liao 603gratulated on the New Year’s Day probably in 645 and certainly in
719.They informed about an internal upheaval in 733 and offered
peace in 745. This paucity of information must be due to the fact
that the overwhelming number of all other missions was for the sake
of trade.
The second period begins in 907 with the partitioning of China
into lesser states and the unification of the Khitan into a single state.
A-pao-chi (T’ai-tsu) proclaimed himself emperor of the Khitan that
year, and Chu Wen founded the Later Liang dynasty (907-923). From
916 to 922 the Khitan were at war with the Later Liang, in 928 with
the Later T’ang (923-936), from 944 to 946 with the Later Chin (936-
946), and from 952 with the Later Chou (951-960). Only the brief
Later Han (947-950) was free of conflicts. The Five-Dynasties emperor
who had the best relations with the Khitan was Kao-tsu of Later Chin
(r.936-942), but he could not have founded his dynasty without their
help, and throughout his reign he had to appease them. In 936, he
agreed to treat T’ai-tsung of the Khitan like a father, which placed
him one step below T’ai-tsung. He also agreed to pay an annual trib-
ute of gold and 130,000 bolts of silk. No other of the Five Dynasties
is recorded to have paid tribute. In 938, he had to cede the Sixteen
Commanderies to the Khitan, which has rankled so bitterly with the
Chinese historians ever since. But, as often has been pointed out, he
was a pragmatic Turk and not concerned with Chinese sensibilities.
When his successor, Emperor Shao under the influence of an anti-
Khitan party attempted to take a more independant line and refused to
call himself a subject, this provoked the invasion of the Khitan in 944
and his arrest, dethronement, and deportation in 946. From 952, Liao
supported the Northern Han against the Later Chou, another classical
example of an alliance across a common enemy. A close relationship
was established, in which Shih-tsu of Northern Han called himself a
nephew of the Liao emperor in 951. The war of Later Chou against
Northern Han and Liao was carried on by the Sung from 960 until
- The Khitan extended the alliance they had with the North-
ern Han to the Chinese states southwest of the Five Dynasties, Wu
(902-937), its successor the Southern T’ang (937-975), and Wu-yüeh
(908-979). This threatened the Five Dynasties and early Sung with
possible wars on two fronts and also povided the Khitan with valuable
intelligence, forwarded in secret letters encased in wax.
But even when relations were at their best between one or another