The Liao and Jin Dynasties: How Khitan and Jurchen Nomads Ruled Half of China for 300 Years
Chinese history is usually taught as a procession of Han dynasties — Han, Tang, Song, Ming, Qing — with the "barbarian" periods as interruptions. But for more than three centuries, from 916 to 1234, the northern half of China was ruled not by Han Chinese but by two nomadic confederations: the Khitan (Qidan) Liao and the Jurchen (Nüzhen) Jin. To skip them is to miss how China actually learned to govern as a multi-ethnic empire.
The Liao and Jin were not crude raiders. They built capitals, minted coins, administered provinces, and codified law — and the Jin literally laid Beijing's foundations as an imperial capital. Understanding them reframes what "China" meant before the modern nation-state.
The Khitan and the Founding of Liao
The Khitan were a federation of steppe tribes east of the Mongols, in modern Inner Mongolia and Manchuria. In 907 a chieftain named Yelü Abaoji unified them, and in 916 proclaimed the Liao dynasty. At its height the Liao controlled Manchuria, the Mongolian plateau, and — critically — the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun, the corridor north of the Yellow River including the site of modern Beijing, ceded by a weak Later Jin ruler in 938. That gave a nomadic empire the gateway to the North China Plain and four centuries of leverage over the settled south. The Liao was perhaps 1 million Khitan ruling some 10 million Han subjects — a conquest minority that governed by adaptation.
Dual Administration: The Liao Innovation
The Liao's key contribution was institutional. Rather than force Han subjects to live as nomads, it ran two parallel systems: a "northern administration" for the tribal Khitan, organised around herding and military camps, and a "southern administration" for sedentary Han, run on Tang-style civil bureaucracy. The Khitan kept their own script — they invented two alphabets, from Chinese and Uyghur models — while using Chinese for Han affairs. This "one realm, two systems" model was radical for its time and became the template later copied by the Yuan and Qing. It is why the Liao endured two centuries while pure conquest states around it collapsed.
The Jurchen Rise and the Fall of Two Dynasties
The Jin began as Liao subjects — forest hunters and fishermen of Manchuria organised in clans. In 1114 a leader named Aguda rebelled; by 1115 he declared the Jin. In a stunning reversal, the Jin destroyed the Liao by 1125, then, briefly allied with the Han Northern Song, turned south and crushed the Song in 1127, sacking Kaifeng in the Jingkang incident and carrying off the emperor and much of the court. In one generation the Jurchen unmade both the Liao and the Northern Song, leaving the Song retreating south of the Yangtze to found the Southern Song — a permanent division lasting until the Mongol conquest.
The Jin and the Making of Beijing
The Jin moved their central capital to Zhongdu in 1153, on the site of modern Beijing, expanding the city and building palaces that began its systematic development as an imperial capital. When Genghis Khan captured Zhongdu in 1215 he razed much of it, but the logic of the location — defensible, supplied by the north, poised to command both steppe and plain — survived, and Yuan, Ming, and Qing all followed it. The Jin also sinicised fast: within decades, Jurchen elites read Confucius, sat civil exams, and intermarried with Han families, even banning then reversing a ban on adopting Han dress — the recurring anxiety of conquerors who feared losing the edge that won the throne.
Culture, Coinage, and the Everyday Empire
Both dynasties left more than battlefields. The Jin continued the exam system and produced poets and painters bridging Khitan, Jurchen, and Han aesthetics. Economically they minted copper and iron coins, promoted frontier trade along the Silk Road's northern branches, and taxed agriculture while drawing cavalry from the tribes — their busy border markets with the Song a reminder of who held the upper hand.
Why They Vanished From the Story
The Liao fell to the Jin; the Jin fell to the Mongols in 1234 after a war that depopulated much of the north. The victorious Yuan then wrote the official histories from a Mongol perspective, lumping Jin and Song as predecessors rather than elevating either, and later Han-centric historians compressed these centuries into a footnote. Modern archaeology restores the balance: Liao tombs with bilingual inscriptions, Jin city walls beneath Beijing, and steppe artefacts in Chinese museums confirm sophisticated states, not interludes — and the rehearsal for the Yuan and Qing that finally made "China" explicitly multi-ethnic.