The Manchus are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and Qing (1636–1912) dynasties of China were established and ruled by the Manchus, who are descended from the Jurchen people who earlier established the Jin dynasty (1115–1234) in northern China. Manchus form the largest branch of the Tungusic peoples and are distributed throughout China, forming the fourth largest ethnic group in the country. They are found in 31 Chinese provincial regions. Among them, Liaoning has the largest population and Hebei, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia and Beijing have over 100,000 Manchu residents. About half of the population live in Liaoning and one-fifth in Hebei. There are a number of Manchu autonomous counties in China, such as Xinbin, Xiuyan, Qinglong, Fengning, Yitong, Qingyuan, Weichang, Kuancheng, Benxi, Kuandian, Huanren, Fengcheng, Beizhen and over 300 Manchu towns and townships. Manchus are the largest minority group in China without an autonomous region.
Jurchen is a term used to collectively describe a number of East Asian Tungusic-speaking people. They lived in northeastern China, also known as Manchuria, before the 18th century. The Jurchens were renamed Manchus in 1635 by Hong Taiji. Different Jurchen groups lived as hunter-gatherers, pastoralist semi-nomads, or sedentary agriculturists. Generally lacking a central authority, and having little communication with each other, many Jurchen groups fell under the influence of neighbouring dynasties, their chiefs paying tribute and holding nominal posts as effectively hereditary commanders of border guards.
The Changbai Mountains are a major mountain range in East Asia that extends from the Northeast Chinese provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning, across the China-North Korea border, to the North Korean provinces of Ryanggang and Chagang. They are also referred to as the Šanggiyan Mountains in the Manchu language, or the Great Paekdu in Korean. Most of its peaks exceed 2,000 m (6,600 ft) in height, with the tallest summit being Paektu Mountain at 2,744 m (9,003 ft), which contains the Heaven Lake, the highest volcanic crater lake in the world at an surface elevation of 2,189.1 m (7,182 ft). The protected area Longwanqun National Forest Park is located within the vicinity of the mountain range.
The Eight Banners were administrative and military divisions under the Later Jin and Qing dynasties of China into which all Manchu households were placed. In war, the Eight Banners functioned as armies, but the banner system was also the basic organizational framework of all of Manchu society. Created in the early 17th century by Nurhaci, the banner armies played an instrumental role in his unification of the fragmented Jurchen people and in the Qing dynasty's conquest of the Ming dynasty.
Hong Taiji, also rendered as Huang Taiji and sometimes referred to as Abahai in Western literature, also known by his temple name as the Emperor Taizong of Qing, was the second khan of the Later Jin dynasty and the founding emperor of the Qing dynasty. He was responsible for consolidating the empire that his father Nurhaci had founded and laid the groundwork for the conquest of the Ming dynasty, although he died before this was accomplished. He was also responsible for changing the name of the Jurchens to "Manchu" in 1635, and changing the name of his dynasty from "Great Jin" to "Great Qing" in 1636.
The House of Aisin-Gioro is a Manchu clan that ruled the Later Jin dynasty (1616–1636), the Qing dynasty (1636–1912), and Manchukuo (1932–1945) in the history of China. Under the Ming dynasty, members of the Aisin Gioro clan served as chiefs of the Jianzhou Jurchens, one of the three major Jurchen tribes at this time. Qing bannermen passed through the gates of the Great Wall in 1644, and eventually conquered the short-lived Shun dynasty, Xi dynasty and Southern Ming dynasty. After gaining total control of China proper, the Qing dynasty later expanded into other adjacent regions, including Xinjiang, Tibet, Outer Mongolia, and Taiwan. The dynasty reached its zenith during the High Qing era and under the Qianlong Emperor, who reigned from 1735 to 1796. This reign was followed by a century of gradual decline.
Jiu Manzhou Dang is a set of Manchu archives stored at the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan. It is the sourcebook of Manwen Laodang and a primary source of early Manchu history. It is often called yuandang.
The Jianzhou Jurchens were one of the three major groups of Jurchens as identified by the Ming dynasty. Although the geographic location of the Jianzhou Jurchens changed throughout history, during the 14th century they were located south of the Wild Jurchens and the Haixi Jurchens, and inhabited modern-day Liaoning and Jilin provinces in China. The Jianzhou Jurchens were known to possess an abundant supply of natural resources. They also possessed industrial secrets, particularly in processing ginseng and the dyeing of cloth. They were powerful due to their proximity to Ming trading towns such as Fushun, Kaiyuan, and Tieling in Liaodong, and to Manpojin camp near Korea.
The Mohe, Malgal, Mogher, or Mojie were historical groups of people that once occupied parts of what is now Northeast Asia during late antiquity. The two most well known Mohe groups were known as the Heishui Mohe, located along the Amur River, and the Sumo Mohe, named after the Songhua River. They have been traditionally defined by the approximate use of what would have been Tungusic languages. The Heishui Mohe are commonly thought as being direct ancestors to the 12th century Jurchens. The Tang documented the Mohe as inhabiting the land of Sushen, to the northeast of the Tang, east of the Turks, and north of Goguryeo.
Hūlun was a powerful alliance of Jurchen tribes in the late 16th century, based primarily in modern Jilin province of China.
Hanpu, later Wanyan Hanpu, was a leader of the Jurchen Wanyan clan in the early tenth century. According to the ancestral story of the Wanyan clan, Hanpu came from Goryeo when he was sixty years old, reformed Jurchen customary law, and then married a sixty-year-old local woman who bore him three children. His descendants eventually united Jurchen tribes into a federation and established the Jin dynasty in 1115. Hanpu was retrospectively given the temple name Shizu (始祖) and the posthumous name Emperor Yixian Jingyuan (懿憲景元皇帝) by the Jin dynasty.
Nurhaci, also known by his temple name as the Emperor Taizu of Qing, was the founding khan of the Jurchen-led Later Jin dynasty.
Jin Qicong or Aisin-Gioro Qicong was a Chinese historian and linguist of Manchu ethnicity who is known for his studies of the Manchu and Jurchen languages. His works include the first modern dictionary of Jurchen (1984), various books about the Manchu people, and editions of the poetry of his great-great-grandfather Aisin-Gioro Yihui (1799–1838) and his wife Gu Taiqing.
The History of Jin is a Chinese historical text, one of the Twenty Four Histories, which details the history of the Jin dynasty founded by the Jurchens in northern China. It was compiled by the Yuan dynasty historian and minister Toqto'a.
Shamanism was the dominant religion of the Jurchen people of northeast Asia and of their descendants, the Manchu people. As early as the Jin dynasty (1115–1234), the Jurchens conducted shamanic ceremonies at shrines called tangse. There were two kinds of shamans: those who entered in a trance and let themselves be possessed by the spirits, and those who conducted regular sacrifices to heaven, to a clan's ancestors, or to the clan's protective spirits.
Identity in China was strongly dependent on the Eight Banner system during the Manchu-led Qing dynasty (1644–1912). China consisted of multiple ethnic groups, of which the Han, Mongols and Manchus participated in the banner system. Identity, however, was defined much more by culture, language and participation in the military until the Qianlong Emperor resurrected the ethnic classifications.
Bukūri Yongšon was a legendary ancestor of the future emperors of the Qing dynasty.
The Balhae controversies involve disputes between China, Korea, Japan, and Russia, countries that have conducted studies on the historical state of Balhae. The Korean perspective generally considers Balhae to be the successor state of Goguryeo and part of the Northern and Southern States period of Korean history, while Chinese scholars generally consider Balhae to be a state of the Mohe people, a Tungusic ethnic group, and subordinate to the Tang dynasty (618––907). In Russian historiography, Balhae is recognized as the first highly organized independent state formation of the Tungus-Manchurian peoples.
The Jurchen unification were a series of events in the late 16th and early 17th centuries that led to the unification of the Jurchen tribes under the Jianzhou Jurchen leader Nurhaci. While Nurhaci was originally a vassal of the Ming dynasty who considered himself a local representative of imperial Ming power, he also had a somewhat antagonistic relationship with the Ming due to Ming's involvement in events early on in his life that led to the death of his father and grandfather combined with his own increasing ambition.
Dong Gao, courtesy name Zhelin (蔗林), was a Chinese politician, scholar, painter and calligrapher of the Qing dynasty.
