Download PDF | The Empire Of The Qara Khitai In Eurasian History Between China And The Islamic World, Cambridge University Press (2005).
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Introduction
The early twelfth century was a time of turmoil in both China and Central Asia In north China the Khitan Liao dynasty that had ruled Manchuria, Mongolia and parts of north China for more than 200 years (907-1125) was overthrown by a new wave of Manchurian invaders, the Jurchens, who established the Jin dynasty (1115-1234). Under these circumstances, one Khitan prince, Yelü Dashi (1087- 1143), chose not to submit to the Jurchen conquerors. Instead, he led his few adherents westward, hoping to return subsequently to restore the Liao dynasty in its former domains.
After six years in western Mongolia, Dashi recognized his inability to challenge the Jurchen Jin dynasty, and, becoming aware of the relative weakness of the Central Asian kingdoms, he decided to seek a political future further to the west. In a little more than a decade he successfully fashioned a new empire in Central Asia that was known to the Muslims as the Qara Khitai (the Black Khitans) and to China as the Xi Liao (Western Lino) 2 After completing their conquests in 1141, the Qara Khitai empire ruled the area roughly between the Oxus river in the west and the Altai mountains in the cast, i.c., a territory equivalent to the larger part of modern Xinjiang, Qyrghyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and south Qazaqstan. Dashi and his successors bore the Inner Asian title Gürkhan (Geerhan, universal khan), but were also designated as Chinese emperors.
The empire existed for nearly ninety years, and was finally vanquished by the Mongols in 1218. The Qara Khitai period is of the least known in the history of Central Asia, yet it is also one of the most as nating periods: The Qara Khitai dynasty is the only Central Asian dynasty to have been considered a legitimate Chinese dynasty by Chinese official historiography as they ruled over a mostly Muslim population, the history of the Qara Khita provides a unique window on the extensive cross- cultural contacts between China, Inner Asian nomads and the Muslim world, and permits an assessment of the relative appeal of Chinese and Muslim cultures for the Inner Asian nomads. Moreover, since the Qara Khitai ruled over Central Asia in the period that immediately preceded the rise of Chinggis Khan, a better understanding of the Qara Khitai period can provide further insights into the nature of the Mongol empire. It can also reexamine the claim, raised first in the nineteenth century but never fully developed, that the Qara Khitai empire was the prototype of the empire established by Chinggis Khan.3 This study is divided into two parts, each consisting of three chapters.
The first part provides a fuller narrative history for the Qara Khitai, firmly locating them in their complex historical context between the worlds of Islam and China on the eve of the Mongol invasion. The chronological framework chosen for this purpose is wide: it begins in 1124, when Yelü Dashi left for Mongolia, enthroning himself merely as a king, not yet as an emperor (which he did in 1131/2), and ending in 1218, when the Mongols eliminated the Naiman prince Güchülüg, who seized the Qara Khitai throne, rather than in 1211 when Güchülüg deposed the last Gürkhan, Zhilugu, or in 1213 at Zhilugu's death. Güchülüg's reign is a peculiar period in Qara Khitai history: his ethnic origin and policies were so different from those of the former Gürkhans that, despite his attempts to revive the fortunes of the empire, his contemporaries in China and in the Muslim world never regarded him as a legitimate Qara Khitai ruler. Yet the polity over which he ruled was still called the Waern Liao, and I therefore decided to document its history down to its final dissolation in 1218. The second part examines the main components of the multicultural milieu found within the Qara Khitai realm: the Chinese, the nomadic or Inner Asian; and the Islamic.
This is organized around three questions, not hitherto addressed in the literature: Why did the Qara Khitai retain their Chinese characteristics in the new Central Asian environment? How did these "infidel" nomadic rulers acquire legitimization among their mostly Muslim sedentary population? And why, unlike their predecessors and successors in Central Asia, did they not embrace Islam? In trying to find answers to these questions certain Qara Khitai institutions, principally their administrative, army and religious policies, are described in detail, while aspects of economic and social history are also touched upon. This close cxamination of Qara Khitai history and institutions permits a prelim- inary evaluation of Qara Khitai influences on the Mongol empire, a theme dealt with in the conclusion.
Methodological problems, sources and previous scholarship Despite the uniqueness and importance of the Qara Khitai empire, research about it is relatively meager, and has generally not been undertaken by scholars with direct access to the entire range of sources. This is mainly due to the character of the sources for the study of the Qara Khitai. Except for the chronicle in chapter 30 of the official history of the Liao dynasty. the Liao shi, a rather problematic text (about which see below), there are no sources compiled by historians of the dynasty itself and only a few, none of them strictly chronicles, that were written under its vassals. The study of Qara Khitai history is therefore mainly based on what its eastern and western neighbors chose to mention about it. These reports, nearly always fragmentary and often contradic- tory, are scattered mainly among Chinese, Arabic and Persian sources. Moreover, even after completing the painstaking work of collecting the scattered accounts and combining different historiographical traditions, several problems remain apparent. First, the amount of information at our disposal is not evenly divided, in terms of either time or space. While Chinese sources supply relatively ample information on Yelli Dashi's early career and on his formative years in Mongolia, and Muslim sources describe in greater detail the fall of the Qara Khitai, the middle period of the Qara Khitai is only partially covered by either of these sources, leaving many lacunas.
In spatial terms, we know much more about the situation in the Qara Khitai western territories, mainly Transoxania, than about the situation in the central territory of the Qara Khitai or on their eastern border. Many intriguing details regarding the relations of the Qara Khitai with the Mongols, therefore, remain unknown. Second, the number of contradictions contained in the sources is unusually large. These are apparent not only when juxtaposing eastern and western infor- mation but also within each category of sourcesz uwayni, a major Muslim source, presents two contradictory versions of the fall of the Qara Khitai, and details in the chronicle of the Qara Khitanin the Liao shi are challenged by inconsistent evidence from other of its chapters as well as by other Chinese (and Muslim) works.
Third, a considerable part of what we know about the Qara Khitai derives from people foreign to them, who did not always understand their background. Thus, for example, the Chinese fashion of calling the ruler and his officials not by their first names but by their titles contused Muslim historians. An experienced historian, Rashid al-Din, recounted that he sarme Gürkhan ruled from the death of Yelü Dashi (1143) until the rise of Cuchilling (1211), ascribing a considerable part of Güchülüg's success to the Gurkhan's aging, a marginal factor at best." Due to these lumitations, the resulting history is less unequivocal than the polit- ical and institutional histories of other regions and periods, and more than once my notes refer to an alternative reconstruction of the events. Yet, systematic and comparative reading in a large variety of contemporary and later works partially compensates for the sources' deficiencies and results in a meaningful picture of Qara Khitai political and institutional history. Of the many works consulted, only a few important ones and some principal genres can be described below. Chinese sources The basic source for Qara Khitai history is the chronicle of the Western Liao included in chapter 30 of the Liao shi, which reviews the political history of the Qara Khitai from the early rise of Yelü Dashi to Güchülüg's usurpation.
The Liao shi itself is ranked very low in comparison with other Chinese official historics. due to the irregular record keeping of the nomadic Khitans and the unusually long time that passed from the end of the Liao (1125) to the compilation of its his- tory 1344-5,10 As early as the Qing period (1644-1911) scholars complained that it was marred by both internal and external contradictions." But apart from these general deficiencies, the Western Liao chronicle suffers from unique prob lems of its own, namely the unattested source of its information and chrono- logical inconsistencies, which become apparent when it is compared with the relevant Muslim sourees. Those reasons led Pelliot to describe the Liao shi 30 as a romanticized biography of Yelü Dashi. 14 The content of the chronicle, how- ever, is far from romantic. A considerable part of it is dedicated to administrative measures: nominations and titles, so characteristic of Chinese history; and even ensus results are given. This kind of information strongly suggests that the chron ele was at least partially based on some surviving written documents.
What those documents were like; where they originated; how and where they were preserved the more than hundred years that clapsed from the fall of the Qara Khitan to the compilation of the Lito she; how and why their chronological framework was corrupted all these questions are at the moment unanswerable. Apart from the Liao shi, other official histories, those of the Jin and, to a lesser extent, those of the Yuan and Song are also major sources for the history of the Qara Khitai. Of great importance are also the unofficial histories written under the Song. First among these is the San chao bei meng hui bian ("Com- pilation of documents on the treaties with the North during three reigns") by Xu Mengxin (1126-1207).
This book collects extracts from 196 contemporary works (e.g., diaries, memorials, letters, all preserved in their original forul) and narrates with many details, sometimes even day after day, the fall of the North- ern Song and its alliance and war with the fin from 1117 to 1161, a period that corresponds to the reigns of three successive Song emperors. The work con- tains many details regarding Yelü Dashi's early career in China, his departure tor Mongolia, and his attempts to forge alliances with the Song and Xi Xia. Other important unofficial histories include the Qidan guo zhi, one of the major sources for the Liao shi; Yuwen Mozhao's Da Jia guo thi "History of the great Jin kingdom"), written around 1234, which narrates the history of the Jin from the Song point of view; and the Jianyan yilai xinian yaołu ("A Record of impor tant affairs since the beginning of the Fianyan [1127-30] period") by Li Xinchuan (1166-1243), an annalistic work that covers the 1126-63 period. Among other top- ics, this work offers a most deailed description of Yelü Yudu's campaign against Yelü Dashi in the 1130s and olin and Song reactions to Dashi's strengthening al Kedun. 18 Other significant genres of Chinese sources include literary collections (wenji) by Song and Jin scholars and oficial documents (e.g., the Song hui yao). Of special importance are the tunvelopes, mainly reports of envoys sent from one Chinese state to the other or from Jin or Song to the Mongols.
The Song mo ji wen ("Record of hearsay on the pine forest to the plains"), for example, records the personal experience of Hong Huo (1088-1155). Hong was a Song envoy to the Jin who was detained by the Jurchens from 129 to 11-3.19 His work contains unique information about Yelü Dashi's capture by the Jin in 1123 and his subsequent escape Other relevant travelogues narrate the journeys of Chinese envoys or visitors to the Mongols, most of whom went to see Chinggis Khan during his stay in Trans- oxania in the early 1220s. As their authors passed through the Western Liao territory soon after its dissolution, most of them retain some reference to its history. The two most important travelogues are those of Chang Chun and Yelü Chucai. Chang Chun (1148-1227), the patriarch of the Daoist Quanzhen sect who was summoned by Chinggis Khan due to his erudition in the science of elixirs, set out for Central Asia u 1220. He met the Mongol Khan at Samarqand in 1222, and came back to north China in 1224. The record of his journey contains several references to Qara Khitai history as well as a vivid description of the lands formerly under their rule. 20 Yelil Chucai (1189-1243), later the famous councilor of Chinggis Khan and his son Ögodei, and himself a descendant of the Khitan royal family. was naturally interested in Qara Khitai history. Accompanying Chinggis Khan in his campaign against Khwärazm in 1219 and remaining in Central Asia until 1226, Yelli Chucai visited most of the former Qara Khitai territories.
His Xi you lu ("Account of a journey to the west"), and many poems in his literary collection, preserve unique details about Qara Khitai administration and language, as well as abote economic situation in their former regions. 24 Apart from contemporary or nearly contemporary works, important later Chinese compilations, mainly from the Qing period, were also consulted. Qing historians, aware of the inadequacy of the Liao shi, accumulated materials from other Song, Jin and Yuan works and tried to eliminate the inconsistencies of the Liao shi. While their results for Liao history are impressive, the treatment of the Western Liao is less successful. Important Qing works are the Liao shi shi yi ("Sup- plement to the Liao shi") of Li E (1692-1752); the Liao shi shi yi bu ("Addendum to the Supplement to the Liao shi") of Yang Fuji (1727-1820), the richest work with regard to the Qara Khitai; and the Liao shi ji shi benmo ("The complete history of the Liao" of Li Yutang (1843-1902), who mainly rearranged his predecessors' work in topical order.
None of those records, however, used non-Chinese sources for reconstructing Qara Khitai history, and they are cited in this study only when their information adds to more contemporary sources. Also important are later compilations for the history of the Xi Xia, the Western Liao's southeastern neigh- bor. Those include mainly We Guangzheng's Xi Xia shu shi ("Historical record of the Xi Xia"), completed in 1825-7, and the Xi Xia ji ("Record of the Xi Xia") of Tai Xichang, completed in 1927, an annalistically arranged work whose compiler carefully identifies his (mainly Song, Liao and Jin) sources. The Tangut codex of 1148-69, available in both Chinese and Russian translations, provides important undirect information on Qara Khitai trade, 23 Although I have checked most of the existing indices for Liao, Song and Yuan works, very few new Chinese sources can be added to the meticulous work by Wittfogel and Feng and by modern Chinese scholars. Muslim sources This study uses a large variety of Muslim sources, some of them hitherto not consulted with regard to the Qara Khitai.
Yet the major works remain the chronicles of Juwayni (d. 1283 in Baghdad), Ibn al-Athir (d. 1233 in Mawsil), and Jüzjanī (d. after 1265 in Delhi). As in the case of the Liao shi, however, the sources for tite information on the Qara Khitai in these three major Muslim works are not always clear. Juwaynī, an administrator in the service of the Mongols, is by far the most knowledgeable Muslim source on the Qara Khitai, Still, his existing record ignores their most remarkable victory, that over the Saljüqs at Qatwän in 1141, and, as mentioned above, includes two contradictory versions of their fall. 24 The only work Juwayni mentions as a source for his information on the Qara Khitai is the Masharib al-tajärib wa ghawärib al-ghara'ib ("Places of refreshment of the experiences and zeniths of the marvels"), of Ibn Funduq, a lost history of Khurāsān. The same book is quoted also by Ibn al-Athir, although in both cases the writers refer to information for the years 1172-89, while Ibn Funduq himself supposedly died in 1169.25
The surviving works of Ibn Pundaq which I have consulted hardly mention the Qara Khitai. 26 Ibn al-Athir's great annalistic work, al Kamli fi al tarikh ("The complete his- tory"), includes unique information about the consolidation of Qara Khitai rule in the Muslim world as well a detailed description of their fall, which happened during his lifetime. Apart from one mention of Ibn Fonduq and a few of unnamed "historians of Khurasan," Ibn al-Athir did not document the sources for his infor- mation on the castern Islamic world. His colleague al-Nasawi (d. after 1241), the biographer of the last Khwam Shah, Jalal al-Din, and himself a major source for the fall of the Qara Khitan raised Ibn al-Athir's treatment of Khwārazm and the east, and suggested that Ibn al-Athir had used Persian histories since "the his- torical material he put in his book is more than could be culled from the mouths of men. "
The third important source is Jüzjānī's Tabaqat-i Nayiri ("The Naşitī tables"), a general history from the creation till 1259; most of its chapters (or tables) deal with individual dynastics. The work includes a special chapter on the Qara Khitai. and they are also mentioned in the chapters dealing with their contemporaries. Jüzjani's description of the rise of the Qara Khitai is completely different from Other versions of this subject, and his work includes unique details on Qara Khitai attitudes towards Islam. As a young man in Ghür (modern Afghanistan), Jüzjānī witnessed the first Mongol invasion of the Muslim world, and might have been aware of the fall of the Qara Khitai which preceded it.
Writing in Delhi, where, according to his own testimony, several Qara Khitai achieved important positions, 29 he might have gathered his information from them or from other refugees from the fornara Khitai territories who, like Jüzjānī, escaped to Delhi after the Mongol invasion. Rashid al-Din (1247-1318), an Ilkhanid vizier whose Jami' al-tawarikh ("The collection of histories") is a sweeping world history, belongs to a later generation, and his reliance on Juwayni and Ibn al-Athir can easily be traced. Yet his usage of the term Qara Khitai suggests that he had used Mongol sources as well. While his history of the Mongol and Turkic tribes is essential for understanding the environment of the Qara Khitai and for details of their fall, his specific treatment of the Qara Khitai is quite disappointing. In his history of Chinggis Khan Rashid al-Din included an often-cited paragraph about the rise of the Qara Khitai.
Yet he hardly gave any further information on the dynasty's rulers, nor did he try to synthesize information on the Qara Khitai which appears in other parts of his magnum opus. To supplement these major works I have used many other sources. They include mainly literature of different kinds written in the territories of the Qara Khitai (man- uals for courtiers, local histories adab works, Muslim legal works); contempo- rary or nearly contemporary works from other parts of the Muslim world, mainly chronicles of the Saljüqs, 'Abbasids, Ayyübids or local histories;2 collections of contemporary official documents, mainly from Khwärazım; geographical works; and biographical collections. Of this latter genre, Awfi's Lubab al-albab ("Quintessence of hearts") is of special importance. 'Awit (d. ca. 1232) spent much of his youth in Qara Khitai Fransoxania, and his uncle Majd al-Din Muhammad b. Adnan wrote the now lost Tarikh-i Turkistän (History of Turkestan"), which recounts the history of the Qarakhanids, who were Qara Khitai's vassals." "Awfi's work is an anthology of poets which also contains a biographical introduction on cach poet.
In addition, it includes biographies of and poemsby people for whom poetry was only marginal to their other careers as rulers or administrators, including those little known from other sources such as some Qarakhanid rulers. His biography of Shams al-Din al-Uzgandi, a qüdi from Farghana who became the Qara Khitai court doctor, is most valuable, providing us with a rare insight into Qara Khitai administration. The works of al-Sam'äni (d. 1166) also deserve to be mentioned here. Although he never discussed the Qara Khitai, his information on the religious life in Qara Khitai Transoxania, where he spent several years in the 1150s, is indispensable for understanding the relationship between the Qara Khitai and their Muslim subjects. Whereas geographical works are important for determining the image of China in Central Asia, contemporary Muslim travologies are rather disappointing, espe- cially when compared to their Chinese counterparts. Abo Hamid al-Gharnati (d. 1169/70), who visited Ahwärazm, Balkh and Bukhara in 1153-5, never men- tioned the Qara Khitai, and al-Idrisi (d. 1165), who wrote in Sicily in 1154, did not reach Central Asia. His oformation on Transoxania and beyond is based on tenth-century reports, mainly following Ibn al-Faqth. 4 Apart from contemporary nearly contemporary works I have also consulted later Muslim works, since meneval Muslim writers often preserved earlier infor mation in relatively late compositions. Most of the later Muslim works follow either Ibn al-Athir (in Arabic or fuwayni (in Persian), although they sometimes include meaningful variants.
Of necial importance is the Tarikh-i alfi ("A mil- lenial history"), compiled in the early seventeenth century by a team of historians in Moghul India to mark the illennusm of the Prophet Muhammad's demise. This compilation combines traditions of Juwaynī and Ibn al-Athir, yet since its authors seemed to have had direct access to Ibn Funduq's Masharib al-tajarib it includes many details unavailable in carlier sources. 35 The information contained in the semi-legendary Majmű al-tawarikh of the sixteenth century and the unique per- sonal names retained in the seventeenth-century Tarikh-i Haydari probably reflect oral traditions.
The two main Turkic works of the eleventh century, al-Käshghart's Diwan lughät al-Turk ("Compendium of the Turkic dialects") and Yūsuf Häss Hajib's Qutadghu bilig ("Wisdom of royal glory"), consulted in translation, are invaluable for shedding light on the society and culture of Central Asia on the eve of the rise of the Qara Khitai.
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