The Mongols, the Khitans and the Jurchen

There is a great period in Chinese history known as the Conquest Dynasty period, meaning that foreigners or rather, non-Han ethnic groups were ruling the lands of China. One of these dynasties was the Liao Dynasty, a group of semi-nomadic people that came from beyond the wall early in the 10th century and ruled the northern part of China; these were the Khitans and they would take on the name Liao as they became more and more Sinicized. Scholars believe them to be a Turko-Mongolian or proto-Mongolian group, so almost like a cousin to the Mongols. This new Khitan state was a regime that not only imposed itself on the people of northern China, but also the steppe nomads. Many nomadic groups that did not submit were expelled and fled West.

Because of certain events, in the 1120s a group of people from Manchuria, also semi-nomadic, the Jurchen overthrew the Khitan people and established their own state in the region, they adopted the title Jin or Golden, the Jurchen ruling family's ruler was known as the Golden Emperor. They kicked out many of the Khitan people and many of the Khitan people themselves left, but kept many in their services and now you saw an almost multi-layered pyramid social structure in north China, the bottom of course being the peasants, the middle now was the Khitans who had been displaced, and of course the top of the pyramid was now the Jurchen. This was a big big big big deal, because the Jin's main interest was China, and they became even more Chinese than the Khitans had become and they did not care much about beyond the wall, the "Great Wall" if we can call it that in this period, once again became a border and the tribes that had been subjugated by the Khitans were now roaming free, and in this period, a fellow named Temujin will rise up and compete within this power vacuum.

The Khitan exiles that headed West will find the Kara Khitai Empire that had its own successes. One notable success, but a catastrophe for the Muslim world was that the Kara Khitai had defeated the last Great Seljuk Sultan. Islam had lost to a pagan power near the city of Samarkand, a catastrophic event for the followers of Islam and from this story the legend of Prester John was born. This is a topic for another day.

In 1206, at the Great Mongol Kurultai, our friend Temujin was proclaimed Genghis Khan. He was an ambitious fellow and decided to prove himself by assaulting the sedentary people, the first group was the Xi Xia Kingdom (though not fully inhabited by settled peoples) whom eventually submitted to Genghis Khan. During his campaign against the Xi Xia, Genghis Khan had realized that walled cities were formidable for his style of warfare, and he will once again be reminded of this when he invades the lands of the Golden Emperor.

Here is where it gets interesting....the Mongols and the Jin were having this back and forth for a few years, the Khitans were spiteful towards the Jin for having displaced them and exiled their nobility and so the Jin were becoming worried that the Khitans were going to join the Mongols; and worried they should have been. The Jin began colonizing Khitan majority territories to sort of, make sure they were under watch; however, this made the situation worse and it provoked a rebellion. This is one of those events in history that change everything in my opinion. Generally historians agree that not only Khitans, but the Juyins, a federation of nomadic people that were kept on the borderlands to fend off other nomads, Jurchen defectors and the Han that decided to join the Mongols gave Genghis Khan and the Mongols the sieging abilities that allowed for the Mongols to evolve their warfare. This is huge, as generally speaking, fortified cities had often been the downfall of steppe nomadic empires, but now that the Mongols had this capability, the sky was the limit and we will see source after source citing their surprise that these savages had advanced sieging capabilities. In the year 1214, not long after the campaign against the Xi Xia, and not long after his initial battles with the Jin, and honestly not that long after the Kurultai of 1206....Genghis Khan had the “keys” to cities.

Sometimes stories are just hearsay, but it is worth noting that according to some sources, supposedly a Khitan commander had allowed the Mongols into a city where the Mongols raided and pillaged but kept useful people alive, such as these Chinese engineers. Think of the impact this one individual had on all of history. Who’s to say the Mongols ever would have learned the art of the siege?

Heavy Cavalry

The Mongols were great at adapting and were always happy to improve on their military. Usually they would bring people into their own military system people that lived in the same pastoral nomadic style such as themselves; thus, you will often hear that the Mongol army had a large population of Turkic tribes, and this is true. The Mongols were not interested in changing the armies of settled peoples, but did in fact often use them as auxiliary forces. For example, Genghis Khan used Chinese infantry in the mountains as auxiliary forces, and his grandson Hulagu Khan who is famous for the siege of Baghdad in 1258 often used Christians such as Armenians and Georgians as auxiliary forces. This was a different story for the Khitans, the Jurchen and later the Bulgars. These groups were known for their elite cavalry forces, especially the Khitans. The Mongols realized 2 things; first of all, the Khitans fought in a very similar fashion and also trained in a similar way (by hunting), but secondly, they also realized that they weren’t going to be able to convert them into horse archers, so allowed them to play a role as heavy cavalry within the Mongol formation. These heavily armored units acted as shock troops and gave the Mongol archers more freedom to fight from afar and minimized Mongol losses. The Mongol General Subutai is known for using the heavy cavalry in devastating fashion.