The Khitan, one of the nomadic peoples in northern China, is also an ethnic minority that has had a profound impact on Chinese history. After the fall of the Liao Dynasty, the Khitan people changed from a ruling nation to a ruled nation, and began a large-scale escape and migration. According to historical data and previous research results, the migration activities of the Khitan people were mainly concentrated on the eve of the fall of the Liao Dynasty, the reign of the Jin Dynasty, and the Mengyuan Dynasty.
In the last years of the Liao Dynasty, the Jurchens could not bear the national oppression and exploitation of the Khitan nobles, and quickly defeated the Liao Dynasty under the leadership of Wanyan Aguta. In the second year of Emperor Liao Tianzuo (1122), the Jin army conquered Zhongjing, and then continued to go south, and Yelu Yujian, who surrendered to the Jin army, led the Jin army to force into the palace of Emperor Tianzuo, and Emperor Tianzuo hurriedly led more than 5,000 guards to flee to Datong Mansion in Xijing (now Datong, Shanxi). In March, Emperor Tianzuo heard that the Jin army was approaching and fled on light cavalry into Jiashan (the area near Wuchuan County, northwest of present-day Hohhot). In the third year of Baoding (1123), his son Yelu Yali was taken away by "Taibaote's mother and brother, and traveled to Yinshan". Later, when he heard that Emperor Tianzuo had lost, he rushed to meet Emperor Tianzuo, "more than 1,000 followers". Emperor Tianzuo planned to flee to Western Xia, but his subordinates Yelu Di's persuasion was ineffective, and he robbed Yelu Yali with Temuge and others and fled north. From May to Shaling (now the place is not available), Yelu enemy martyr supported Yelu Yali as the emperor, and changed the year name to "Divine Calendar". This was mainly the migration of the Khitan nobles when the Jin army was approaching, and the number of followers was very small.
In 1125, Emperor Tianzuo was captured in Yingzhou, and Yelu Dashi, the eighth grandson of Liao Taizu, betrayed Emperor Tianzuo, established himself as king, and led an army to the west. According to the "History of Liao", Yelu Dashi only took 200 people with him when he moved westward, starting from Jiashan, traveling west to Kedun City (now the upper reaches of the Tula River in the Mongolian People's Republic), stationed in Beiting Duhufu, gathering seven prefectures such as Weiwu, Chongde, Huifan, Xin, Dalin, Zihe, and Camel, as well as Dahuang Murowei, Dira, Wang Jira, Cha Chira, Yexi, Nose Gude, Nira, Dara, Damili, Mierji, Hezhu, Wuguli, Zhubu, Pusuwan, Tanggu, Humusi, Xidi, and the eighteen kings of the Correction and Bi held a meeting to call for the restoration of the country. With their support, he got more than 10,000 elite soldiers, placed officials, set up armor, and had weapons. Later, he continued his westward expedition and established the Western Liao Empire at Barasagon (present-day Tokmak East, Kyrgyz Republic). During Yelu Dashi's westward expedition, a part of the Khitans were also brought to the northwest region. According to Wei Liangtao's "Research on the History of Western Liao", in the early days of Western Liao, there were about 25,000 Khitan people in the Qihe area, and less than 10,000 households in the vicinity of Kedun City.
After the fall of the Liao Dynasty, most of the Khitans became subjects of the Jin Dynasty. However, with the deepening of class and ***, the Khitan people could not bear the national oppression and exploitation of the rulers of the Jin Dynasty, and several large-scale armed uprisings broke out. These large-scale armed uprisings directly led to the large-scale migration of the Khitans during the Jin Dynasty, mainly due to the spontaneous migration of the Khitans caused by the rebellion of Yelu Yujian, a close relative of the former Liao Dynasty royal family in the early Jin Dynasty; The rulers of the middle Jin Dynasty suppressed the Khitans.
8. After the uprising, the Khitans were moved to the northeast in an organized manner.
Yelu Yujian, a close relative of the former Liao Dynasty royal family, defected to the Jurchens because of the infighting of the Liao Dynasty rulers, and also participated in the Jurchen battles against the Liao and Song. After the Jin Dynasty destroyed Liao, Yelu Yu saw the official worship of the Western Army, but he was not promoted for a long time, and was suspected by the rulers of the Jin Dynasty of secretly colluding with Yelu Dashi, and took his wife and son as hostages. So in September of the tenth year of Jintianhui (1132), Yelu Yu conspired with the Khitan people in the Yanyun area, "plotting to punish those who are in the clouds of the Western Army, and make an appointment with the Khitan and Han'er in Yunzhong, Hedong, Hebei, and Yanjing County (Shou), and order the Jurchen to be in the officials and in the army." As a result of the mutiny, Yelu was forced to flee into Western Xia and the Tatar region, where he was captured and killed by the Tatars. After this incident, Jin Ting ordered all localities to "arrest the rebel party in all localities, and still ordered all roads to kill the Khitan, and all roads were in chaos, and the rest of the month stopped." "Five hundred households in the eight halls of Hedong, the palace of the second room of the Shanjin Division, the palace of the north and south, the four tribes, and the chieftains of the Khitan Xiangwen led the crowd to rise up, and died into the Xia country, and the desert of the north." This incident caused a large number of Khitans to defect to the Xia Kingdom in the west or to the nomads of the Mongolian steppes in the north.
From the fifth year of Jin Zhenglong (1160) to the second year of Dading (1162), the Khitans on the Northwest Road forcibly recruited Ding Zhuang to oppose the southern invasion of King Hailing.
8. Launched an anti-Jin uprising under the leadership of the Shifter and the Wo Hu. After the uprising was suppressed, the rulers of the Jin Dynasty, in order to prevent the Khitans from rebelling again and strengthen their control over the Khitans, first put the Khitans who participated in the uprising to "dismiss the Khitan Meng'an Mouke, and their household subordinates were subordinate to the daughters of Zhimeng'an Mouke". Later, the Khitan people who originally lived in the grassland area of the northwest were moved to the northeast region (mainly the Yalu and Qiuer river basins west of the middle reaches of the Nenjiang River and the Shangjing area), so that they "lived together with the female straight people". This was a large-scale migration of the Khitans during the Jin Dynasty.
In addition to the above two large-scale migrations, in the Jin Dynasty, there were also moves to Zhongzhou (the Central Plains, the area north of the Yellow River) as the Jin army marched south to conquer the Song Dynasty. "The fifth year of the emperor's reign (1145) ,...All the Jurchen and Khitan people migrated from their headquarters to Zhongzhou and mingled with the people." In the first year of Taihe (1201), the Khitan herdsman Yelu Deshou led the Xinzhou uprising, gathered tens of thousands of troops, and after the uprising failed, he joined the rising Mongols. In the first year of Chongqing (1212), the Khitan Yelu Liuge launched an anti-Jin uprising, with more than 100,000 soldiers, after the failure of the uprising, he and his son Xue Kuo and others defected to Genghis Khan, and more than 50,000 people from the Shousha Department of Yelu Liuge ** entered Goryeo. In the second year of Xingding (1218), Yeluliuge led the Mongol and Khitan soldiers into Goryeo, and was defeated, and most of the Khitans were moved back to Linhuang (now Boluo City, southeast of Balinzuoqi, Inner Mongolia), and most of these people later became part of the Mongol ethnic group.
After Genghis Khan unified the Mongolian Plateau in 1206, he personally led a large army in 1211 to launch a war to destroy the Jin, the western expedition and the attack on the Song Dynasty. According to the History of the Yuan Dynasty, about hundreds of thousands of Khitans surrendered to the Mongols, and they played a great role in the war of destroying the Jin and later the Southern Song Dynasty with the Mongol army. However, the southward movement of the Mongol army caused great disasters to the people in North China, caused a lot of damage to social production, and many people were killed and captured. Those who survived had to flee their homes and seek shelter, including many Khitans. A good example of this is Yelu Chucai, who was trusted by Genghis Khan to take charge of the affairs of the Yanjing Road. Yelu Chucai used his ability to protect his relatives many times, and at the same time tried his best to prevent the Mongols from plundering and killing civilians and Khitans, because of his prestige and measures to protect the people, more Khitans sought the protection of Yelu Chucai, and after that, the residents of Yanjing City (present-day Beijing) were "mostly Khitans", and Yanjing (present-day Beijing) became an important settlement for the Khitans. With the continuous victories of the Mongol army against the Jin Dynasty, the Khitans gradually moved south from the northeast, Hebei, and northern Shanxi. In the third year of Jin Zhenyou (1215), Gao Ruli said to Xuanzong: "Today, there are millions of people in Hebei who have migrated to Henan, and people are given one liter of rice per day, with an annual rate of 3.6 million stones, and half of them are given three million stones of Zhiyu Zhisu", among these more than one million people, there should be a considerable number of Khitans.
With the expansion of the territory of the Yuan Dynasty, there was a "Jiangnan Ping in the past, and the people of China went south like water, and there were those who occupied the family and the waiter." Fanghua followed, forgetting Fangli, and burying the rest without returning". There are not a few Khitans in the "Middle Earth", and they not only migrated to the Yellow River Basin, but also to the Yangtze River Basin with the trend of southward migration, and the nationwide migration during this period formed a new migration of the Khitans during the Yuan Dynasty. Due to the above migration, the Khitan people lived in a wide range during the Yuan Dynasty, both staying in their hometowns in the northeast and scattered in other places, especially the Han land in the Central Plains. Based on this, the Yuan Dynasty also adopted a different policy towards them. The "History of the Yuan" contains: "In August of the twenty-first year of the Yuan Dynasty (1284), the draft of the military officer ,......Female straight, Khitan and Han Chinese. If the female straight and Khitan are born in the northwest and do not understand Chinese, they are the same as Mongolians. The Khitans who do not speak Chinese here refer to the Khitans who have not moved inward and are still living in their original places of residence. As for the Khitans who moved into the Han land of the Central Plains in succession during the Liao, Jin, and Yuan dynasties, they evolved more rapidly. Due to the close contact between production and life, it has gradually integrated with the local Han people. According to Tao Zongyi, in the Yuan Dynasty, the Khitans were included in the eight Han people.