Jurchen people

The Jurchens were Tungusic-speaking peoples of Manchuria, the land now divided between north-eastern China and the Russian Far East. Never a single nation for long, they twice founded dynasties that ruled much of China: the Jin of 1115–1234 and, as the Manchus, the Qing of 1636–1912. In 1635 their leader Hong Taiji renamed them Manchus, and their descendants live on as the Manchu people of China today.

The Jurchens first appear in Chinese records in 748, living in the forests and river valleys of today's Heilongjiang and Primorsky Krai. Earlier peoples of the same region, such as the Mohe, are often seen as their ancestors, and some Mohe groups were subjects of the kingdom of Balhae, though the line of descent is not certain. Jurchen tradition traced the ruling Wanyan clan to a founder named Hanpu who arrived from Goryeo or Balhae; historians generally treat this as an ancestral legend that may preserve memories of real migrations.

By the eleventh century the Jurchens were vassals of the Khitan Liao dynasty, while groups near the Yalu River also sent tribute to Goryeo, switching sides as it suited them. Under the Wanyan chiefs, especially Wuyashu (r. 1103–1113), the tribes drew together. Goryeo sent a large army in 1107 and built nine fortresses on the frontier, but soon handed them back under constant Jurchen pressure.

In 1115 Wuyashu's brother Aguda declared himself emperor, founding the Jin dynasty, whose name means "gold". The Jin overthrew the Liao in 1125 and took the Song capital, Kaifeng, in 1127, driving the Song south until the border settled on the Huai River. A Jurchen script, based on the Khitan one, was created in 1120. From the late twelfth century the Jin fought the rising Mongols, moved their capital south to Kaifeng in 1215, and fell in 1234.

After the Mongol period, Ming officials sorted the Jurchens into three groups: the Jianzhou near the Changbai Mountains and Liaodong, the Haixi along the Songhua River, and the so-called Wild Jurchens of the far north. The Ming dynasty sought Jurchen allies against the Mongols, gave their chiefs titles and expected regular tribute; in the reign of the Yongle Emperor alone, 178 commanderies under hereditary Jurchen leaders were set up in Manchuria. In 1444 the Jurchens told the Ming that none of them could still read the Jurchen script, so they wrote in Mongolian instead.

Most Jurchens were settled farmers who grew millet and other grains and raised pigs, oxen and horses, while the northern groups lived mainly by hunting and fishing. Like the Mongols, they prized horsemanship and archery, and leadership passed to any capable son or nephew rather than strictly to the eldest. Fortified villages were ruled by hereditary chiefs called beile. Their religion centred on shamans and a sky goddess, and under the Jin many became Buddhists. Graves found in Primorye in 2012 suggest they cremated their dead.

From 1586 Nurhaci, a Jianzhou chief, spent some thirty years uniting the Jurchen tribes, organising them into the Eight Banners and founding the Later Jin. His son Hong Taiji renamed the people Manchus in 1635, partly to break with their past as Ming vassals, and in 1636 founded the Qing dynasty. Several northern groups once lumped in with the "Wild Jurchens", such as the Nanai, Negidai and Oroqen, are now regarded as separate peoples. The Manchus today are an officially recognised minority in China, with a registered population of over ten million, a figure inflated because Han Chinese members of the Banner system may also register as Manchu.

Our 1492 and 1500 maps show a territory labelled "Jurchen tribes" across Manchuria and the lower Amur, an approximate outline for loosely organised peoples under nominal Ming overlordship. It lies north of Ming China and east of the Mongol lands of the Northern Yuan.