Distant Savior: The Great Stone of Jerusalem, the Last Lord

In Europe in the 12th and 17th centuries, for more than 500 years, there was a legend that there was a Christian "sacrificial king John" in the far East who could lead Christians to liberate the holy city of Jerusalem and help Europe get rid of Muslim infestations. Central Asia, which was about the same period as the Liao and Northern Song Dynasties, when there was a Seljuk Empire.

The Seljuks were a Branch of the Turks, whose state was named after the chieftain Seljuk.

Seljuk's grandson Tughluk Burke first occupied Khorasan and then conquered all of Persia;

He then invaded Baghdad, took control of the Abbasid caliphate, and made the princes kings of a vast area from the Levant to Central Asia. Caliph Qaimu even made Tugruk Burk sultan and called him "King of the East and the West."

Tughlebock's nephew and successor, Arp-Arslan, defeated the Byzantine Empire at Manzikert, and even the Byzantine Emperor Romanus IV became a prisoner, extending the power of the Seljuk Empire to Asia Minor.

The conquest of the Seljuk Empire not only dealt a devastating blow to the Byzantine Empire, but even shook the Catholic world of distant Western Europe.

The Fiasco of Theby-Byzantine defeat at Manzikert caused the Western Catholic world to recall once again the fear of domination by the Islamic world after the Battle of Tours

Byzantium, which had been exhausted at the Battle of Manzikt, could no longer deal with the threat from the Islamic world on its own, as leo X had done in the time of Leo X, and had to ask for help from the heretics of Western Europe.

Fear of the Islamic world and Byzantine requests for help gave the Church of Rome an opportunity.

Pope Urban II took the opportunity to mobilize The Catholic knights of Western Europe to fight the Seljuk Turks in the Middle East, and launched the Crusades. The Seljuk Empire, on the other hand, was caught in civil strife over the throne by its sons due to the death of Sultan Maliksha, and a series of small Turkic dynasties emerged in the newly conquered Levant and Asia Minor.

However, Maliksha's third son, Sanjar, was a British lord.

Sanjar took Khorasan as its base and spent more than ten years in the southern conquest of the Northern War.

By 1104 AD, he had conquered the small Seljuk Turkic dynasties of Baghdad, Damascus, Konya, Mosul, Diyarbaker and other places, just one step away from reviving the glory of the Seljuk Empire. However, while Sanjar was satisfied, a fierce enemy he did not expect appeared in the far east.

In 1125, with the capture of the Tianzuo Emperor Yelü Yanxi, the Liao Dynasty collapsed. At this time, the protagonist of this article finally came on,

Born into the Liao imperial family, Yelü Dashi was the eighth grandson of The Liao Taizu Abaoji, who had both literature and martial arts since childhood, and was proficient in riding archery, Khitan and Han. In 1115, Yelü Dashi passed the examination for the jinshi, and then entered the Hanlin Temple as a undertaker. Since the Khitans called Hanlin "LinYa", Yelü Dashi was also called "Dashi Linya", and he was also the only Khitan jinshi in the Liao historical records. During the reign of Emperor Tianzuo, Yelü Dashi's career was quite smooth, and he successively served as the assassin of Tai and Xiang Erzhou, and finally the official to the Liaoxing Army. In 1122, in the face of Jin's offensive, the defeated Tianzuo Emperor gave up his resistance and took refuge in Jiashan With a slip of smoke. Due to the closed environment and lack of information, after the Tianzuo Emperor fled into Jiashan Mountain, his whereabouts were not known to the outside world for a long time. Therefore, in order to stabilize the hearts and minds of the army and the people, Yelü Dashi, Xiao Han, and others who remained in Nanjing (present-day Beijing) at that time supported Emperor Tianzuo's cousin Yelü Chun as emperor, known as Northern Liao.

After the establishment of the Northern Liao, he tried to maintain peace relations with the Song Dynasty, but Emperor Huizong of Song "took advantage of the fire and robbery" and ordered Tong Guan to lead more than 200,000 elite troops in the Northern Expedition, with the intention of retaking Yanyun's homeland, however, under the command of Yelü Dashi and Xiao Han, the Liao army in the Battle of Backwater broke out with amazing combat effectiveness, defeating the Song army twice at the Baigou River and Nanjing, killing and capturing a lot, and taking advantage of the victory to pursue the city of Xiongzhou. As a result, the Great Stone of Jeroboam became famous in the First World War and shook the world. In April of the following year, the Northern Liao dynasty was destroyed by the Jin Dynasty, and Yelü Dashi was defeated and captured, and was forced to lead the way for the Jin soldiers to sneak into emperor Tianzuo's Aozuka camp, but escaped halfway through. In September of that year, Yelü Dashi defected to Emperor Tianzuo, but Emperor Tianzuo could not forgive him for establishing another emperor without authorization, nor did he accept his suggestion of "raising troops to stay in time", and wanted to kill him. In 1124, when Emperor Tianzuo was preparing to send an army to fight a decisive battle against the Jin Dynasty, Yelü Dashi took advantage of the chaos to kill the generals Xiao Yixue and Po Likuo, who were monitoring him, and then led 200 of his own soldiers to flee.

After escaping from Jiashan, Yelü Dashi led his men all the way to the northwest, and reached the city of Liaoktun in 1124. Ketun City was the military town of the Liao Dynasty in the northwest, and a cavalry of more than 20,000 people was stationed all year round to deter the Kelie troops, and no matter what kind of turmoil occurred in the country, they were not allowed to leave the garrison. Therefore, when Yelü Dashi arrived at Kedun City, this powerful force was taken over by him and became a new force to revive the Liao Dynasty. Soon, the news that Emperor Tianzuo had been captured by Jin soldiers reached the city of Kedun, and Yelü Dashi took the opportunity to gather forces in the northwestern region that were still loyal to the Liao Dynasty and launched two consecutive offensives against the Jin Dynasty. At the same time, Yelü Dashi also sent emissaries to contact the White Tatars, western Xia, and the Southern Song Dynasty, trying to form a diplomatic isolation and military siege of the Jin Dynasty, but unfortunately with little success. The Jin Dynasty hated Yelü Dashi to the bone, and launched two expeditions to the city of Kedun, both of which ended in failure, but made Yelü Dashi feel very worried.

Yelü Dashi knew very well that although the city of Kedun was rich in livestock and had enough food, its strength was still unable to compete with Jin's, and to restore the country, it could only find a stronger and more extensive base area, and the western region was undoubtedly an excellent choice. Because of this, in accordance with the Khitan tradition, Yelü Dashi killed a green cow and a white horse in 1130 to pay homage to heaven and earth and ancestors, and then the whole division marched west. Along the way, Yelü Dashi led an army to conquer the Uighur state of Gaochang and defeat the Eastern Qarakhanid state, reaching Yemili in 1132. Subsequently, Yelü Dashi was proclaimed emperor with the support of his courtiers (while using the Turkic title of "Juer Khan", meaning "Khan of Ten Thousand Khans"), and still used the state name of Liao, known as Western Liao. As a result, the Liao Dynasty was restored in the Western Regions 7 years after being destroyed by the Jin Dynasty.

Yelü Dashi established the state as the empress dowager, and continued to carry out foreign expansion based on Yemili. At this time, civil unrest broke out in the Eastern Qarakhanid Empire, and the Khan Ibrahim was unable to cope with the rebellion launched by the Khali and Gelug people, so he had to send envoys to ask for help from his old enemy, Yelü Dashi, and the latter agreed. After conquering the Kangli and Gelulu people, Yelü Dashi took the opportunity to annex the Eastern Qara Khanate and moved the capital to Husi Huluduo, in 1134, after the annexation of the Eastern Qarakhanate, Yelü Dashi began to implement the plan of the Eastern Crusade, and in 1134 sent his confidant General Xiao Huoli to lead an army of 70,000 eastern expeditions, resulting in too long distances, bad environment, cattle and horses, and low morale, and had to withdraw halfway. After the abortive crusades, Yerushalayim shifted the center of gravity of his expansion to the west in an attempt to annex the Western Qarakhanids, which occupied Central Asia. However, the Western Qarakhanid empire was a vassal of the Seljuk Empire, and Sultan Sanjar, known for his arrogance, certainly did not allow the Western Liao to invade his territory.

In 1141, the Western Qarakhanids attacked the Gelug people, who were dependent on the Western Liao, and asked For reinforcements from Sanjar in an attempt to defeat them

Rivals of the Western Liao. After receiving a letter of help from the Western Qarakhanids, Sanjar immediately mobilized the Islamic countries to participate in the war under the banner of "jihad", and eventually gathered more than 100,000 elite troops. In 1141, Sanjar personally led a coalition of Muslims across the Amu Darya River, and fought with the combined forces of The Western Liao, Gelulu, and Huazizimo in the steppe of Katwan north of Samarkand, resulting in a major defeat, with as many as 30,000 soldiers killed, and countless wounded and captured. After the end of the Battle of Katwan, the Seljuk Empire collapsed and lost its hegemony over Central Asia, while the Muslim powers such as the West Qarakhanids, Huazizimo, and Bukhara submitted to the Yelü Dashi, causing the Territory of the Western Liao to expand rapidly to the west, eventually becoming a large empire that stretched north to the Ili River State, south to the Bauchir River Division, west to TheRos, and east to Balshan.

At this time, in the Middle East, the Crusades did not meet expectations, and they did not want to return to their hometowns, so they spread the word that a King John of Christ in the East had defeated the caliph.

This legendary King John is currently considered by Western historians to refer to the Ju'er Khan (the Khan of the Khans) among the Khitans, that is, the Yelü Dashi of the Western Liao.

After defeating the Muslim coalition and seizing hegemony in Central Asia, Yelü Dashi stopped large-scale external expansion and began to devote himself to internal affairs during his reign, after summing up the lessons of the rise and fall of the Liao state, Yelü Dashi absorbed the ruling experience of the local ethnic groups, adapted to local conditions, and formulated a political system and military system that conformed to the national conditions of the Western Liao. Greatly promoting the socio-economic and cultural development of Central Asia, and promoting exchanges and integration between the various ethnic groups in the region, in 1143, Yelü Dashi died of illness at the age of 57. After Dashi's death, his descendants continued to rule Central Asia and Xinjiang, China, until 1218, when they were destroyed by the Mongol army. After the destruction of the Western Liao, the Mongol chancellor Yelü Chucai praised Yelü Dashi as "quite literate and religious, and the people of the Western Regions still think about it." "After the Liaoxing Dashi, the Western Regions Unified Guizi, the Wanli Wei Sound Boom, and the Century-old Famous Teachings" It can be seen that the contribution of the Yelü Dashi to the Liao State and the Khitan Nation is not less than that of the Liao Taizu Yelü Abaoji, and although the Yelü Dashi, this lonely goshawk, although it failed to restore its homeland, it galloped in the Western Regions and let the Chinese civilization take root, such a heroic figure of the Chinese nation, we really did not pay enough attention to it before.