Yelü Abaoji Founds the Khitan State (Liao)

The Khitan were an ancient people of northern China who long roamed the Xar Moron and Lao Ha River basins in eastern Inner Mongolia. In Sui and Tang times their ties with the Central Plains grew closer, and Tang set up the Songmo Governorate in Khitan lands and appointed Khitan leaders as governors. In late Tang, constant war in the Central Plains drove many northern Han people north beyond the Great Wall, bringing advanced production techniques and ways of life. By the late 9th century the Khitan had farming, ironworking and weaving and began building houses and towns. In the early 10th century Yelü Abaoji, leader of the Dila tribe, united the Khitan tribes through repeated campaigns. In 916 he formally took the title of emperor and founded the Khitan state, known as Emperor Taizu of Liao, with the capital at Shangjing Linhuangfu (south of present-day Balinzuo Banner, Inner Mongolia). Abaoji employed Han scholars such as Han Yanhui and Han Zhigu, built state institutions on Central Plains models, developed agriculture and settled Han people to farm, and had the Khitan large script created on the model of Chinese characters, and his state grew steadily stronger. In 926 Abaoji led his army to destroy the Bohai Kingdom and soon died. His son Emperor Taizong, Yelü Deguang, helped Shi Jingtang found the Later Jin, obtained the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun, and in 947 renamed the state “Liao”. Liao followed a policy of “governing according to custom”, with a Northern administration and a Southern administration, “ruling the Khitan by Khitan institutions and the Han by Han institutions”. The dynastic name later changed several times between “Khitan” and “Liao”; the state lasted over two hundred years until the Jin destroyed it in 1125.