Circuit, prefecture or people · The Jin empire of Zhangzong · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Jingzhao fu

The great prefecture of the old Tang capital, now a Jin frontier city: the seat of the Jingzhao fu circuit, the military commandery of the west and the first city of the Shaanxi lands.

The city is the small walled Imperial City of 904 (the Tang outer city lies in ruins and gardens), with the Confucian temple and the Stele Forest (Beilin, begun in 1087) holding the Tang stone classics. The prefecture runs from the Wei plain up to the Zhongnan hills: Chang'an, Wannian, Lantian, Lintong, Hu, Zhouzhi, Xianyang, Xingping, Jingyang and Sanyuan. Quanzhen's first homeland (Chongyang's tomb at Liujiang in Hu) and the Daoist Louguan lie in the Zhongnan hills.

Who holds it

Title
Prefect (fu yin) of Jingzhao fu, under the Jingzhao fu circuit (Jingzhao fu lu) commander
Since
not pinned
Confidence
low

No source consulted dates the office-holder for the winter of 1199-1200.

Overlord

The circuit command at the circuit seat, and through it the emperor Zhangzong

What it holds

  • Jingzhao fu and its counties (Jingzhao fu circuit (Jingzhao fu lu))

How things stand that morning

At peace with the Song (Longxing, 1165) and with the Xia. Xi'an is the eastern anchor of the overland routes to Xia and Central Asia and the Jin's base for the Song frontier at the Qinling. The fu yin and the circuit zongguan are not named in what we could consult; the Shaanxi military commissioner (tongjun shi) is usually said to sit here (see the lord record).

Wealth

Cloth, grain of the Wei plain, the Silk Road trade, tolls on the Qinling roads to the Song; the Shaanxi transport commission.

Military

Seat of the Shaanxi military commissioner (tongjun si, usually placed here) and the circuit zongguan fu. No numbers.

Places of note

  • Beilin (Stele Forest): Confucian temple and the stone classics and steles, in the city
  • Big Wild Goose Pagoda: Xuanzang's pagoda of the Daci'en Temple, the old city's south-east
  • Huxian (Liujiang): County and the Quanzhen ancestral hut of Wang Chongyang
  • Zhouzhi (Louguan): County; Louguan Daoist terrace in its hills

Where the sources disagree

  • The campaign board (xi-an-jingzhao) places Xi'an at 34.342, 108.94, which is Weiyang district, north of the walled city; the walled city lies at about 34.26, 108.95.

Evidence: Seat and general extent follow the standard Jin administrative geography (Jinshi 24 to 26, Dili zhi). We could not open the Jinshi text in this session (the Chinese-language sites would not load), so which counties belonged to which prefecture is reasoned from the old units and the modern map and is indicative; no holder is dated for 1 January 1200.

"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.

On the map: Drawn from the modern counties that lie on the old prefecture's ground: edges follow modern county lines, not the 1200 boundaries, and a county on a prefecture edge may really have belonged to its neighbour. The atlas draws this territory itself: the ground nearer to the seats of this record than to the seats of any other record of the same kind, out to about 30 km of travel from a seat (less in hills and marsh, where travel is slow). The edges are the atlas's own drawing, not a boundary from a source.

Primary sources for Jin empire

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

  • Annals of the Western Xia, Wu Guangcheng (吳廣成) (1825 to 1827, compiled from Song, Liao, Jin and Yuan sources). A Qing scholar's year-by-year reconstruction of Tangut history from the Chinese histories, since the Xia left no surviving annals of their own in Chinese. Read online
  • Continuation of the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government, Bi Yuan (畢沅), completed by Feng Jiwu after his death (late eighteenth century, finished after 1801, from Song and Yuan sources). A Qing scholar's continuous month-by-month chronicle of the Song and Yuan centuries, compiled from the Song shi, the Liao, Jin and Yuan histories, Li Tao, Li Xinchuan and other Song sources. Read online
  • Essentials of the History of Goryeo, Kim Jong-seo (金宗瑞) and the Joseon history office (1452). The chronological companion to the Goryeosa, finished a year after it and drawing on the same lost records, sometimes with entries the Goryeosa omits. Read online
  • Outline and Details of Two Reigns (thirteenth century, after 1224). A Song outline-and-detail chronicle of exactly the two reigns around 1200, drawn from the court's daily records. Read online
  • Record of the Personal Campaigns of the Holy Warrior (Chinggis Khan) (presented to Khubilai in 1288, finished in Mongolian in 1290; the surviving Chinese version dates from 1369). A year-by-year Chinese account of Temujin's wars, drawn from the lost Altan Debter (the same source behind the Yuan shi's first chapter and Rashid al-Din). Read online
  • The Secret History of the Mongols (1228 or 1240 (the colophon's Year of the Rat is disputed), with later additions; the surviving Chinese transcription and gloss were made under the Ming in the 1380s). The only Mongol account of Temujin's rise, written within living memory. Read online
  • History of the Jin, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office, with Ouyang Xuan among the chief compilers (1343 to 1344, from the Jin veritable records and the Jin national history). The official history of the Jurchen empire that ruled north China and Manchuria in 1200. Read online
  • Record of the Great Jin State, Attributed to Yuwen Maozhao (宇文懋昭); the attribution is doubtful (preface dated 1234; probably assembled in the Southern Song from Song and Jin material, with later accretions). A Song-side history of the Jin, with annals for each emperor and chapters on institutions, customs, the capitals and the Jurchen way of life. Read online

14 more in the sources library for North China and Manchuria.

Sources and studies

  1. Jinshi (History of the Jin), juan 24 to 26, Dili zhi (geography); cited from the standard reference, the text itself could not be opened in this session
  2. Jing-shen Tao, The Jurchen in Twelfth-Century China (University of Washington Press, 1976); not consulted in this session

Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.