The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History: Between China and the Islamic World.

• Author: Buell, Paul D.
• Position: Book review

The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History; Between China and the Islamic World. By MICHAL BIRAN. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2005. Pp. xvi + 279, illus., tables. $90 (cloth); $39.99 (paper).

Writing a history of the Qara Khitai and their empire has always been a daunting task due to the disparate primary sources in many languages, most notably Chinese, Arabic, Persian, and Mongolian, not to mention an even more disparate secondary literature. This is in addition to the many philological, textual, and other problems that have hamstrung investigators in the past, along with a lack of serious archaeology relating to the period and no existing specialized study of its coinage. One does not, as a consequence, write Qara Khitai history--one unravels it piece by piece with great peril.

Thus the conventional wisdom, but Biran has not only done the task in an exemplary manner, she has even made it look easy, and she has produced a study that is the best to date and one unlikely to be superseded any time soon. In fact, all future research will begin with her synthesis.

Her book, now unquestionably the most important treatment of the subject in the field, is in two parts. In part one she unravels the political history of the Qara Khitai, documenting her interpretations so well that few will find reasons to complain, even if some may choose to disagree on some details. This is probably the part of the book that will find the widest use, since scholars in so many connected areas badly need a good chronology to support their own understandings of the period. Part two, by contrast--and I suspect that it was by far the most difficult to write given the scarcity of directly useful source material--looks at culture, including Qara Khitai borrowings from China, their own nomadic traditions, and, interestingly, their religious position, in particular, given geography and the primary religion of their subjects, why they did not become Muslims. As icing on the cake are a great variety of maps and tables--including very valuable genealogical summaries--and an appendix on the issue of names: what people called the Qara Khitai and, by implication, what they might have called themselves. Finally, there is a large and exhaustive bibliography that is simply amazing. Biran has read and clearly assimilated almost everything. The only titles missing are a few in Modern Mongolian (principally Perlee's study of...