Biography
Family Background and Early Years
Yelü Dashi was born in 1087 at Linhuang Prefecture in the Liao Supreme Capital. He was an eighth-generation descendant of Yelü Abaoji through Abaoji's fourth son Yelü Yaliguo. As a member of the imperial clan he received a strong education, became proficient in both Chinese and Khitan, and was skilled in riding and archery.
In 1115 Dashi passed the palace examination with the highest result, became a jinshi, and joined the Hanlin Academy, first as an attendant and later as chief academician. The *History of Liao* records him as the only Khitan jinshi. Since the Khitan term for a Hanlin official was “linya,” he was also known as Dashi Linya or Linya Dashi. Around 1116 he became prefect of Taizhou, and after Jin attacked the area he was transferred to Xiangzhou. Around 1120 he became military governor of the Liaoxing Army and was posted to the Southern Capital circuit.
Defense of Yanjing and Northern Liao
In 1122 Jin armies pushed deeply into Liao territory and Emperor Tianzuo fled west toward Jiashan. Officials remaining at the Southern Capital, including Zhang Lin, Li Chuwen, Xiao Gan, and Yelü Dashi, enthroned Yelü Chun as emperor in what later became known as Northern Liao. Dashi received overall responsibility for military defense of the Southern Capital.
Northern Song viewed Liao's weakness as an opportunity to recover the Yan-Yun region. In the fourth month of 1122 Tong Guan moved a large army toward the frontier. Dashi, as southwestern commander, led about two thousand Xi and Khitan cavalry and stationed them at Xincheng in Zhuozhou. On the twenty-sixth day of the fifth month he surprised Yang Keshi at Landiangu and routed his troops. He later defeated Zhong Shidao at Baigou and pursued Song troops at Gucheng, inflicting heavy losses.
On the sixth day of the sixth month Dashi met Song envoy Ma Kuo at Zhuozhou and challenged Northern Song for violating a century of peace and attacking Liao territory after listening to the Jurchens. He told Ma Kuo to convey to Tong Guan that Song should either restore the old peace or come out for open battle.
Yelü Chun died on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month and his wife Xiao Puxiannü became regent as empress dowager. Dashi and Xiao Gan controlled military affairs. When a Northern Song force of roughly 200,000 again advanced, they had only about 20,000 troops and defended along the Lugou River. In the tenth month Guo Yaoshi seized the outer city of the Southern Capital but was driven back when support failed to arrive. Later, fires and confusion north of the river led Song troops to believe a major Liao attack was underway; they burned their own camp and fled, and Dashi's forces pursued and defeated them.
Return to Tianzuo and Captivity by Jin
As Jin troops approached from the north, the Northern Liao leadership split over where to go. Xiao Gan favored creating a state among the Xi, while Dashi advocated rejoining Emperor Tianzuo. Dashi executed Xiao Bodie for opposition, while Xiao Gan took his Xi troops away and Dashi accompanied Xiao Puxiannü and Khitan forces toward Tianzuo.
When they reached Tianzuo in 1123, the emperor executed Xiao Puxiannü and rebuked Dashi for enthroning Yelü Chun. Dashi replied that Tianzuo had abandoned the state and people despite possessing the strength of the empire and that enthroning even ten descendants of Abaoji would have been better than begging enemies for mercy. Tianzuo had no answer and pardoned the participants.
In the fourth month Dashi defended Fengshengzhou but was captured near Juyong Pass by Jin forces. Wanyan Zongwang bound him and forced him to guide a Jin attack against Tianzuo's Qingzhongzhai camp, resulting in the capture of princes, consorts, princesses, and officials. Jin founder Wanyan Aguda specifically commended Dashi's service as a guide even though he had not voluntarily surrendered. This episode became the most controversial part of Dashi's career. In the ninth month he escaped the Jin camp and returned to Tianzuo.
Break with Tianzuo and the Western Base
In 1124 Tianzuo, encouraged by reinforcements, prepared another decisive war with Jin. Dashi argued that repeated defeats meant the army should be conserved and opportunity awaited rather than risk another reckless attack. Tianzuo refused. Concluding that restoration under Tianzuo was impossible, Dashi killed two commanders who opposed him, established northern and southern administrative offices, declared himself king, and left with two hundred armored cavalry for Kedun City, a major Liao base in the northwest.
Traveling north from Jiashan, he crossed the Black River and received support from a White Tatar leader, including horses, camels, and sheep. In autumn 1124 he reached Kedun City and assembled forces from seven prefectures and eighteen tribal groups. In an address he invoked two centuries of Liao rule, denounced Jin's destruction of Liao territory and people, and called on the assembled peoples to help avenge the dynasty and recover its lands. He obtained more than ten thousand elite troops, appointed officials, organized military units, and equipped the army. Within months of his departure Tianzuo was defeated and captured and the Liao ended in its old heartland.
Westward Expansion and Imperial Rule
From Kedun Dashi built strength and brought surrounding groups under his control. In 1130 he launched a major westward campaign across the Altai Mountains into Central Asia. In 1132 at Emil he proclaimed himself emperor, took the title Gurkhan and the Chinese title Tianyou Emperor, and formally established Western Liao.
He expanded across Xinjiang, Mongolia, Central Asia, and toward West Asia, establishing Husi Ordo near Balasaghun as his capital. In 1134 he transferred the capital to Balasaghun. Gaochang Uyghurs, western and eastern Qarakhanids, and Khwarazm came under Western Liao supremacy. In 1141 Dashi defeated a coalition led by the Seljuk Empire at Qatwan, securing Western Liao's dominant position in Central Asia and spreading his reputation far to the west. He died in 1143, aged fifty-seven, and received the temple name Dezong.
His Degree and the Title "Dashi Linya"
Yelü Dashi, whose courtesy name was Zhongde, was a descendant in the eighth generation of the Liao founder Abaoji; he knew both Qidan and Chinese, was a good rider and archer, passed the metropolitan examination in 1115, was made a Hanlin attendant and soon rose to be a Hanlin recipient of edicts. The Liao called the Hanlin "linya," whence he was known as Dashi Linya, sometimes written Dashi Linma in the notebooks; and the Qidan Guozhi explains the name by saying that linya was his office, like the Chinese Hanlin academician, while Dashi was his childhood name, since in the north men had no surnames. He afterwards served as governor of Tai and Xiang and as military commissioner of the Liao Xing army. As to the examination system of the time, the palace examination "took its instructions when the time came," and its first man was given a special promotion and made a grand master of the palace library and Hanlin attendant for edicts, the second and third and the rest being made only gentlemen in waiting — a rule that matches his own beginnings.
The Founding of Northern Liao and His Two Repulses of the Song Armies
In 1122, with the Jin pressing hard and Emperor Tianzuo in flight, Yelü Dashi and the great ministers set up Yelü Chun, prince of Qin and Jin, as emperor, enfeoffed his wife Puxiannü as consort of virtue, made Huilibao acting commissioner of the northern privy council, and entrusted all military matters to Yelü Dashi; and when Northern Liao was founded Yelü Chun made him commander-in-chief of its forces with charge of guarding Nanjing. After Yelü Chun's death his wife, the consort of virtue Xiao, was set up as empress dowager to hold Yan. Just when Northern Liao was founded, the Northern Song court, learning that the Jin had marched south in force, judged this the moment to recover Yan and sent Tong Guan "with a hundred thousand men on a frontier tour," watching for a chance to take Nanjing; and Yelü Dashi was ordered to camp at Xincheng county to guard against the Song. Yang Keshi, a favourite of Tong Guan and commander of the vanguard, believing the rumour that as soon as the Song troops appeared the people of Yan and Yun would come out with baskets of rice and jars of wine to welcome the royal army, rode straight for Nanjing with several thousand light horse; and on the twenty-sixth day of the fifth month Yelü Dashi surprised Yang Keshi at Landiangou and broke his army. The Northern Liao court then gave him thirty thousand more men. On the twenty-eighth he faced the Song commander of the eastern route, Zhong Shidao, and the next day the Song tried to induce the Liao troops to surrender, which Yelü Dashi flatly refused, saying that there was no need of many words since death was all he had; and he meanwhile led his cavalry across the river where it was shallow in the west, turned the flank of the Song bridge-guards and broke them. On the thirtieth Xiao Gan began to besiege the Song western army, and on the third day of the sixth month Zhong Shidao, finding the fighting going against his several commands, withdrew; and Yelü Dashi, hearing of it, took light horse in pursuit and fought a hard action with the Song at Gucheng. Zhong Shidao and the rest fled to the walls of Xiongxian, where Tong Guan would not let them in; and the Liao troops struck the Song army in the flank and denounced the Song for breaking faith and treaty. On the same day, with wind, rain and hail, the Song army was disastrously beaten, and it is recorded that "from south of Xiongzhou to north of Mozhou, among the ponds and marshes, and west of Xiongzhou in the Baozhou and Zhending region, the dead lay pillowed on one another beyond counting." In the exchanges between envoys, Ma Kuo declared at the Liao court that the Song had not marched at the Jin's invitation but because Tianzuo still lived and Yelü Chun ought not to have taken the throne, so that they came to punish him; and Yelü Dashi asked why, after a hundred years of good relations between Song and Liao, they should break faith and invade. Ma Kuo answered that the Jurchen had several times sent envoys by sea offering to restore the Yan region and had lately sent a despatch saying they had taken Shanhou, so that if Song did not want Yan the Jurchen would take it themselves, and therefore Song had to send troops to rescue Yan. Yelü Dashi said with an angry face that the Tangut had several times memorialized to attack Song from both sides and that his own court had each time sealed up the memorials and sent them to Song, unwilling to seek advantage by betraying faith or to employ spies, and asked whether Song, on the strength of a single word from the Jurchen, would raise troops at once; and he pressed Ma Kuo on why, as an envoy, he had made a pact with the Chinese Liu Zongji against them, and ended by saying that since the two states were on good terms he would not detain the envoy, who might go after eating and carry word to Tong Guan that if he wished for peace there could be peace as before, and if not he was invited to bring out his troops and give battle.
The Regency of the Consort of Virtue, Liaoshigang and the Lugou River
The empress dowager Xiao Puxiannü ruled as regent and changed the era name to Dexing, and Yelü Dashi with the great king of the four armies, Xiao Gan, held the military and political business of the court. In the seventh month of that year Northern Song gathered two hundred thousand troops to invade again on the occasion of Yelü Chun's death; and in the ninth month the Song commander of Zhuozhou, Guo Yaoshi, and others marched to Xiongzhou with a great show of strength. Yelü Dashi and Xiao Gan had then only about twenty thousand men, and making use of the ground they disposed their defence and faced the Song across the river; the two armies fought once at Liaoshigang without decision, and Guo Yaoshi meanwhile rode with light horse on the undefended way straight at Nanjing and took the outer city, but being unsupported was driven back by Xiao Gan. On the twenty-ninth the north bank of the Lugou river was bright with fire on every side, and the Song troops on the far bank, thinking a great Liao attack was coming, burned their camp and fled in disorder; and at dawn the next day Yelü Dashi and the others, discovering the Song retreat, led their troops after them and heavily defeated them, so that Song "lost all the military stores accumulated since the Xining and Yuanfeng eras." The Liao army under Yelü Dashi and Xiao Gan thus won another great victory over the Song.
The Divergence at the Liao Court and His Reproof of Tianzuo
Just as Yelü Dashi and the others were driving the Song back in the south, the Jin were pressing from the north. Northern Liao, having failed to obtain investiture from the Jin, sent troops to guard the Juyong pass; but when the Jin arrived in the twelfth month of 1122 the Liao troops broke without fighting, and Xiao Puxiannü fled Nanjing by night. At this point the company began to consider where to go: Xiao Gan proposed to go to his own Xi princely house and found a state there, while Yelü Dashi, judging that Liao still had some strength in the northwest, proposed Fengzhou; and Xiao Boduie observed that in principle they ought indeed to go over to Tianzuo, but that as things stood they had no face to meet him. Yelü Dashi, hearing this, had him dragged out and beheaded and proclaimed that whoever dared dispute the decision would be beheaded too, which brought him into conflict with Xiao Gan's Xi troops, the Qidan and Xi armies facing each other in order of battle. In the end Xiao Gan led the Xi troops back to the Xi princely house and the next year made himself emperor, soon afterwards being killed by his own men; while Yelü Dashi took Xiao Puxiannü and led the Qidan troops over to Tianzuo. In the second month of 1123 Yelü Dashi reached Tianzuo's place, but Tianzuo put Xiao Puxiannü to death and reproached him, asking how he had dared to set up Yelü Chun while he himself still lived; and Yelü Dashi answered that with the strength of the whole realm the emperor had been unable to make a single stand against the enemy but had abandoned the state and fled far, bringing ruin on the people, and that even if ten Yelü Chuns were set up they were all descendants of the founder, which was surely better than begging another man for mercy. Tianzuo had no answer, gave him wine and food and pardoned all who had taken part.
His Capture by the Jin, His Service as Guide, and His Night Flight
In the fourth month of the same year the Jin sent Wulu and Zongwang against the Liao sovereign at Yinshan. When the Jin first entered Yan, Liao troops again raided Fengshengzhou, and Linya Dashi walled himself twenty-five li east of Longmen; the Jin commander Wulu, hearing of it, sent Zhaoli, Lou Shi and Ma Heshang with troops against him, took Dashi alive and reduced all his following. Having got Yelü Dashi, the Jin bound him with ropes and forced him to guide them against Tianzuo's great camp at Qingzhong: Zongwang and Danghai with four horsemen tied the Liao commander Linya Dashi with a rope and made him their guide straight to the Liao main camp, where, the Liao sovereign having gone to Yingzhou, his consorts and daughters saw the enemy arrive suddenly and would have fled, and were seized by dismounted riders; the Jin took the princes of Qin and Xu with consorts, princesses and ministers, and "more than ten thousand carts," only the prince of Liang, Yali, and his eldest daughter escaping in the confusion. The Jin founder issued a special edict praising Yelü Dashi, saying that though Linya Dashi had not submitted, he had done labour as a guide and should be told so plainly; and of this matter, the least creditable page in his life, the Liao Shi says nothing or passes it over in a phrase. The Qidan Guozhi records that after submitting to the Jurchen he played double-sixes with the great chief Nianhan and quarrelled over the throw, and that Nianhan wished to kill him without saying so, at which Dashi took fright and, returning to his tent, abandoned his wife and fled by night with his five sons. In any case the upshot was that in the ninth month of that year Yelü Dashi escaped from the Jin camp with a body of men and returned to Tianzuo.
Making Himself King, the Founding at Kedun, and the Beginning of the Western March
In the seventh month of 1124 Tianzuo, having got the men Yelü Dashi brought and having also gained the Yinshan Shiwei chief Mogeshi's following, thought himself favoured by Heaven and prepared to give battle to the Jin and recover his lands. Yelü Dashi pointed out that the Liao armies had been beaten again and again and had lost the whole of the Chinese lands, and that to seek a decisive battle now was no good plan, advising that they should "nourish the troops and wait for the time, and not act lightly"; but Tianzuo would not take it. Yelü Dashi, concluding that Tianzuo could not accomplish the restoration, resolved to go to the great northwestern stronghold of Kedun, which had been valued by every Liao emperor since the founding, had its own military commission of the Jian'an army and was the seat of the northwestern circuit's commissioner, and where even in the troubles of the late Liao the northwest had remained comparatively quiet with more than twenty thousand horse in the several tribal forces and several hundred thousand war horses. Two officers, Xiao Yixue and Polikuo, opposed him, and he struck first and killed them both; then he set up the northern and southern offices, made himself king, and fled the Liao court by night with two hundred armoured horse. Three days north he crossed the Black river and met the Baidada Xiangwen Chuanggu'er, who offered him four hundred horses, twenty camels and some sheep; and going west to Kedun he camped at the Beiting protectorate and assembled the kings and peoples of the seven prefectures of Weiwu, Chongde, Huifan, Xin, Dalin, Zihe and Tuo and of the eighteen tribes including the great Huangshiwei, Dila, Wangjila, Chachila, Yexi, Bigude, Nila, Dalaguai, Damili, Mi'erji, Hezhu, Wuguli, Zubu, Pusuwuan, Tanggu, Humusi, Xidi and Jiu'erbi, telling them that his ancestors had founded the state through hardship over nine reigns and two hundred years, that the Jin as a subject people had pressed his realm, slaughtered his people and destroyed his cities, so that Tianzuo was exiled abroad, and that he would march west in righteousness to borrow the strength of the tribes, destroy his enemies and recover his lands, and asking whether among them there were any who pitied his state, feared for its altars and wished to join in saving their sovereign and father and rescuing the people from hardship. Moved by this speech the tribes supported him one after another, so that he soon had more than ten thousand picked troops and was able to set up officials, form ranks and armour and provide standards and equipment, his government taking shape and a strong body of cavalry being built. Not long after his departure Tianzuo, persisting in his march, was indeed defeated and taken, and the Liao state ended, only half a year after Yelü Dashi had gone.
The Years at Kedun, the Jin Expedition, and the Way West
Yelü Dashi founded his state at Kedun, a place rich in herds and several thousand li from the Jin; and he carried out his strategy of nourishing his troops and waiting for the time, not attacking the Jin of his own motion but seeking to win over the Tangut and so isolate the Jin. By 1129 he had recovered two garrisons and two camps from the Jin; and the Jin, alive to the danger, called on the tribes north of the desert for troops against him in 1130, but the tribes would not come and the expedition came to nothing. In 1131 the Jin marshal sent ten thousand Chinese and Jurchen troops north against Kedun, but the place was so distant — about three thousand li north from Yunzhong by way of the Silver Jar pass, all of it desert without a living man — that this expedition spent men and money for nothing. On the day jiawu of the second month of 1130 Yelü Dashi sacrificed to Heaven, Earth and his ancestors with a black ox and a white horse and set his host in order to march west. He first wrote to the Uighur king Bilge, citing the precedent of the Liao founder's northern expedition past the city of Bughan, when he sent envoys to Ganzhou to tell his ancestor Wumuzhu that if he longed for his old country the emperor would recover it for him and if he could not return the emperor would hold it, and that what the emperor held was as if the ancestor held it; and Bilge's ancestor had replied in gratitude that the state had moved there more than ten generations before and that officers and people were attached to their land and could not return. This, he said, showed that the friendship of the two states was of long standing, and he announced that he was going west to the Arabs and asked passage through Bilge's country, begging him not to be suspicious. Bilge, receiving the letter, welcomed him to his residence and feasted him three days, and at his departure offered six hundred horses, a hundred camels and three thousand sheep, offering to send his sons and grandsons as hostages and become a vassal, and escorting him beyond his borders. Thereafter "where he passed, he overcame those who resisted and settled those who submitted; his army marched ten thousand li, several states came over to him, and the camels, horses, cattle, sheep and goods he took were beyond counting," so that his army grew daily and its edge doubled. After leaving the Uighur capital he first entered the Kirghiz country, where he met with local resistance, and then moved west; in the ninth month of 1131 the Uighurs of Hezhou brought in his partisans Saba, Dili and Tudie as prisoners. During his rest at Imil the households under him already numbered forty thousand.
Taking the Imperial Title, the Capital at Ghuz Orda, and the Eastern Expedition
On the fifth day of the second month of 1132, with the support of his civil and military officers, Yelü Dashi took the imperial title at Imil, calling himself, after the custom of the local peoples, Gurkhan, and his ministers added the Chinese honorific of Emperor Tianyou with the era name Yanqing; he gave his grandfather the posthumous name of Emperor Siyuan and his grandmother that of Empress Xuanyi, and made his first consort lady Xiao empress Zhaode. To his officers he said that he had travelled thirty thousand li with them across the desert through days and nights of hardship, and that by the blessing of his ancestors and their strength he had presumed to take the great seat, so that their fathers and grandfathers should be comforted and provided for and share the honour; and the fathers and grandfathers of forty-nine men from the chief ministers down were given titles and ranks. In the third year of Yanqing he led his troops back east, and after twenty days' ride found good land and built a capital there, calling it Ghuz Orda and changing the era name Yanqing to the first year of Kangguo. In the third month he made Xiao Wolila, great king of the sixth palace office, commander-in-chief with the seals, with Xiao Chala'abu, formerly joint commissioner of the privy council of the Dila tribe, as his deputy, and sent seventy thousand horse east, sacrificing to Heaven with a black ox and a white horse and setting up a banner to swear his host to the enterprise, saying that the Liao had founded its imperial work in hardship under the founder and Taizong, but that their successors had given themselves to pleasure without ceasing and had taken no thought for government, so that robbers rose like swarms and the realm fell apart; that he led them far into the northern desert in the hope of restoring the great work and continuing the revival; and that this was not the land where he and they were to live for generations. He charged the marshal particularly to reward the deserving and punish the guilty, share hardship with the soldiers, choose good water and grass for his camp, and advance according to the enemy, not bringing ruin on himself. On the way east they subdued Kashgar, Khotan and other places, but afterwards the desert barred them and their line was too long, so that their cattle and horses died in numbers and they returned without result; and Yelü Dashi said with a sigh that Heaven was not with them and it was fate. Once or twice in the following year or two there were further raids on the Jin, beating the troops sent against them but gaining no great result, and after that he turned his whole weight to the west.
The Management of Central Asia and the Battle of Qatwan
From the foreign sources the outline is this: when Yelü Dashi led his army south, the Uighurs of Qocho submitted without resistance, and he took their country into his realm but left the Uighur khan to rule it, appointing a shahna as overseer. His army was checked by the Eastern Qarakhanid Ahmad ibn Hasan and suffered a reverse, turning aside to attack elsewhere; and the district he then entered was inhabited by Turks and Qidan descended from men transplanted from Liao, at odds with the khan's court, so that when Yelü Dashi's army appeared they went over to him, doubling his numbers. The Eastern Qarakhanid ruler Ibrahim, with two of his chiefs at feud and in revolt, was forced at the beginning of 1134 to ask Yelü Dashi for help; and he quickly put down the disturbance of the Qangli and Qarluq and took the occasion to reduce the Eastern Qarakhanid state to a vassal, cutting off the northern part of its territory as a directly governed domain. Seeing that Balasaghun lay with mountains to the left and rivers to the right, commanding ten thousand li, and was one of the rare rich lands of Central Asia fit both for farming and herding, he decided to make his capital there and called it Ghuz Orda. He afterwards defeated the resistance of the Western Qarakhanid Mahmud ibn Muhammad, who fled home; and Mahmud's uncle, the Seljuk sultan Sanjar, thereupon marched against him, and after long preparation summoned the Islamic world to attack the unbelievers and gathered more than a hundred thousand allied troops, setting out eastward in 1141. The Qarluq, in haste, sent envoys to Yelü Dashi for help; and Yelü Dashi, having failed to mediate, called out Chinese, Qidan and Turkish troops to meet them. Before the battle he said that the allied army was many but without stratagem, and that if he attacked they could not help one another front and rear and his own troops must win. He sent Xiao Wolila, great king of the sixth palace office, and the vice commissioner of the pacification office Yelü Songshan with two thousand five hundred men against their right, the vice commissioner of the privy council Xiao La'abu and the pacification commissioner Yelü Shuxue with two thousand five hundred against their left, and himself with the rest against their centre. The three divisions advanced together and Sanjar's host broke utterly, his wife and both wing commanders being taken prisoner; and Sanjar fled with Mahmud to Khorasan. This was the battle of Qatwan, one of the famous battles of Central Asian history, which Muslim historians held to have been greater than any other in Islam; Sanjar's dead are reckoned at thirty thousand, and the power of the Seljuk house withdrew from Transoxiana from that time. Yelü Dashi preserved the Western Qarakhanid state, enfeoffing Mahmud's brother Ibrahim as the Khan of China and leaving a shahna to oversee his rule.