Khitan envoys bring a letter requesting cession of land
The Song shi basic annals record that in the third lunar month of Qingli 2 (AD 1042) the Khitan (契丹) sent Xiao Ying (蕭英) and Liu Liufu (劉六符), who came bearing a letter requesting a cession of territory.
What this does and does not establish
The Song shi is a Yuan-compiled (1343-45) official history drawing on Song court records; the English is an AI working translation. The entry does not say which territory was requested.
- Read through an AI working translation.
- Region
- East Asia
- Theme
- Politics and institutions
- Kind of record
- Placed in a year. A source places this in one year. It is listed under that year; no day precision is invented.
How it is dated
- Date reference
- 慶曆 2 (慶曆二年 as numbered by the annals), lunar month 3
- How we use it
- Year assigned from the lunar month under which the annals enter the item; the sexagenary day was not converted to a Julian day.
The date reference is this project’s reading of the source’s date. It may give an era name, a reign or a calendar in a normalised form rather than in the source’s own words; the dating notes say what the source prints.
Dating notes from the research record
Lunar month 3 of 慶曆 2 = Julian 1042-03-24 to 1042-04-22, per Academia Sinica 兩千年中西曆轉換 year table(s) 慶曆2.html (sha256 4bd58b28b990…); the whole month lies in AD 1042.
File names and line numbers in these notes, and in the limits above, refer to the project’s retained copies of the cited sources. Names such as calendar_headers are the project’s calendar look-ups, and “the investigator” is the research step that prepared the record.
Sources and quoted text
Line and character numbers under “Location” refer to the project’s retained copy of the source. For database rows, “Edition” names the batch of rows that was fetched together.
Source 1 · Supports the statement
Song shi (History of Song), basic annals
Toghto (脫脫) et al., Yuan court historiographers
The credit or link shown here was corrected after an audit of the retained source.
Quoted text (Classical Chinese)
己巳，契丹遣蕭英、劉六符來致書求割地。AI working translation into English; not official or authoritative
On the jisi day, the Khitan sent Xiao Ying and Liu Liufu to come and deliver a letter requesting the cession of territory.
Source credit and reuse conditions recorded for this source: Source: Song shi, juan 11, zh.wikisource transcription (revision 2285045). English renderings are AI working translations, not published translations.
Exact source version
36945f8014c9f6607726fc0ff38b0d93925151797d9314a5aa23ae05fbcaa9e7Checks and changes
Source checked 2026-11-04. An independent AI evidence review supports this bounded, attributed wording. That review does not guarantee historical truth. How records are checked
No correction has been made to this record’s statement or limits.
Revision s1p_1042_song_1
Exact revision fingerprint
dade165b8e53153f7a38d3eafd8efcbe4f20c936ecd5c609fa40e47ed2abd526