Post by pantigin on Feb 1, 2008 12:07:51 GMT 3
Khitans (Qidan), a little-studied people of Mongolia who founded the Liao dynasty, rulers of eastern Mongolia, Manchuria, and parts of north China, c.916-1125. They appear, to judge from what is understood of their language, to have been related to the Mongols who achieved world prominence in the 13th century. They were a semi-nomadic, tribally organized confederation led by an imperial clan, the Yeh-l¨±. Like many successful conquest dynasties in China, they straddled the steppe and the sown, combining the military effectiveness of an army of nomad mounted archers with a willingness to rule their Chinese sedentary territories so as to maximize the productiveness of the agricultural sector. They had five capitals: supreme (in Mongolia), central, western, eastern, and southern (near the site of modern Beijing). They occupied only a small part of China proper, which was governed according to the traditional ways of the Chinese bureaucracy. The much larger nomadic and semi-nomadic lands to the north were ruled in the equally traditional tribal fashion. Their army of nomad cavalry was organized on a decimal basis, as was common in Asian steppe polities and as the Mongols after them were also to do.
By 1125 they had been displaced by their former vassals, the Jurchen of Manchuria (ancestors of the Ch'ing, the last Chinese dynasty), who founded the Chin dynasty, which many Khitan notables were prepared to serve faithfully. One group of Khitans, headed by a member of the imperial family, Yeh-l¨± Ta-shih, declined to submit and headed west, to found a new empire, Qara-Khitai (Western Liao in official Chinese usage). This survived until its conquest by the Mongols in 1218. In 1141 Yeh-l¨± Ta-shih defeated the Seljuk Turk Sultan Sanjar in battle near Samarqand, a battle which seems to have helped give rise to the enduring European legend of Prester John, the Christian king of the East who was coming to the aid of Christendom against the Muslims (Yeh-l¨± Ta-shih was in fact a Buddhist). Khitans who entered Mongol service in the early 13th century were influential in helping to set up the institutional basis of the Mongol empire. The word Cathay (for China) in English and other European languages, is derived from the Khitans' realm, Khitai.
By 1125 they had been displaced by their former vassals, the Jurchen of Manchuria (ancestors of the Ch'ing, the last Chinese dynasty), who founded the Chin dynasty, which many Khitan notables were prepared to serve faithfully. One group of Khitans, headed by a member of the imperial family, Yeh-l¨± Ta-shih, declined to submit and headed west, to found a new empire, Qara-Khitai (Western Liao in official Chinese usage). This survived until its conquest by the Mongols in 1218. In 1141 Yeh-l¨± Ta-shih defeated the Seljuk Turk Sultan Sanjar in battle near Samarqand, a battle which seems to have helped give rise to the enduring European legend of Prester John, the Christian king of the East who was coming to the aid of Christendom against the Muslims (Yeh-l¨± Ta-shih was in fact a Buddhist). Khitans who entered Mongol service in the early 13th century were influential in helping to set up the institutional basis of the Mongol empire. The word Cathay (for China) in English and other European languages, is derived from the Khitans' realm, Khitai.