From the Khitans to the Jurchens & Mongols: A History of Barbarians in Triangle Wars & Quartet Conflicts

By Hong Yuan

From the Khitans to the Jurchens & Mongols, A History of Barbarians in Triangle Wars & Quartet Conflicts is the third book of The Scourge of God Tetralogy. This is a book with comprehensive writeup of the barbarians’ history spanning more than one thousand years, from before the anno domini eras and inclusive of the expulsion of the Mongols from China. The subtitle about the barbarians in triangle wars & quartet conflicts is self-explanatory for the historical environment of different groups of barbarians successively rising up on the steppes to overpower the former with more savagery. This third book, while carrying a title with emphasis on the Khitans, the Jurchens and Mongols, also covered the Hsiung-nu (Huns), Hsien-pi (Xianbei), Tavghach (Tuoba), Juan-juan (Ruruans), Tu-chueh (Turks), Uygurs (Huihe), Kirghiz, Tibetans, Tanguts and southern barbarians. This book, being not merely about the barbarians, chronicled, without omission, an annalistic history of China’s dynasties including the Sui and Tang dynasties, the Five Dynasties, and the two Soong dynasties, with the interwoven theme of a civilization’s good fight against barbarism. There are many unique and groundbreaking contents, such as collation of the missing one-year history of the Mongols’ Central Asia campaigns and restitution of the unheard-of Mongol campaign in North Africa. This kind of discoveries is similar to this author’s trailblazing work done in other areas of sinology like rectifying the Huns’ war with the first Han dynasty emperor to 201 B.C. and correcting one year error in the Zhou dynasty’s interregnum (841-828 B.C. per Shi-ji/840-827 per Zhang Wenyu) in the duology The Sinitic Civilization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663242587

Hong Yuan

Hong Yuan is the author of The Sinitic Civilization: A Factual History Through the Lens of Archaeology, Bronzeware, Astronomy, Divination, Calendar and the Annals.

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Copyright © 2022 Hong Yuan.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-4119-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-4258-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022911225

iUniverse publication date: 10/18/2022

CONTENTS

Inscribed To

Epigraph

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Maps & Illustrations

Mongol Campaign against the Jurchens (Battle of Yehuling, July of A.D. 1211)

Mongol Campaigns against Semiryechye & Central Asia (A.D. 1216-1219, 1219-1224)

Mongol Campaign against Kiev Rus (A.D. 1223)

Mongol Campaign against the Jurchens (A.D. 1231-1232)

Mongol Campaigns against the Volga Bulgars, Kipchaks, Alans, Rus Principalities, Crimea, Caucasus & Kiev Rus (A.D. 1237-1240)

Mongol Campaigns against Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, Austria & Dalmatia (A.D. 1240-1242)

Mongol Campaign against Arsacia (Mulahida) from A.D. 1253 to A.D. 1256

Mongol Three-prong Campaign against Hezhou (Caaju) from late A.D. 1255 to early A.D. 1256

Mongol Continuous Campaigns in the Sichuan Basin (A.D.1257-1259)

Mongol Campaign against Hezhou (Caaju) & Diaoyucheng (A.D. 1257-1259)

Mongol Campaigns against the Abbasid Caliphate, Mecca, Misr (Egypt) Outposts, North Africa, and the Ayyubid & Mamluk Sultanates (A.D. 1257-1260)

Section One: The Barbarians of the Steppes

Chapter I: The Hu (Huns) & Eastern Hu Barbarians

The Huns

The Eastern Hu (Dong-hu) Barbarians: Xianbei & Wuhuan

The Duan, Murong & Yuwen Xianbei Clans, and the Tuoba Xianbei

The Khitans, Xi, Kuzhen-xi, Shi-wei & Malgal

Section Two: The Sui & Tang Dynasties

Chapter II: The Sui Dynasty (A.D. 581-618)

Unification of China by the Sui Dynasty

Sui Emperor Wendi (Yang Jian/Yang Chien, r. A.D. 581-604)

Chapter III: The Turks vs. the Sui Dynasty

Chapter IV: The Rebellion Against The Sui Dynasty

Sui Emperor Yangdi (Yang Guang, r. A.D. 604-618) & the Koguryo Invasion Debacles

The Wagang-jun Rebellion against the Sui Dynasty Rule

Chapter V: The Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907)

Tang Emperor Gaozu (Li Yuan, r. A.D. 618-626)

Tang Emperor Taizong (Li Shiming, r. A.D. 627-649)

The Turks vs. the Tang Dynasty

Tang Emperor Gaozong (Li Zhi, A.D. 628-683; r. A.D. 649-683)

Tang Emperor Zhongzong (Li Zhe, r. A.D. 683-684, 705-710)

Empress Wu Zetian & the Wu-Zhou Dynasty (A.D. 684-705)

Relations with the Barbarians during Empress Wu Zetian’s Reign

Tang Emperor Zhongzong (Li Zhe, r. A.D. 683-684, 705-710) & the Zhongzong Restoration

Tang Emperor Ruizong (Li Dan, r. A.D. 684-690, 710-712)

Tang Emperor Xuanzong (Li Longji, r. A.D. 712-756)

Tang Emperor Suzong (Li Heng, r. A.D. 756-762)

Tang Emperor Daizong (Li Yu, r. A.D. 762-779)

Tang Emperor Dezong (Li Kuo, r. A.D. 779-805)

Tang Emperor Shunzong (Li Song, r. A.D. 805-805), Xianzong (Li Chun, r. A.D. 805-820), Muzong (Li Heng, r. A.D. 820-824), Jingzong (Li Zhan, r. A.D. 824-826)

Tang Emperor Wenzong (Li Han/Li Ang, r. A.D. 827-840)

Tang Emperor Wuzong (Li Yan, r. A.D. 840-846), Xuan[1]zong (Li Chen, r. A.D. 847-859), Yizong (Li Wen/Li Cui, r. A.D. 859-873)

Tang Emperor Xizong (Li Yan/Li Xuan, r. A.D. 873-888), Emperor Zhaozong (Li Ye, r. A.D. 888-904), Emperor Aidi (Li Zuo/Li Zhu, r. A.D. 904-907)

Chapter VI: The Khitans vs. the Tang Dynasty

The Eight Khitan Tribes

The Khitans vs. the Turks & Uygurs

Khitan Chieftain Yelü Abaoji’s Rise to Power

Chapter VII: The Tibetans

Origin of the Qiangs and Tibetans

The Qiang[1] vs. the Di[1] People

The Tuyuhun Xianbei, the Tibetans & the Tanguts

The Tibetans vs. the Tuyuhun

The Tibetans vs. the Tang Chinese

Chapter VIII: The Mywa (Nanzhao/Nanchao) State (A.D. 738-902)

Chapter IX: The Shatuo Turks

Origin of the Shatuo

Shatuo Mercenaries Serving the Tang Dynasty

Shatuo Quelling the Rebellion of Pang Xun, Wang Xianzhi & Huang Chao

Chapter X: Huang Chao’s Rebellion

The Shatuo Turks Defeating the Huang Chao Rebels

Rebel Zhu Wen’s Defection to the Tang Government

Civil Wars after the Crackdown on the Huang Chao Rebellion

Tang Emperor Zhaozong’s Being Hijacked by Eunuchs & Warlords & Demise of the Tang Dynasty

Section Three: Five Dynasties & Ten Kingdoms

Chapter XI: Five Dynasties (A.D. 907-960)

The Posterior Liang Dynasty (A.D. 907-923)

The Posterior Tang Dynasty (A.D. 923-936)

The Khitans vs. the Posterior Tang Dynasty

The Posterior Jinn Dynasty (A.D. 936-946)

The Posterior Han Dynasty (A.D. .947-950) vs. the Khitan Liao Dynasty

The Posterior Zhou Dynasty (A.D. .951-960)

The Khitans, the Shatuo, the Tanguts vs. the Five Dynasties

Chapter XII: Ten Kingdoms (A.D. 902-979)

The Anterior Shu (Qian-shu) Kingdom (A.D. 907-925)

The Posterior Shu (Hou-shu) Kingdom (A.D. 934-965)

The Jing-nan (Nanping) State at Jiangling (A.D. 924-963)

The Chu-guo State (A.D. 907-951)

The Yang-Wu State (Yang Xingmi, Yang Wo and Yang Longyan’s King Wu-wang state, A.D. 902-927, Yang Pu’s King Wu-wang & Emperor Wu-huangdi State A.D. 920-927/927-937)

The Southern Tang (Nan-tang) State (Qi A.D. 937; Southern Tang A.D. 938-958; Jiangnan-guo A.D. 958-975)

The Wu-Yue State (A.D. 907-978)

The Min-guo State (A.D. 909-945)

The Southern Han (Nan-Han) State (A.D. 917-971)

The Northern Han (Bei-Han) State (A.D. 951-979)

Section Four: The Northern Soong Dynasty’s Triangle & Quartet Wars

Chapter XIII: The Northern Soong Dynasty (A.D. 960-1127)

Soong Emperor Taizu (Zhao Kuangyin, r. A.D. 960-976)

The Soong Dynasty vs. the Khitans & Tanguts

Soong Emperor Taizong (Zhao Jiong/Guangyi/Kuangyi, r. A.D. 976-997)

Soong Emperor Taizong’s Wars with the Khitans

Soong Emperor Zhenzong (Zhao Heng, r. A.D. 998-1022) & the Chanyuan Peace Accord with the Khitans

Soong Emperor Renzong (Zhao Zhen, r. A.D. 1023-1063)

Northern Soong’s Continuing Conflicts with the Tanguts

Soong Emperor Yingzong (Zhao Shu, r. A.D. 1063-1067)

Soong Emperor Shenzong (Zhao Xu1, r. A.D. 1067-1085)

Soong Emperor Zhezong (Zhao Xu4, r. A.D. 1085-1100)

Soong Emperor Huizong (Zhao Ji, r. A.D. 1100-1126)

Soong Emperor Qinzong (Zhao Heng, r. A.D. 1126-1127)

Chapter XIV: The Khitan Liao Dynasty (A.D. 907-947 [Qidan], 947-983 [Liao], 983-1066 [Qidan], 1066-1125 [Liao], 1124-1218 [Western Liao])

The Chanyuan Peace Accord of A.D. 1004

The Jurchens’ Rebellion against the Khitans

The Khitan Liao Dynasty’s Demise

Chapter XV: The Tangut Xia Dynasty (A.D. 1038-1227)

Origin of the Tanguts

The Tanguts vs. the Five Dynasties

The Tanguts vs. the Soong Dynasty

The Tanguts Attacking the Western Corridor Garrisons, the Tibetans & the Uygurs

Launch of the Grand Xia (Da-Bai-Gao-Xia) Dynasty

The Soong Debacle at the Battles of Sanchuankou (in A.D. 1040), Haoshuichuan (in A.D. 1041) and Dingchuanzhai (in A.D. 1042)

The Triangle & Quartet Wars Among the Khitans, Jurchens, Tibetans, Tanguts and Soong

The Triangle & Quartet Wars Among the Tanguts, Jurchens, Mongols and Soong

Section Five: The Jurchens & the Mongols

Chapter XVI: The Jurchens

The [Misnomer] Dong-yi (Eastern Yi) Barbarians: Sushen-shi, Gu-zhu, Ji-zi Chaoxian (Korea), Mo, Hui, Eastern Hu (Donghu) Barbarians (Wuhuan & Xianbei)

The Eastern Hu Barbarians & Successors: Shi-wei, Khitans, Wuji, Mohe, Bohai (Parhae) & Nüzhen (Nüzhi, i.e., the Jurchens)

Founding Father of the Jurchens

The Jurchens’ Rebellion against the Khitans

Chapter XVII: Demise of the Khitan Liao Dynasty

Yelü Dashi’s Kara-khitai (Western Khitay) Empire

The Jurchens’ Wars against the Khitans & Zu-bu (Da-da2, Tatars)

Chapter XVIII: The Mongol Attacks on the Jurchens

The Jurchens Expanding the Construction of the Great Walls on the Steppe

The Mongols’ First-Stage Campaign against the Jurchen Jin Dynasty (Battle of Yehuling, A.D. 1211)

The Mongols’ Second-Stage Campaign against the Jurchen Jin Dynasty (A.D. 1213)

Fall of the Jurchen Jin Capital City Zhongdu (A.D. 1215)

Chapter XIX: The Jurchen Jin’s Triangle & Quartet Wars

The Jurchens’ Two-Front Wars with the Tanguts & Mongols

The Jurchens Launching a Third Battlefront against Southern Soong

Southern Soong’s Taking the Shan-dong & He-bei Territory from the Mongols & Jurchens

The Jurchens’ Conferral of Nine Dukes as Feudatories against the Mongols

Southern Soong’s Northern Campaign against the Mongols & Jurchens

The Mongols’ Attacking the Jurchen & Soong’s Western Territories after Elimination of the Tangut Xia Dynasty

Chapter XX: The Mongols

Origin of the Mongols: Mengwu Shiwei

The Mongol Legends

Genghis Khan’s Mongols Called Themselves by the Da-da (‘Ta-ta-er’)

Meng2gu3 State and/or Mongols’ Conflicts & Feuds with the Jurchens

The Mongols’ Kinsmanship with the Khitans and Jurchens

Chapter XXI: The Turco-Mongol Tribes & Clans

The Tayichi’ut

The Jurkin

The Oirats

The Onggirat & Genghis Khan’s Wife

The Jadirats and Genghis Khan’s blood-brother Jamuka

The Tatars (Ta-ta-er, not today’s misnomer Tartars)

The Naimans (Turco-Mongol)

The Keraits (Turkic)

The Merkits & the Women Abduction

The Jalair

The Wang’gu (Vuanggu, Wanggu, Ongud, Ongut)

The Kirghiz

Genghis Khan’s Family Members of Six Brothers & Four Sons, Four Steeds & Four Dogs

Chapter XXII: The Mongol Attacks on the Tatars, Naimans, Keraits, Tanguts, Jurchens, Khitans in Manchuria & Kara-Khitay (from A.D. 1202 to 1219)

Attack on the Tanguts

The Mongol Attack on the Jurchens

The Battles of Huan’erzui (badger mouth) & Yehuling (wild fox ridge)

The Battle of Migukou (secret valley entrance)

The Mongol’s Second Campaign against the Jurchens (A.D. 1213)

Attack on the Kara-Khitay (A.D. 1214)

The Mongols’ Sacking the Jurchen Capital City of Zhongdu

Attack on the Khitans in Manchuria

The Quartet Wars among the Mongols, Jurchens, Tanguts and Southern Soong

The Mongol Attacks on the Keraits & Kara-Khitay

Southern Soong’s Recovering the Shan-dong & He-bei Territories

Continuous Mongol Attacks on the Tanguts

The Mongol Attack on the Khitans along the Manchuria-Koryo Border

Chapter XXIII: The Mongol Campaigns Against Semiryechye & Central Asia (A.D. 1216-1219, 1219-1224)

The Mongol Campaign against Kuchlug’s Kara-Khitay (A.D. 1218)

The Fergana Valley Campaign, and the Battles of Oyrat, Bukhara, Samarkand (A.D. 1219-1220)

Subetei & Chepe Chasing the Khwarazm Shah to Balkh, Neyshabur, Urgenchi, A-la-hei (Alajeh, Amol), Demavend Mountain, Qazvin, and the Caspian Sea (A.D. 1220)

Jala ad-Din’s Succession as the Khwarazm Sultan (Shah)

The Amu Darya River Sweep Campaign (A.D. 1220-spring 1221)

Siege of the Urgenchi Twin Cities (autumn of A.D. 1221-spring of A.D. 1222)

Battle of the Buzgala Pass (April of A.D. 1221)

Tolui’s Khorasan, Mazandaran and Arsacia Campaigns (autumn of A.D. 1221-spring of 1222)

Battle of the Taloqan Castle (autumn 1221-March of A.D. 1222)

The Battles of Bamiyan and Beruwan (summer of 1222)

The India Campaign (A.D. 1222-1224)

Subetei and Chepe’s Campaign in the Caucasus (A.D. 1220-1222)

The First European Campaign (A.D. 1222-1223)

The Mongols’ Continuous Campaigns against Iraq-i Ajam and Transcaucasia (A.D. 1230-1240)

Chapter XXIV: Demise of the Tangut Xia Dynasty (A.D. 1038-1227)

Chapter XXV: Demise of the Jurchen Jin Dynasty (A.D. 1115-1234)

The Mongols’ Campaigns against Dong-Xia (Eastern Jurchen) & Koryo

Ogedei Khan’s Campaign against the Jurchens South of the Yellow River

The Sanfengshan Battle (January of A.D. 1232)

The Mongol Siege of the Jurchen Bian-jing Capital city (February-April of A.D. 1232)

The Battle of Gui’de (May of A.D. 1233)

The Jurchen Jin Dynasty’s Demise at Caizhou (January of A.D. 1234)

Chapter XXVI: Ogedei Khan (r. A.D. 1229-1241)

Chapter XXVII: The Second European Campaign (A.D. 1236-1242)

The Mongol Attack on the Bulgars, Kipchaks and Alans (A.D. 1236-1237, 1238-1239, 1242)

The Mongol Attack on the Northern Rus Principalities (A.D. 1237-1238, 1239)

The Mongol Attack on the Kipchaks, Alans, Crimea & Caucasus (A.D. 1238-1240)

The Mongol Attack on the Kiev Rus Principality (A.D. 1240)

The Mongol Attack on Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, Austria & Dalmatia (A.D. 1240-1242)

Chapter XXVIII: Dowager-Empress Toregene (r. A.D. 1241-1246), Guyuk Khan (r. A.D. 1246-1248), & Oghulgamish’s Regency (r. A.D. 1249-1251)

Chapter XXIX: Mengke Khan (r. A.D. 1251-1259)

Chapter XXX: The Mongol Conquest of the Mywa (Dali) State

Chapter XXXI: The Mongols’ Third Western Campaign in the Middle East & North Africa (A.D. 1252-1260)

Chapter XXXII: Mengke Khan’s Death in the Siege of the Hook-Line Fishing Castle

Section Six: The Southern Soong Dynasty (A.D. 1127-1279)

Chapter XXXIII: The Southern Soong Dynasty vs. the Jurchens

Soong Emperor Gaozong (Zhao Gou, r. A.D. 1127-1162)

The Jurchens’ Attacking Southern Soong to the South of the Yangtze (A.D. 1129-1130)

Wu Jie’s Defeating the Jurchens at the Battle of Heshangyuan (A.D. 1231) & at the Xianren-guan Pass (A.D. 1134)

Yue Fei’s Northern Campaigns against the Liu-Qi Dynasty Puppets & Jurchens (May of A.D. 1134, July & November of 1136, June of 1140)

The Tianjuan Peace Agreement (A.D. 1139) & the Shaoxing Peace Treaty (A.D. 1141)

Wei Sheng (A.D. 1120-1164)’s Wars with the Jurchens along the Eastern Coastline (A.D. 1161-1164)

Soong Emperor Xiaozong (Zhao Shen, r. A.D. 1162-1189) & the Longxing Northern Expedition

Soong Emperor Guangzong (Zhao Dun, r. A.D. 1189-1194)

Soong Emperor Ningzong (Zhao Kuo, r. A.D. 1194-1224) & the Kaixi Northern Expedition

Southern Soong’s Triangle & Quartet Wars with the Tanguts, Jurchens and the Mongols

Soong Emperor Lizong (Zhao Yun, r. A.D. 1224-1264)

Chapter XXXIV: Southern Soong vs. the Mongols

The Duanping Northern Expedition against the Mongols (A.D. 1234)

Ogedei Khan’s Campaign against Southern Soong

Cao Youwen Defeating the Mongols at Qingyeyuan and Defending the Yangpingguan-Jiguan’ai Passes (A.D. 1236)

The Mongols Ravaging the Sichuan Basin from A.D. 1236 to 1279

The Mongols’ War against Southern Soong during Toregene, Guyuk & Oghul-qaimish’s Reigns

The Mongols’ Recurring Attacks against the Sichuan Mountain Forts & the Han-shui River Bend Forts through the A.D. 1250s

The Third Mongol Campaign against Hezhou (Caaju) & Diaoyucheng (A.D. 1257-1259)

Chapter XXXV: Khubilai’s War Against Southern Soong

Khubilai Khan’s Sinicization & Southern Soong’s Northern Expedition to Echo Li Tan3’s Rebellion

Khubilai Khan Launching the Yuan Dynasty (A.D. 1271)

The Mongols’ Continuous Campaigns in the Sichuan Basin for Two Decades

Soong Emperor Duzong (Zhao Qi, r. A.D. 1264-July 1274)

The Mongol Siege of Xiangyang & Fancheng Twin Cities (A.D. 1267-1273)

The Mongols’ Campaign against the Triangular Vertices of Ying3zhou, Jiangling and Yueyang (A.D. 1274-1275)

Soong Emperor Gongdi (Zhao Xian, r. A.D. 1275-1276)

Soong Dowager-Empress Surrendered the Capital City Lin’an to the Mongols (February of A.D. 1276)

Continuous Resistance in the Sichuan Basin and Southwestern China

Soong Emperor Duanzong (Zhao Shi, r. A.D. 1276-1278) & Emperor Shaodi (Zhao Bing, r. A.D. 1278-1279)

Demise of the Southern Soong Dynasty (A.D. 1127-1279)

The Mongols’ Weapon Prohibition Order against the Chinese

Chapter XXXVI: The Death Toll from the Mongol Conquest

Section Seven: The Yuan Dynasty (A.D. 1271-1368)

Chapter XXXVII: Khubilai Khan (r. A.D. 1260-1294)

Khubilai Defeating Contender-khan Arik-Buka at Karakorum

Khubilai Launching the Sinicized Yuan Dynasty (A.D. 1271-1368)

The Conquest of Southern Soong

Chapter XXXVIII: The Mongol Invasion of Koryo, Japan, Vietnam, South & Southeast Asia & Island States

The Invasion of Koryo & Japan

The Invasion of Burma, Champa & Annam

The Invasion of Java, Declaring Amnesty, and Khubilai’s Death

Chapter XXXIX: The Mongol Internal Strife

Chapter XL: The Yuan Dynasty Emperors

Emperor Chengzong (Borjigin Temur, r. A.D. 1294-1307)

Emperor Wuzong (Borjigin Qayisang, r. A.D. 1307-1311)

Emperor Renzong (Borjigin Ayuur-balbad, r. A.D. 1311-1320)

Emperor Yingzong (Borjigin Sidibala, r. A.D. 1320-1323)

Emperor Taidingdi (Borjigin Yisun-temur, r. A.D. 1323-1328)

Emperor Tianshundi (Borjigin Razibay, r. A.D. 1328)

Emperor Wenzong (Borjigin Tob-temur, r. A.D. 1328-1329, 1329-1332)

Emperor Mingzong (Borjigin Kusele/Kusala, r. A.D. 1329)

Emperor Ningzong (Borjigin Rincinbal, r. A.D. 1332)

Emperor Shundi (Borjigin Toyan-temur/Toghan-temur, r. A.D. 1333-1370)

Chapter XLI: The Red Turbans’ Rebellion Against the Mongols

Chapter XLII: The Ming Dynasty vs. the Mongols

Afterword

Chronology of the Chinese Dynasties

References on the Twenty-Four Histories

Bibliograhy

INSCRIBED TO

SENATOR RICK SCOTT

&

REPRESENTATIVE BRIAN J. MAST

OF

THE U.S. CONGRESS

In High Regard with Great Admiration for Sponsoring

TRANSACTION AND SOURCING KNOWLEDGE ACT (U.S. S4095)

&

CHINA SOCIAL MEDIA RECIPROCITY ACT (H.R. 8041).

EPIGRAPH

Their [Russian] particular brand of fanaticism, unmodified by any of the Anglo-Saxon traditions of compromise, was too fierce and too jealous to envisage any permanent sharing of power. From the Russian-Asiatic world out of which they had emerged they had carried with them a skepticism as to the possibilities of permanent or peaceful coexistence of rival forces. Easily persuaded of their own doctrinaire rightness, they insisted on the submission or destruction of all competing power. … But we have seen that the Kremlin is under no ideological compulsion to accomplish its purposes in a hurry. Like the Church, it is dealing in ideological concepts which are of long-term validity, and it can afford to be patient. …Again, these precepts are fortified by the lessons of Russian history: of centuries of obscure battles between nomadic forces over the stretches of a vast unfortified plain. Here caution, circumspection, flexibility and deception are the valuable qualities; and their value finds a natural appreciation in the Russian or the oriental mind. —George Kennan’s Mr. X article (Long Telegram of 1946; The Sources of Soviet Conduct, Foreign Affairs (July 1947)).

A hundred and twenty years ago ..., the Marquis de Custine, felt compelled to speculate ... the ultimate destiny of a tyranny so vast and so ponderous as ... in the empire of Nicolas I. ...to take over the West and to teach us decadent Westerners …But the old Russian hands in the Petersburg diplomatic corps had, ..., a different view. The destiny of Russian tyranny, ... was to expand into Asia — and eventually to break in two, there, upon its own conquests. ... in the case of Soviet Russia a little bit of this happened as much as thirty-three years ago (i.e., the 1927 communist uprisings and mutinies). —George Kennan’s Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin (1961).

All the great masterful races have been fighting races, and the minute that a race loses the hard fighting virtues, then, no matter what else it may retain, no matter how skilled in commerce and finance, in science or art, it has lost its proud right to stand as the equal of the best. …Diplomacy is utterly useless when there is no force behind it. The diplomat is the servant, not the master, of the soldier. There are higher things in this life than the soft and easy enjoyment of material comfort. It is through strife, or the readiness for strife, that a nation must win greatness. …No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumph of war. —Pres. Theodore Roosevelt’s Speech at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island (June 2, 1897).

PREFACE

Book III of the barbarian tetralogy was written to explicate the theme of a civilization’s good fight against barbarism, with a secondary title of Laments for the Middle Land’s Sinking printed on the cover in commemoration of China’s fall under the alien conquests, with her status quo being rule by an alien Leninist tyrannical dictatorship. This book is inscribed to representative Brian J. Mast and senator Rick Scott in the same fashion as Jeremiah Curtin (1835-1906)’s dedicating his book The Mongols, A History to President Theodore Roosevelt, a book taken by the President to be of tremendous importance in world history ... imperatively necessary to all who would understand the development of Asia and of Eastern Europe and a book vindicating the President’s war and triumph message, namely, All the great masterful races have been fighting races, and the minute that a race loses the hard fighting virtues, then, no matter what else it may retain, no matter how skilled in commerce and finance, in science or art, it has lost its proud right to stand as the equal of the best. The inscription of the barbarian tetralogy is in appreciation of representative Brian J. Mast’s sponsoring the China Social Media Reciprocity Act (H.R. 8041) and senator Rick Scott’s sponsoring the Transaction and Sourcing Knowledge Act (U.S. S4095), two legislative acts that hit the nail on the head as to the exact nature of the China problems and could have provided a workable first-step solution to the China problems.

At the same time of writing Book III of the barbarian tetralogy, I also updated the civilization duology, i.e., The Sinitic Civilization: A Factual History Through the Lens of Archaeology, Bronzeware, Astronomy, Divination, Calendar and the Annals, with addition of an Afterword, in which I expounded on what George F. Kennan cited as to the destiny of Russian tyranny in Marquis De Custine and his Russia in 1839 and Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin, i.e., conquest of the Orient where the Russian tyranny was to duplicate itself. Continuing in the same line of thought, George Kennan, in his Mr. X article, talked about the Russian or the oriental mind and the Russian-Asiatic world; seemingly perceived this Russian or oriental mind as an innate matter that could not be overcome and implied the Russian caution, circumspection, flexibility, and deception to have derived from hundreds of years’ dealings with the barbarians like the suzerain Mongols, with Russia or the Soviet Union better to be dealt with via a protracted strategy such as what I guessed to be something of an entrenched blockade nature to outlive the opposite party; and further took the Chinese as a group of people whom the Americans should not take on in the first place for what appeared to this author to be more a logistic issue of what Kennan termed the limited capacity for assimilation as well as downplayed one hundred years of American missionaries of work in China as patronizing in this attitude of ours (i.e., American). Kennan’s limitation apparently referred to the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882). In the same context of writing the Afterword for the Sinitic civilization duology, I lamented that one hundred years of episcopal and evangelical work by the Americans were lost, both in China and in Korea, with the irony knowing that Kim Il-sung’s father Kim Hyong-jik was a student at the evangelical Sungshil School while his grandson is manufacturing the atomic bombs to menace the world. I mentioned the work of Rev. Elliot Heber Thomson (?-1917) who founded St. Luke’s Hospital (Shanghai) [and partially founded the later Saint John’s University], where this author’s great-grandfather Ch’üan-fu studied at the male nurse school before becoming a doctor himself, as well as the work of Francis Lister Hawks Pot (1864–1947) who devoted a whole life to Saint John’s University (Shanghai), where the second elder brother of this author’s grandfather’s held a lifelong campus contractor’s career. Kennan’s toolkit was a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment (American Diplomacy, p. 119. The U of Chi Press 1951, expanded edition). This long digressive talk about what Kennan meant in the "Long Telegram, i.e., his bankrupt ‘long’ view of problems and seeking solutions in the historical context, is to evince today’s world an alternative to a passive and mechanical way to contain" the Chinese communists, which would be more vigorous engagements and forceful démarches. In the context of continuous discourse on the barbarians, I will offer more in-depth dissection of Marquis De Custine’s twins, i.e., combination of the old Russian tyranny (i.e., sarcastically referred to as the Posterior Mongol Empire by the Japanese) and its Oriental stand-in (i.e., communist China), and the more serious damages that the twins could inflict onto the civilized world.

George F. Kennan, though having a firsthand knowledge of the Russian situation for the many years he spent in Russia, apparently harbored sympathy with the czar, for which he obtained a special letter (pass) from the Russian police chief, i.e., Count Dimitri Tolstoy, to visit the Siberia gulags, a pass that on many occasions saved him from the police terror that was same and commonplace as is in today’s communist China. George F. Kennan reminded this author of Jack Service and Ilia Tolstoy who harbored sympathy with the Chinese communists and at one time contemplated on sailing down the Yellow River to enter the communist territory of Yenan. George F. Kennan did not understand the development of Asia and of Eastern Europe as President Theodore Roosevelt thought whoever had read Jeremiah Curtin’s The Mongols: A History (Little Brown & Company 1908) could have achieved such knowledge. Jeremiah Curtin (1835-1906), a Harvard graduate, was also in Russia where he worked as a translator, apparently acquired knowledge of numerous Eastern European languages, and translated Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Trilogy, a great Polish masterpiece that this author also liked. George F. Kennan did not appear to be in the capacity to empathize with Anson Burlingame who authored the Burlingame Treaty, wore the barbarian Manchu flowery jadeite feather-tube hat, and died for China in 1870 in St. Petersburg while still on Manchu China’s mission to the U.S. and Europe. Kennan believed that Secretary of State John Milton Hay bought the Open-Door Policy’s idea from Alfred E. Hippisley and Sir Robert Hart (1835-1911) of the Manchu Imperial Maritime Customs, not realizing that Hay was a loyalist and a son to President Abraham Lincoln who sent Anson Burlingame to China. While Kennan seemingly understood what Marquis De Custine recorded in the travelogue, namely, the destiny of Russian tyranny... was to expand into Asia — and eventually to break into two, there, upon its own conquests and further believed that the Soviet-instigated communist revolution of the 1920s partially turned the prediction into reality, Kennan had no clue as to the damages that the Tehran and Yalta secret deals with Stalin and the 1946-47[48] arms embargo did to Republican China, which fully transformed the prediction into reality and a spell on China that incurred full alien conquests in history twice to suffer a third time, i.e., communist China’s being an exactly split twin born from the Russian tyranny.

The barbarian tetralogy was written with the interwoven theme of a civilization’s good fight against barbarism and meticulously knit together with the minute details as to how the barbarians snowballed to conquer the world, a recurring thesis that could be applied to today’s Russo-Ukrainian War, for example, and something to remind the world that the Russians could afford to continue invasion without conscripting young men in Moscow or St. Petersburg for the material and human resources that Russia and its twin entity Communist China jointly possess to carry on military ventures against the white (Western) civilization, i.e., the kind of scenarios that Secretary of State John Milton Hay and President Wilson likely foresaw a long time ago and worked henceforth to keep China open or intact (i.e., independent). The world needs to be forewarned that Czarist successor Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin’s design, i.e., the road to Paris lay through Peking, is still alive at this moment, and the danger to the white (Western) civilization, as perceived by President Woodrow Wilson, is still clear and present. Note that President Wilson was misquoted by Secretary of State Robert Lansing or misplaced a comma as to his words ‘white civilization’ and its domination in the world rested largely on our ability to keep this country (China, not the U.S. as claimed by Ko Unoki or others) intact, ... President Wilson, with intent to prevent Japan or another entity from hijacking China, made the same-premise decision to enter WWI after the Bolsheviks’ overthrow of Alexander Kerensky’s Russian provisional government, apparently taking Russian to be in a vulnerable position as China to fall to trigger a crisis to the white (Western) civilization. In Secretary Lansing’s records, President Wilson was quoted to have used different words in the same conversation to express idea or thought about country (more likely China), nations (i.e., European nations) and nation (America). David Henry Fromkin (1932 – 2017) of Boston University correctly interpreted President Wilson’s idea or thought in the context of China’s entry into WWI, which was minister Paul Samuel Reinsch (1869-1923)’s masterplan for China to come out of the war in a strong position against Japan which took advantage of WWI to have raised twenty-one demands to subjugate China, as well as in the immediate context of the overthrow of the Russian democratic government by the Bolsheviks.

The barbarians’ conquest of the civilized world was not a slam-dunk thing. Sinitic China was attacked by the barbarians since prehistory and warded off the barbarians either with advanced weaponry like chariots or with construction of the Great Walls. Something like the demise of a half or whole Sinitic nation was not to befall till the Yongjia (A.D. 311) and Jingkang (A.D. 1227) cataclysms. The barbarians, lacking the chariots, or the metal weapons, or the stirrups, did not pose a life-threatening danger till emergence of the mounted archery with stirrups that did not get invented till about the 2nd to 3rd centuries A.D. The notorious Mongol conquests of China and the world were made possible with the barbarians’ acquisition of Soong China’s iron coins from as early as the Jurchens’ time, for making into the iron sabers and arrows, as a result of the extravagant lifestyle of Soong emperors’ running a trade deficit with the Arab and Persian countries and exhausting the copper coins to invoke a substitute of iron coins instead. Secondarily, the barbarians’ fluky success in the world conquest lied in the application of the age-old contrivance of snowballing or blanketing, which was written as ‘guǒxié’ for the banditry rampage recorded in the twenty-four Chinese history annals, meaning a hurricane’s uprooting and making a clean sweep of everything on the way like in a sac or inside a wrapped carpet. Specifically, this was what Zhao Gong’s Meng Da Bei-lu (prepared notes on the Black Dadan) described as to the Mongol customs of having each horseman round up ten non-Mongol villagers as fodder to fill moats and sack forts, with another recent example being the Chinese communists’ mobilizing able-bodied males in a human wave (sea) attack that was termed the people’s war, numbering 1.6 million troops and 3.13 million [mixed-usage] logistic army that the communists drafted in Manchuria alone in the late 1940s. Other than coercing the ‘bound-under-threat’ people, the Mongols, in the process of the snowballing war, requisitioned the advanced siege and attack weapons from the conquered people like the Jurchens and Persians for further conquest of the world, with the arsenals including iron cannons, fire rockets flying rockets, machine crossbows, flamethrowers, stone throwers, catapults, etc. One notable person who possessed a keen understanding of the banditry ‘guo-xie’ artifice in history was Confucian Jiang Zhongyuan who back in A.D. 1851 recruited 1000 village fighters to confront and tailgate the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom rebels for sake of nipping the rebellion in the bud and preventing the rebels from scurrying north to pillage his Hunan hometown. Jiang Zhongyuan was a peer of future Confucians-turned Manchu governors-general who quelled the Taiping rebels with the Western muskets and under the help of mercenaries like Frederick T. Ward and Charles George Gordon.

President Wilson, when being described to be ‘more and more impressed with the idea that white civilization and its domination in the world rested largely on our ability to keep this country intact...’ must have come to understand that Russia, and/or China, for the immense territory wherein there were the unmeasurable natural resources and labor power, could pose danger to the white (Western) civilization if falling under a tyrant or dictator’s rule, which is very much the case with today’s Russia and communist China. Kennan, not aware of the damages of the Yalta betrayal, naively discounted the Chinese communist revolution as part of the Soviet system and asserted its victory to be an exception to the Soviet military intimidation or invasion and not a result that could be ascribed primarily to Soviet propaganda or instigation (American Diplomacy, p. 119. The U of Chi Press 1951, expanded edition). Kennan, who did not know the damages that the 1946-1947[48] arms embargo did to Republican China, never had an inquiry into the whereabouts of the Soviet August Storm lend-lease weapons, i.e., 3,000 tanks, 5,000 planes, innumerable artilleries, plus all the other munitions, food, and fuel required for the Soviet Far Eastern invasion army of 1,250,000 men, that ended up in the Chinese communists’ hands and were used to blast the cities of Jinzhou, Xinbao’an, Tientsin and Taiyuan to pieces. Furthermore, the Soviets directly intervened in the Chinese civil war, with Ivan V. Kovalev, i.e., Stalin and All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)’s plenipotentiary to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), sent to China for directing the civil war as a railway czar according to Andrei Ledovsky and under a mantle that pro-Soviet regimes must be established in all territories that the Soviet Red Army ever stepped on, no matter Europe or Asia. Using the cover of the Soviet co-owned Chinese Eastern Railway, the Chinese communists claimed to have expanded the control of railway tracks in Manchuria to 9,818 kilometers (or 88.6% of the total railway tracks of Manchuria) three years after control of the initial number of 4,694 kilometers in June of 1946 (p. 137 of Book I of the four-volume communist compiling of Northeast Economics and Finance, 1987).

The barbaric ‘bound-under-threat’ banditry-style sweeping of all able-bodied men for war, i.e., ‘guǒxié’, was applicable to the Mongol conquest of the world in the 13th century, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom rebellion of the 19th century as well as the communist conquest of China of the 20th century. The Chinese communists claimed to have recruited in Manchuria an army of 1.6 million troops within four years (1945-1949) and mobilized a logistic auxiliary support horde of 3.13 million [quasi-military] civilians (p. 124 of Book I of Northeast Economics and Finance, 1987) in addition to a huge railway ‘security’ army. This was on top of the decimated communist headcounts of original 130,000 men sent to Manchuria in late 1945 (p. 649 of Book IV of Northeast Economics and Finance, 1988), which was one third of the total communist army strength at the time of the Japanese surrender, repeatedly tallied by Peter Vladimirov in The Vladimirov Diaries: Yenan, China, 1942-1945 (English translation, Doubleday, 1975) to be about 387,245 troops on January 1st, 1944, with 190,000 rifles, 3,187 machineguns, 360 heavy machineguns, and 232 artillery pieces, or the real, not officially inflated, strength of ... about 380,000 troops on August 23rd, 1945. The number of 1.6 million troops in Manchuria might not have included 250,000 Koreans whom Kim Il Sung claimed to have supplied to fighting the Chinese civil war, a mercenary army consisting of the former ethnic-Korean Japanese Kwantung Army soldiers who were filtered out and repatriated back to Korea from Siberia. In another word, the barbarians’ conquest of the world or the communist conquest of China had the same trait of banditry-style racketing in the consummation of conquests, not necessarily related to the military skills and strategy or support from the people who should be properly termed the auxiliary or fodder.

After this scathing attack on George F. Kennan’s Mr. X article and its proposed policy of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment that proved its utter failure three quarters of a century later, we will return to the topic of finding a more robust mechanism to deal with the threat to civilization by the twin entities which inherited the same old tyranny with the same old police brutality and gulags, that was passed down from one and half centuries ago and revigorated by a Leninist-Stalinist dogma. The alternative would be more vigorous engagements and forceful démarches, as seen in representative Mast’s China Social Media Reciprocity Act (H.R. 8041) and senator Scott’s Transaction And Sourcing Knowledge Act (U.S. S4095). Communist China, since the eruption of the COVID epidemic, had begun to implement a lock-down mode as possibly some mock tests to exercise the military control of the population for the elusive invasion of Taiwan, to the extent that the kitchen knives were ordered to be registered and chained, and the streets and lanes were barricaded and barb-wired. Perhaps, speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan had diffused the situation, and if not diffused, an early outcome from likely conflicts triggered by her visit could be better than a later one. The inaction or passivity, as proposed by George F. Kennan, could increase the cost of action in the future. What representative Mast and senator Scott proposed for dealing with the thuggery communist regime was the right approach, and more could be done. (It was also likely that communist China, with border fences built along Vietnam, Burma and Thailand two years ago and recently reinforced with a double wire mesh, could have decided to go back to the historic closed-door state of the Ming and Qing dynasties and the Japanese shogunate.)

Being concerned over the miserable fate of the Chinese peasants who are enslaved by the totalitarian communist regime and toiling to death for the multinational corporations in the past decades, I had used Jagdish Bhagwati’s Immiserizing Growth theory for decades to tell the world that the more trade there is with China, the more worsening-off the living standards of the Chinese peasants would be. This was the same viewpoint shared by Steven W. Mosher, author of the book Broken Earth. Professor Peter Navarro’s two books "The Coming China Wars and Death by China" reflected the same thesis from a different angle of communist China’s using the trade surplus’ monetary gain and control of the production chains to harm America, something that diffused my original thought that President Donald J. Trump’s trade war was like hitting the mark by a fluke. In comparison with the difficulty to detect slave-labor or coolie-labor imports from communist China, senator Scott’s Transaction and Sourcing Knowledge Act could be enforced with precision for the easier way of identifying the origin of materials than that of labor, a masterpiece act to be applauded. I want senator Scott to know that I had three classes of classmates from the western territory of Xinjiang, and share the same concern over the Turkic and Uygur people’s welfare, which is in a same way as concern over my countryside cousins. The Uygurs, for their origin in the northern rivers area of Tu’ula, Kerulen, Onon, and Orkhon, situated to the north of the Turks, might be originally related to the Finno-Ugric people who spoke the Yeniseian language, i.e., part of the Dene-Caucasian language family. This author, a bona fide Sinitic descendant, possessed about 15% Eurasian hunters’ gene of the type N1a (N-M96 (N-CTS7095, N-P189)) plus a large gene segment of 2.0 cM from the Ust-Ishim people of Siberia, which showcases the affinity of the ancient Sinitic Chinese with the N-haplogroup Finno-Ugric people. The N1a haplotype in China is a different branch from N1c, a gene widely seen in the Russians and Ukrainians, that the Finnish people passed on when they took the long-distance trek to Scandinavia, with the Russians having more N gene than the Ukrainians. In this barbarian tetralogy Book III, more than a full chapter of space was devoted to the history of the Turks and Uygurs whose claim of or consent with descent from a son of the last king of China’s first dynasty of Xia could be true when we trace the human history beyond the emergence of the Huns and Turks to find out that the Finno-Ugric people at one time clustered together with the paleo-North-China Sinitic people and belonged to the same Dene-Caucasian language family.

Not many days ago, in July of 2022, the thuggery communist regime, in collaboration with the corrupt United Nations, ironically hosted the World Internet Conference which was supposed to be about digital divide and global information inequality, and soundly slapped the civilized world with proclamation of a theme "Towards a New Era of Digital Civilization - Building a Community with a Shared Future in Cyberspace". This recurring convention of internet-related conferences in China for consecutive years is an affront to the civilized world and an insult to the human dignity for communist China’s notoriety in practicing the Orwellian style of speech suppression and information censorship. Will the civilized world continue to turn the back on the grave insult to human dignity? Where are the righteous people of the civilized world to make a stand against this affront to the humanity? Representative Mast’s China Social Media Reciprocity Act is a great work to deal with this insult and affront, but not enough. Internet and information broadcasting is a form of warfare. With communist China pouring resources to controlling the internet and the flow of information, the information battlefront should be treated on the same par as the past wars between the barbarians and the civilized worlds. In parallel with President Ronald Reagan’s open call to Soviet secretary general Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin wall, there is need of an open declaration of war against communist China and exertion of efforts to proactively enhance technology to break down the Great Firewall for securing intactness of the civilization or otherwise risking loss of the information war, which should could turn into what President Wilson termed by a ‘crime against civilization’.

During the recent trip to the east coast, I had expressed a wish to dedicate this book on the barbarians to senator Scott and others but was told of scheduling conflicts by the senator’s office. Hence, this book was inscribed to senator Scott instead without asking for permission. While wrapping up the book, it was noticed that representative Mast proposed the reciprocal information act, for which this book was inscribed to him without asking for permission. While walking past the Elliott School of International Affairs of George Washington University on a rainy day in May, secretary of state Antony Blinken flashed through my mind as likely a disciple of George F. Kennan and Henry Kissinger, and hence this book on civilization and barbarism needs to be impressed the importance ever. This barbarian tetralogy Book III was also written with Dalai Lama his Holiness on my mind, and hence history on the Tibetans, i.e., the Sinitic people’s closest cousins, was made into a relatively self-standing and intact chapter. While carrying a title with emphasis on the Khitans, the Jurchens and Mongols, the book covered the Hsiung-nu (Huns), Hsien-pi (Xianbei), Tavghach (Tuoba), Juan-juan (Ruruans), Tu-chueh (Turks), Uygurs (Huihe), and Kirghiz to show different groups of barbarians successively rising up on the steppes to overpower the former with more savagery, in addition to coverage of the Tibetans, the Tanguts and southern barbarians (i.e., the Mywa states of Nanzhao and Dali) who shared some common origin with either the Sinitic people or the Qiangic people of the larger Sino-Tibetan family. The barbarian tetralogy also chronicled an annalistic history of China’s dynasties including the Sui and Tang dynasties, the Five Dynasties, and the two Soong dynasties. There are many unique and groundbreaking contents, such as collation of the missing one-year history of the Mongols’ Central Asia campaigns (A.D. 1219-1224), restitution of the unheard-of Mongol campaign in North Africa in A.D. 1258, and validation of the years of Mongol operations against southern Russia, Crimea and Caucasus through A.D. 1238-1240. This kind of discoveries is similar to this author’s trailblazing work done in other areas of sinology like rectifying the Huns’ war with the first Han dynasty emperor to 201 B.C. and correcting one year error in the Zhou dynasty’s interregnum (841-828 B.C. per Shi-ji/840-827 per Zhang Wenyu) in the duology The Sinitic Civilization. This will promise to be a continuing good-read for the readers who have followed through to this point.

Hong Yuan

August 2022

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This author would like to express special thanks of gratitude to Lilian and Alicia who are gifted and talented in visualizing and effectuating the diagram maps, cartograms and book covers for this book From the Khitans to the Jurchens & Mongols, A History of Barbarians in Triangle Wars & Quartet Conflicts.

INTRODUCTION

From the Khitans to the Jurchens & Mongols is a comprehensive writeup of the steppe barbarians, with emphasis on what the ancient Chinese annals termed by the Eastern Hu barbarians, i.e., the Hsien-pi (Xianbei) component from the Mongolia-Manchuria steppe or the Mongol and Tungunsic stock barbarians whose successors included the Khitans, the Jurchens and Mongols. When adding up the Huns and Turks in the first, third and ninth chapters, the history period of this barbarian tetralogy Book III would have spanned more than one millennium. This book also provides the readers with a bonus writeup of history of the non-steppe barbarians like the Tibetans, the Tanguts and the Mywa (Nanzhao/Nanchao and successor Dali) in the seventh, eighth and fifteenth chapters, i.e., the Tibeto-Burman or the Qiangs from the larger Sino-Tibetan family, who differed from or differentiated among each other for their degrees of assimilation into and admixture with the ancient Haplogroup D-M174 people of the Tibetan plateau, the Hsien-pi (Xianbei) and Kra–Dai/Hmong-Mien/Mon-Khmer people of the south. The subtitle "A History of Barbarians in Triangle Wars & Quartet Conflicts" defines this book as mainly a military history of the barbarians in triangle wars & quartet conflicts for the different barbarian groups successively rising up to overpower the predecessor groups in the fluid steppe environment. The book threads together different groups of the barbarians in the trilateral, quadrilateral or more complicated settings, such as the Qiangic people versus their admixed Tibetan, Tuyuhun, Tangut and Mywa groups. The Huns’ successors were taken to have spawned the Turkic and Uygur successors, and the Eastern Hu barbarians or the Hsien-pi (Xianbei) successors further spawned the Khitans and Mongols. Genghis Khan’s Mongols were a Turco-Mongol mixture after their ancestors migrated to the three rivers’ area of central Mongolia. The Tungunsic Jurchens were taken to be of the same stock as the Hsien-pi (Xianbei) but developed different traits due to geographic segregation from the Hsien-pi (Xianbei) kinsmen by the Great Khing’an Mountain Range. The difference of the Mongol or Turco-Mongol barbarians was measured by the degrees of extremely raw (i.e., black Dadan), raw (white Dadan), and cooked (semi-civilized). Similarly, the Tungunsic barbarians, for their relative distance from Sinitic China, were classified into the ‘he-su-kuan’ cooked or acquaintance Jurchens (whom Khitan founder Abaoji forcefully resettled at Liaoyang with several thousand households of big-clan Jurchens after conquering thirty-six barbarian tribes in Manchuria), the noncooked and non-raw Jurchens in Xian[2]zhou (Xian[2]ping; Kaiyuan of Liaoning), the raw (i.e., uncivilized) Jurchens to the north of Sumo (Sungari) and northeast of Ningjiang, and the Huangtou (yellow-head with yellow iris and green apple) Donghai (east sea) Jurchens further to the northeast towards the Japan Sea. The Jurchen Jin dynasty founders, with ancestry in Koryo, came from the raw Jurchen tribe.

Jeremiah Curtin (1835-1906), in The Mongols: A History (Little Brown & Company 1908), divided the barbarians into five historic groups of the Huns, Bulgars, Magyars, Turks, and Mongols. Nazi SS commander Heinrich Himmler took Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union as a same fight against the Huns, Magyars, Tartars, and Mongols, whom he took as the same subhumanity or the same inferior races. Applying today’s genetic knowledge that was not available one hundred years ago, the sequence of the barbarian groups’ intrusion to Europe, such as the Magyars versus Huns, could be inverted by the criteria of emergence of the Huns who dispersed the Magyars who actually first arrived in the west geographically speaking, which was in a similar fashion as the later Slavic people’s displacing the Finno-Ugric people (i.e., the Magyars, Bulgars and Moldovans) into two clusters separated by the Dnieper River. In the first chapter of the book, human migrations through the steppe and between North China and [southwestern] Siberia in the remote antiquity was explored to differentiate the N1c/N1a-haplogroup Uralic or Finno-Ugric and the O-haplogroup Sino-Tibetans -- who could be bundled under the same Dené–Caucasian language family -- from the later-coming Q-haplogroup people who could be associated with the Huns (or later Turks) and the C-haplogroup Mongol and Tungunsic barbarians. The Finno-Ugric and Sino-Tibetans peoples’ same origin from the Dené–Caucasian or proto-Borean (Northern) language family, which also encompassed the R1b-haplogroup Basques and Celtic people and/or the agglutinative Korean and Japanese, pointed to a much ancient development of civilizations in the northern Eurasian steppe and northern Chinese continent. What likely happened was that after the Sino-Tibetan language split off from the Dene-Caucasian language family, the Sinitic branch lost the agglutinative feature, with some machine-molding operation that led to the singular syllable as existed today.

Hungarian philologist and Orientalist Sándor Kőrösi Csoma (1784-1842), a Székely (Magyar), spent over a dozen of years in Ladakh, next to Tibet, in search of the elusive Magyar homeland and believed from the linguistic perspective that the Magyars migrated to Bokharia to Hungary from northern Tibet. The Hungarians were affiliated with the Finnish, Bulgar and Sami people, i.e., the Finno-Ugric people who likely took the steppe route to reach the Semiryechye and Ural areas before further dispersion to Central Asia to the south and the Volga areas to the west. Over one hundred years ago, Finnish philologist Matthias Alexander Castrén (1813-1852) took the Uralic homeland in East Asia and west-central Siberia, and shared the same homesickness as Sándor Kőrösi Csoma. The Tibeto-Burmans, who split from the Sinitic people, were speculated by Jan Braun of the Oriental Institute of the University of Warsaw to have migrated to Mesopotamia to be the agglutinative Sumerians, i.e., the ultimate source of western civilizations, with the Sumerians likely taking the route of today’s Wakhan Corridor to have left Tibet, which was mistaken by Sándor Kőrösi Csoma to be possibly the Magyars’ point of exit from the original homeland of northern Tibet. Note that the Sumerians’ link with the Sino-Tibetans could be validated by similar artifacts excavated in a midway archaeological site of Harappa, namely, the double-headed bird ivory found at the Mohenjo-Daro Ruins, which was similar to 6000 to 7,000-year-old sun-holding two-head bird ivory of Hemudu in coastal China. Sergei Starostin, on basis of a list of basic words compiled by Monis Swadesh and Sergei Yakhontov, compared the cognates among Old Chinese, Proto-Tibeto-Burman, Proto-North-Caucasian, Proto-Yeniseian, Proto-Indo-European, and Proto-Austronesian for estimating the relationship between Proto-languages in the prehistoric period, with the linguistic findings yielding to Old Chinese’s 43% correlation with Proto-North-Caucasian rather 23% with Proto-Indo-European. Joseph Edkins (1823-1905), who authored China’s Place in Philology (1871), also noticed the shared cognates among the Old Chinese and Indo-European languages, that the Jesuits stumbled on hundreds of years earlier.

This barbarian tetralogy was not about the Sinitic nation’s virtuous and benevolent rule over the barbarians, nor assimilation and acculturation of the barbarians. This book’s first passage started with the collective loss of memory about the Shimao Culture (about 2300-1800 B.C.), a ruin with the patented Sinitic jar-shaped rostrum with double gates, and the outer walls and inner walls that spanned the range of 2000 and 2840 meters long. The Shimao Culture, like the Mohenjo-Daro Ruins, was lost into oblivion due to the most likely cause of conquest and genocide by the unknown barbarians. Shimao, which predated China’s literature-corroborated dynasty of Xia by less than half a millennium, could be likely a joint works of the Finno-Ugric people and the Sino-Tibetans. In light of the Hongshan Culture and Xiajiadian Culture findings, the Finno-Ugric people’s extinction in the area of today’s southwestern Manchuria could be due to the onslaught by the Mongol and Tungunsic barbarians. The Khitans, the Jurchens and Mongols consecutively exhibited a progressively barbaric way of conquest, with their barbaric way of life blunted by hiring of the ethnic-Chinese or Sinicized Jurchen-Khitan Confucians along the way of conquest and eventually ending in the fate of being conquered by their more barbaric kinsmen. For example, the Jurchens, during rebellion against the Khitans in Manchuria in the mid-1110s A.D., pillaged Qing[4]zhou and Rao[2]zhou, sacked Dong-jing (eastern capital), Huanglong-fu, Sufu[zhou], Bohai and Liaoyang, with several millions of ethnic-Chinese in the fifty-four prefectures massacred by the Jurchens. For another example, the Mongols could have massacred the whole city of Jurchen Jin capital city Zhongdu (Peking) in A.D. 1215, as seen in Minhaj al-Siraj Muhammad Juzjani’s Tabaqat-i Nasiri (historic records of Sultan Nasir-ud-Din r. A.D. 1246-1265), wherein Khwarazm shah Muhammad II’s emissary jotted down an exaggerated account of spotting a white hill like a snowy mountain outside of Peking, which turned out to be a pile of skeletons and corpses, with the human fat overflowing the ground that they trekked on, as well as a horrific story of 60000 young women and girls throwing themselves to their death from the city wall --which conflicted with the Yuan Shi biography on ethnic-Khitan turncoat Shimo Ming’an who was described to have accepted the surrender of the city on the ‘xin-you’ day of May without conducting massacre. More barbaric than the Jurchens, the Mongols fulfilled the Khwarazm emissary’s foretold story in decimating the Central Asia population within merely five years, and accumulatively cut short the potential population growth of 100 million people on the Chinese continent during the period of three quarters of the 13th century, as detailed in Chapter XXXVI: The Death Toll from the Mongol Conquest.

Continuing the theme of a civilization’s good fight against barbarism, the Khitans, Jurchens and Mongols in the tetralogy Book III, who were more savage than the forerunner steppe barbarians like the Huns and Turks, were given credit for what they were able to launch the Sinitic-style dynasties of Liao (A.D. 907-1125), Jin (A.D. 1115-1234) and Yuan (A.D. 1271-1368) ruling parts of or whole China. The Khitans, Jurchens and Mongols adopted the Chinese governance system, which was the rites, protocols, laws, and most importantly the examination-based or talents-based officialdom system. This could be made into a parallel to the Mesopotamia civilizations’ rise and fall, with the Assyrians replacing the Amorites who in turn replaced the Akkadians whose relationship with the Sumerians could be likened to that between the Khitans and the Chinese. Before the three barbarian groups, the Tuoba Xianbei people established the Northern Wei dynasty (A.D. 386-534), Eastern Wei dynasty (A.D. 534-550) and Western Wei dynasty (A.D. 535-557) in northern China, and the Tanguts, whose ruling clique claimed descent from the Tuoba Xianbei, established the Western Xia dynasty (A.D. 1032-1227) in northwestern China. (Before that, the Tuoba Xianbei established the Wei dynasties in northern China, with the Tuoba Wei history and many other short-lived barbarian dynasties to be detailed in the barbarian tetralogy Book I (i.e., the Huns) and Book II (i.e., the Turks). The Tangut Xia dynasty, that was launched with the assistance of two Confucians who flunked the Soong imperial exams, was launched by the Tanguts who claimed heritage from the Tuoba Xianbei, and is fully covered in this book.)

While the Mongols were progressively more barbaric than the Khitans and Jurchens, the Mongols appeared to have mastered the game of using the aliens against the aliens from the very beginning, with Genghis Khan not hesitating to employ the non-Mongols, such as the Uygur and Tangut (i.e., Central Asian migrant) fugitives, at the very early stage of internecine fighting among the Mongol-Tartar clans in the A.D. 1190s; later skillfully adopted the tactic of using the conquered people as fodder of war for snowballing the conquest; and after the conquest, resorted to a religiously tolerant policy for divide and rule, such as dispatching the Muslims to China as viceroys and governors – to the extent that the Muslims and Dungan people dominated in northwestern and southwestern China hundreds after the demise of the Mongol rule, as seen in the A.D. 1862-1877 revolt that echoed the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom rebellion. The Mongols, in sparing the lives of artisans and religious persons, et al., could have averted the outcome of loss of the human knowledge and cutoff of the trans-Roman Empire division of labor that led to the Dark Ages of Europe in the aftermath of the fall of the Western Roman Empire as seen in Professor Bryan Ward-Perkins’ assessment of the post-Rome tiles and potteries.

The Khitans, under Yelü Abaoji (r. A.D. 916-926), launched a Khitan (Qidan) dynasty in A.D. 907, and designed a three-layer imperial system under the guidance of ethnic-Chinese minister Han Yanhui. In A.D. 947, Khitan Liao Emperor Yelü Deguang (r. A.D. 927-947), who hired Zhao Yanshou as a prime minister, destroyed the Posterior Jinn dynasty, and for a short time period through January-June of A.D. 947, ruled northern China under the Da-Liao (Great Liao) dynasty. The Khitans, after intrusion into the ancient Chinese capital city of Kaifeng, ransacked all the Chinese classics in the city for the north. The Khitans, who renamed their dynasty back to Khitan in A.D. 983, reverted back to the Liao dynasty in A.D. 1066. The Liao dynasty lasted through A.D. 907-1125 till the last Liao Emperor Tianzuodi was captured by the Jurchens. Yelü Dashi, a Khitan royal, launched the Kara-khitai (A.D. 1124-1218) dynasty in today’s Mongolia and Central Asia. Similarly, the Jurchens, in rebelling against the Khitans, hired Yang Pu, who was a Han-ethnic Khitan imperial examinee (or dropout), as a minister responsible for setting up the imperial system. The Jurchens, after sacking the Northern Soong capital city in A.D. 1127, blanketed the Chinese classics, library and archives, which enabled the Jurchens to hire Confucian ministers to devise a Daming-li calendar for themselves. The Mongols were known for retaining Khitan Yelü Chucai (A.D. 1190-1244) as a counsellor after he came out of hermitage (A.D. 1215-1218) over mourning the Jurchen Jin dynasty’s demise, and later was responsible for rebutting Mongol minister Bie-die’s proposal to kill all ethnic-Han Chinese and make the agricultural land into pasture. Yelü Chucai spent ten years in Central Asia (A.D. 1219-1229), and hence did not play an important role till during the reign of Ogedei Khan who had two quasi-adopted sons (orphans), i.e., Yang Weizhong and Hao-heshang-badu, with the former responsible for seeking out the future Confucians who were to assist Khubilai Khan in the launch of the Sinicized Yuan dynasty. During Genghis Khan’s absence for the Central Asia campaign (A.D. 1219-1224), it was viceroy Muhuali who first took the Confucians’ advice to abandon the banditry psychology and beginning from A.D. 1221-1222, no longer ravaged North China in the autumn and left for north in the spring but chose to stay in North China for consolidating the Mongol rule. Yang Weizhong, an orphan picked up by Ogedei or abducted by the Mongols at a young age, served three Mongol lords and four courts. Yang Weizhong hired Confucian Yao Shu, and the two, during the Mongol murderous campaign in the Han-shui River area in the A.D. 1230s, saved dozens of Confucians from death ropes, with this core Confucian group responsible for establishing the Mongol imperial academy as well as the Taiji (grand, ultimate, ridgepole, polar) Academy. Hao-heshang-badu, an orphan picked up by Jochi while at age nine or abducted by the Mongols, was to become a Mongol ‘wan-hu’ (tarqa) commander.

Tribal empires rose and fell, the conquered and the conquerors mixed up, and ethnic and linguistic dividing lines blurred. The Khitans, who were of the same family as the later Mongols, differentiated themselves from their barbarian cousins of the Mongol stock or Turco-Mongol stock by classifying the barbarians under nine Da-da or Da-dan[4] tribes in Liao Shi (history of the Liao dynasty). Da-da originally meant for a group of adversaries living to the east of the Turks in the 5th century A.D., and was seen in the Turks’ steles, such as Otuz-Tatar (san-shi-xing [thirty surnames] Da-da[2]) on the Kul-tigin Stele (A.D. 732), and Toquz-Tatar (jiu-xing [nine surnames] Da-da[2]) on the Bilge Qaghan Stele (A.D. 734). The Khitans were ethnically different from the Turkic/Uygur/Kirghiz stock to the west and geographically different from the Tungunsic stock in Manchuria. The Khitans, who belonged to the Eastern Hu or Tungunsic group, were also called by the Da-da (Dadan), a name the Khitans apparently disliked for the likely reason that the Khitans were not admixed with the Turks or Finno-Ugric people as the Da-da people were. The Jurchens, who called the Mongols by Da-dan[4] in Jin Shi (history of the Jurchen Jin dynasty), could take themselves to be not admixed with the Turks or the Turco-Mongols. In another word, the Khitans were more kinsmen to the Mongols than to the Jurchens, one likely reason that Genghis Khan, after routing the Jurchens, claimed to Yelü Chucai that the Mongols had avenged on the Jurchens the old feuds on behalf of the Khitans. In the northern steppe, there were three areas of the Yenissei and Orkhon rivers to the west and north of Lake Baikal, three rivers of Tu’ula,