A Political Time Rewritten: Revisiting the Founding Year of the Khitan Empire

Abstract

Materials dating from the Liao dynasty usually record the founding year of the Khitan Empire as 907; this was done deliberately, rather than it being caused by the negligence of historians. The official history records of the Khitan Empire contain two completely different narratives of the founding year: the account of “Junji Taiyi deity Repeatedly Appearing” from the “Biography of Taizu” in Liaoshi reflects the original appearance of the history of the empire foundation period in the first year of the Shence era (916). Other records were reworded by later historians, which caused the contents of these originally clear records to become completely blurred and concealed. This rewriting process may have been completed in the thirteenth year of the Zhongxi era (1044) during Emperor Xingzong’s reign; the records advance Emperor Taizu’s rise to the throne to the year that the Tang dynasty was destroyed. That year was essential in reconstructing the founding history of the Khitan Empire and a narrative showed a strong tendency to orthodoxy in the late Liao dynasty. This article offers further reflection on the portrayal of a political epoch in historical records from a dynamic and productive angle.