Talk:Yelü Dashi

message: Charles E. Nowell, "The Historical Prester John," Speculum, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Jul., 1953), pp. 435-445 http://www.jstor.org/stable/2847020: 
"Yeh-lu Ta-shih . . . was the 'historical' Prester John."17 
Investigation reveals Yeh-lu Ta-shih as a prince well known to history, about whom a great deal can be learned. The first European mention of him appears in the chronicle of Otto of Freising for the year 1145.18 Otto reports having acquired his information the previous year from a bishop of Gebal in Syria, who had come to Rome to report on church conditions in the Near East. Being then in Rome himself, Otto was told by this Syrian bishop how not many years earlier ('quod non multos annos') a certain John, who lived in the Extreme East beyond Persia and Armenia and who was both a Nestorian king and priest, had defeated two brothers, called Samiardos, who ruled the Persians and the Medes. He took their capital, Ecbatana, by storm, and put vast numbers of their people to the sword. Following the victory, John planned to come to the aid of the Church and Jerusalem, but when he reached the Tigris river he could not cross with his great army. After waiting several seasons in the hope that winter ice would form on the Tigris, while many of his men died of the cold, the priest king (whom Otto of Freising calls Presbyter lohannes) was compelled to retire east- ward.19 This ruler, who was a descendant of the Biblical Magi, possessed great riches and owned an emerald scepter. His ancestors had been in the custom of making pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and he would have followed their example but for the unfortunate obstacle of the Tigris. It makes little difference whether Otto received the name Prester John from the bishop of Gebal or whether he applied it to the Eastern conqueror himself. In either case, it came from the title of the Zan of Ethiopia, whose occasional contacts with Jerusalem have already been noticed. What does matter is that in this case he was writing of Yeh-lu Ta-shih, who four years earlier had won just 1 . . .
. . . . Otto's report is filled with the errors and anachronisms that might be expected. The scene of the battle was Qatwan and not Ecbatana, the old Median capital that had ceased to exist as a place name before the Christian era. The conqueror was no Christian, Nestorian or otherwise, and probably adhered to the Buddhist faith. Contrary to the bishop of Gebal's information, he made no attempt to push westward to Jerusalem after his victory, and his next probable move, had he lived longer, would have been against China.20 Nevertheless, Otto gives some authentic details. He locates his Prester John's empire with reasonable, if not perfect, accuracy, and his time correlation with the actual battle of Qatwan is satisfactory. In his mention of the two brothers Samiardos, there is a remote but unmistakable reflection of the Seljuk sultan's name, Sanjar. If Otto had described the vanquished Turkish chieftains as uncle and nephew instead of as brothers, he would have been correct, for Sanjar was accompanied into the battle by his deceased brother's son.2' To discover more about the historical Prester John, it becomes necessary to explore Asiatic history and to commence the exploration in China. The great T'ang Dynasty, one of the mightiest houses ever to rule there, collapsed early in the tenth century,22 and the resulting power vacuum was filled from two sides. In the south rose the native Chinese dynasty of Sung, which succeeded in grasping most of the old empire.23 From the north, originating in Southwestern Manchuria, came a horde of invaders bearing the name Ch'i-tan and belonging to a 'proto-Mongol tribal complex,' speaking a Mongol language mixed with many Turkish and Tungus words.24 The members of the leading family of the Ch'i-tan all had names beginning with Yeh-lui, which was their clan appellation.25 They seized two provinces of North China, including the city of Peking which became their capital, and in 937 gave their dynasty the Chinese name Liao, meaning 'iron.'21 For two centuries these Mongols of the Iron Dynasty ruled their portion of China, at first usually in war with their Sung neighbors but later generally in peace. Although in the beginning they had been typical Tartar barbarians, they ended by becoming somewhat Sinicized, without losing their identity or alto- gether abandoning their tribal customs.27 By the opening of the twelfth century, Ch'i-tan military power had declined 
20 ['Yeh-lu] mourut en 1136, lorsqu'il se preparait a faire la guerre aux Kins, pour recouvrir la mon- archie qu'ils avaient enlevee a sa famille.' Baron C. D'Ohsson, Histoire des Mongols, four volumes (Amsterdam, 18592-1853), i, 165. D'Ohsson here accepts a date for Yeh-Ilu's death that is furnished by a Chinese source; a source now known to be erroneous. The real death date, as shown by the best sources, was 1143. 21 Zarncke, p. 856. 22 Rene Grousset, L'Empire des Steppes (Paris, 1948), pp. 178-180. 23 Ibid., p. 184. 24 Karl A. Wittfogel and Feng Chia-Sh8ng, History of Chinese Society: Liao, 907-11925 (Philadelphia. 1949), p. 9292. hereinafter cited as 'Wittfogel.' 25 Ibid., p. 18. 26 Henri Cordier, Histoire Generale de la Chine, four volumes (Paris, 19920), ii, 36. 27 Wittfogel, p. 920.
 sufficiently to leave the way open for another invader from the wild north. This was the Manchu people called Jurchen, better known in Chinese annals as the Chin, who swarmed into the Ch'i-tan empire and after several years of hard fighting brought it to an end. The last Ch'i-tan emperor became their prisoner in 1125, and with his capture resistance to the Jurchen virtually ceased.28 The Ch'i-tan role in history had by no means ended, however. Although most of the defeated people settled down quietly to become subjects of the Jurchen, some free spirits refused to accept the yoke and drifted westward in armed bands seeking new worlds to conquer. Leading one of these Ch'i-tan adventure corps was Prince Yeh-li Ta-shih, whom a curious destiny had designed for the role of Prester John in that remote western world of which he had probably never heard. Yeh-lu Ta-shih, born in 1087, was approaching the age of forty at the time of his exodus from China.29 Already he had made his mark as a warrior, both in personal valor and in leadership. He was a splendid horseman and a deadly bow- man.30 He had been the soul of his people's resistance as long as successful oppo- sition to the fierce Jurchen had seemed possible, and once, for a brief period, he had been proclaimed emperor.31 Nor was his ability limited to military matters, for in his youth he had studied at the Han-lin (National) Academy and taken a learned degree.32 The Liao Shih, or official history of the Ch'i-tan Dynasty, describes him as thoroughly familiar with both Chinese literature and that of his own people.33 A Moslem writer describes Yeh-lii Ta-shih as a handsome, well- shaped man, who dressed in nothing but Chinese silk.34 However fastidiously the prince attired himself in leisure moments, we doubt that he was silken clad during his strenuous period of wandering and fighting from China to Turkestan. For several seasons he lurked with a band of followers in the vicinity of Kansu Province, engaging in raids and skirmishes with the Jurchen forces and obviously hoping for an early return to China.35 When finally pressed hard, he withdrew to the country of the Kirghiz, then located in the modern Tan- nu Tuva near Lake Kosso-gol,36 and later to the Uighur territory, between Tur- fan and the Lop-nor.37 Passing westward through Turkestan, the prince and his Ch'i-tan band next founded the town of Imil, near the eastern end of Lake Balkash.38 The surrounding Turks in considerable numbers accepted the rule of Yeh-lii Ta-shih, who soon held sway over 40,000 families.39 Presently the ruler of Balasagun, on the Upper Chu River, called on the Ch'i-tan prince for help against local enemies, and Ta-shih, after furnishing the aid, occupied Balasagun and made it his capital.40 During the next few years he carved out a substantial empire, extending from Lake Balkash in the north to Khotan in the south, and from the Lop-nor in the east to the Sir-Darya (Jaxartes) River in the west. The empire was called Qara-Khitay (Black Cathay) and its ruler bore the title Gur Khan (King of the World), which he may have assumed before leaving China.4' Most of his subjects were Moslem Turks, but the Ch'i-tan nucleus that had ac- companied Yeh-li Ta-shih on his adventures remained true to the Chinese cultural heritage and continued to practice Buddhism.42 The Gur Khan's most powerful neighbor to the west was the Seljuk Turkish empire, built in the previous century by Turanian conquerors from Central Asia. At the time of the First Crusade, the empire had lain in fragments, but now under Sanjar, its last able sultan, it was again united. A collision between the two military powers could not be long postponed, and in 1141, Sanjar, accom- panied by his nephew, Mahmud, and commanding a force estimated at 100,000 men, crossed the Amu-Darya (Oxus) River.43 On 9 September, at Qatwan near Samarkand, he met Yeh-lu Ta-shih, who led an army reported by the Iraqi historian, Ibn al-Athir, as numbering 300,000 horsemen.44 Details of the battle are lamentably few, but all reports agree that the Gur Khan of Qara-Khitay won an overwhelming victory. The slaughter was terrific, and corpses of the defeated Turks littered the ground for miles.45 The sultan's wife fell into the hands of the conqueror, as did many other distinguished Seljuk persons.46 Qara Khitayan sway over Transoxiana was instantly established, and (according to Ibn al- Athir) 'a greater and bloodier defeat for Islam never before happened in Khora- san.'47 Nor did other Moslem historians make any attempt to minimize the scope of the disaster.48 Some exaggeration is obvious, to be sure, in the attribution to Yeh- lIi Ta-shih of 300,000 men; eighty years later, Chinghis Khan, whose resources greatly exceeded the Gur Khan's, never campaigned with such numbers.49 Nevertheless, Yeh-lu Ta-shih was in some measure a predecessor to the mighty Chinghis, and even those Moslem chroniclers who described the later and greater Mongol invasion confessed to the earlier humiliation of their faith at Qatwan. Following this battle, the tale of woe spread quickly through the Islamic world,50 and so it is no wonder that it soon reached the Syrian bishop of Gebal and within three years came to Otto of Freising's attention. With a candor that perhaps had some importance for the future Prester John legend, contemporary Moslems acknowledged that they had been beaten by a remarkable man. The Gur Khan, after all, was no typical Asian marauder but a cultured product of Chinese civilization, whom the reports even of his adversaries reveal as a gentleman with some sense of justice. Before Qatwan, while still nominally at peace with Sanjar, he interceded with the sultan for some of the latter's rebellious subjects and asked that they be forgiven.51 The Seljuk noblemen captured in the great battle, were later returned unharmed by him to their ruler."2 In the management of his own Qara Khitay, he exercised especial care in the appointment of officials to rule the people. He refused to parcel the land out as fiefs to his relatives and friends.53 Injustice and drunkenness he severely reproved, although Ibn al-Athir adds, without seeming to condemn, that he had no firm stand against sexual irregular- ity and did not discipline his governors in this respect.54 Was he a Christian, as Europe came soon to believe? Considering the wide diffusion of Nestorianism through Asia, that possibility might at first glance seem strong. When the Patriarch Nestorius was condemned and degraded by the Council of Ephesus in 431, the chance for the propagation of his doctrines in the West was forever gone. Disciples and missionaries carried them eastward, however, and in a comparatively short time spanned the continent of Asia. We know that a Nestorian named A-lo-pen arrived in China to preach as early as 635.11 Nes- torianism made substantial headway among the Chinese for generations, until hostile emperors of the T'ang Dynasty began a persecution so fatal that by the year 1000 not a Nestorian church remained in the country.56 Throttled in China, this eastern branch of the faith remained strong in adjacent lands until Tamer- lane, who was as bigoted as Chinghis Khan was tolerant, virtually ended it east of Iraq. This, however, lay centuries in the future, and meanwhile Nestorianism survived and even grew in Mongolia and Turkestan. We are informed by the Asiatic Christian historian, Bar Hebraeus, that in 1007 the powerful Mongol tribe of the Keraits was baptized en masse into the Nestorian faith,57 and other evidence exists to show that this people remained Christian, at least in part, until the thirteenth century. Richard Hennig, by making the wholly erroneous and unwarranted assumption that Keraits and Qara-Khitays were one and the same people, concluded that the Gur Khan, Yeh-lt Ta-shih, must have been a Christian.58 This conclusion, based upon a false initial premise, will not stand.59 The Gur Khan had nothing to do with the Keraits and had lived in China until reach- ing mature years. China had cast out Nestorianism long before his time; the court religion of the Ch'i-tan Chinese Dynasty was Buddhism, and there is every reason to think it remained the same in the new environment of Qara Khitay.60 The Gur Khan had many Christian subjects, however, and no doubt, the Nestori- ans were well represented in his army at Qatwan.61 Their participation in the battle may well have had some part in the building of the Prester John legend. If the purpose in creating the realm of Qara Khitay was to use it as a base for the reconquest of the old empire in Northern China, Yeh-lu Ta-shih's early death prevented him from attempting this culminating part of the program. In 1143, less than two years after his resounding victory, he died from causes unrevealed by the historians.62 Although the Qara Khitayan empire lasted for several genera- tions, none of the succeeding Gur Khans displayed much ability, and their dominion shrank in size and importance until its final absorption into Chingis Khan's mighty empire in 1218.63 Meanwhile, the Prester John letter of 1165, allegorical in nature yet revealing a few traces of acquaintanceship with the first Gur Khan, circulated in Europe. Its author, very likely Archbishop Christian of Mainz,64 recalled Yeh-lu Ta-shih as a veritable 'hammer of Islam,' and reflected this in the hatred of Moslems he attributed to his Prester John. He described the Prester's empire as a polyglot affair, composed of different peoples and religious faiths, where, in spite of all differences, justice and contentment existed.65 The Gur Khan's real empire was indeed polyglot, containing Buddhists (and possibly Confucianists), Moslems, Nestorians, Jews, a few Manichaeans, and probably some Shamanists. Yeh-lu Ta-shih did, in a short time, establish an enviable record as an administrator, winning the esteem of all branches of his subjects. The impartial justice of which Prester John boasts in the letter is credited to the Gur Khan by both Chinese and Moslem sources. Although the Prester John letter had not been addressed to Pope Alexander  III, it was he, after a lapse of twelve years, who undertook to answer it. In 1177, when the recent Lombard League victory over Frederick Barbarossa at Legnano had so greatly improved the papal position in Europe,66 Alexander, from the Venetian Rialto, penned or dictated his reply. The Pope's message was in general complimentary, but it strongly urged the Prester to embrace the true (Roman) faith and henceforth not to boast so much of his own power and magnificence.67 Alexander selected as his messenger a physician named Philip, who once before had travelled in the East.68 Philip presumably departed, but knothing is known of his search for Prester John or of the fate of the Pope's letter. Whether the physician directed his steps toward Qara-Khitay or toward Ethiopia is equally unknown, but in the unlikely event that he reached either place we are justified in assuming that his disappointment with it was great. The sober historian is unfortunately not permitted to indulge in speculation regarding the reaction to Philip's paper document in either Balasagun or Aksum. It is now possible to recapitulate the process by which the Prester John legend grew. The foundation, of course, was the ancient Christian realm of Ethiopia, with its long line of priests who were also Zans. From here issued the name Prester John, although Europe, or at least the non-travelling Europeans, had little if any idea where his dominions were to be found, and thought of them only as eastern. Next came the Qara-Khitayan move from China to Turkestan, and following that the thunderbolt victory of Yeh-lt Ta-shih over the hated Seljuks. To the Europeans, who learned this agreeable news during a low moment in the Crusades, it could only mean that Prester John had gone into action at last. Impressions of the Gur Khan's character and personality, bearing some approximation to the truth despite distortions, likewise drifted to Europe, so that Yeh- 11 Ta-shih's little known and greatly misunderstood life became the nucleus of all that was vital in the Prester John story. Finally, in 1165, a western churchman, with a genuine message to impart to his fellow Christians, used the handful of facts known about the Gur Khan and mixed them with a conglomeration of lore regarding the Orient that had been accumulating for over a thousand years. His real message, which he disguised too well for the unsophisticated Europe of that century, was overlooked or soon forgotten. Prester John was neither overlooked nor forgotten, and for nearly four centuries thereafter the adventurous sons of Europe roamed the earth in search of him. 
17 Beside the German scholars already named, this seems to have been the opinion of the late French orientalist, Paul Pelliott. Rene Grousset reports (Le Conquerant du monde [Paris, 1944], p. 44 n.) that on 12 May 1944 Pelliott delivered a lecture to the Societe Asiatique expressing this view. The lecture seems never to have been published, and Pelliott died the following year. 18 Zarncke, pp. 847-848, quotes the Latin passage from Otto. 19 'Ibi dum per aliquot annos moratus gelu expecterat, sed minime, hoc impediente aeris temperie, obtineret multos ex insueto coelo de exercitu admittens, ad propria redire compulsus est.' Ibid., p. 848.
* * *
28 E. Bretschneider, Mediaeval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources, two volumes (London, 1910), i, 219; Grousset, L'Empire des Steppes, p. 190. 29 Wittfogel, p. 627. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., p. 632. 32 Bretschneider, Mediaeval Researches, i, 211; Wittfogel, p. 627. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibn al-Athir, cited by Zarncke, p. 863. 35 Bretschneider, Mediaeval Researches, i, 221-222. 3 Ibid., p. 225; Wittfogel, p. 634. 37 Ibid., p. 635. 38 W. Barthold, 12 Vorlesungen uiber der Geschichte der Tiirken Mittelasiens (Berlin, 1935), p. 122. 39 Wittfogel, p. 634.
40 Barthold, 12 Vorlesungen, p. 122. 
41 At least the Liao Shih, quoted by Wittfogel, p. 632, so indicates. 42 'II 6tait sectateur de Boudha; cette religion devint la dominante dans le nouvel empire du Cara- Khitai,' D'Ohsson, Histoire des Mongols, i, 165. 43 Ibn al-Athir, in Zarncke, p. 856. 44 Ibid., p. 853. 4 Liao Shih, quoted by Wittfogel, p. 639. 46 Bretschneider, Mediaeval Researches, i, 232. 47 Quoted by Zarncke, p. 857. Zarncke's German translation reads, 'Eine grossere Niederlage fur den Islam hatte in Khorasan noch nicht statt gehabt, und keine blutiger.' 48 Others who reported the event were Niaml-i-Arfidi, Hamd-Allah Mustawfi, and Juwayni, all cited by Wittfogel, pp. 640-642. 49 H. Desmond Martin, The Rise of Chinghis Khan and his Conquest of North China (Baltimore, 1950), pp. 326-334, shows that Chinghis overthrew the Khorezmian Empire, the thirteenth-century equivalent of Sanjar's realm, and probably a more powerful military state, with less than 200,000 men.
50 Barthold, 12 Vorlesungen, p. 123. 51 Wittfogel, p. 640. 52 Ibid., p. 641. 53 Zarncke, P. 863. 54 Ibid. 55 Paul Pelliott, 'Chretiens d'Asie Centrale et d'Extreme Orient,' T'oung Pao, xv (1914), 624. 56 Ibid., p. 626; A. C. Moule, Christians in China before the Year 1550 (London, 1930), p. 78. 57 Bar Hebraeus is quoted to this effect in D'Ohsson, Histoire des mongols, i, 48-49. He says, with probable exaggeration, that 200,000 Keraits were baptized at one ceremony. Bar Hebraeus gives the year of the Hegira 398, which is the Christian year 1007.
58 'das tatarisch-mongolische Volk der Kara-Kitai (auch Kerait und Krit genannt) . . . ' Historische Vierteljahrschrift, xxix, 241; 'ein bis dahin ganz unbedeutlicher ttirkischen Stamm, die Kerait oder Kara-Kitai . . . ' Terrae Incognitae, ii, 368. 59 It is impossible to offer any documentary evidence in disproof of Hennig, because, to the best of my knowledge, no other scholar has ever thought that Keraits and Qara Khitays were the same. The reader is referred to any map or description of Central Asia in the twelfth century. In the new 1950 edition of the second volume of his Terrae Incognitae, Hennig (p. 446) weakens somewhat in his in- sistance that Yeh-lui Ta-shih was a Christian. 60 See footnote 42. 61 Martin, The Rise of Chinghis Khan, p. 62. 62 Zarncke, p. 867; Wittfogel, p. 642. 63 Grousset, L'Empire des Steppes, p. 296; Barthold, 12 Vorlesungen, p. 156; Wittfogel, p. 654. 64 Fleuret, Mercure de France, ccIxviII, 309. 65 'Septuaginta duae provinciae serviunt nobis, quarum paucae sunt christianorum,' Zarncke, p. 910.
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
66 Jordan, L'Allemagne et l'Italie aux XIIe et XIIIe Siecles, pp. 109-116; Vittorio Savorino, I Communi, l'Impero ed il Papato alla Battaglia di Legnano (Milan, 1876), pp. 149-173, 67 Latin text in Zarncke, pp. 941-944. 68 Ibid., p. 942.
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