Art. VI.—<i>The Northern Frontagers of China</i>. Part V.—<i>The Khitai or Khitans</i>

The Khitai fill a notable place in Asiatic history, and the investigation of their ethnology and early history is full of interest and value. It is also surrounded by considerable difficulties. The Khitai, or Khitans as they are otherwise known, conquered Northern China, and it was from them that mediæval geographers and travellers derived the famous name of Cathay, which has much romance about it. The Russians to this day call the Chinese Kitai. The name was perhaps introduced into Europe by the Arabs, whose adventurous merchants began to frequent the ports of China during the supremacy of the Khitai; or it may have travelled westward through the intervention of the Turkish tribes of Central Asia, who called the Khitai Khatai. They never conquered Southern China, nor did their dominion there extend apparently beyond its six northern provinces; but they made up for this by dominating over the various nomade tribes who occupied the country from the river Hurka to Turkestan, and from the Chinese wall to the country of the Tunguses. The Mongols and the tribes of Manchuria were either immediately subject to them, or tributaries; and, in fact, the history of Eastern Asia from the beginning of the tenth to that of the twelfth century was focussed about the Khitai. When their dominion in the further East was broken, as I described in a previous paper, by the Kin or Golden Tartars, a branch of their royal house founded an empire further west, known as Kara Khitai, which has already occupied our attention.