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• 1 media/Yelu Dashi.jpeg 2015-07-21T09:03:22-07:00 Qara Khitai 17 image_header 2022-07-27T10:50:29-07:00 The Kara Khitai (known also as the Black Cathay) was established out of the ruins of the Chinese Liao Dynasty when, in 1124, some 200 followers of the Khitan imperial family escaped into Central Asia with their leader, Yeh-lü Ta-shih, fleeing from the Jurchen who had begun to make war on the Khitan in 1115.  Within a few years, Yeh-lü Ta-shih successfully enlisted the support of a number of Turkish tribes in the area and established a formidable army. 
  
  The group's victory over the Seljuk Turks in 1141 was misunderstood in the Historia de duabus civitatibus as the deeds of an Eastern Christian potentate capable of uniting all of Christendom.  This anecdote turned out not to refer to utopic Christians at all (nor Christians of any stripe), but to the Qara Khitai, led by the Buddhist (not Nestorian) Yeh-lü Ta-shih. 
  
  More specifically, Hugh's story refers to Yeh-lü Ta-shi and the Qara Khitai's 1141 defeat of Seljuk king Sanjar and his army at the Battle of Qatwan near Samarkand (not Ecbatana, as Hugh has it).  Given the timing and location of this event, combined with the fact that the Qara Khitai were nominally Nestorian, it is reasonable to conclude that this event provided historians with a possible explanation for the beginning of the Prester John legend.
  
  
  
  Traces of this historical battle also appear in Benjamin of Tudela's account of Kofar al-Turak, another early influence on the legend of Prester John. According to Brooks (pg. 77):

  "Of interest to the discussion of the legend of Prester John is a passage in which Benjamin described a powerful king in the East. According to the narrative, the king’s name was Kofar-al-Turak, and this Asian king successfully destroyed the king of Persia. Benjamin claimed that Kofar-al-Turak’s forces 'slew many of the Persian army, and the king of Persia fled with only a few followers to his own country.' The account seems contemporaneous with the 1141 defeat by the Kara-Khitai of the Kara-Khanids, who were nominally vassals of the Seljuks. The idea that the forces of Islam could be defeated by conquerors from the East – especially if they were fellow Christians – no doubt was welcome news in Europe. The series of twelfth and thirteenth century papal and royal embassies to the Turkic nomads known collectively as the Mongols was in part due to the credence placed in the account of Benjamin of Tudela."