A collage of several Khitans
The Khitans, also called the Khitai, were an Altaic people that originated in Mongolia and Manchuria. Descended from a branch of the Xianbei tribe, the Khitans were closely related to Mongols. The Khitans were originally a barbarian tribe that occasionally raided northern China and North Korea, but they set up the Liao dynasty, which would last from 907 to 1125, and they ruled over the Kara-Khitans (a rump state of the Liao) from 1125 to 1218, when the Mongol Empire conquered them. Most Khitans adhered to Buddhism.