this video is sponsored by surf shark the kitan leo dynasty was a very interesting moment in chinese history it is a time when china had two recognized emperors one in the ethnic hanurd song dynasty and the other in the kitchen ruled leo dynasty and that just goes completely against the idea of there should be only one son of heaven the holder of the mandate of heaven so how did this happen and who were the kittens you will find out after the intro who were the kitans the kittens are often called paramongolic but that's just because of the similarity of their language to the mongolian language the identity of the step tribes is actually much more complicated than that the kitan leo dynasty was established by yelu apothy who became the great khan of the kitans in 907 and announced himself as the emperor in the chinese style in 916. in the process he conquered a lot of the other step people including some han chinese so other tribes such as the georgians who will later establish the jin dynasty and the subway which had mongols under them were all part of the larger kitan empire the kitans had actually existed much longer before the 10th century but it was only during apogee's time that they had a lucky break and rose to the top previously during the tang dynasty they were under the turks and switch allegiances between various powers such as the tang dynasty and even the uyghurs in terms of lineage they split away from the shen bay who split from the donghu themselves when they were defeated by the xiongnu emperor modu sanyu in the 3rd century bce so you can equally say that the mongols were parakitanic just as the kitans were paramongolic it is just that the mongols happen to be a lot more famous and their culture survived until today while the kittens have assimilated into various cultures and disappeared check out my previous interview with professor hyunjin kim after this video if you want to know more about the inner workings of the step culture so how and why in the world did these dead people turn their cannons into a chinese empire did they suddenly just decide this out of the blue not really there is actually a political reason for that and to be fair there is also narrative dissonance between the chinese official history and the cultural narrative in poems folklores and classic literatures such as water margin the kitan leo dynasty were treated as invaders and the barbaric others but historically and in the official 24 dynastic histories of china the kitanya dynasty is considered to be a legitimate chinese dynasty even in russia they still call china by its exonym kitai the reason for this cognitive dissonance is actually quite funny that's because after kublai khan conquered china and established the yuan dynasty mongol historians considered the han let song kitan led lyo and the georgian led jing dynasty to be all legitimate and kublai khan inherited the mandates of heaven from them think about it if they say that the kitans and jurgens can't create a legitimate chinese dynasty then how about mongols like them so this historical narrative is passed on to the ming dynasty and later dynasties as they inherit the mandate of heaven in succession so here we can see that by just looking at the difference between the historical and cultural narrative of a country we can gain an extra dimension of insight into history and if we were to look at history from the opposing side we can obviously learn much more on the internet history is often told from the western perspective especially colonial history even if there are media from the opposing side it is often region locked quite literally like this indonesian film sultan akung which ironically is only available in thailand and a few other southeast asian countries but luckily i've got surf shark the vpn service which allows me to change my region and watch this movie as if i'm from the region it serves this movie depicts the colonization of indonesia by the voc or the dutch east in this company it's got action awesome historical set pieces but most importantly it is told from the perspective of the native defenders something that you can't easily get in mainstream media besides allowing you to access rare piece of media surfjar also provides you with added security as it marks your ip address keeping you safe on the internet so what are you waiting for use the link in the description and enter my code bros to get 83 of your subscription and three extra months for free all right back to the kittens well if we want to pinpoint a principal cause for the reason why the kitans want to create a chinese style empire we can perhaps point this to apogee's friendship with li kayong an ethnic sato turk warlord who operated during the chaotic period near the fall of the once great tang dynasty the two became sworn brothers in 905 when abolji brought 70 thousand cavalry riders to assist the latter the tang dynasty was being slowly usurped by li kyung's biggest rival zhuwan who would establish the later liang dynasty zuwan was a major douchebag who tried to assassinate him before so obviously he can't suffer him becoming the emperor of china so li kayong did everything he could to wrestle the throne away from him he did not succeed in his lifetime but his son will finish his job and establish the later tang dynasty four of the five dynasties of the five dynasties and 10 kingdoms period were all established by li kyung's son and the generals who served their family despite his lack of achievements all the major dynasties turned out to be connected to this one seemingly insignificant guy the kittens through their khan apochi can also technically be considered his relative and they became the major power broker during this chaotic period sometimes assisting them and other times impeding them because they had their own interest to fulfill of course by the way you can find out more about the 5 dynasties and 10 kingdoms periods from our previous episodes this time we're going to focus on the kitan's perspective around the time apache swore his brotherhood with li kha young the kitan chief confided in his new brother that he was going to be replaced after three years as according to his people's custom then li kyung just gave him a very simple advice who cares about them just ignore them like himself was a military governor of the tang dynasty a jaitus but he just ignored all the orders from the top and ruled as a warlord so apogee took this advice and in a couple of years he strong armed his way into becoming the great khan of the kitans in 907 coincidentally the tang dynasty also fell on the same year and the later young dynasty was established kicking off the chaotic five dynasties and ten kingdoms period obviously apoche wasn't very popular and he spent the next few years conquering more tribes while eliminating internal oppositions until finally in 916 he declared a chinese era name and appointed his wife sulu ping as his empress and his eldest son yelube as his successor traditional chinese historians usually consider this to be the true start of the leo dynasty this went completely against kitan customs where succession was supposed to be decided through tribal gathering and elections but here we can see that apochi is adopting chinese political custom just to keep the power within his family he even offered sacrifice to confucius first before buddha because his son pointed out that buddha was not a chinese god however apochie didn't completely abandon his kitan heritage and just became chinese like the step people that came before and after him he cherry-picked only the stuff that he liked for example apochi ordered the creation of the kitan script while the shapes are based on the chinese character strokes it is actually a whole different system used for the kitan language the official language they still use their traditional law to rule their northern nomadic population but they ruled their southern sedentary chinese population according to chinese laws so they were being really practical in the application the kitan empire then continued to expand under apogee he raided leeds honju li kyungsan territory at times but he remained relatively friendly to the lee family who eventually defeated their nemesis later liang and established the later tang dynasty in 923 at the time the kitans had plenty of space to expand and haven't seriously tried to conquer china yet they proceeded to conquer balhe in 926 which angered the newly established gorilla dynasty of korea guryo and bahi were linked through the kingdom of kokuryo the kingdom from which many of their people were descended from and with barge no longer acting as a buffer state between them the conflict between koryo and kitans will be fought until the next century soon after the conquest of barge apochi died to illness as for his successor he wasn't succeeded by his son yelu bay surprisingly it was his younger son yeluda guang who succeeded him the kitan elites just considered yelubai to be too bookish and too much of a sinophile to succeed the throne so empress sulu ping made her second son the new emperor and nobody could defy sulu ping who was quite the character herself she was a literal warrior princess a warrior emperor sorry who personally fought in the battlefield and she was also one of the empire's best strategists she was so tough she won't even bow to her mother-in-law the empress dowager she claims that she will only bow to heaven and not do people usually when an emperor dies his consorts and concubines would be killed and buried along with him but she knew that she had lot more to do in life and couldn't die yet so to silence her detractors she cut out her hand and buried it in her husband's grave the rest of her will follow later the pastoralist kitten women in general had more autonomy than the sedentary people surrounding them they often hunt and fall together with their men but these treatments may not be extended to the women of other tribes because kitan and voice often demanded to sleep with the women of other tribes in turn this custom will be the cause of their downfall we will get back to this later the second kitan emperor yeludar guang was uneasy about the prospect of his brother yelu bay rebelling the latter was given his own little kingdom in where baalhe was located so yeli the guang transferred the people from his brother's kingdom away and kept a close watch on him fed up with the constant pressure yellow bay eventually defected to later tongue where he was given a high position since they had sworn familial connection yelubai adopted the chinese name li san hua this defection is a major threat for a yelutar gwang since his mom couldn't bear to eliminate his brother he had to do it one way or another and this opportunity eventually presented itself xintang one of later tongue's military governors rebelled and the kitans decided to back him against a later tang dynasty but this support didn't come cheap to secure the kitan's help xi jintang had to first throw away his dignity by addressing yelud guang as father emperor even though he was older than the kiran emperor by 10 years then he also gave away the strategic 16 prefectures of northern china which included the site that would become the city of beijing today the rebellion succeeded and xintang established the later jin dynasty conveniently yelubai was killed by a later tongue officer when he refused to commit mass suicide with the rest of the later tang royal family now with the possession of the 16 prefectures and an emperor of china calling him father the kittens had increasingly more stakes and justification in conquering china after the death of xintang his successor and ministers all think that it was quite disgraceful for them to address the kitten emperor as father emperor so in a sort of a sneaky way the later qing dynasty emperor tried to get away by just calling him grandfather instead of father emperor because it has less political symbolism but yellow the guang is having none of it he punished this insubordination by invading them due to the long period of political upheavals in china there were a lot of people captured to kirtan and many became refugees some chinese officials were also recruited by the kitans and they helped the kitten emperors implementing the imperial chinese political system into their empire so when yelio de guan conquered the capital he proclaimed himself as the emperor of china previously in 936 he had renamed the kitan empire lyon and now in 947 he is calling it great liao because he had just conquered china a bit just a small part at the time but still events like this will be used to reinforce their claim for china during his occupation however yelud guang made a grave mistake of robbing the wealth of the population this caused great resentments and resistance forces sprung up everywhere this in combination with the unbearable summer heat which was too much for the cold loving kitanzu handle forced him to return north sadly for him he died to illness along the way before making it back to his homeland the following succession crisis and instability that ensued tied up the kitan's hands and prevented them from launching a serious efforts at reconquering china for a long time meanwhile down in china capitalizing on the power vacuum a military governor leo yuan quickly seized power and established the later khan dynasty but his dynasty only lasted four years and he only reigned for one of those years his young successor was the pose in a coup and the later though the last of the fife dynasty was established one of the royal family members of the later khan then aligned themselves to be a vassal state of the kitans and established the kingdom of northern han this is real politic guys sometimes your greatest enemy can become an ally at the drop of a hat you know as they say in international relations there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies only permanent interests the rivalry between the chinese dynasties and the kitandyo would last all the way until the end of the leo dynasty during the early part of the dynasty the kitans had the upper hand but once the song dynasty usurped the later zhou and unified most of china the balance started to shift once the song dynasty conquered the kitan festival state of northern han they proceeded to march north against lyon itself luckily for the kitans the song campaign was defeated and on their second campaign the famous song general yang yae was even killed in action this became the premise of the young's family general folktale where the women folk of the young family rode to the battlefield to get the boys home by coincidence the late 10th century somehow became a stage for a few strong women in the region leo dynasty was virtually ruled by emperor's xiao yin yin she was the regents of her young son so she was pretty much calling all the shots she was not a fighter like her predecessor sulu ping but she was brave enough to personally lead in the battlefield around the same period queen mother chun chu also became the regents of her young son in guryo korea the wars between koryo and the kitans were quite epic and it was an important series of battles in the korean national memory the balance of power between the kitans and their neighboring countries fluctuate over time while they never made any great progress they were able to exact tribute from both koryo and song and maintained the dual emperor status with the latter that run however came to an end in the early 12th century because as we have talked about earlier the kitan envoys demanded to be served by the women of other tribes the churchians didn't object too much until the kittens started demanding for the georgian noble women to serve them after suffering this and many other humiliations the georgians led by wanyan akuta finally rebelled against the kittens and formed the xin dynasty in 1115. capitalizing on this split the song dynasty quickly formed an alliance with the georgians and launched a two-pronged attack against the kitans finally in 1125 the leo dynasty was defeated and the kitan tribes came under the control of the jin dynasty but the kitan empire wasn't completely destroyed because a kitan noble yelu dasa led a segment of the kitan society and moved west to form the karakitai also known as western dial but that's a story for another time on the next episode we will look at the jurgen jin dynasty in greater detail remember to subscribe so that you won't miss the episode before i go i would like to thank all our patrons on patreon for supporting the channel and all you viewers for liking and sharing this video by the way remember to check the link to surf surfshark until next time stay cool my bros