Yēlǜ Chǔcái 耶律楚材 (1190–1244), zì Jìnqīng 晉卿, hào Zhànrán jūshì 湛然居士 (“Lay Master of Quiescence”), was the most consequential Khitan literatus to enter Mongol service: a descendant of the Khitan-Liáo ruling house of the Yēlǜ 耶律 clan, born at the Jīn 金 capital Yānjīng 燕京 (modern Beijing). After the Mongol capture of Yānjīng in 1215 he was summoned by Chinggis Khan in 1218 and served thereafter as the senior Sinitic adviser at the Mongol court — first under Chinggis on his Central-Asian campaigns (1219–1224) and then through the reign of Ögödei (r. 1229–1241) as effective principal secretary (zhōngshū lìng 中書令), responsible for installing Chinese-style fiscal and administrative institutions in north China. The form 移剌楚才 (Yílá Chǔcái) found in Daozang and Yuán-period sources is a clan-name variant: 移剌 / 夷剌 was the standard Yuán-era transliteration of the Khitan clan-name normalised in modern usage as 耶律 (cf. TC 2 entry on DZ 176).
In 1219 Chinggis Khan dispatched the official Liú Zhònglù 劉仲祿 to summon the Quánzhēn 全真 patriarch Qiū Chǔjī 丘處機 (Chángchūn 長春) westward to the imperial encampment in the Hindu Kush; Qiū’s three audiences with Chinggis at the Kabul-region camp in winter 1222 were noted down by Yēlǜ Chǔcái at imperial command and circulated in 1232 as [[KR5a0177|Xuánfēng qìnghuì lù 玄風慶會錄]] (DZ 176). His own literary collection survives as the Zhànrán jūshì wénjí 湛然居士文集 (14 juan); his account of his Central-Asian travels is the Xī yóu lù 西遊錄. He was a lay Buddhist of the Línjì 臨濟 Chán lineage of Wànsōng Xíngxiù 萬松行秀 but engaged across the Three Teachings.
CBDB id 29279 (1190–1244).