, and the western region of Central Asia gradually fell under the control of a new regime, the Gur Dynasty (known as the Guo Er State in the Central Plains historical records).
The rulers of this Ghurid dynasty had a mixed Persian and Turkic background, and they also nominally submitted to the Arab caliphate and expanded in Central Asia in the name of the caliph. During the reign of emperor Tianxi, they clashed with hua lazimo, a vassal of the western Liao at that time, and the king of huarazimo had no choice but to ask for help from the western liao. In 1198, Emperor Tianxi sent his general Tayanggu to lead an army to the west, and soon advanced into the Khorasan region at the junction of today's Iran, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan.
Location in the Khurasan region
However, this place can be said to have been far away from the Western Liao's sphere of influence, so the Western Liao army was fiercely resisted after entering, and soon after it was attacked by the Gur Dynasty and the locals, a large number of Western Liao troops drowned in the Amu Darya River when they retreated, and the number of casualties reached about 12,000. The Tianxi Emperor was shocked to receive the news, but his reaction was not how to fight back against the Gul Dynasty on the battlefield, but to demand that the King of Huarazimo, Ta Qi, compensate for the losses. Of course, Ta Qi lost his consent, and as a result, the two sides actually fought each other, and Hua Lazimo once captured the important town of Western Liaoning, and Bukhara in present-day Uzbekistan caused a rift in the alliance between the two sides, which was originally dominated by Western Liao.
However, at that time, the threat of the Gur Dynasty to the Western Liao was still the main one, so although there was a contradiction with the Hua lazi model, in the face of the Gur dynasty, the Western Liao could only side with the Hua Lazi model. Therefore, in 1203 AD, when Hua Lazimo once again fought against the Gul Dynasty, the Tianxi Emperor once again sent Tayanggu to lead an army to assist in the battle. This army surrounded the Gul army in and over in present-day Afghanistan, eventually annihilating more than 50,000 of its men. However, the Western Liao army itself also suffered heavy casualties, and although this battle was considered to be a victory for the Western Liao, it played a two-defeat effect, and the Western Liao and Gul dynasties both declined after that.
The confrontation between the Western Liao, Huarazm and the Gur Dynasty
Soon, king Mahmud (the son of the previous king Taqi lost) stopped paying tribute to Xiliao, and emperor Tianxi, of course, could not bear this, and sent an emissary, Mahemu Tai, to Huarazimo to collect the tribute. Although Hua Lazimo did not immediately tear his face at that time, returned the arrears of tribute, and nominally reiterated his claim to the Western Liao, Ma Hemu Tai had already seen that something was wrong from Hua Lazimo's attitude, and immediately after returning to China, he reported to the Tianxi Emperor that Hua Lazimo would probably never be called a tribute again.
In 1206, a rebellion broke out in the territory of the Western Liao, buhuala, and Mahama saw the opportunity to capture the local area, which triggered a chain reaction, and the vassal states of the Western Liao turned to Huarazimo, and the power of the Western Liao was declining. In 1209, Gaochang Uighurs, who had also been vassals of the Western Liao in the east, killed the Taishi monk Shaojian sent by the Western Liao and defected to Genghis Khan Temujin. The following year, Mahabharata sent the Tianxi Emperor to Huarazm to ask for tribute to the envoy Tushi Lingchi to be executed, and openly broke with the Western Liao. The Western Liao were completely out of control of the Western Regions. However, for the Western Liao, these changes in the external environment have not actually shaken its national capital, and the bane that really led the Western Liao to its demise was actually the Prince of Naiman who took in the "Mr. Dongguo" by the Tianxi Emperor.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" how does the law > of ququ destroy the Western Liao? </h1>
This law of resignation comes from the Western Mongolian Plateau, the Turkic tribe of the Naiman, and this Naiman is also a very interesting tribe. First of all, although they are in the Mongolian steppe, they have been influenced by Christianity since when, and there are a large number of Christian Nestorian believers (Jingjiao) in the tribe, and the protagonist of our section is a Christian. In addition, this tribe also had writing relatively early, and they used the Wu'er script to spell out their own language.
At that time, the Naiman tribe was arguably the strongest tribe in the Mongolian steppe besides the Temujin Beggars. During Temujin's rise, a series of opponents he defeated, including his righteous brother Zamuhe, later fled to Narambu. In 1204, the leader of the Naiman clan, Sun Khan, joined forces with Zamuhe and others to fight a decisive battle against Temujin, but was ultimately defeated and killed. After that, his son Qu Chulu began a journey of exile. A large number of the Naimanbu were later incorporated by Temujin, among which the Naiman's master, Tata Tong'a, later created the Mongolian script for the Mongols.
Before its demise, the Naimanbu was in the eastern part of the Western Liao
Qu Chulu fled all the way to the west, and soon fled to The Western Liao. As we mentioned above, at this time, the Western Liao was in a period of internal and external difficulties and the collapse of the position of the Western Regions Alliance. And the Naimanbu was also one of the most powerful tribes in the grassland before, so the arrival of Qu Chulu made the Tianxi Emperor overjoyed, believing that he had seized the straw of survival and could use the strength of the Naimanbu to re-overturn in the Western Regions.
Therefore, he immediately married his daughter Princess Hun ku to Qu Chulu and gave him the surname Xiao, which was to give him the status of emperor of the Western Liao. He not only obeyed the request of Princess Hun kuo, abandoned Christianity, and converted to Buddhism believed in by the Western Liao imperial family, but also told the Tianxi Emperor that he could return to the area near the homeland of the Naimanbu and gather the old ones to help the Tianxi Emperor revitalize the Western Liao. He openly stated that as long as the Tianxi Emperor allowed him to gather the old ministry, then as long as the Tianxi Emperor was alive, he would be loyal wholeheartedly and would never renege on his word.
When emperor Tianxi saw that Qu Chulu was so loyal, he believed him and asked him to go back and collect the rest. And Qu Chulu did quickly gather an army. However, after gaining his own power, he did not return to serve the Tianxi Emperor, but immediately contacted the King of Huarazimo, Mahmud, and agreed with him that the two sides would join forces to destroy the Western Liao, and then divide their territory.
Until the 16th century, the maps published in Europe also depicted the Western Liao (Kara Kitay, a large yellow area directly above)
In 1210 AD, Qu Chulu took advantage of the Western Liao army to quell the rebellion of the Western Qarakhanids in the west, and rebelled in the east. When emperor Tianxi hurriedly transferred his army into the east to suppress the rebellion, Hua Lazimo sent troops to the Western Liao. Emperor Tianxi was busy and joined the general Tayanggu in attacking the Hua lazimo army. But they were soon defeated at the present-day Kyrgyzstan territory of dá Rus, and Tayanggu was killed. However, when the Tianxi Emperor led the remnants back to the capital Husi Erduo, the residents of the city were ready to surrender Hua Lazimo, so they closed the city gates tightly to prevent them from entering. As a result, the Tianxi Emperor was forced to carry out a 16-day siege battle in his capital, although he finally succeeded in breaking the city, but this battle caused extremely heavy casualties, and it can be said that the Western Liao was already dying at this time.
A year later, Qu Chulu raided emperor Tianxi and took him captive. Although he did not kill the Tianxi Emperor immediately, he honored him as the Emperor Taishang, but after that, the power of the Western Liao fell into the hands of Qu Qilu. Two years later, emperor Tianxi died, and Qu Chulu officially became the Great Khan of Western Liao, and Western Liao was effectively extinct by this time. After that, Qu Chulu used troops everywhere to try to establish a rule in the whole Western Liao. However, the army burned and looted everywhere it went, and even executed its opponents with crosses, leaving the Western Liao in a state of disarray. In this way, the Western Liao naturally had no ability to resist the Mongol army a few years later, and Hua Lazimo also sent troops at the same time at this time, Qu Chulu was soon defeated and killed, and the territory of western Liaoning was occupied by the Mongol and Huarazimo armies respectively, and the Western Liao Dynasty, which once shocked Europe and Asia, finally withdrew from the historical stage in a drama similar to "Mr. Dongguo and the Wolf". (Image from the Internet, infringement notice deleted)