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Khitan people

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Khitan people

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Also known as Khitai, Kitan, Kidan, Khitans, Qidan

nomadic people originally from Mongolia and Manchuria

AI overview

The Khitan were a nomadic people from Mongolia and Manchuria who built a powerful empire in East Asia during the medieval period. They matter historically because they significantly influenced the development of the region and its neighboring civilizations before eventually being absorbed into other populations.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Wikidata facts

Instance of
ethnic group
Image
MongolHuntersSong.jpg
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Commons category
Khitan people
topic's main category
Category:Khitans
different from
circumcision in Islam
described by source
New Book of Tang
language used
Khitan
on focus list of Wikimedia project
Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
Sources (2)

via Wikidata · CC0

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Encyclopedic overview

The Khitan people (Khitan small script: ; Chinese: 契丹; pinyin: Qìdān) were a historical nomadic people from East Asia and parts of North Asia who, from the 4th century, inhabited an area corresponding to parts of modern Mongolia, Northeast China and the Russian Far East.

As a people descended from the proto-Mongols through the Xianbei, Khitans spoke the now-extinct Khitan language, a Para-Mongolic language related to the Mongolic languages. The Khitan people founded and led the Liao dynasty (916–1125), which dominated a vast area of Siberia, Mongolia and Northern China. The Khitans of the Liao dynasty used two independent writing systems for their language: Khitan small script and Khitan large script.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Khitan people” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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