In the era of the Turkic shogunate, the fear of the East disappeared with the familiarity of both sides, because soon, greater stimulation came.
The Seljuk dynasty unified the vast area from the river to the Mediterranean, captured the Eastern Roman emperor alive, entered Asia Minor, which the Tianfang religious countries had not been able to touch for a long time, and established the Sultanate of Roma here.
In the east, after the Liao Dynasty was destroyed by the Jin Dynasty, Yelu Dashi led the remnant troops to flee to the Western Regions, established the Western Liao Dynasty, and had conflicts with the overlord Seljuq Dynasty here. The Seljuk renaissance leader Sanjar then decided to personally conquer these pagans from the east.
Sancar was not a dull man. On the contrary, he was young and promising, fought all his life, and was a famous hero at that time.
When he was 11 years old, Sanjar, who lost his father, served as the governor of Khorasan, conquering east and west and suppressing rebel forces in various places. After that, he joined the routine civil wars of the Turkic dynasties. At the age of 19, he defeated a group of relatives, seized the position of sultan, and became the suzerain of each Turkic dynasty.
When facing Xiliao, Sanjar was 57 years old and still fighting in person everywhere. He is obviously not someone who does not understand military affairs. On the contrary, he has fought against almost all the Karakhanids in the Central Asian grasslands, to the dynasties of Syria and Minor Asia, and relied on force to reunite the fragmented Tianfang Sect world. His military experience and political experience are very rich.
And his enemy, Yelu Dashi, who later became famous from Khitan to Ireland in a real sense, was two years younger than him. In terms of performance, it is also much inferior.
From the perspective of the Northern Song Dynasty, Yelu Dashi was actually a civil servant. Although he had the surname Yelu, his family was far from the emperor, and he finally became an official through the imperial examination.
The only imperial examination in the Liao Kingdom was the Han Examination, and the content of the examination was traditional Chinese test questions. Although it has been liberalized for all ethnic groups in the later period, if other people want to take the exam, they have to take the exam with the Han people. There were only a few people there, and their cultural background was not as good as others, so very few passed the exam. Yelu Dashi is one of the only two Khitan Jinshi in the history books, and he is a scholarly figure.
After passing the exam, he went to the Hanlin Academy. The Khitan language calls Hanlin "Linya", so in the history books of the Song Dynasty, he is also called "Dashi Linya", which means to be the big stone of Hanlin. The only advantage is probably that the systems of the Liao and Song Dynasties are quite different. They learned more about the Tang system, so the separation of civil and military affairs was not obvious, which gave Yelu Dashi some opportunities to participate in the military.
However, before coming to the Western Regions, Yelu Dashi's record was not very good.
His highlight moment on the battlefield was to counterattack the Northern Song Dynasty's attack.
In the last few years of the Liao Kingdom, failure was almost certain. In the Yanyun area, the rule also became seriously unstable. Many local Han people hoped to surrender to the Northern Song Dynasty and obtain asylum. Many local officials took the initiative to surrender to the Northern Song Dynasty.
The Northern Song Dynasty thought this was a good opportunity to regain this place, so it mobilized a large army, with Tong Guan as the propaganda envoy and Zhong Shidao as the commander, and led an army of 150,000 to the north.
The Liao regime had collapsed at this time. Emperor Tianzuo fled on his own and did not know where he was hiding. Officials in Yanjing could not find the emperor, so they elected Yelu Chun to be the emperor, which was known as "Northern Liao" in history. The small political power of Northern Liao was small and weak, and only managed to gather 20,000 people to confront the Song army on the front line.
The Song army soon discovered that the enemy's rear was very empty, so they decided to select 6,000 elites, bypass the front line, and sneak attack Yanjing. General Liu Yanshi led 100,000 people as backup. As expected, Yanjing's guards were very lax. The Song army successfully sneaked in, and there were Han people in the city who responded to the Song army. In the end, all seven city gates were controlled by the Song army, and the people in the city didn't even notice anything unusual.
However, after the success, the Song army did not expand the results. Instead, they all went to drink, commit adultery, and wantonly massacre and plunder the citizens. The citizens were suddenly attacked, tried their best to resist, and got entangled with the Song army. As a result, the Northern Liao court got some breathing time and urgently mobilized troops from the front line to return reinforcements.
The reinforcements from the Northern Song Dynasty were delayed in arriving, but the Liao army had dispatched 3,000 men and rushed back quickly. At this time, the elite Song troops who entered the city were still fighting back and forth with the citizens, without any precautions. When the two sides were in a stalemate, the Liao army suddenly attacked and the Song army was defeated. Almost all 6,000 elite troops were lost, and only more than 400 people escaped.
Hearing that the elite vanguard had failed, the main force of the Song army was greatly frightened. A few days later in the evening, a wildfire accidentally broke out outside the camp, and the Song army immediately blew up the camp. The commander-in-chief Liu Yanshi burned the camp and fled. The main force of the Song army trampled on each other, lying dead for more than a hundred miles, and countless people fell to death in mountain streams. The large amount of ordnance and supplies accumulated during the reigns of Shenzong Xining and Yuanfeng were almost completely lost.
At this time, the Liao army did not even realize what was happening. When it dawned the next day, it was discovered that the Song army had collapsed. At this time, Yelu Dashi began to lead his army in pursuit. The Liao army scolded the Song Dynasty for violating the alliance and pursued them all the way to the ancient city where the Song army used it as its rear base. The Song army's follow-up troops also collapsed.
This is Yelu Dashi's best record. It seems that the results of the battle are great, but the role of the Yelu Dashi in it is very limited, and it may not be as good as the wildfire that evening. Moreover, defeating the Song Army is nothing to brag about, to be honest, and does not reflect the true level of a general.
When facing the real enemy Jin Bing, Yelu Dashi was in a very embarrassed state. He served as a local magistrate several times, but he could not serve for long because the Jin people attacked the city every time he defended it. Throughout his military career, he maintained a record of complete defeat against the Jin Kingdom. This kind of performance is indeed difficult to talk about.
Of course, Sancar may not be aware of his record. However, this will not affect the mentality of a veteran.
Although he wrote a provocative letter to Yelu Dashi before the war, it was probably just a ploy to provoke the enemy. Sanjar actually did not underestimate the enemy. On the contrary, although he despised Xiliao in words, in action he attached great importance to these new enemies.
In order to face the battle, Sanjar used the Sultan's prestige and religious appeal to summon armies from Khorasan, Sistan, Ghazni, Mazandaran, Ghor and other local regimes to participate in the jihad. Most of the Tianfang Sect world was mobilized, and according to Persian historians, more than 100,000 soldiers arrived. Sanjar spent six months just gathering and reviewing this army.
In 1141, the year when the Song and Jin Dynasties negotiated peace and the Southern Song Dynasty recalled Yue Fei with twelve gold medals, Yelu Dashi led the Western Liao army to take the initiative to march westward and faced the Seljuk army in the Katwan grassland north of Samarkand.
