THE LIAO

Traditional sources

The Liao is a particularly poorly documented period. Its government, like all Chinese bureaucracies, produced a mass of paperwork, written in both Chinese and Khitan. But little of this documentation survived the fall of the dynasty, and nothing remains today.

The peculiar nature of the Liao government was an important factor in the poverty of the historical record. Although it supported court diarists and a historiographical office, its historians never achieved the smooth routines and professional competence of their successors under the Chin, let alone of their Sung contemporaries. One reason for this was the fact that even until the end of the dynasty the Liao never had a static capital, palace, court, and government on the Chinese model. The Khitan court remained peripatetic, the emperors never abandoning their annual tours around their empire and their annual visits to the four seasonal camps (na-po). This style of government was not conducive to keeping orderly state archives. Nor was the personal arbitrary style of government at every level, and the Liao's fragmented administrative structure, divided into northern (tribal) and southern (Chinese) bureaus, the former keeping some of their records in Khitan and the latter exclusively employing Chinese.