From the Khitans to the Jurchens & Mongols

Book excerpt: From the Khitans to the Jurchens & Mongols, A History of Barbarians in Triangle Wars & Quartet Conflicts is the third book of The Scourge of God Tetralogy. This is a book with comprehensive writeup of the barbarians’ history spanning more than one thousand years, from before the anno domini eras and inclusive of the expulsion of the Mongols from China. The subtitle about the barbarians in triangle wars & quartet conflicts is self-explanatory for the historical environment of different groups of barbarians successively rising up on the steppes to overpower the former with more savagery. This third book, while carrying a title with emphasis on the Khitans, the Jurchens and Mongols, also covered the Hsiung-nu (Huns), Hsien-pi (Xianbei), Tavghach (Tuoba), Juan-juan (Ruruans), Tu-chueh (Turks), Uygurs (Huihe), Kirghiz, Tibetans, Tanguts and southern barbarians. This book, being not merely about the barbarians, chronicled, without omission, an annalistic history of China’s dynasties including the Sui and Tang dynasties, the Five Dynasties, and the two Soong dynasties, with the interwoven theme of a civilization’s good fight against barbarism. There are many unique and groundbreaking contents, such as collation of the missing one-year history of the Mongols’ Central Asia campaigns and restitution of the unheard-of Mongol campaign in North Africa. This kind of discoveries is similar to this author’s trailblazing work done in other areas of sinology like rectifying the Huns’ war with the first Han dynasty emperor to 201 B.C. and correcting one year error in the Zhou dynasty’s interregnum (841-828 B.C. per Shi-ji/840-827 per Zhang Wenyu) in the duology The Sinitic Civilization.