History of the Khitans

The history of the Khitans dates back to the 4th century. The Khitan people dominated much of northern China, Manchuria and the Mongolian Plateau. They subsequently established the Liao dynasty and the Western Liao dynasty.

Originally from Xianbei origins, the Khitans were part of the Kumo Xi tribe until 388 when the Kumo Xi–Khitan tribal grouping was defeated by the newly established Northern Wei dynasty. This allowed the Khitans to reorganize and consolidate their own tribal identity which led to the beginning of Khitan written history.

From the 5th to the 8th centuries, the Khitans were dominated by the Turks and then the Uyghurs in the west, various Central Plain dynasties in the south, and Goguryeo in the east. Despite coming under the domination of other polities, the Khitans grew in power. Their rise was slow compared to others because they were frequently crushed by neighbouring powers—each employing the Khitan warriors when needed but ready to crush them when the Khitans became too powerful.

Following the fall of the Liao dynasty, many Khitans migrated westward and established the Western Liao dynasty. Although the Khitans no longer survive as a distinct ethnic group in contemporary times, their name is preserved in the Russian word for China (Китай, Kitay) as well as the archaic English (Cathay) Portuguese (Catai) Hungarian (Kína) and the Spanish (Catay) appellations of the name.

Origins

References to the Khitan people in Chinese sources date back to the 4th century. After their regime was conquered by the Murong clan the remnants scattered in the modern-day Inner Mongolia and mixed there with the original Mongolic population.

Pre-dynastic Khitans (388–916)

During the time of the Chinese Tang dynasty, the Khitan people were vassals to the suzerain Tang or Turks, depending on the balance of power between the two, or the suzerain Uyghurs when they replaced the Turks as the main steppe power. Once the Uyghurs left their home in the Mongolian Plateau in 842 enough of a power vacuum was left to give the Khitan the opportunity to cast off the bonds of subordinacy. The Khitan occupied the areas vacated by the Uyghurs bringing them under their control.

thumb|Qidan gold work, 1st–3rd century. Found in Batou city, Inner Mongolia, 1981.

Khitan military activities from 388 to 618

In the 5th century, the Khitan were under the Toba Wei influence.

In the 6th century, the Khitan tribes were still a weak confederation after being heavily defeated in 553 by the Northern Qi who enslaved many Khitans and seized a large part of their livestock, leading to harsh times for the Khitans. By that time the Khitan are still described as the lower level of nomadic civilization, their 'confederation' still being an anarchist system of isolated tribes, each tending his own sheep and horses and hunting on his private territory.

When the Sui dynasty was established in 581 when the Khitan were living in a period of internal military turmoil. Their tribes were fighting each other

Military activities during the first half of the Tang dynasty (618–735)

The Li-Sun Rebellion (696–697)

thumb|The rebellion of Li Jinzhong and Sun Wanrong

Under Emperor Taizong of Tang (r. 626–649) the Khitans became vassals of Tang dynasty. Despite some occasional clashes, the Khitans remained Chinese vassals until the 690s when Empress Wu took the throne of China.

When Li-Sun died, his brother-in-law Sun Wanrong replaced him and engaged the Turks in an aggressive policy of "plunder to strengthen" as the best way to revitalize his Empire. The Turks plundered all their neighbour, the Khitan and Chinese included, but encouraged the Khitans to rebel against Tang rule. Almost as soon as the Khitan rebelled and were successful the Turks proposed an alliance with China. The Turks, engaged in a war against China, were just asking the Khitans for a diversion in the east allowing them to be more free on their front. When the Khitans unexpectedly appeared to be successful they both were surprised and afraid at seeing a new power born on their East. Seeing the Khitans fighting hard against the Chinese seemed the perfect occasion to take advantage of both the busy Khitan and the downtrodden Tang. By attacking Khitan on their rear the Turks provided an inestimable help to Tang which also worked for themselves by crushing that eastern rising power.

Xu Qinzhan (許欽?), the Chinese governor-general of Yingzhou, immediately called for a punitive military campaign ordering General Xue Tai assisted by 500 valiant soldier, Xi troops, and Suogu troops to go northwards. The Chinese-loyalist army was crushed and both Suogu (Khitan King) and Li Dapu (Xi King) were killed while Xue Tai was captured by Ketuyu. In hope of resuming good relations with the Chinese Tai was not executed and an envoy was sent to humbly apologize while Ketuyu enthroned Suogu's cousin Yuyu (李鬱于, 720–722/724). getting the titles of the Prince of Guiyi (allegiance and righteousness) and prefect of Guiyi Zhou with the Xi allowed to settle in Youzhou under Chinese protection.

A second major campaign came in the fourth month of 733 when Guo Yingjie was ordered to lead 10,000 troops, assisted by Xi warriors, to crush Khitan. Ketuyu came first with Turkish support putting the Chinese-Xi troops in difficulty forcing the Xi to flee to save themselves. Predictably Guo Yingjie and his men, left alone to face the Khitan-Turkish troops, lost with heavy casualties. Guo and most of his men were killed on the battlefield. One year later the Khitan were defeated by Zhang Shougui, regional commander of Youzhou in the second month of 734.

Youzhou soon became the Bingmashi (兵馬使) of the Pinglu Army in the seventh month of 741. He carefully cultivated relationships with other officials and generals to earn praises and bribed Imperial messengers to include him in their reports. As the consequence of this systematic bribery he was promoted to commandant at Yingzhou (Ying prefecture) and Jiedushi (military governor) of the Pinglu army in 742 to face and defeat the northern threat from Khitans, Xi, Balhae and Heishui Mohe. He was made military governor of Fanyang Circuit (范陽, headquartered in modern Beijing) in 744 plundering Khitan and Xi villages to display his military abilities. This continuous harassment of Khitan is understood by some scholars as provocation to the Khitan aggressiveness and the threat aimed to get more troops from Chang'an for his future rebellion as well as the reason for the 745 Khitan-Xi rebellion. A horse was once crushed to death under An Lushan's sheer weight due to his fatness.

745s Khitan rebellion

In the third month of 745 several Tang princesses were married to Khitan's leaders in a sign of appeasement. But for some reason the Khitans soon turned into an open rebellion against Tang in the ninth month of 745 killing the princesses and starting military operations. Huge previous pressures from An Lushan combined with the Chang'an courts praise for him may have been seen Khitan as presenting an impasse against which they eventually revolted.

The Khitans were quickly defeated by An Lushan's troops by punitive expeditions and traps. Sources report that Banquets for a peace declaration were set up by An Lushan and offered to Khitan and Xi who, happy to get both peace and free provisions, rushed to the buffet and drunk heavily. It turned out that the food and wine were poisoned by narcotics. An Lushan then led his warriors to kill all of those who were sleeping on the ground or drunk enough to be easy to kill and the Chiefs' heads were sent to the Tang court for display. Sources have said that each of such Banquets ended with the death of thousands of warriors. This claim is difficult to believe: can Khitan have been that naive to let An Lushan kill thousands of them, several times, in the same kind of "free food traps". The difficulty is that Chinese sources seem biased against An Lushan depicting him by this story as a terrible untrustable enemy. The final result was that Khitan's 745 rebellion was crushed.

751–752s wars to 755s An Shi rebellion

In 751–752, following An Lushan's provocations and harassment, the Khitans moved south to attack the Chinese Tang Empire. Accordinglys Khitan were soon subject to a Chinese campaign in the eighth month of 751: An Lushan assisted by 2,000 Xi guides leading 60,000 Chinese troops into Khitan territories. When the fighting started the Xi suddenly turned their support to Khitan and the Khitan-Xi army then quickly pushed against the Tang armies who were hampered by rains. The Khitan-Xi army killed almost all the enemy soldiers while An Lushan escaped to Shizhou with just twenty cavalrymen. The defending general Su Dingfang, a Tang general, was eventually able to stop the Khitan pursuit troops which retreated. They had their battlefield victory, although not An Lushan's head, and so they laid siege to the city which only Shi Siming (one An Lushan's general) was able to end. One of his generals was killed in action and, after retreating, he blamed and executed the other two for the defeat.

In 752, to punish this audacity and insult, a 200,000 strong army including both Chinese and barbarian infantry and cavalry went northwards to meet the Khitan. But while An Lushan requested that the ethnically Tujue general Li Xianzhong (李獻忠) accompany him Li feared An and, when compelled to, rebelled putting a halt to An's campaign.

When Li Linfu died and Yang Guozhong, a Yang clan member, replaced him as high chancellor An Lushan rose in rebellion with his armies and attacked the central power with Khitan, Xi and Turkish supporters.

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Eberhard 1967, p. 184; Twitchett ed., 1979, p. 426.

Matsui 1981. Repr. in: Sun, Jinji et al. 1988 (vol. 1), p. 105.

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2nd half of the Tang dynasty (763–907)

;Middle of Tang's dynasty

The Khitan were concentrating themselves on their own development and were relatively peaceful.

;Uighurs domination and Khitans state

When the Turks were overthrown by the Uighurs in 745, the war-loving power of the Turks was replaced by the commerce-loving Uighurs. The control that the Uighurs had on the Khitans were of a different kind. Uighurs were focusing on economic exchanges, were the protectors of the diplomatic stability and left large political and internal freedom to their vassals. The Khitans used this to keep a peaceful environment helping to strengthen all their demographic, economic and structural force.

For their demographic the main point was the choice to avoid foreign conflicts. The new "Steppe Lords" were relatively peaceful while the Tang dynasty was later greatly weakened by the An-Shi rebellion of 755–763 providing a new intra-China situation with a weak center and with provincial generals pacification and strengthening of their respective provinces. In this context the Khitans and their close-relatives the Xi had opposite strategies. Kumo Xi kept a relatively aggressive foreign policy slowly exhausting their forces. The Khitans chose to stay as a calm self-defensive power enjoying most of the Manchurian plain and working to improve their daily situation. While previous centuries had seen successive Turko-Chinese provocations or recall to obeisance, and the following wars had prevented Khitan gaining any notable expansion, the 8th-century situation eventually allowed one. This demographic growth would strongly support the other qualitative changes.

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Demographic.

Economic development: yaolian family, etc.

State building: centralisation of the powers, strengthen the military chief, stop the democratic heredity, set up administration and own prisons.

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Pre-dynastic Khitan's allegiances and reasons

Pre-388 : Kumo Xi – submitted to the Turks. Part of the Kumo Xi-Khitan tribal complex
388–?: Tang dynasty– because of recent Tang expansion and following the Turkish collapse.
696–697 : independent (Li-Sun Rebellion) and in war on all sides, encouraged by Tujue and caused by Chinese official mistreatment and famine.
697–720s : Tang dynasty+ Tujue, since the 697 defeat.
730–734: The first of these two scripts was created in 920. The second, based on alphabetic principles, was created five years later.

Before the Jurchens overthrew their Khitan rulers, married Jurchen women and Jurchen girls were raped by Liao dynasty Khitan envoys as a custom which caused resentment by the Jurchens against the Khitan. Liao Khitan envoys among the Jurchens were treated to guest prostitutes by their Jurchen hosts. Unmarried Jurchen girls and their families hosted the Liao envoys who had sex with the girls. Song envoys among the Jin were similarly entertained by singing girls in Guide, Henan. Although the Liao Khitan had superior power over the Jurchens when ruling them there were no evidence that guest prostitution of unmarried Jurchen girls to Khitan men was hated or resented by the Jurchens. It was only when the Liao Khitan forced aristocratic Jurchen families to give up their beautiful wives as guest prostitutes to Liao Khitan messengers stirred resentment and anger by the Jurchens. A historian has speculated that this could mean that in Jurchen upper classes, only a husband had the right to his married wife while among lower class Jurchens, unmarried girls virginity and sleeping with Liao Khitan men did not matter and did not impede their ability to marry later. The Jurchens sexual habits and norms were seemed lax to Han Chinese, such as marrying with an in-law, which was one of China's "Ten Heinous Crimes". Jurchens very commonly practiced guest prostitution giving female companions, food and shelter to guests. Unmarried daughters of Jurchen families of lower and middle classes in native Jurchen villages were provided to Liao Kitan messengers for sexual intercourse and amusement as recorded by Hong Hao (Hung Hao). Marco Polo also reported that Hami (Camul) guest prostitution was practiced with hosts giving their female relatives, sisters, daughters and wives to guests in their house. Tanguts practiced this guest prostitution.

Post-Liao dynasty history

The Khitans were absorbed by the Jurchens and widely used in the following years of war to conquer the northern Song territories.

In contrast a number of the nobles of the Liao dynasty escaped the area towards the Western Regions establishing the Qara Khitai (Western Liao dynasty). They were in turn absorbed by the local Turkic and Iranian populations and left no influence of themselves. As the Khitan language is still almost completely illegible it is difficult to create a detailed history of their movements. The Khitans were mainly employed by the Mongols in military and civil services after they conquered most of Eurasia. The Daur people and some Baarin people are direct descendants of the Khitans.

On the Eastern front, Khitans elements fled the Mongol offensives toward Korea. In 1216 the Khitans invaded Goryeo and defeated the Korean armies multiple times, even reaching the gates of the capital and raiding deep into the south, but were defeated by Korean General Kim Chwi-ryeo who pushed them back north to Pyongan, where the remaining Khitans were finished off by allied Mongol-Goryeo forces in 1219. These Khitans are possibly the origin of the Baekjeong.

Historical atlas

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File:KaraKhitaiAD1200.png|Qara Khitai circa 1200

File:Mongol Empire c.1207.png|Mongol Empire circa 1207, showing the locations of the Qara Khitai and Khitans

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References

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;Pre-dynastic Khitan

MATSUI, Hitoshi 松井等 (Japan). "Qidan boxing shi 契丹勃興史 (History of the rise of the Khitan)". Mamden chiri-rekishi kenkyu hokoku 1 (1915). Translated into Chinese by Liu, Fengzhu 劉鳳翥. In Minzu Shi Yiwen Ji 民族史譯文集 (A Collection of Translated Papers on Ethnic Histories) 10 (1981). Repr. in: Sun, Jinji et al. 1988 (vol. 1), pp. 93–141
Chen, Shu 陳述. Qidan Shi Lunzheng Gao 契丹史論證稿 (A Study on the History of the Khitan). Beijing: Zhongyang Yanjiu Yuan Shixue Yanjiu Suo 中央研究院史學研究所, 1948.
Chen, Shu 陳述. Qidan Shehui Jingji Shi Gao 契丹社會經濟史稿 (A Study on the Khitan's Social Economical History). Shanghai: Sanlian Chuban She 三聯出版社, 1963.
Feng, Jiasheng 1933.
Marsone, Pierre, La Steppe et l’Empire : la formation de la dynastie Khitan (Liao) Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2011, 322 p. https://www.academia.edu/4954295/La_Steppe_et_l_Empire_la_formation_de_la_dynastie_Khitan_Liao_

;Liao dynasty

Shu, Fen (舒焚), Liaoshi Gao 遼史稿 (An History of the Liao). Wuhan: Hubei Renmin Chuban She 湖北人民出版社, 1984
WITTFOGEL, Karl & FENG, Chia-sheng. History of Chinese Society: Liao (907–1125). Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1949.

;Post-dynastic / Qara Khitai

Biran, Michal. The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History: Between China and the Islamic World,

;Useful official dynastic histories

Wei Shu 魏史 (Dynastic History of the Northern Wei Dynasty): Wei, Shou 魏收 et al. eds. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju 中华书局, 1973.
Xin Wudai Shi (XWDS) 新五代史 (New Dynastic History of the Five Dynasties): Ouyang, Xiu 歐陽修 et al. eds. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju 中华书局, 1974.
Sui Shu (SS) 隋書 (Dynastic History of the Sui Dynasty): Wei Zheng 魏徵 et al. eds. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju 中华书局, 1973.
Jiu Tangshu (JTS) 舊唐書 (Old Dynastic History of Tang Dynasty): Liu, Xu 劉昫 et al. eds. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju 中华书局, 1975.
Xin Tangshu (XTS) 新唐書 (New Dynastic History of the Tang Dynasty): Ouyang, Xiu 歐陽修 et al. eds. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju 中华书局, 1975
Liao Shi (LS) 遼史 (Dynastic History of the Khitan Liao Dynasty): Tuotuo 脱脱 et al. eds. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju 中华书局, 1974
Song Shi 宋史 (History of Song): Tuotuo 脫脫 et al. eds. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju 中华书局, 1974
Zizhi Tongjian (ZZTJ) 資治通鑒 (Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government): Sima, Guang 司馬光 ed. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju 中华书局, 1956

;Other

(pp. 43–153)
Khitans
Khitans on scholar.google.com

Origins

Pre-dynastic Khitans (388–916)

Khitan military activities from 388 to 618

Military activities during the first half of the Tang dynasty (618–735)

The Li-Sun Rebellion (696–697)

745s Khitan rebellion

751–752s wars to 755s An Shi rebellion

2nd half of the Tang dynasty (763–907)

Pre-dynastic Khitan's allegiances and reasons

Post-Liao dynasty history

Historical atlas

See also

References

References