Kaifeng fu

Who holds it

Title

Resident governor of the Southern Capital and prefect of Kaifeng (Nanjing liushou, Kaifeng yin)

Since

not known

Born

not known

Family

not known

Confidence

low

Not known. The Jinshi names prefects only inside individual biographies, which we could not reach; the office, not the man, is what the map can show.

Overlord

the Jin emperor Zhangzong (Wanyan Jing), Cheng'an 4, through the Department of State Affairs at Zhongdu

What it holds

• Kaifeng and Xiangfu (seat counties)
• Yangwu
• Tongxu
• Taikang
• Zhongmu
• Qi
• Yanling
• Weishi
• Fugou
• Chenliu
• Yanjin
• Changyuan
• Fengqiu
• circuit: Nanjing lu

How it was acquired

Conquered from the Northern Song between 1127 and 1141 and held by the Jin directly after the puppet states of Chu and Qi were closed (1127 to 1137); the Huai line was agreed in 1141 and confirmed in 1165.

Allies and rivals

Answers to the Southern Capital's governor and the Henan military commission; faces the Song across the Huai only if it lies on the frontier.

How things stand that morning

A quiet, much reduced heartland. The court sits at Zhongdu; the resident governor keeps the Southern Capital, supervises the dikes with the water bureau and passes the Song embassies on their road north. The flooded north-east counties (Yangwu, Fengqiu, Yanjin, Changyuan) are the weakest part.

Wealth

Grain and silk land of the Huang-Huai plain taxed by the book; canal and river tolls; salt and iron under the state monopolies; paper money (jiaochao) as the common medium. The Dili zhi gives 235,890 registered households for 1152 (Tiande 4) and a far larger figure for the end of Taihe that its editors doubt; neither is a 1200 count.

Military

Prefectural garrison under the Henan military commission; Jurchen meng'an and mouke households are settled in the circuit; no numbers are given in the sources we could reach.

Threats

• Yellow River floods on the new course and the displaced households
• Poverty and land sales among the settled Jurchen households
• Bandit gangs on the plain

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

1. 1214 (Zhenyou 2)The Jin court moves from Zhongdu to the Southern Capital under Mongol pressure (Japanese Wikipedia, read).Depends on: The Mongol attacks on North China that begin in 1211, which have not happened yet. Stopped by: Any settlement with the Mongols, or a Zhongdu that holds.

Places of note

• Yangwu, the breach of 1194: The Yellow River broke the old bank here in 1194 and flowed east over Fengqiu.

Where the sources disagree

• The campaign board entry puts Fugou and Taikang in Chenzhou, Yanling in Xuzhou and Zhongmu in Zhengzhou; the Dili zhi lists all four in Kaifeng fu (Chenzhou has Wanqiu, Xiangcheng, Nandun, Shangshui and Xihua; Zhengzhou has Guancheng, Xingyang, Mi, Heyin, Yuanwu, Fanshui and Xingze).

Evidence: Rank, army title, former Song name and county list are from the Jinshi Dili zhi (read), which describes the circuit about 1207 to 1208 and records later changes; changes dated 1201 or later have been taken out of the 1200 list. No prefect of 1 January 1200 is named in anything we could reach.

"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 county seats of the Jin counties named in the Dili zhi; Jin county seats can lie some kilometres from the modern ones, and the edges follow the nearest-unit rule, not a surveyed line. 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.