Jin dynasty (1115–1234)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Jin dynasty declared itself the Great Jin in 1115, and its name meant gold. Not gold in a figurative sense, but gold as in the Jurchen word alchun, possibly drawn from a river east of Harbin whose waters the Jurchens called golden. From a people who had no writing, no calendar, and no formal offices as recently as the mid-11th century, the Wanyan clan built an empire that would stretch from Outer Manchuria in the north to the Qinling-Huaihe Line in the south, capturing two sitting Chinese emperors, redirecting the Song dynasty to southern China, and reaching European ears before any prior Chinese dynasty. How did a tribal people described by the Tang as fierce and uncultured rise to dominate the most populous region on earth? What did it cost them to rule it? And when Genghis Khan's Mongols came calling in 1211, why did a dynasty that had conquered so much collapse in just 23 years?

• 2. The Name and Its Meaning

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  When Wanyan Aguda chose the word alchun as the name of his new state, the choice carried more weight than a river reference. Alchun may trace to the Anchuhu River, a tributary of the Songhua east of Harbin, whose Jurchen name meant golden. Marco Polo, working from the Mongol name for the Jin ruler, rendered it roi d'or in French: gold king. Through the Mongols, the Jin became the first Chinese dynasty known in Europe by their dynastic name.

  The ideology behind the name was deliberate. After conquering Kaifeng, some advisors urged the Jin to adopt metal as their wuxing dynastic element, since metal and gold were linked. The emperor rejected that suggestion. He chose earth instead, and yellow as the royal color. According to the wuxing cycle, earth follows fire in the sequence of elemental creation, and fire was the dynastic element of the Song. By this logic, the Jin were not merely the conquerors of the Song; they were its ordained successors in the cosmic order.

  The ruling clan's surname, Wanyan, carries its own buried history. It does not originate in Jurchen at all, but in a Sino-Khitan compound combining the Middle Chinese word for king or prince with a Khitan suffix. Written as 完颜 during the Liao-Jin period, it yielded the Mandarin pronunciation Wányán. The Wanyan Jurchens were, by their very name, the royal Jurchens. Jin documents also show that their emperors called their realm Zhongguo, the Middle Kingdom, pushing back the known timeline for non-Han rulers adopting that self-designation earlier than scholars had previously thought.

• 3. Roots in the Mohe World

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  Chinese texts were mentioning the Tungusic-speaking Mohe people by the late 5th century AD, and they are the most commonly cited ancestors of the Jurchens who would later found the Jin. The Mohe of what is now Northeast China were primarily sedentary farmers who grew soybeans, wheat, millet, and rice, alongside hunting and pig farming. Horses were scarce in the region until the Tang period, and large-scale herding did not take hold until the 10th century under Khitan domination.

  The Mohe also practiced mass slavery, deploying enslaved people in both hunting and agricultural labor. The Tang described them bluntly as fierce and uncultured, users of poisoned arrows. Two groups dominated: the Heishui Mohe, or Blackwater Mohe, named for the Heilong River in the north, and the Sumo Mohe in the south, named for the Songhua River. Jurchen oral tradition in the early 12th century held that their people had emerged specifically from the Heishui Mohe, in the forested mountain country of eastern Manchuria and Russia's Primorsky Krai.

  The Jurchens themselves appear only thinly in early records. A possible reference from 748 places them at the Tang court presenting silver and gold under the name Little Ruzhe. More solid evidence starts in the 10th century, when they appear as tribute bearers to the Liao, the Later Tang, and the Song courts. An embassy to Later Tang is recorded in 925, and one reached the Song in 961 by sea via the Liaodong peninsula. Their primary export was horses. By the mid-11th century they still had no script, no calendar, and no formal offices, and the Jurchens could not even produce iron armor; they had to trade other tribes for it.

• 4. The Wanyan Clan and Hanpu's Legend

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  Before the time of Wugunai (1021-1074), there is no dated evidence placing the Jurchens as a unified people. The clan that would found the Jin traced its lineage back to Hanpu, who by tradition must have lived around the year 900. Hanpu came from the Heishui Mohe tribe of Balhae, but his arrival among the Wanyan was, according to the History of Jin, a form of compensation for a murder debt. He left behind two brothers, one in Goryeo and one in Balhae.

  By the time Hanpu reached the Wanyan, he was already 60 years old. He was accepted as a wise man. He settled a dispute between two families without resorting to violence, and as a reward was given a bride, also 60 years old. The marriage was marked by the gift of a dark ox, an animal held in high regard in Jurchen culture. From this union came one daughter and three sons, and Hanpu became chief of the Wanyan. Western scholars have assessed this story cautiously: Herbert Franke called it an ancestral legend with a historical kernel, noting that the Wanyan clan had absorbed immigrants from Goryeo and Balhae in the 10th century. Frederick W. Mote described it as a tribal legend carrying the memory of genuine ethnic absorption.

  Wugunai himself, six generations after Hanpu, was described in sources as a brave warrior, a great eater and drinker, and a lover of women. He extended Wanyan authority from the Changbai Mountains in the south to the Wuguo Five Nations in the north. The Liao recognized his consolidation of Jurchen territory by granting him the title of military governor of the Uncivilized Jurchens, a title that carried recognition but not actual power. His grandson Aguda would turn that recognition into something far more consequential.

• 5. Aguda and the Rebellion

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  In late 1112, Emperor Tianzuo of Liao held a gathering on the Huntong River, the modern Songhua, where Jurchen chieftains were expected to take turns dancing before the emperor in tribute. One of the chieftains, Aguda, refused. He was asked three times and refused each time. Tianzuo wanted him executed. His chancellor, Xiao Fengxian, talked him out of it, dismissing the danger Aguda posed. Aguda was elected ruler of the Jurchens the following year.

  He moved fast. He attacked the Liao border post of Ningjiang in late autumn 1114. Tianzuo underestimated the threat and sent only Balhae detachments, which were defeated. A second force of Khitan and Kumo Xi troops under Xiao Sixian, the chancellor's own brother, was also beaten on the Songhua. Sixian escaped punishment despite his failure, demoralizing Khitan generals further. By the end of 1114, several border prefectures had fallen to the Jurchens and neighboring tribes had begun joining them.

  In spring 1115, Aguda declared himself emperor of the Jin Gold dynasty, rejecting Liao peace overtures because their letters failed to address him by his new imperial title. He took a Chinese personal name, Min, meaning compassionate, and a Chinese reign title, Shouguo, meaning receiving statehood. The man who appears to have designed this Chinese imperial persona was Yang Pu, a Balhae man who had earned the jinshi degree under the Liao. Yang Pu advised Aguda not to settle for mere independence but to claim emperorship on Chinese terms. Aguda died in 1123, a few months after concluding a treaty with the Song, without witnessing the Liao's final collapse. That work fell to his brother Wuqimai.

• 6. The Capture of Kaifeng

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  In fall 1125, the Jin decided to invade the Song. Within months they had swept through most of Shanxi and Hebei. By early 1126, Jin forces under Wanyan Zongwang, the second son of Aguda, had crossed the Yellow River and laid siege to the Song capital of Kaifeng. The Song paid dearly to end the siege: they ceded the three prefectures of Taiyuan, Hejian, and Zhongshan, representing most of Shanxi and Hebei, and paid an indemnity in silver, silk, and coins said to be worth 180 years of annual payments. The siege was lifted on the 10th of February 1126.

  Conflict resumed almost immediately. The Jin crossed the Yellow River again in winter 1126-27 and broke through Kaifeng's defenses on the 9th of January 1127. What followed is remembered as the Jingkang Incident. Both sitting Song emperors, Qinzong and Huizong, were captured along with scores of courtiers and family members. They were demoted to commoners, forced to bow before Aguda's mausoleum, made to wear mourning dress, and eventually given the humiliating titles of Muddle Virtue and Doubly Muddled. Huizong died in 1135 in Wuguocheng, a town near the Songhua River. Six Song princesses were married into the Wanyan clan.

  To consolidate their hold on newly conquered territory, the Jin installed a puppet state, the Great Chu, under a Han official named Zhang Bangchang placed on the throne in Jiankang. The hope was that a Han-faced ruler would draw defectors from the Song. Zhang was killed or forced to commit suicide by the Song soon after. A second puppet arrangement, the Great Qi, followed under Liu Yu, a jinshi degree holder who had defected to the Jin in 1128. It was during the battles between Jin-Qi forces and the Song in 1132 that the fire lance, forerunner of the hand cannon, was first used in combat at the Siege of De'an.

• 7. Sinification and Its Tensions

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  The Treaty of Shaoxing, finalized on the 11th of October 1142, drew the border between Jin and Song along the Huai River. The Song agreed to pay 250,000 ounces of silver and silk annually, cede Tangzhou and Dengzhou, and acknowledge the Jin as a superior state. In exchange the Jin withdrew and promised to return the coffin of the captured emperor Huizong along with several empresses. The Jin had fully absorbed northern China and the Central Plains.

  What happened next was a slow cultural transformation that alarmed Jurchen traditionalists. Over roughly two decades, large numbers of Jurchens migrated south into northern China and were granted land organized around hereditary military units. A mouke, or company, comprised 300 households; groups of seven to ten moukes formed a meng-an, a battalion. As Jurchens settled among Han populations, many adopted Chinese ways of life.

  Emperor Xizong, who took the throne in 1135 at the age of 16, studied the Chinese classics and wrote Chinese poetry. Later in his reign he became an alcoholic, grew paranoid, and began executing officials for criticism, including members of the Wanyan clan itself. He was murdered on the 9th of January 1150 by relatives and nobles who replaced him with his cousin Wanyan Liang.

  Wanyan Liang, known posthumously as Prince of Hailing after being stripped of his imperial title for his brutality, took sinification further than anyone before him. In childhood he had been called Boliehan, a Jurchen nickname meaning aping the Chinese. He executed 155 princes from the Wanyan clan and absorbed their widows and concubines into his harem. In 1152 he relocated his residence to Yanjing, modern Beijing, renaming it the Central Capital. In 1157 he ordered the Jurchen palaces of the Supreme Capital in Huining Prefecture demolished and its rank reduced to a mere prefecture.

  Emperor Shizong, who came to power after Wanyan Liang was murdered by his own officers on the 15th of December 1161, pushed back hard against this cultural drift. He founded the Imperial Jurchen Academy, began offering imperial examinations in the Jurchen language, and had Chinese classics translated into Jurchen. He passed edicts barring Jurchens from taking Chinese names or wearing Chinese dress. In 1184-85, he spent a full year at the rebuilt Supreme Capital to honor the memory of his forefathers. His reign was remembered as a period of prosperity and relative peace, and the History of Jin compared him to the legendary rulers Yao and Shun.

• 8. The Mongol Horizon

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  The Jin had encountered the Mongols long before Genghis Khan. During the 1150s or 1160s, Jin forces captured Ambaghai Khan of the Taichiud Mongols after he was duped in a Tatar ruse. The Jin executed Ambaghai by nailing him to a wooden donkey and leaving him to die. Genghis Khan, whose own family lineage traced through relatives of Ambaghai, would not forget.

  Earlier, when the Jin under Xizong invested Khabul Khan with the title of assisting state ruler of the Mongols in 1146-47, the relationship had seemed manageable. Khabul once visited the Jin court and, in a drunken moment, tweaked the emperor's beard. The emperor initially let it pass, then reversed course and ordered Khabul captured. The Jin pursuers were ambushed and killed. The Jin settled the matter by sending gifts.

  Under Zhangzong, who ruled from 1189 to 1208, the storms converged. The 1194 Yellow River flood alone inundated vast regions and carved two new courses, displacing farmers and disrupting communication across Jin territory. Drought and locust plagues added pressure in the districts bordering the Song. The Jin financed punitive expeditions into Mongol territory even while managing the flood crisis, and began building large-scale fortifications along the northwestern border after 1192. To raise funds, the Jin government seized land from Han owners accused of tax evasion and redistributed it to Jurchens, deepening ethnic friction inside the empire.

  The Jin had briefly aided Toghrul and Temüjin against the Tatars in 1196 and rewarded them with titles. One of the officials who delivered those titles, a Khitan named Yelü Ahai, later defected to Temüjin in 1203 along with his brother Tuhua, taking Jin knowledge of border defenses with him. By 1206, the Song chancellor Han Tuozhou had begun actively encouraging raids into Jin territory, sensing weakness. In 1211, Genghis Khan invaded directly, and the dynasty that had once humiliated two Song emperors now faced an opponent it could neither appease with gifts nor outlast in the field.