Qara Khitai

The Qara Khitai, officially the Great Liao and better known in Chinese sources as the Western Liao, was a Central Asian dynastic state of the Yelü clan of the Khitans, who had ruled the Liao dynasty of north-east Asia until the Jurchens destroyed it. A band of displaced Khitans under Yelü Dashi fled west and carried the Liao name with them: in 1124 Dashi was proclaimed king at Kedun on the old Liao frontier, and in 1132 he took the Turkic title of Gurkhan with the Chinese style of Tianyou Emperor at Emil, founding the regime in form. The new state was a multicultural empire, Khitan and Liao custom over Chinese administration, ruling a mostly Turkic and Iranian population, and Chinese and Muslim historians alike counted it a legitimate Chinese dynasty. Dashi expanded into Mongolia, Xinjiang, Central and West Asia, beat the Qocho Uyghurs and the Eastern Karakhanids, and in 1134 made Balasagun his capital, Hus Ordu; in 1141 his victory at Qatwan over the Seljuk coalition won Transoxiana and Khwarezm and made the Qara Khitai the masters of Central Asia. After Dashi the throne passed through Xiao Tabuyan, Yelü Yilie and Yelü Pusuwan to Yelü Zhilugu, under whom revolts and the Naiman Kuchlug's usurpation of 1211 ended Khitan rule, and the Mongols took the state in 1218.