Jurchen soldier households

Who he is

Title

Leaders of the meng'an (thousand) and mouke (hundred) military units settled in Hedong and Shaanxi

Since

not pinned

Confidence

low

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

Overlord

The Jin emperor Zhangzong at Zhongdu, through the Department of State Affairs

What it holds

• Military households on granted land in the Hedong and Shaanxi circuits

How it was acquired

By appointment of the Jin court; the date of the present appointment is not known.

Allies and rivals

Works with the neighbouring circuit commands; no quarrel is known to me.

How things stand that morning

Settled on the land. The households' hardship and the court's measures are the standing problem of the reign; nothing specific is known to me for this winter.

Wealth

The revenue of the office comes from the circuit's taxes in kind and the frontier tolls; no figures are given by any source we could read.

Military

The Jurchen households are the backbone of the circuit garrisons; no numbers.

Threats

• Poverty and land sales among the households; a bad harvest or a flood year would hurt them first.

Places of note

• Taiyuan: A Hedong North muster town
• Pingyang: A Hedong South muster town
• Jingzhao: The Shaanxi muster town

Where the sources disagree

• This is a general record from the Jin military system, not a roll of units. The campaign board does not name these units on our ground.
• 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 existence and general role of this office follow the standard Jin administrative accounts (the Jinshi Baiguan zhi and Dili zhi, via the secondary literature). We could not open the Jinshi text in this session. No source we could read names the holder in the winter of 1199-1200, so the holder is "not known".

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

On the map: The command is drawn on the seat prefecture; its authority ran over the whole circuit, shown in the province records.

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.