Khara-Khoto (Chinese: 哈拉浩特 or 哈日浩特; Mongolian: Хар хот (Khar Khot); 'black city'), also known as Qara-Qoto, Heicheng (Chinese: 黑城), Heishuicheng or Heishui City (Chinese: 黑水城), is an abandoned city in the Ejin Banner of Alxa League in western Inner Mongolia, China, near the Juyan Lake Basin. Built in 1032, the city thrived under the rule of the Tangut-led Western Xia dynasty. It has been identified as the city of Etzina, which appears in The Travels of Marco Polo, and Ejin Banner is named after this city.
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👉 Khara-Khoto in the context of List of Tangut books
This list of Tangut books comprises a list of manuscript and xylograph texts that are written in the extinct Tangut language and Tangut script. These texts were mostly produced within the Western Xia dynasty (1038–1227) during the 12th and 13th centuries, and include Buddhist sutras and explanatory texts, dictionaries and other philological texts, as well as translations of Chinese books and some original Tangut texts. Some Tangut texts, particularly Buddhist sutras, continued to be produced during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), after the fall of the Western Xia dynasty, but the Tangut language became extinct sometime during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and Tangut literature was only rediscovered in the early 20th century.
Most of the books listed here were discovered hidden in a stupa outside the city walls of the abandoned Western Xia fortress city of Khara-Khoto in Inner Mongolia by Pyotr Kuzmich Kozlov during his expedition of 1907–1909. A lesser number of texts (mostly fragments) were recovered from Khara-Khoto by Aurel Stein during his expedition of 1913–1916. A large number of complete and fragmentary Tangut texts have also been discovered at various sites in Inner Mongolia, Ningxia and Gansu in China during the 20th and 21st centuries.
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Khara-Khoto in the context of Western Xia
The Western Xia or the Xi Xia (Chinese: 西夏; pinyin: Xī Xià; Wade–Giles: Hsi Hsia), officially the Great Xia (大夏; Dà Xià; Ta Hsia), also known as the Tangut Empire, and known as Mi-nyak to the Tanguts and Tibetans, was a Tangut-led imperial dynasty of China that existed from 1038 to 1227. At its peak, the dynasty ruled over modern-day north-central China, including parts of Ningxia, Gansu, eastern Qinghai, Northern Shaanxi, North Eastern Xinjiang, and Southwest Inner Mongolia, and Southernmost Outer Mongolia, measuring about 800,000 square kilometres (310,000 square miles).
The capital of Western Xia was Xingqing (modern Yinchuan); another major Xia city and archaeological site is Khara-Khoto. Western Xia was annihilated by the Mongols in 1227. Most of its written records and architecture were destroyed, so the founders and history of the empire remained obscure until 20th-century research in China and the West. Today the Tangut language and its unique script are extinct, only fragments of Tangut literature remain.