La steppe et l’empire

Reviewed by: La steppe et l’empire: La formation de la dynastie Khitan (Liao) IVe–Xe siècle by Pierre Marsone François Louis Pierre Marsone. La steppe et l’empire: La formation de la dynastie Khitan (Liao) IVe–Xe siècle. Paris: Les belles lettres, 2011. Pp. 322. €26 / $41 (paper). ISBN 978-2251381091. The Liao dynasty may have a long history of being sidelined by historians of China, but its marginalization has been particularly acute in French scholarship. Indeed, Pierre Marsone’s volume is the first major contribution on the Kitans in French since the important pre-war studies by Edouard Chavannes, Joszef Mullie, and Rolf Stein.1 But the gap it fills extends well beyond francophone borders. Marsone has initiated here a much-needed updated history of the Kitan dynasty that takes full advantage of recent scholarship on new or newly deciphered epigraphic data. Carefully parsing the traditional source texts, he offers a comprehensive factual account of the Kitans from their first mention in the fourth century up to the death of the charismatic dynastic founder Abaoji in 926. Throughout the narrative, he relates and assesses current scholarly thinking on a wide range of details pertaining to biography, [End Page 369] language, and cultural geography. Not since Wittfogel and Feng have we seen such a careful history of the Kitans in Western scholarship.2 Marsone organizes the material chronologically and divides it into four parts. Part One briefly introduces the traditional sources and then concentrates on the Kitans’ origin myths and historical origins. Marsone carefully navigates between Liao and post-Liao data, explaining, for instance, that already by the 940s the Kitans emphatically traced their origin via their Xianbei ancestor Qishou 奇首 to the Yellow Emperor. The official Liao History (Liaoshi) of 1345, meanwhile, names the Flaming Emperor (Yandi 炎帝, i.e. Shennong 神農) as the Kitan progenitor. But the Yandi ancestry was, as Marsone convincingly relates, most likely a theory devised by Yuan historians, presumably to diminish the Kitans’ prestige at a time when they were all but forgotten. Part One also includes an excellent summary of ongoing Chinese debates about the meaning of the name and the probable location of Muyeshan 木葉山, the most sacred mountain of the Kitans. Marsone concurs with the opinion that the descriptions of its location only make sense if we posit that the main rivers in the old Kitan heartland ran rather different courses a millennium ago. Parts Two and Three situate the Kitans in the political and cultural geography of the Six Dynasties and Tang eras, while the fourth and most substantial part of the book is devoted to Abaoji. In Part Two we also find the most concise summary yet of what is known of the Kitans’ neighboring peoples: the closely related Xi 奚 (with whom early Kitan elites occasionally intermarried), the Shiwei 室韋 to the north, and the Wuji 勿吉 (also known as Mohe 韎鞨) to the east, who also included the Jurchens. The main focus in Parts Two and Three, however, lies on the various altercations and alliances between the Kitans and the Chinese and Turk empires. Marsone takes issue with the long-held view that pre-dynastic Kitans were simply barbaric hordes of brigands and raiders. Noting the “profound ignorance” of Tang and Song authors “about what really happened among the Kitans” (p. 19), he demonstrates that the process of Kitan empire formation was already well underway by the eighth century. The leader of the Kitan Yaonian 遙輦 clan first took the title of “emperor” (qaghan) as early as 735, with Abaoji’s ancestor Nieli 涅里 as the strong man in the background. When Abaoji finally replaced the Yaonian khaganate with a Chinese-style dynastic monarchy at the beginning [End Page 370] of the tenth century, he was able to do so because a family-centered, centralized power structure was well in place, and Abaoji’s family had long been part of it. Marsone also confirms the observations of Elina-Qian Xu that up to the middle of the eighth century frontier conflicts were typically provoked by Tang court politics, not by Kitan aggression.3 A stable peace resulted only after Tang imperial power was sufficiently weakened following the An Lushan wars and the Tang

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Biography · Empire · Historiography · Humanities · Literature · Mythology · Narrative · Political science · Scholarship · Chinese history and philosophy · Classics · History

• History of Chinese Society, Liao (907-1125)

  Karl A Wittfogel, Feng Chia-Sheng•Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies•1950

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