In the time of the Turkic shogunate, the fear of the East disappeared with the familiarity of both sides, because soon, greater stimuli came.

The Seljuks unified a vast area from the middle of the river to the Mediterranean, captured the Eastern Roman Emperor alive, and invaded Asia Minor, which had long been untouched by the Celestial Cults, where they divided the Sultanate of Rûm.

In the east, after the Liao was destroyed by the Jin, Yelu Dashi led the remnants to flee to the Western Regions, established the Western Liao, and came into conflict with the Seljuk Dynasty, the overlord here. Sanjar, the Seljuk lord of the Rising Empire, decided to take it upon himself to exterminate these pagans from the East.

Sanjar is not a mediocre man. On the contrary, he was young and promising, fought all his life, and was a famous hero of his time.

At the age of 11, Sanjar, who had lost his father, served as governor of Khorasan, fighting to suppress rebellions in various places. Later, he joined the routine civil wars of the Turkic dynasties, and at the age of 19 he defeated a group of relatives and seized the throne as sultan, becoming the suzerainty of the Turkic dynasties.

At the time of the battle against Western Liao, Sanjar was 57 years old and still fought in person. He is obviously not a person who does not understand military affairs, on the contrary, he has fought almost all the dynasties in the Central Asian steppes to Syria and Asia Minor, and he has relied on force to reunite the fragmented Tianfang Sect world, and he has very rich military and political experience.

And his enemy, Yelu Dashi, who was later famous in the true sense of the word, from Khitan to Ireland, was two years younger than him. In terms of performance, it is also much inferior.

According to the view of the Northern Song Dynasty, Yelu Dashi was actually a civil official. Although he had the surname Yelu, his family was too far away from the emperor, and in the end he became an official by relying on the imperial examination.

The imperial examination in the Liao State only had the Han test, and the content of the examination was the traditional Chinese test questions. Although it has been opened to all ethnic groups in the later period, everyone else who wants to take the exam has to go to the exam with the Han people. There are few people in the first place, and the cultural heritage is not as good as others, so there are very few people who are admitted. And Yelu Dashi is one of the only two Khitan Jinshi in the history books, and he belongs to the academic tyrant level.

After being admitted, he went to the Hanlin Academy. The Khitan language calls Hanlin "Lin Ya", so in the history books of the Song Dynasty, he is also called "Dashi Lin Ya", which means the big stone of Hanlin. The only advantage is probably that the Liao and Song systems are quite different, and they learn more from the Tang system, so the separation of civil and military is not obvious, so Yelu Dashi still has some opportunities to participate in the military.

However, before coming to the Western Regions, Yelu Dashi's record was not very good.

The highlight of his battlefield was the counterattack against the Northern Song Dynasty's attack.

In the last years of the Liao State, defeat was almost a foregone conclusion. In the Yanyun region, the rule also became seriously unstable, and many local Han people hoped to be able to defect to the Northern Song Dynasty and obtain refuge, and many local officials voluntarily surrendered to the Northern Song Dynasty.

The Northern Song Dynasty thought that this was a good time to recover this place, so it mobilized a large army, with Tong Guan as the Xuanfu envoy and the seed master as the commander, and led an army of 150,000 to the north.

The Liao regime had collapsed at this time, Emperor Tianzuo himself fled, not knowing where to hide, and the officials of Yanjing could not find the emperor, so they elected Yeluchun as the emperor, known as "Northern Liao" in history. The small regime in Northern Liao had few people and only 20,000 people to go to the front line to confront the Song army.

The Song army soon found that the enemy's rear was very empty, so it was decided to select 6,000 elites, bypass the front line, and sneak attack Yanjing. General Liu Yanshi led 100,000 people as backup. Yanjing's guards were really very lax, the Song army successfully infiltrated, and there were Han people in the city who responded to the Song army, and in the end, all seven city gates were controlled by the Song army, and the people in the city had not even noticed anything abnormal.

However, after the success, the Song army did not expand the results of the war, but ran to drink, commit adultery, and wantonly slaughter and plunder the citizens. The townspeople were suddenly attacked, resisted with all their might, and became entangled with the Song army. As a result, the Northern Liao court was given time to breathe, and urgently transferred troops from the front line to help.

The Northern Song reinforcements were delayed, and the Liao army had already dispatched 3,000 men to rush back. At this time, the elite of the Song army who entered the city were still fighting back and forth with the citizens, and they were defenseless. When the two sides were at a standoff, the Liao army suddenly arrived, the Song army was defeated, and the 6,000 elites were almost lost, and only more than 400 people fled back.

Hearing that the elite of the strikers failed, the main force of the Song army was greatly frightened. A few days later, in the evening, a wildfire broke out outside the camp, and the Song army immediately bombed the camp. The commander Liu Yanshi directly burned the camp and fled, and the main force of the Song army trampled on each other, ambushed the corpses for more than 100 miles, and countless people fell to death in the mountain stream. A large amount of ordnance materials that began to accumulate during the reigns of Shenzong Xining and Yuanfeng were almost lost.

And at this time, the Liao army didn't even realize what was happening. When it was dawn the next day, I found 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 breaking the covenant and pursued it all the way to the ancient city where the Song army served as a rear base, and the follow-up troops of the Song army also collapsed.

This is the best record of Yelu Dashi. It seems that the results of the battle are great, but the role of the Jerod Stone in it is very limited, and it may not be as good as the wildfire that night. Moreover, defeating the Song army, to be honest, has nothing to brag about, and it does not reflect the true level of a general.

When facing the real enemy, Jin Bing, Yelu Dashi was very embarrassed. He served as a magistrate several times, but he couldn't last long, because once he defended the city, he was attacked by the Jin people once. Throughout his military career, he maintained a record of total defeat against the Jin State. This kind of performance is really difficult to talk about.

Of course, Sanjar may not be aware of his record. However, it doesn't affect the mentality of a veteran either.

Although he wrote a provocative letter to Jerodashi before the battle, it was supposed to be just a ploy to provoke the enemy. Sanjar did not actually underestimate the enemy, on the contrary, although he paid lip service to the Western Liao, in action, he attached great importance to these emerging enemies.

In order to meet the war, Sanjar took advantage of the prestige of the Sultan and the appeal of religion to gather the armies of the regimes of Khorasan, Sistan, Ghazni, Mazandaran, Ghor and other local regimes to participate in the jihad. Most of the Celestial Sect was mobilized, and according to Persian historians, more than 100,000 soldiers arrived. It took Sanjar six months just to gather and review the army.

In 1141, the year when the Song Jin Yihe and the Southern Song Dynasty recalled Yue Fei, Yelu Dashi led the Western Liao army to take the initiative to march westward and meet the Seljuk army in the Katwan steppe north of Samarkand.