Homeland meng'an and mouke

Who he is

Title

Meng'an (battalion) and mouke (company) commanders of the homeland, hereditary in their families

Since

not pinned

Born

not known

Confidence

medium

The system is well described (English Wikipedia, Jin dynasty: a mouke is a company of 300 households, seven to ten mouke make a meng'an). The commanders in the homeland in 1200 are not named in anything we could read.

Overlord

The Shangjing liushou and, for the northern routes, the Dongbei commission

What it holds

• Mouke and meng'an villages and fields on the Sungari, Lalin, Hulan and Nen plains
• Pastures and hunting ground
• Service obligations to the liushou and the frontier commissions

How it was acquired

Jurchen tribal organisation from Aguda's age (1114 onward).

Allies and rivals

Han tenants and creditors; the Jin court's tax and survey officers; the liushou.

How things stand that morning

Impoverished in the south, more secure in the north-east; the court's help and the land surveys are the issues.

Wealth

Land, herds, hunting; poor households sell land and children in the south.

Military

The Jin's core fighting men: Jurchen horse archers (no figures).

Threats

• Debt and land sale to Han tenants
• Heavy levy for the steppe frontier
• Famine

Where the sources disagree

• The sizes of the Jurchen units differ between the researchers of this atlas. The Homeland researcher gives a mouke of 300 households and a meng'an of seven to ten mouke (English Wikipedia, read); the Henan and Shaanxi researchers give a meng'an of a thousand households and a mouke of a hundred, which is what the two names mean (recalled); the Heartland researcher gives no figure because the sizes differ between places and times. The atlas takes the first as the better sourced and treats every figure as a nominal size, never as a roll of 1200: it holds no count of men for any unit.

Evidence: The system is well attested; the numbers and the commanders for the homeland in 1200 are not given and we give none.

On the map: Mouke villages were scattered among other settlements; the outline is the concentration, not exclusive ground.

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.