Behind the surnames - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2024

Behind the surnames

Résumé

The Kitan are known to have born only two different surnames. Emperors came from the Yelü clan, and empresses came from the Xiao clan. This resulted in the formation of a Kitan nobility composed almost exclusively of Yelü-Xiao couples. The consensus among historians is that both Yelü and Xiao adopted their names sometime at the beginning of the dynasty as part of a Sinicization process, and the Kitan nobles followed the Chinese exogamic principle of tongxing buhun (two individuals carrying the same surname cannot intermarry) to establish matrimonial alliances. The recent discovery of a large number of epitaphs (muzhiming) in Inner Mongolia and Dongbei has enabled new research on the noble families of the Kitan Empire to be conducted and has unveiled numerous aspects of their social organization. Among the most important discoveries is the fact that no equivalent in Kitan existed for the “Xiao” surname, which was born by numerous clans claiming no common ancestry. A close inspection of marriage relations within the Empire nobility unveils the existence of a very specific structure that splits the elite society into halves or moieties. The patronyms “Yelü” and “Xiao” were only simplistic reflections of a much more convoluted system where different patrilineal clans were sometimes fused into pseudo-clans called “Tents,” which in turn formed the core or one part of the two larger moieties: the imperial “Yelü” centered on the Horizontal Tent and the consort “Xiao” centered on the Imperial Uncles Tent. This dual structure did not merely encompass the Kitan and Xi (Tatayar), but also several Han’er and Bohai clans that bore other Chinese patronyms. This new conclusion not only changes the way we perceive the ruling elite of the Kitan, but also means that we must re-evaluate our understanding of the pre-Chinggisid steppe nobility and imperial statecraft.
Fichier non déposé

Dates et versions

hal-04553216 , version 1 (19-04-2024)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-04553216 , version 1

Citer

Adrien Dupuis. Behind the surnames: The dual structure of the Kitan Empire nobility and the significance of the "Yelü" and "Xiao" patronyms. The third Kitan Network Annual Symposium Online, Feb 2024, En ligne (Jérusalem), Israel. ⟨hal-04553216⟩
0 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More