Introduction, Part 1: Evolving Approaches to the Study of the Liao

The Liao empire (907–1125), at its largest extent, comprised the modern cities of Beijing and Datong, the provinces of Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, and Jilin, parts of southeastern Russia, and a swathe of grasslands stretching across much of Mongolia (see map of the Liao empire, overleaf). Drawing on Chinese-language sources, many earlier studies of this empire focused largely on its relations with Five Dynasties and Song China. This special journal issue, in contrast, demonstrates that the world of the Kitan Liao was much broader than simply China, East Asia, or even Central Asia. Utilizing Kitan-, Tangut-, Japanese-, Turkic-, Persian-, and Arabic-language sources as well as new archaeological findings, the essays here demonstrate that the Liao empire had extensive contacts both with its immediate neighbors—Song China, Koryŏ Korea, the Tangut Xixia, the Uighur Khanates—and with more distant polities—Japan and the Muslim states of Central Asia. Diplomatic exchanges unfolded in this open and cosmopolitan world, in which Inner Asia and the Liao were central actors, fostering the flow of mutual knowledge within and across cultural regions, kingdoms, and courts.

We have titled this volume Perspectives on the Liao, in homage to the 1973 volume edited by Denis Twitchett and Arthur F. Wright, Perspectives on the T’ang.¹ The title, Perspectives on the Liao, preserves some useful ambiguity.

Map.

Approximate extent of the Liao empire and Kitan homelands.

Drawing: François Louis. Terrain map data: © AutoNavi, Google, SK planet.

The word Liao here can refer to the dynasty, the state, and the culture, all of which are covered by the essays in this special issue. We use the term Kitan to refer more specifically to the language, ethnicity, and ascribed cultural identity of the Kitan people and the Liao ruling house. This introduction has two parts: Part 1 explains how this volume builds on earlier Western-language studies of the Liao dynasty, and Part 2, by Daniel Kane, provides an update on the ongoing decipherment of the Kitan language.

The spellings Khitan and Kitan have been commonly used in English and other Western languages since the eighteenth century. In the twentieth century many authors preferred Ch’i-tan, the Wade-Giles form of the Chinese characters 契丹, and many people nowadays write Qidan, from pinyin. The Kitan form of the word probably had a back k, conventionally written q. The Old Turkish pronunciation of the name was qïtañ. The closest one can get to this in conventional English spelling is Kitan, which is adopted in the articles in this collection, as is the plural, Kitans.

Although the Kitans devised two scripts for their native language as early as the 920s, no significant Kitan texts from the tenth or early eleventh century have yet come to light. All our early records are instead written in Chinese. The Chinese name Liao 遼 appears to have been introduced in 937 to designate the Chinese-speaking regions in the south of the state while the rest of the empire was referred to as “Great Qidan.” In 983, at the beginning of Empress Dowager Chengtian’s regency, she issued a decree specifying that the entirety of the empire was to be called “Great Qidan,” but the name Liao continued to be used occasionally. Only in 1066, under the sinophile emperor Daozong (r. 1055–1101) did “Great Liao” become the official Chinese name for the entire state.² Liao was also the Chinese name of the river that originated in the Kitan heartland in Inner Mongolia.

The cultural diversity of Liao society and the importance of the dynasty to later Chinese history are now widely recognized. This is in part the result of the 1949 landmark study by Karl A. Wittfogel (1896–1988) and Feng Chia-sheng 馮家昇 (1904–1970),³ and in part a reflection of extensive archaeological finds, which have prompted an unprecedented scholarly interest in the Liao dynasty, especially in China. Recent bibliographies compiled by Liu Pujiang, Zhou Feng, and Sun Guojun list over 6,500 publications, almost all...