Early Islamic Sources on the Kitan Liao: The Role of Trade

The power of the Kitan Liao was such that their fame spread across Asia, ultimately reaching into Europe, where their name, transmogrified in English into Cathay, still evokes an image of eastern splendor.¹ In this paper, we will trace one aspect of the westward journey of the name of the Kitans, its early transmission into the Islamic world, and the context of the earliest references to their name. The first references in Islamic sources to the Kitans appear in documents dealing with their trade goods and can be dated from the late tenth century onwards. The story of these Islamic references to the Kitans is muddied by the history of the Kitan Liao dynasty: when it fell to the Jurchen in 1125, some of the survivors headed west. They established a new state, Qara Khitai (also spelled the Qarakhitāy), on the eastern frontier of the Islamic world, in Transoxiana and the Tarim Basin, where they ruled for a century.² Many Islamic sources mention this dynasty of the Qara Khitai, but fewer are available for the earlier history of the Kitans. The earliest references to the Kitans by name are usually taken to be those in connection with an invasion of Qarakhanid territory in 1017–19 by steppe peoples including Kitans in 1017/8, though this event is recorded only by later historians such as Ibn al-Athīr;³ here we will push that date a little earlier and amplify the corpus with material from pharmacological literature and other genres which deal with the commodities of the Kitan Liao. The references which we will be discussing are found in Arabic literature such as the Mukhtaṣar fī al-ṭīb (Concise Guide to Aromatics) of Ibn Kaysān, the Hikāyat Abī Qāsim al-Baghdādī (Story of Abū Qāsim of Baghdād) of al-Azdī, the Kitāb al-Ṣaydanah (Book of the Pharmacy) of Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī, Persian literature such as the Zayn al-akhbār (Adornment of Reports) of Gardīzī, and an Arabic account of Turkic language, the Dīwān lughāt al-Turk (Compendium of the Languages of the Turks) of Maḥmūd al-Kashghārī. Reports from this early period are also preserved in later works, especially the Ṭabāʾiʿ al-ḥayawān (Natures of Animals) of al-Marwazī. When we examine these early references, we are struck by their connection with commodities employed in trade and tribute.⁴ Musk was especially associated with the Kitans, and it is in the context of examination of accounts of musk that reference to the Kitans first appears in Arabic literature in the late tenth century. In addition, khutū, walrus or narwhal ivory traded by the Kitans, also appears for the first time in the tenth century. These references are prior to the earliest political references to the Kitans, which appear in the early eleventh century in conjunction with the invasion of 1017/8 and with a Kitan embassy to the Ghaznavids in 1025/6 or 1026/7. The priority of these references to commodities suggests that what the Kitans exported or sent in tribute was an aspect of relations between the Kitans and the Islamic world which had a lasting impact on the spread of their name.

Before proceeding to the matter at hand, a few remarks about the issue of foreign names in Islamic sources and their handling in this paper are necessary. Arabic script does not regularly indicate short vowels, only long, and even then the repertory of vowels is limited to long and short versions of a, i, u, and diphthongs. An ancillary system for indicating short vowels does exist, but it is rarely employed except in special cases. For all of the Arabic script forms of the name of the Kitans romanized in this paper, and for other words with uncertain vowels, I have given no short vowels except as written in the original sources. Spaces where a vowel should be read have been marked with a period, for example kh.ṭāʾ, even though...