Building Of Five Capital Of The Liao Dynasty

Liao Dynasty, the Khitan tribe based in northern China as the main establishment of a feudal dynasty. Over two hundred years of feudal rule, from the founding of A Baoji in the year 916 AD to 1125 destroyed by Gold, the establishment of Liao Dynasty has played an indelible role in later formation of a unified multi-ethnic country. With the constant expansion of territory, Liao ruling class under the nation's tradition and the reality of countries has adopted a very unique Five Jing system in the geographical area management, including Shangjing, Nanjing, Zhongjing, Dongjing, and Xijing.Located in northern grassland, a vast territory, no convenient transportation facilities, uneven distribution of population density, multi-tribe territory, in addition to most of the Khitan ethnic and Han, there are Xi, Bohai,Gaoli, Jurchen together more than ten nationalities, differences in economic structures, social development and the inherent differences of national emotion, all these features has lead to different reflections of Liao's urban settlement types.The establishment of Five Jing is a reflection of regional differences integration. In the process of establishing Five Jing, the vast territory of Liao began to integration regionally. From a historical point of view, the establishment of Five Jing has a certain relationship with Khitan tribe's nomadic way of life, when the nomadic ethnic transfer to farming, there must be a fixed and comfortable living environment to assure and protect this conversion. Thus Khitan tribe gave up the past nomadic way of life. At the same time this Five Jing system was created base on other countries and dynasties capital system experience.The first part of this paper is to detail historical reasons of five capital city's establishment. The second section introduces the establishment time, location, natural environment, territory, size, tribe, documentary material and archaeological data that reflected features of architecture of every single capital city. The last part emphasize on political, economic, military and cultural functions of every capital city, from different urban construction layout to reflect the functions respectively. The establishment of five capital cities in Liao dynasty not only promoted the political, military, economic and cultural development of the whole Liao dynasty but also provide a reference for future generations of urban construction and development, not only promoted the integration of nation but also enriched chinese culture, not only played a very important role in the stability of regime at that time but also had a very positive impact on the capital building of later Jin dynasty.