How many people know about Khitan because of the TV series "Dragon Babu"? This TV series is the childhood memory of the post-80s generation, and it also makes many people sigh because of Qiao Feng's short and tragic life.
Historical disputes, in addition to competing interests, are racial conflicts.
Although Qiao Feng maintained the peace of Song Liao for decades through his own efforts, he could not stop the changes of the times.
At that time, the Liao and Song dynasties, which were divided against each other, finally fell silent in the long river of history under the rise of the Southern Song Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty.
So which province is the current Khitan equivalent to the glorious Khitan? You know what?
The Khitan appeared in Chinese historical records very early, but there was no formal historical document to record it in detail, so the understanding of the Khitan was limited to miscellaneous biographies.
The Khitan is an ethnic group in the northern steppe, living nomadically, and the people are born strong and good at war.
Therefore, when they appeared, they were valued by the ruling court at that time, and they paid attention to collecting their information.
There is a partial description of the Khitan in the official history "Book of Wei".
By the Sui and Tang dynasties, the shadow of the Khitan could also be seen in biographies and anthologies.
The origin of the Khitan people is relatively complex, and it can be said that it is a product of the conflict and integration of the northern nomadic peoples.
As for the true origin of the Khitan, scholars also have different opinions, and those who stand more are the descendants of the Turks and the descendants of Xianbei.
Of course, the development of nomads depends on the climate and geographical location, and the growth of tribes is important for their prosperity, so the dependence and integration between ethnic groups are also more frequent and common.
The difficulty of the nomadic people's survival is an important factor for them to invade the southern countries, and the relatively harsh living environment also makes them more rugged and warlike.
Therefore, the dynasty of the southern territory has been committed to the expulsion of the northern tribes.
The limitation of living space and the weakening of their power by war were the main reasons for the slow development and growth of the northern nomads.
The Khitan people, who were struggling to survive in the cracks, paid attention to their own development while relying on other tribes, and even developed into a big tribe step by step.
The real rise of the Khitan was in the post-Tang Dynasty, although the Khitan grew stronger, but also has been bearing the eye of the Tang Dynasty in the southern position, in order to survive, the Khitan sent envoys to the Tang Dynasty, proposing to pay tribute every year to ensure peace.
The attitude of the Tang Dynasty towards the Khitan was still different from that of other tribes, on the one hand, because the Khitan was located in a special position, among the large barbarian tribes in the north such as the Tang Dynasty and the Turks.
On the other hand, through the method of giving the leaders of the eight Khitan tribes, it can play a role in stabilizing the entire Khitan tribe, and the annexation of the Khitan is also crucial to the disintegration of the Turks.
In this case, the Khitan and Tang dynasties avoided major conflicts, while cultural exchanges between the Khitan and the Tang Dynasty were strengthened, and the two places ushered in a brief period of peace.
With the changes in the situation of the imperial court, the Tang Dynasty's oppression of the Khitan became more and more obvious, and finally during the reign of Wu Zetian, the Khitan rebelled, and since then, the decades-long war between the Khitan and the Tang Dynasty has once again begun.
After the Khitan was hit hard, it was in a state of great vitality for nearly a hundred years.
It was not until the end of the Tang Dynasty that the Yelu family arose, and the Khitan really ushered in its prosperity.
The rise of the Yelu family was a turning point in the history of the Khitan, when the Khitan and other tribes had alliances, but in the face of interests, friendship was like tissue paper, and it could not withstand the test.
And attachment to the Tang Dynasty is not a long-term plan after all.
During the five generations, the Yelu family ushered in the person who made their family glorious for a hundred years, Yelu Abaoji.
Yelu Abaoji is brave and resourceful, and what is more valuable is that he has a peaceful and tolerant heart.
After Abaoji was elected Khitan Khan, he relied on his extraordinary wisdom to quell the tribal rebellion, and took back the Khan's election system, bringing together the supreme ruling power.
This was tantamount to depriving his brothers of their right to be khans, and thus causing the "rebellion of the brothers".
Abaoji couldn't bear to kill his brother, and put down the rebellion three times before finally consolidating his supreme power.
Once you hold the scepter of power, you can't control the desire for more power, this desire to be dominated by power is understandable, and it is commendable that Abaoji is unkind and does not be cruel and murderous for power.
After Yelu Abaoji pacified various opposition forces, in the ninth year of his reign as Khan, that is, in 916 AD, he accepted the support of his ministers and established Liao as emperor.
Under the leadership of Yelu Abaoji, the Khitan State officially stepped onto the stage of history and enjoyed the country for more than 200 years.
This is a rich and colorful stroke in the history of China's ethnic minorities who established a dynasty and became emperors.
It also opened the door to the prosperity and development of the northern nomadic peoples, and raised the economic and cultural development of the northern peoples to a higher level.
The reason why Abaoji is evaluated with wisdom and tolerance is because he not only works hard, but also has a good control over the direction and strategy.
Economically, he took control of the basic lifeblood of the people's life, controlled the salt area of Inner Mongolia, and developed agriculture, so that the Khitan gradually developed from nomadic herding to agriculture and animal husbandry.
At that time, the Khitan could be said to be a model for the development of the northern nationalities, and the northern ethnic dynasties established in the later period were more or less the shadow of the Khitan Dynasty.
And when it comes to Abaoji's tolerance to the Khitan Dynasty, that is his diplomatic and cultural integration with other countries at that time.
When the Liao State was first established, it wanted to compete in the Central Plains, but it was not the best time to be restrained by various forces.
However, Liao Taizu Abaoji was very supportive and yearning for the ruling methods and culture of the Central Plains, so he boldly used Hanchen during his reign.
Let the integration of the northern ethnic groups and the culture of the Central Plains, and the economic development have made leaps and bounds.
And his move also made Liaoguo enter a stage of rapid development.
The success of the Liao regime is a very intuitive microcosm of the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-collision of China's feudal social history.
In the last 5,000 years of Chinese history, dynasties and groups with independent political power have been dotted with stars and alternates, leaving traces of varying degrees in history.
There are relatively few records of the official history of the Liao State and the records of the literature, which is also due to the destruction and tampering of the historical books due to the alternation of dynasties.
At the beginning of their founding, due to the relatively limited cultural level of the nomads themselves, the records of their own people mainly relied on oral transmission or their own written records.
With the passage of time, the changes of history, and the progress of tribal civilization, the text has also been changed or distorted, and it is even more difficult to decipher.
Therefore, due to the limitations of cultural heritage and ideological level, it became more and more difficult for the establishment of independent political power of ethnic minorities, and the establishment of the Liao State broke this shackle and played a very great role in promoting the historical process of ethnic minorities.
After the fall of the Tang Dynasty, the entire Central Plains and the north were in an extremely ** state, and all parts of the country rose up, occupying the land as the king.
The second emperor of Liao, Yelu Deguang, was stained with the light of Shi Jingjiao, the founding emperor of the Later Jin Dynasty, and was very famous in history.
Shi Jingjiao was nicknamed "Emperor Er" by historians, and was a representative who did everything for imperial power.
In order to stabilize his imperial power, he asked the Khitan for help, and Liao Taizong, who was in power in Liao at the time, was very willing to help with this favor.
Since then, the two have comically referred to each other as father and son, Liao Taizong as the father and Shi Jingjiao as the son.
The Later Jin Dynasty even gave up all of them to the Khitan with the sixteen states of Yanyun as a thank you.
You must know that the Khitan's coveting of the Yanyun region is not a day or two, and during the period of Liao Taizu Abaoji, the Liao State has invaded many times and tried to seize the Yanyun region.
Abaoji never dreamed that the stepping stone to the Central Plains, which he thought about day and night, would belong to the Liao State in this form.
As a result, the territory of the Khitan expanded to the Central Plains, and this fertile land was pocketed, and the Khitan strength increased greatly and directly entered the heyday.
The decline of the Tang Dynasty of the first generation made the land fall apart, and the growth of the Khitan at this time also changed the diplomatic situation of foreign countries.
At that time, many countries in Central and East Asia referred to China as the Khitan.
It can be seen that it was powerful at that time.
Yanyun Sixteen Prefectures are located in the North China Plain, with a good climate and arable land environment, which promoted the transformation of the Khitan from nomadic herding to agriculture and animal husbandry.
The Khitan's reservation of the local landlord class and the sinicization of the ** system also contributed to the transformation of the Khitan from a tribal regime to a feudal dynasty.
Although the important passes had been controlled by the Khitan before the cession of the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, the loss of the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun still had a great impact on the military of the Central Plains.
For more than 100 years after that, the Central Plains countries have been under pressure from the minority regimes in North and North.
Although the Later Jin Dynasty ceded the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun to the Khitan, which became a major boost to the expansion of the Khitan territory, in general, the geographical location of the Khitan was not conducive to the permanent consolidation of the country.
The two river basins where they have lived for generations are located in the middle of the northeast, the central plains and the northwest, and are surrounded by powerful enemies - which has also caused the Khitan to be harassed from the tribal period.
In the last years of the Liao Kingdom, the Jurchen tribe, which had been guarding the vicinity of present-day Harbin, sprung up, and as an indigenous tribe in the northeast, the invasion based on the northeast was more fierce and resilient.
The Mongols of the northern steppes, under the leadership of Temujin, formed a unified alliance and became unprecedentedly powerful.
The attack on both sides caused the Liao State, which had entered a period of turmoil, to completely fall apart.
At that time, the direct grandson of Khitan Taizu, Yelu Dashi, led more than 1,000 tribes to flee westward.
The Khitan Liao State, which was at its peak, couldn't resist the times.
Yelu Dashi is in the northwest of Liaoning, with the city of Kedun as the center, contacting the local eighteen tribes, and recuperating for 5 years.
After several years of development, the strength has increased greatly.
Rationally, he did not choose revenge, but decided to expand westward and recover the Liao Kingdom.
In 1132, Yelu Dashi established the capital in present-day Kyrgyzstan and established Western Liao.
Yelu Dashi, who has experienced the collapse and establishment of the state, has become more cautious and experienced in the management of the country.
He integrated the Chinese Han culture and the cultures of various ethnic groups, and vigorously promoted them in the West, which has a very far-reaching significance for the spread of Chinese culture in the Western Regions.
Under the leadership of Yelu Dashi, the Khitan people showed the innate adaptability and strong vitality of the nomadic people.
Although the Khitan expedition to the Western Regions, they did not forget their original intentions, and used Chinese as the official language, reminding the tribesmen not to forget their roots and keep in mind the humiliating memories of the Liao State.
Yelu Dashi did not forget the hatred of the country and the family, after he established the Western Liao, he contacted the Southern Song Dynasty many times, wanting to fight together against the Jin Dynasty, in order to avenge the destruction of the country, but the Jin Dynasty was in the prosperous period, and the powerful Mongolian regime Genghis Khan did not drive it back to the northeast throughout his life.
Therefore, for various reasons, although Western Liao has strengthened its strength, it has failed to fulfill its desire to recover Liao.
After the Khitan settled the capital in the Western Regions, they worked hard to centralize their power and learn from the ruling culture of the Central Plains and the management policies of the vassal states, but the Western Liao had a vast territory and serious ethnic diversity, and after all, it came from afar.
In the later period, the Khitan Western Liao regime had another civil strife, which directly led to the great damage to the vitality of the Western Liao, and the surrounding Western indigenous tribes took advantage of the situation to besiege it, resulting in the collapse of the Western Liao after only more than 80 years of the founding of the country.
Although the Western Liao existed for a short time in history, its impact was far-reaching.
From Liao to Western Liao, his territory was mainly concentrated in the north of China, with the north of North China as the foundation, extending to the northeast and northwest.
Diplomacy covering almost the entire northern border, which is why Central and West Asia are more impressed with the Khitan.
After the fall of the Liao State, the Khitan tribe fell apart again.
Some of the tribesmen, led by Yelu Dashi, moved west to the Western Regions, and later merged into the Western countries and slowly assimilated.
After the defeat, most of the Khitans remained in their homeland and attached themselves to the leadership of the new regime.
That is, what is now Chifeng in Inner Mongolia and parts of Liaoning.
This is the case with multi-ethnic countries, and it is rare to be able to maintain the identity of their own culture throughout thousands of years of history.
Among the 56 ethnic groups today, there is no longer a Khitan figure, but the imprint of the Khitan will always be imprinted on the historical scroll of China's development.
Perhaps the Khitan people have just changed their identity and continue to be active in the land of China, witnessing the changes of history and the progress of social civilization.
Which province is Khitan equivalent to now? Did you know?
Journal: Journal of Shanxi Datong University (Social Sciences Edition), "Exploring the Strategic Value of "Youyun Sixteen Prefectures" by Regional Structure", February 2023;
Journal: Research on the History and Geography of China's Frontiers, On the Relationship between the Early Khitan and the Tang Dynasty, September 2022;
Journal: Journal of Zhaowu Dameng Nationality Teachers College Chinese Philosophy and Social Science Edition, "The Past, Present and Future of Khitan Liao Historical Research".
Journal: Journal of Xinjiang University (Philosophy, Humanities and Social Sciences Edition), "The Role of Western Liao on the Spread of Chinese Culture in the Western Regions", March 2020.