The Northern Wei Emperors on the Black Felt

The emperors of Northern Wei were not only rulers of a Chinese imperial state, but also khagans of an Inner Asian nomadic conquest elite. Their historical experience was one of cultural traditions colliding, merging, and giving rise to something new. The so-called “old institutions of Dai’s capital” in Northern Wei were clearly part of the Inner Asian tradition.

Starting with the northern frontier influences on Northern Wei imperial accession ceremonies, this book examines Northern Wei’s Heaven-worship rites, the crisis of succession in the early Liao dynasty, and the Qing dynasty’s rites to Heaven at the Tangzi altar. It explores both the encounters, conflicts, and transformations between the political traditions of the Tuoba Xianbei and those of the Chinese heartland, and the ties between Xianbei customs of old, known as the old institutions of Dai’s capital, and Inner Asian political traditions.

The Inner Asian peoples who migrated into China and played important roles in its history were certainly deeply influenced by Chinese culture, but they also inherited and upheld, to varying degrees, certain Inner Asian cultural traditions. Many of these traditions were forgotten or distorted in historical records, surviving only in faint, unrecognizable traces. Sorting through what remains is therefore a way to reveal the diversity and richness of history. There is undoubtedly vast scope for rereading history from an Inner Asian perspective.