Tanguts

In 1209, the Khagan undertook a larger campaign to secure the submission of the Tanguts.

The Tanguts surrendered right before Genghis died.

After the Yuan fell, a substantial number of the Tanguts followed the Mongols into the northern grassland.

Around 1028, the Tanguts defeated the Ganzhou Uyghurs and took Ganzhou.

The Tanguts left alive joined the service of the Mongol Empire, founding Mongol clan Tangud.

In 1105, the Tanguts' kingdom of Xi Xia attacked China and Han Shizhong was conscripted into military service.

That very same year, the Jurchens assembled a large coalition force consisting of Jurchens, Tanguts, Khitans and Koreans to launch a second invasion of China.

In medieval China, Yan'an was once called 'Yanzhou', a location of strategic military importance for the Chinese empire and Tanguts of the Western Xia Dynasty.

The Red Faced Tanguts comprised the commonality while the Black Headed Tanguts were the elite priestly caste.

They were followed by the Western Xia of the Tanguts, who took control of what is now the western part of Inner Mongolia (including western Hetao) .

The Tanguts divided themselves into two classes: the "Black Headed" Tanguts, and the "Red Faced" Tanguts.

During the 1206 political rise of Genghis Khan, the Mongol Empire created by Genghis Khan and his allies shared its western borders with the Tanguts' Western Xia Dynasty.

He was born in a time when China was under constant threats by stronger bordering nations: notably the Tanguts' Xi Xia,the Khitans' Liao Empire and the Jurchens' Jin Empire.

The vassal emperor of the Tanguts (Western Xia) had earlier refused to take part in the war against the Khwarezmid Empire after Genghis Khan and the main army marched towards Kharezmian Empire.

According to Tangut myth, the ancestor of the Black Headed Tanguts was a heavenly white crane, while the ancestor of the Red Faced Tanguts was a monkey.

As the Tanguts spoke an extinct language written in a unique and complex script, the cornerstone of Tangut studies has been the study of the Tangut language and the decipherment of the Tangut script.

To the far northwest, the Tanguts had been in power over northern Shaanxi since 881, after the earlier Tang court appointed a Tangut chief as a military governor (jiedushi) over the region, a seat that became hereditary (forming the Xi-Xia Dynasty).

The Song had to rely on new gunpowder weapons introduced during the late Tang and bribes to fend off attacks by its enemies, such as the Khitan, Tanguts, Jurchens, and Mongols, as well as an expanded army of over 1 million men.

A few years after Song Dynasty military forces had made victorious territorial gains against the Tanguts of the Western Xia, in 1080 Shen Kuo was entrusted as a military officer in defense of Yanzhou (modern-day Yan'an, Shaanxi province).

However, it was eventually taken over by the Tanguts in 1082 once Shen's defensive victories were marginalized and sacrificed by the new Chancellor Cai Que (who handed the city over to the Tanguts as terms of a peace treaty).