The Great Khingan forest and its western foot are held by hunting and fishing peoples that the Chinese call by the old name Shiwei and that the Jin treat as border tribes.
Tungusic and Mongolic bands live side by side by the Argun and the Hailar, in small camps in the river bends in winter, hunting sable, elk and reindeer and fishing the rivers. No chief of theirs is known from 1200. The Jin claim the tribes east of the range through their north-eastern commands; west of the crest, as far as the sources show, they are free.
The Mongol sources call such people forest peoples (hoi-yin irgen). Descendants of Liao Khitan garrisons and of the Xi live mixed with them in some river valleys at the edge of the steppe; those east of the range are Jin subjects and belong to the North China sheet.
Who holds it
- Title
- Family and band heads; no chiefs known to history
- Confidence
- low
What it holds
- Hunting grounds on the western Khingan
- River fisheries on the Argun
- Furs for trade with the steppe and the Jin
Allies and rivals
Neighbours of the Onggirat (south-west), the Tatars and the Jin. No feud recorded.
How things stand that morning
Self-governing; nominally within the Jin's reach to the east, untaxed to the west.
Wealth
Furs, game, fish; no cultivated land.
Military
Hunters with bows; no army.
Threats
- Raids from the steppe
- Jin tribute demands
Places of note
- Winter camps (guess): River bends of the western slope; no sites are known.
Where the sources disagree
- 'Shiwei' is a Tang-era name that the Jin sources use only loosely; whether a Jin writer of 1200 means these hunters or only the Mongols is uncertain. Wikipedia's Shiwei article describes the Tang period.
Evidence: Peoples and ecology are attested for the period; no named chiefs or dated events for 1200.
On the map: The range continues east of the line, on Jin ground (nch's).
Sources and studies
- Shiwei (Wikipedia)
- Timeline of the Jurchens (Wikipedia)
- Christopher P. Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire (2004)
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.