Datong

Who holds it

Title

The Resident Governor (liushou) of Xijing, who is also head of Datong fu and of the Xijing circuit; name not known.

Since

not pinned

Confidence

low

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

Lord in 1200

The Resident Governor (liushou) of Xijing, who is also head of Datong fu and of the Xijing circuit; name not known.

Overlord

The Jin emperor Zhangzong, through the circuit command

What the town holds

• Datong fu: the Western Capital (Xijing) of the Jin

How things stand that morning

Peace on the Yin Shan front after the campaigns of 1195-1198. The liushou's name is not known. The Ongud, the Jin's wardens, graze their herds north of the trench.

Charter

none known: a Chinese prefectural city or county town with no municipal charter

Council

No town council. The prefect (zhizhou) or county magistrate governs with the staff of the prefecture; Jurchen military commanders hold the garrison. Names are not known.

Communities

Chinese, the Khitan households of the old Liao capital, Jurchen garrison households and traders of the steppe. Buddhist houses (Huayan, Shanhua, Yungang). A Muslim and a Nestorian community are said to have lived here (see the religious records); neither is dated for 1200.

Fairs and markets

Markets and temple fairs on the usual Chinese pattern; none dated for this town.

Militia

No citizen militia; the garrison is the Jin's own (Jurchen meng'an and mouke households and Chinese soldiers), not numbered in any source we could read.

Walls and castle

A large walled city with a citadel and the palace precinct of the Liao western capital reused for the liushou. We know no Jin repair dates for the walls.

Trade and crafts

The markets of the Yin Shan front: horses, sheep, hides and felt from the steppe against grain, cloth, tea and ironware; the post-road between Zhongdu, the Yanmen pass and the north-west. Coal from the nearby hills is a later famous trade and is not dated here for 1200.

Places of note

• Upper Huayan Temple: Great Treasure Hall rebuilt about 1140 after the fire of the 1120s (from memory, medium confidence)
• Shanhua Temple: Liao-Jin temple; the great hall dated to the Jin repairs of the 1130s-1140s (from memory, medium confidence)

Where the sources disagree

• The campaign board (datong) calls it the Western Capital; we agree. The Jin took Datong in 1122 in some accounts and 1125 in others; we give the 1120s.

Evidence: Seat and general character follow the standard Jin geography and the usual accounts; we could not open the Jinshi text in this session, and no dated detail of the town in 1199-1200 was found. The description is indicative.

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

On the map: A seeds recipe of about 14 km round the city; the prefecture is in the province record.

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.