On the Specificity of the Use of Eastern Asian Written Sources on the History of the Khitan and Their States (10th - 13th Centuries)

Abstract

The article focuses on the need to consider classical medieval texts not only as sources of historical information, but also as author's works subject to a certain methodology and using a variety of historiographical technologies and ideological schemes. The specific subject of the study is the two main sources on the history of the Eastern and Western Khitans (“Khitan Guo Chi” / “History of the Khitan state” and “Liao Shi” / “History of the [dynasty] Liao”), who created the largest state structures in the pre-Mongol period. “Khian Guo Zhi” is more of a history of the Khitan ethnos, whereas “Liao Shi” is a history of the dynasty, i.e., of the state construction. As a result, we have the maximum possible penetration in those days into the two most important topics-the people as a geopolitical actor and the state as a civilizational-state structure. Their authors carried out impressive synthetic work to prove certain postulates. These are, strictly speaking, not scientific approaches, but ideological, existing, moreover, often in the form of Philistine fabrications. These sources raise a particularly significant problem of the origin of the Khitan, their dynasty, civilizational affiliation of the Khitan, the Khitan determination of the place in a nomadic world, the specifics of socio-economic and social system of the state of Liao, Khitan influence on the social development of the far East and East Asian regions. In them, the Chinese civilizational paradigm was applied to the fullest extent possible, the essential worldview settings of classical Chinese historiography are traced: Sino-centrism, sedentary centrism, Han-fan dichotomies and culture - nature. As a result, these works had a significant impact on the development of the two most common approaches to studying the history of Khitan, which are considered as classical barbarians who constantly attacked China and for this purpose created their own quasi-state, but under the influence of Chinese civilization “grew” to the level of the traditional dynasty.