Qara Khitai

The Qara Khitai, or Western Liao, was a state in Central Asia founded by Khitans who fled west after the fall of the Liao dynasty in northern China. From 1124 to 1218 it ruled a large region from the Tarim basin to the Aral Sea, as a non-Muslim power governing a largely Muslim population.

When the Jurchens attacked the Liao dynasty in the 1120s, Yelü Dashi, a Khitan prince and scholar who had passed the Chinese civil-service examination, broke with the last Liao emperor and led a group of followers west, to the Uyghur lands and the Kirghiz. In 1124 he declared himself king, and around 1131 took the title gurkhan, "universal khan". Around 1134, invited by the Kara-Khanid ruler of Balasagun, in today's Kyrgyzstan, to help against nomadic enemies, he took the city and made it his capital.

In 1141, near Samarkand, at Qatwan, Yelü Dashi's army defeated the Seljuk sultan Sanjar and his Kara-Khanid allies, one of the heaviest defeats suffered by the Seljuks. The Qara Khitai took Transoxiana, and the western Kara-Khanids, the Khwarazm Shahs and the Uyghurs of Qocho became their vassals, paying tribute. News of the defeat of a Muslim army by a ruler from the east reached the Crusaders and may have contributed to the European legend of Prester John, a Christian priest-king in the east who would come to help them.

The Qara Khitai kept Chinese-style titles, institutions and the calendar of the Liao, used Chinese and Khitan scripts, and issued coins with Chinese inscriptions. They ruled indirectly, allowing local Muslim rulers to govern their territories and collecting tribute, often a modest tax of one dinar per household, through resident officials. Their rule was generally tolerant: the ruling elite were mostly Buddhists, but Muslims, Nestorian Christians and others practised freely.

After Yelü Dashi's death in 1143, his widow, Tabuyan, ruled as regent. His daughter Pusuwan ruled from 1164 to 1177, until she was killed by her father-in-law after an affair. Her brother, Yelü Zhilugu, became gurkhan in 1178.

In the early thirteenth century, the vassals rebelled. The Khwarazm Shah Muhammad II, who resented paying tribute, defeated the Qara Khitai in 1210. In the east, Kuchlug, a prince of the Naiman people who had fled from Genghis Khan, took refuge with the gurkhan, married his daughter and, in 1211, seized power, keeping Zhilugu as nominal ruler until his death. Kuchlug, who had converted from Christianity to Buddhism, persecuted Muslims in Kashgar and Khotan, ordering them to give up their religion.

In 1218 Genghis Khan sent his general Jebe against Kuchlug. Jebe proclaimed freedom of religion, and the Muslim population welcomed the Mongols. Kuchlug fled and was killed in the Pamirs. The Qara Khitai lands became part of the Mongol Empire. A branch of the Qara Khitai, under Buraq Hajib, founded a dynasty in Kerman, in Iran, which ruled until 1306 under the Mongols.

Our maps show the Qara Khitai on the 1200 map, with an outline of about 4.3 million square kilometres. Kazakhstan makes up 42 percent of it and China 22 percent, with the rest in Russia and Central Asia. Samarkand, Tashkent, Almaty and Kashgar lie inside it. On the 1279 map, the region belongs to the Chagatai Khanate.