Archaeology Magazine - March/April 2025 - 36

and helped them lead an attack on Tianzuo
before escaping and returning once again
to Tianzuo's side. Perhaps recognizing that
the Liao were doomed to be overrun by the
Jin-or fearing that Tianzuo would exact
retribution for his repeated betrayals-Dashi
made the fateful decision, in 1124, to break
with the emperor for good, declare himself
king, and head west with a small band of
followers. Although it could hardly have
been apparent at the time, this marked the
beginning of the Western Liao, or Qara
Khitai, Empire, which would go on to rule a
swath of Central Asia for nearly a century until being overrun
by Genghis Khan and the Mongols in 1218.
Over the next decade, Dashi ventured into a region that
was occupied by a fragmentary patchwork of kingdoms
whose rivalries he could exploit. These included the Buddhist
Uighurs of Xinjiang, in far western China, and the Muslim
Eastern Qarakhanids of south Xinjiang, Kyrgyzstan, and parts
of southern Kazakhstan. Dashi pushed west, all the while nursing
the ultimate aim of returning to take vengeance on the
Jin-who completed their conquest of the Liao in 1125 and
took a good portion of territory from the Song in 1127. In
1131, Dashi was enthroned by his followers as both a Chinese
emperor and as gürkhan, a new title meaning " universal khan. "
In addition to their military prowess, Dashi's contingent
profited from their prestigious association with China, as well
as their nomadic roots and embrace of local customs. " Dashi
knows the Chinese writing system and he has all these trappings
of the emperor-for him, China was a good brand, " says Michal
Biran of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a historian who
specializes in the Qara Khitai. " But the Khitans also shared a
nomadic culture with most of the rulers of Central Asia. They
were strangers, but they were not too foreign. " After helping the
Eastern Qarakhanid khan fend off enemy tribes, in 1134 Dashi
easily took over the khan's capital of Balāsāghūn in present-day
Kyrgyzstan and made it the Qara Khitai capital. Dashi's greatest
triumph came in 1141 when he extended his realm to include
the territory of the Western Qarakhanids, encompassing much
of Uzbekistan, by defeating their overlords, the powerful Seljuk
Empire, which was based in Baghdad. By the time Dashi died
in 1143, his domain stretched from the Oxus River to the Altai
Coins believed to have been minted by the
Qara Khitai are among the small number
of objects that scholars can confidently
associate with the empire.
Mountains, covering most of modern Xinjiang,
Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan,
southern Kazakhstan, and western Mongolia.
The Qara Khitai ruled over a multiethnic
population composed mainly of Turks,
Iranians, Mongols, and a smattering of Han
Chinese. Khitans were a small minority of
this population. Most of the populace was
sedentary and Muslim, though there was a substantial contingent
of nomads, as well as Buddhist, Christian, and Jewish communities.
The Qara Khitai practiced Buddhism but were tolerant of their
vassals' religions and were, in turn, accepted as overlords by their
largely Muslim subjects. " The time of Qara Khitai rule was a time
of stability and prosperity, " says Biran. " People said, 'Okay, we
have a good life, we still have Muslim rulers, so who cares if the
overlords are infidels?' You can even find in Muslim lawbooks that
they praise the Qara Khitai. Usually, you don't praise the infidel
overlords, you want to replace them. "
In comparison with the Liao Empire, the Qara Khitai
Empire was highly decentralized. Dashi divided the realm
into two domains. A central territory organized around the
capital was directly ruled by the gürkhan. Farther out, the
subject kingdoms-the Uighurs and Eastern Qarakhanids to
the east and the Western Qarakhanids and Iranian Khwārazm
to the west-as well as various subject tribes were all ruled
with a relatively light hand. They were required to pay annual
taxes, send troops when needed, and recognize the gürkhan's
authority by carrying his official seals and tablets of authority,
but retained a degree of autonomy. Representatives of the
gürkhan collected tribute from the subject kingdoms and
tribes, but Dashi's troops were not embedded with them.
T
Altai Mountains
KAZAKHSTAN
Taraz
UZBEKISTAN
Bala¯sa¯ghu¯n
Kök-Tash mausoleum
KYRGYZSTAN
TAJIKISTAN
500
1,000 miles
CHINA
he history of the Qara Khitai Empire is known
largely from a small number of written works, primarily
the Liao Shi, the official history of the Liao Empire,
which was compiled under the Chinese Yuan Dynasty (1279-
1368). Other Chinese sources also mention the Qara Khitai,
including the histories of the Song and Jin Dynasties, as do the
works of several twelfth- and thirteenthcentury
Muslim writers. Notably, the Qara
Khitai is the only dynasty that did not rule
any land traditionally seen as part of China
that is considered a Chinese dynasty by
Chinese historians.
The archaeological record of the Qara
MONGOLIA
Khitai is even sparser than the written
record. Although a series of gürkhans ruled
from Balāsāghūn for 75 years after Dashi's
death, until recently, just a few coins and
other objects-but not a single structure-
had been indisputably associated with
36
ARCHAEOLOGY * March/April 2025
Oxus River
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