The Jin dynasty or the Jin Empire (; Chinese: 晉朝; pinyin: Jìn Cháo, sometimes distinguished as the Sima Jin or Liang Jin was a Chinese dynasty traditionally dated from 266 to 420. It was founded by Sima Yan, son of Sima Zhao, who himself was made the King of Jin and posthumously declared one of the founders of the dynasty, along with his older brother, Sima Shi, and father, Sima Yi. It followed the Three Kingdoms period, which ended with the conquest of Eastern Wu by Jin, culminating in the reunification of China.
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 invasion 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 Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (907-979) was an era of political upheaval in 10th-century Imperial China. Five states quickly succeeded one another in the Central Plain, and more than a dozen concurrent states were established elsewhere, mainly in South China. It was the last prolonged period of multiple political division in Chinese imperial history.
The Northern and Southern dynasties was a period in the history of China that lasted from 386 to 589, following the tumultuous era of the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Wu Hu states. It is sometimes considered as the latter part of a longer period known as the Six Dynasties. Though an age of civil war and political chaos, it was also a time of flourishing arts and culture, advancement in technology, and the spread of Mahayana Buddhism and Daoism. The period saw large-scale migration of Han Chinese to the lands south of the Yangtze. The period came to an end with the unification of all of China proper by Emperor Wen of the Sui Dynasty.
There are traditionally four historical capitals of China, collectively referred to as the "Four Great Ancient Capitals of China". The four are Beijing, Nanjing, Luoyang and Xi'an (Chang'an).
Luoyang is a city located in the confluence area of Luo River and Yellow River in the west of Henan province. Governed as a prefecture-level city, it borders the provincial capital of Zhengzhou to the east, Pingdingshan to the southeast, Nanyang to the south, Sanmenxia to the west, Jiyuan to the north, and Jiaozuo to the northeast. As of the final 2010 census, Luoyang had a population of 6,549,941 inhabitants with 1,857,003 people living in the built-up area made of the city's five urban districts, all of which except the Jili District are not urbanized yet.
Zhao is a Chinese surname, ranking as the 7th most common surname in Mainland China and carried mainly by people of Mandarin-speaking regions. Zhao is the 1st surname in the famous Hundred Family Surnames – the traditional list of all Chinese surnames – because it was the emperor's surname of the Song Dynasty (960–1279) when the list was compiled.
The Zizhi Tongjian is a pioneering reference work in Chinese historiography, published in 1084 in the form of a chronicle. In 1065 AD, Emperor Yingzong of Song ordered the great historian Sima Guang to lead with other scholars such as his chief assistants Liu Shu, Liu Ban and Fan Zuyu, the compilation of a universal history of China. The task took 19 years to be completed, and, in 1084 AD, it was presented to his successor Emperor Shenzong of Song. The Zizhi Tongjian records Chinese history from 403 BC to 959 AD, covering 16 dynasties and spanning across almost 1,400 years, and contains 294 volumes (卷) and about 3 million Chinese characters.
Emperor Wu of Jin, personal name Sima Yan, courtesy name Anshi (安世), was the grandson of Sima Yi and son of Sima Zhao. He became the first emperor of the Jin dynasty after forcing Cao Huan, last ruler of the state of Cao Wei, to abdicate to him. He reigned from 266 to 290, and after conquering the state of Eastern Wu in 280, was the emperor of a unified China. Emperor Wu was known for his extravagance and sensuality, especially after the unification of China; legends boasted of his incredible potency among ten thousand concubines.
Sima is a Chinese family name. It is one of the rare two-character Chinese family names; most Chinese family names consist of only a single character. It is an occupation name, literally meaning "control" (sī) "horses" (mǎ); in a similar way as the surname Marshall is derived from the Frankish: "mare" (horse) + "skalkoz" (master). The family name originated from one of the offices of the Three Excellencies of the Zhou dynasty. The name has also been anglicised as "Szema".
Yue Fei, courtesy name Pengju, was a Han Chinese military general who lived during the Southern Song dynasty. His ancestral home was in Xiaoti, Yonghe Village, Tangyin, Xiangzhou, Henan. He is best known for leading Southern Song forces in the wars in the 12th century between Southern Song and the Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty in northern China before being put to death by the Southern Song government in 1142. He was granted the posthumous name Wumu (武穆) by Emperor Xiaozong in 1169, and later granted the posthumous title King of È (鄂王) by Emperor Ningzong in 1211. Widely seen as a patriot and national folk hero in China, since his death Yue Fei has evolved into a standard epitome of loyalty in Chinese culture.
The Book of the Later Han, also known as the History of the Later Han and by its Chinese name Hou Hanshu, is one of the Twenty-Four Histories and covers the history of the Han dynasty from 6 to 189 CE, a period known as the Later or Eastern Han. The book was compiled by Fan Ye and others in the 5th century during the Liu Song dynasty, using a number of earlier histories and documents as sources.
Wang Dao, courtesy name Maohong (茂弘), formally Duke Wenxian of Shixing (始興文獻公), was a Jin Dynasty (265-420) statesman who played an important role in the administrations of Emperor Yuan, Emperor Ming, and Emperor Cheng, including as Emperor Cheng's regent. In these capacities, he served as a crucial governing figure of the Eastern Jin Dynasty during its first decades. His governance style was to be lenient with the laws, and he handed out few punishments—which stabilized the Jin regime greatly, but which also led to extensive, if moderate, corruption and incompetence in the Jin regime, making it difficult for Jin armies to recapture northern China.
The Song dynasty of China was a ruling dynasty that controlled China proper and southern China from the middle of the 10th century into the last quarter of the 13th century. The dynasty was established by Emperor Taizu of Song with his usurpation of the throne of Later Zhou, ending the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period.
The Sixteen Kingdoms, less commonly the Sixteen States, was a chaotic period in Chinese history from AD 304 to 439, when the political order of northern China fractured into a series of short-lived sovereign states, most of which were founded by the "Five Barbarians," ethnic minority peoples who had settled in northern China during the preceding centuries and participated in the overthrow of the Western Jin dynasty in the early 4th century. The kingdoms founded by ethnic Xiongnu, Xianbei, Di, Jie, Qiang, as well as Han Chinese and other ethnicities, fought against each other and the Eastern Jin dynasty, which succeeded the Western Jin and ruled southern China. The period ended with the unification of northern China in the early 5th century by the Northern Wei, a dynasty that evolved from a kingdom founded by ethnic Xianbei.
The History of Song or Song Shi is one of the official Chinese historical works known as the Twenty-Four Histories of China that records the history of the Song dynasty (960–1279). It was commissioned in 1343 and compiled under the direction of First Minister Toqto'a and Prime Minister Alutu (阿鲁图/阿魯圖) during the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) at the same time as the History of Liao and the History of Jin. Running to a total of 496 chapters, the History of Song includes biographies of the Song Emperors along with contemporary records and biographical sketches of Song dynasty politicians, soldiers and philosophers.
"Beijing" is the atonal pinyin romanisation of the Mandarin pronunciation of the Chinese characters 北京, the Chinese name of the capital of the People's Republic of China.
Song Wo, also known as Song Yanwo, was a military officer and general who successively served the Later Jin, Later Han, Later Zhou, and Song dynasties. He was a grandson of Later Tang's founding emperor Li Cunxu, a son-in-law of Later Han's founding emperor Liu Zhiyuan, and the father-in-law of Song dynasty's founding emperor Zhao Kuangyin.
Wangcheng may refer to the following places in China:
