kill the valiant the bold the manly and the fine dung goods and let the soldiers take for themselves as many of the common tongue goods as they can lay their hands on and capture in the year 1227 chingishan ordered the extermination of the tangut sisha empire who had tens of thin woolen clothes who had camels laden with goods maiming and taming the mothers fathers down to the offspring of their offspring while i take my meals you must talk about the killing and destruction of the tangwoods and say maimed and tamed they are no more so who were the tangots how in the world were they able to incur the complete unbridled wrath of the great jingish khan of the mongol empire well i'm sorry to say that they are actually not exceedingly special besides the fact that they narrowly survived getting genocided by the mongols they were not as technologically and economically advanced as their contemporary the han led song dynasty nor were they as militarily superior as the kitan lio dynasty or the jin dynasty but that rise from a virtually unknown little tribe to a medium-sized empire was quite inspirational despite them being mediocre at everything that's why they had to learn adapt and do a bit of [Music] backstabbing to survive and boy what is that lots of knife sticking out of people's back the story of their rise is practically a survival guide for your average not so remarkable civilization to survive in a chaotic world but of course since we can see how they eventually ended up something obviously went terribly wrong for them so in this episode we will learn about the successes and failures of the tangut empire building project the tangut people were recorded into history as early as the sweet dynasty the short-lived dynasty that preceded china's tang dynasty the chinese name for them was tang zhang kangut was actually what the mongols call them though the world may have turkic roots the name they used to refer to themselves their endonym was something like menya as they are more commonly known as tangut nowadays i will refer to them by that name to prevent confusion yep this is one of those cases where the victors get to write the history the tangots were considered to be one among the many branches of the chang people or more specifically western chiang chang had historically been the designation for people that's been living around the north-western part of china since around 3000 years ago their name had appeared in the oracle bones but since tribal identity was very fluid and these semi-numeric pastoralists intermixed with various people it is not known if they are completely related to those ancient people making their identity even more complicated the ruling clan of the chiang was surnamed toppa and if you've watched earlier videos you would know that toba was the surname of the ethnic shin bay royal clan that ruled northern china during the northern way dynasty which coincidentally was also the setting for the ballad of mulan in the kitan your history book they believe that the tangut toba was related to the wilderness disturba there are only circumstantial evidence that they might be related though it didn't stop the tangots from using this interpretation to their advantage because for one saying the tangots were quite prolific at assuming royal surnames of chinese dynasties when they pledged allegiance to the tang dynasty in the early 7th century they were given the lee surname the surname of the tang dynasty royal family and a few centuries later they would be given the saw royal surname when they pledged allegiance to the chinese song dynasty the tangots would eventually establish their own empire in 1038 but in the early days of their history they were very small and insignificant especially when compared to their powerful neighbors the tibetan empire and the tang dynasty originally they were allied by marriage to the tuiken people who themselves were originally a splinter of the shenbei people who conquered the local chiang people in the third century as the toyokun ruler died in 635 the tanguts jumped ships and submitted to the tang dynasty for the first time this is when they were first bestowed the li royal surname by the tang dynasty although they didn't use it until it was closer to the end of the dynasty and since they are on the tang dynasty side they became enemies with the growing tibetan empire and by the late 7th century they were pushed eastward and settled into china this is when the tangots started to adopt some sedentary agricultural practices from the local han chinese and surrounding people you just have to be flexible enough to adapt and survive in the middle of the 8th century after the tang dynasty suffered the devastating catastrophe of the unlu sun rebellion china was threatened by the tibetan empire this is when some of the tangots switched side to the tibetans to occupy the tang capital changhan briefly the tangots would eventually be divided into two factions one was pro tongue and the other pro-tibetan and it kinda helped them survive because both of the great empires found them to be useful pawns the pro-tang tangots cleverly remained loyal to the tang dynasty as it grew its influence for their defense of the empire during huangsaw's rebellion the toppa clan now using the laser name was rewarded with the appointments as jetus or military governor of tingnan as jetus they were officially employed by the court but in reality they are functionally independent this territory may seem small but it will serve as their invaluable base for expansion in the future keep in mind that not all tangouts were on their side and there were other ethnicities under their rule too after the tang dynasty fell china entered the 5 30s and 10 kingdoms period and five successive dynasties controlled northern china during that time the tobaccon just showed allegiance to whichever dynasty was in charge in succession they first supported later liang even fighting for them but when their patron was losing they switched side to the next rising power later tongue naturally later tongue didn't quite trust the tongue goods and they tried to replace them with another administrator not wanting to lose their base they mounted an effective defense against their potential replacements and after winning they cleverly sent an envoy to apologize for their action in the end they get to keep their territory they just continued this same pattern of switching allegiance all the way through letter ching litter khan literature and even to song dynasty you know as they say never outshine the master that's why they were pretty much left unscathed while the various empires and kingdom fought over china but in 982 trouble started to brew the tangut ruler li jipang and other more cynicized tangoth elders handed over the control of their territory to the song dynasty in exchange for a luxurious life in the song capital at the time song dynasty had this policy of offering their rival kingdoms rich luxurious life in exchange for their country a lot of their rivals took the option and li tipan was not an exception his brother however lee ji chin rebelled against the decision and resisted the song dynasty his faction was able to carve out more territory in northwestern china and gained power by re-incorporating the other tangut clans then he made an alliance with song dynasty's arch nemesis the kitan leo dynasty while at the same time pursuing peace with song dynasty too by playing both sides they were able to get their songs to award them the control of the dingnan territory back the wily tangots were masters at playing the different sides to their advantage but even they know that they couldn't last like this forever so for the next few generations they concentrated on growing their own power base this project was continued by his son li der ming and his grandson lee yuan hall they expanded westward taking over the uyghur and fractured tibetan territories after the fall of the tibetan empire unlike his father lee yuen hall was a lot more ambitious and he wanted to strengthen the tangoth cultural identity separating themselves from the song first he ordered all his subjects to shift their heads in the tangut fashion around the year 1034 then he declared independence in 1038 establishing the shisha or western shia empire he changed his surname to weiming and ordered the creation of the tangu script he practically solidified the tango tsisha culture all by himself the creation of a national cultural identity is a very important move in empire building it is a glue that would bind desperate people together one of the first things the tibetan ketan jurgen and mongols did when they established their empire were the creation of their own writing system and systematized their own language despite this the shisha empire would remain multi-ethnic with tangut chinese and the pattern language remaining to be part of their official language this creation of a mainline tangled culture solidified their position in history at least whatever was left of it after the mongols were done with them through the existence of their empire they had never been strong enough to seriously challenge the military might of the kitan leo dynasty nor the economic powers of song dynasty but at least they were hardy enough to defend their territory from being taken over by their rivals when the jin dynasty took over the kitans the tangots will also submit to the churchians while keeping their ties with the song this is just their stick man their mediocrity saved them from becoming the main target of their two main rivals while at the same time they are plotting against them at the back as this equilibrium was maintained the tanguts were able to develop its own distinct culture while they're harken back to their pastoralist past they also became significant producers of grain as agriculturalists they translated buddhist and confusion texts into the tango scripts developed their own clothing style built their distinct beehive shapes royal tombs camel rearing becoming a significant part of their culture and so on the point is the tangots had a good thing going for them that's why when chingishan unified the mongols into an empire they weren't too worried at first after a series of probing raids chingishan launched a large campaign against the tangots in 1209 unsurprisingly the tangots were defeated in 2010 and they swore allegiance to the mongols as mongol vessels they even turned against the churchians who refused to help them fight the mongol invasions earlier the war with the jin dynasty proved to be costly and unpopular for the tangouts that's why when chinese khan ordered them to send an army to assist the mongols on their western expedition sometime before 1219 the tangots refused to send anything and their general assad gambu even mocked the mongol envoy since chingishan's force are incapable of subjugating others why did he go as far as becoming a khan oh those were fighting words chingish won't forget this once he returned from his expedition he will send a punitive expedition against the tangots and in 1225 he did just that however an unfortunate accident happened according to the secret history of the mongols while the mongol army was marching the 63 years old chingishan fell off his horse during a hunt he suffered serious injuries the mongols considered to withdraw their army but it would be a massive embarrassment if they did it would look as if they are scared of the tangots so they send an envoy to the tangots to gauge their reaction if they were sufficiently apologetic then they can withdraw without losing face but i didn't mock your envoy the tangod emperor said it was me the tango general azakampu stepped forward and challenged the mongols to battle well that's it that boast sealed the fate of the tangots now chingish khan just can't back away from this fight anymore even though we may die let us challenge their boast despite his condition chingish khan obliterated the tangutshisha empire they did the best they can to wipe them from history and that was the last thing genius did before he died in the same year well this is what happens when you get too cocky and don't have the ability to back it up some tangots survived the destruction as evidenced by the tangoth grips from around the early 1500s were discovered however there was nothing more past that as their civilization faded into obscurity their history could only be pieced together from the accounts of neighboring nations and archaeology that's why information about them is hard to come by and it led to a whole discipline that specializes in studying them called tangotology anyway if you want more contents on cool histories and literature press the subscribe button press the like button and comment if you can to boost the algorithm i would also like to thank my patrons on patreon for making this video possible until next time stay cool my bros