The Jin dynasty , officially known as the Great Jin, lasted from 1115 to 1234 as one
of the last dynasties in Chinese history to predate the Mongol conquest of China. Its
name is sometimes written as Kin, Jurchen Jin or Jinn in English to differentiate it
from an earlier Jìn dynasty of China whose name is identical when transcribed without
tone marker diacritics in the Hanyu Pinyin system for Standard Chinese. It is also sometimes
called the "Jurchen dynasty" or the "Jurchen Jin", because its founding leader Aguda was
of Wanyan Jurchen descent.
The Jin emerged from Taizu's rebellion against the Liao dynasty , which held sway over northern
China until the nascent Jin drove the Liao to the Western Regions, where they became
known as the Western Liao. After vanquishing the Liao, the Jin launched a century-long
campaign against the Han-led Song dynasty , which was based in southern China. Over
the course of their rule, the Jurchens of Jin quickly adapted to Chinese customs, and
even fortified the Great Wall against the rising Mongols. Domestically, the Jin oversaw
a number of cultural advancements, such as the revival of Confucianism.
After spending centuries as vassals of the Jin, the Mongols invaded under Genghis Khan
in 1211 and inflicted catastrophic defeats on the Jin armies. After numerous defeats,
revolts, defections, and coups, they succumbed to Mongol conquest 23 years later in 1234.
History Origin
By the 11th century, the Jurchens had become vassals of the Khitan rulers of the Liao dynasty.
The Jurchens in the Yalu River region had been tributaries of Goryeo since the reign
of Wang Geon, who called upon them during the wars of the Later Three Kingdoms period,
but the Jurchens switched allegiance between Liao and Goryeo multiple times out of expedience.
They offered tribute to both courts out of political necessity and the attraction of
material benefits.
One of the causes of the Jurchen rebellion and the fall of the Liao was the custom of
raping married Jurchen women and Jurchen girls by Khitan envoys, which caused resentment
from the Jurchens. The custom of having sex with unmarried girls by Khitan was itself
not a problem, since the Jurchens were treated to guest prostitutes by their Jurchen hosts.
The practice of guest prostitution – giving female companions, food and shelter to guests
– was common among Jurchens. Unmarried daughters of Jurchen families of lower and middle classes
in Jurchen villages were provided to Khitan messengers for sex, as recorded by Hong Hao.
Song envoys among the Jin were similarly entertained by singing girls in Guide, Henan. There is
no evidence that guest prostitution of unmarried Jurchen girls to Khitan men was resented by
the Jurchens. It was only when the Khitans forced aristocratic Jurchen families to give
up their beautiful wives as guest prostitutes to Khitan messengers that the Jurchens became
resentful. This suggests that in Jurchen upper classes, only a husband had the right to his
married wife while among lower class Jurchens, the virginity of unmarried girls and sex with
Khitan men did not impede their ability to marry later.
Wanyan Aguda The Jin dynasty was created in modern Jilin
and Heilongjiang by the Jurchen tribal chieftain Aguda in 1115. According to tradition, Aguda
was a descendant of Hanpu. Aguda adopted the term for "gold" as the name of his state,
itself a translation of "Anchuhu" River, which meant "golden" in Jurchen. This river known
as Alachuke in Chinese, was a tributary of the Songhua River east of Harbin. The Jurchens'
early rulers were the Khitan-led Liao dynasty, which had held sway over modern north and
northeast China and the Mongolian Plateau, for several centuries. Song princesses committed
suicide to avoid rape or were killed for resisting rape by the Jin. In 1121, the Jurchens entered
into the Alliance Conducted at Sea with the Han-led Northern Song dynasty and agreed to
jointly invade the Liao dynasty. While the Song armies faltered, the Jurchens succeeded
in driving the Liao to Central Asia. In 1125, after the death of Aguda, the Jin dynasty
broke its alliance with the Song dynasty and invaded north China. When the Song dynasty
reclaimed the Han-populated Sixteen Prefectures, they were "fiercely resisted" by the Han Chinese
population there who had previously been under Liao rule, while when the Jurchens invaded
that area, the Han Chinese did not oppose them at all and handed over the Southern Capital
to them. The Jurchens were supported by the anti-Song, Beijing-based noble Han clans.
The Han Chinese who worked for the Liao were viewed as hostile enemies by the Song dynasty.
Song Han Chinese also defected to the Jin. One crucial mistake that the Song made during
this joint attack was the removal of the defensive forest it originally built along the Song-Liao
border. Because of the removal of this landscape barrier, in 1126/27, the Jin army marched
quickly across the North China Plain to Bianjing . On 9 January 1127, the Jurchens ransacked
Kaifeng, the capital of the Northern Song dynasty, capturing both Emperor Qinzong and
his father, Emperor Huizong, who had abdicated in panic in the face of the Jin invasion.
Following the fall of Bianjing, the succeeding Southern Song dynasty continued to fight the
Jin dynasty for over a decade, eventually signing the Treaty of Shaoxing in 1141, which
called for the cession of all Song territories north of the Huai River to the Jin dynasty
and the execution of Song general Yue Fei in return for peace. The peace treaty was
formally ratified on 11 October 1142 when a Jin envoy visited the Song court.
Having conquered Kaifeng and occupied North China, the Jin later deliberately chose earth
as its dynastic element and yellow as its royal color. According to the theory of the
Five Elements , the earth element follows the fire, the dynastic element of the Song,
in the sequence of elemental creation. Therefore, this ideological move shows that the Jin regarded
the Song reign of China was officially over and themselves as the rightful ruler of China
Proper.
Migration south After taking over Northern China, the Jin
dynasty became increasingly sinicised. About three million people, half of them Jurchens,
migrated south into northern China over two decades, and this minority governed about
30 million people. The Jurchens were given land grants and organised into hereditary
military units: 300 households formed a mouke and 7–10 moukes formed a meng-an . Many
married Han Chinese, although the ban on Jurchen nobles marrying Han Chinese was not lifted
until 1191. After Emperor Taizong died in 1135, the next three Jin emperors were grandsons
of Aguda by three different princes. Emperor Xizong studied the classics and wrote Chinese
poetry. He adopted Han Chinese cultural traditions, but the Jurchen nobles had the top positions.
Later in life, Emperor Xizong became an alcoholic and executed many officials for criticising
him. He also had Jurchen leaders who opposed him murdered, even those in the Wanyan clan.
In 1149 he was murdered by a cabal of relatives and nobles, who made his cousin Wanyan Liang
the next Jin emperor. Because of the brutality of both his domestic and foreign policy, Wanyan
Liang was posthumously demoted from the position of emperor. Consequently, historians have
commonly referred to him by the posthumous name "Prince of Hailing".
Rebellions in the north Having usurped the throne, Wanyan Liang embarked
on the program of legitimising his rule as an emperor of China. In 1153, he moved the
empire's main capital from Huining Prefecture to the former Liao capital, Yanjing . Four
years later, in 1157, to emphasise the permanence of the move, he razed the nobles' residences
in Huining Prefecture. Wanyan Liang also reconstructed the former Song capital, Bianjing , which
had been sacked in 1127, making it the Jin's southern capital.
Wanyan Liang also tried to suppress dissent by killing Jurchen nobles, executing 155 princes.
To fulfil his dream of becoming the ruler of all China, Wanyan Liang attacked the Southern
Song dynasty in 1161. Meanwhile, two simultaneous rebellions erupted in Shangjing, at the Jurchens'
former power base: led by Wanyan Liang's cousin, soon-to-be crowned Wanyan Yong, and the other
of Khitan tribesmen. Wanyan Liang had to withdraw Jin troops from southern China to quell the
uprisings. The Jin forces were defeated by Song forces in the Battle of Caishi and Battle
of Tangdao. With a depleted military force, Wanyan Liang failed to make headway in his
attempted invasion of the Southern Song dynasty. Finally he was assassinated by his own generals
in December 1161, due to his defeats. His son and heir was also assassinated in the
capital.
Although crowned in October, Wanyan Yong was not officially recognised as emperor until
the murder of Wanyan Liang's heir. The Khitan uprising was not suppressed until 1164; their
horses were confiscated so that the rebels had to take up farming. Other Khitan and Xi
cavalry units had been incorporated into the Jin army. Because these internal uprisings
had severely weakened the Jin's capacity to confront the Southern Song militarily, the
Jin court under Emperor Shizong began negotiating for peace. The Treaty of Longxing was signed
in 1164 and ushered in more than 40 years of peace between the two empires.
In the early 1180s, Emperor Shizong instituted a restructuring of 200 meng'an units to remove
tax abuses and help Jurchens. Communal farming was encouraged. The Jin Empire prospered and
had a large surplus of grain in reserve. Although learned in Chinese classics, Emperor Shizong
was also known as a promoter of Jurchen language and culture; during his reign, a number of
Chinese classics were translated into Jurchen, the Imperial Jurchen Academy was founded,
and the imperial examinations started to be offered in the Jurchen language. Emperor Shizong's
reign was remembered by the posterity as the time of comparative peace and prosperity,
and the emperor himself was compared to the mythological rulers Yao and Shun. Poor Jurchen
families in the southern Routes Battalion and Company households tried to live the lifestyle
of wealthy Jurchen families and avoid doing farming work by selling their own Jurchen
daughters into slavery and renting their land to Han tenants. The Wealthy Jurchens feasted
and drank and wore damask and silk. The History of Jin says that Emperor Shizong of Jin took
note and attempted to halt these things in 1181.
Emperor Shizong's grandson, Emperor Zhangzong , venerated Jurchen values, but he also immersed
himself in Han Chinese culture and married an ethnic Han Chinese woman. The Taihe Code
of law was promulgated in 1201 and was based mostly on the Tang Code. In 1207, the Southern
Song dynasty attempted an invasion, but the Jin forces effectively repulsed them. In the
peace agreement, the Song dynasty had to pay higher annual indemnities and behead Han Tuozhou,
the leader of the hawkish faction in the Song imperial court.
Fall of Jin Starting from the early 13th century, the
Jin dynasty began to feel the pressure of Mongols from the north. Genghis Khan first
led the Mongols into Western Xia territory in 1205 and ravaged it four years later. In
1211 about 50,000 Mongol horsemen invaded the Jin Empire and began absorbing Khitan
and Jurchen rebels. The Jin had a large army with 150,000 cavalry but abandoned the "western
capital" Datong . The next year the Mongols went north and looted the Jin "eastern capital",
and in 1213 they besieged the "central capital", Zhongdu . In 1214 the Jin made a humiliating
treaty but retained the capital. That summer, Emperor Xuanzong abandoned the central capital
and moved the government to the "southern capital" Kaifeng, making it the official seat
of the Jin dynasty's power.
In 1216, a hawkish faction in the Jin imperial court persuaded Emperor Xuanzong to attack
the Song dynasty, but in 1219 they were defeated at the same place by the Yangtze River where
Wanyan Liang had been defeated in 1161. The Jin dynasty now faced a two front war that
they could not afford. Furthermore, Emperor Aizong won a succession struggle against his
brother and then quickly ended the war and went back to the capital. He made peace with
the Tanguts of Western Xia, who had been allied with the Mongols.
The Jurchen Jin emperor Wanyan Yongji's daughter, Jurchen Princess Qiguo was married to Mongol
leader Genghis Khan in exchange for relieving the Mongol siege upon Zhongdu in the Mongol
conquest of the Jin dynasty.
Many Han Chinese and Khitans defected to the Mongols to fight against the Jin dynasty.
Two Han Chinese leaders, Shi Tianze and Liu Heima , and the Khitan Xiao Zhala defected
and commanded the three tumens in the Mongol army. Liu Heima and Shi Tianze served Genghis
Khan's successor, Ögedei Khan. Liu Heima and Shi Tianxiang led armies against Western
Xia for the Mongols. There were four Han tumens and three Khitan tumens, with each tumen consisting
of 10,000 troops. The three Khitan generals Shimo Beidi'er , Tabuyir , and Xiao Zhongxi
commanded the three Khitan tumens and the four Han generals Zhang Rou , Yan Shi , Shi
Tianze and Liu Heima commanded the four Han tumens under Ögedei Khan.
Shi Tianze was a Han Chinese who lived under Jin rule. Inter-ethnic marriage between Han
Chinese and Jurchens became common at this time. His father was Shi Bingzhi . Shi Bingzhi
married a Jurchen woman and a Han Chinese woman ; it is unknown which of them was Shi
Tianze's mother. Shi Tianze was married to two Jurchen women, a Han Chinese woman, and
a Korean woman, and his son Shi Gang was born to one of his Jurchen wives. His Jurchen wives'
surnames were Monian and Nahe, his Korean wife's surname was Li, and his Han Chinese
wife's surname was Shi. Shi Tianze defected to the Mongol forces upon their invasion of
the Jin dynasty. His son, Shi Gang, married a Keraite woman; the Keraites were Mongolified
Turkic people and considered as part of the "Mongol nation". Shi Tianze, Zhang Rou, Yan
Shi and other Han Chinese who served in the Jin dynasty and defected to the Mongols helped
build the structure for the administration of the new Mongol state.
The Mongols created a "Han Army" out of defected Jin troops, and another army out of defected
Song troops called the "Newly Submitted Army" .
Genghis Khan died in 1227 while his armies were attacking Western Xia. His successor,
Ögedei Khan, invaded the Jin dynasty again in 1232 with assistance from the Southern
Song dynasty. The Jurchens tried to resist; but when the Mongols besieged Kaifeng in 1233,
Emperor Aizong fled south to the city of Caizhou. A Song–Mongol allied army surrounded the
capital, and the next year Emperor Aizong committed suicide by hanging himself to avoid
being captured in the Mongols besieged Caizhou, ending the Jin dynasty in 1234. The territory
of the Jin dynasty was to be divided between the Mongols and the Song dynasty. However,
due to lingering territorial disputes, the Song dynasty and the Mongols eventually went
to war with one another over these territories.
In Empire of The Steppes, René Grousset reports that the Mongols were always amazed at the
valour of the Jurchen warriors, who held out until seven years after the death of Genghis
Khan.