The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Jurchens

(also Juchen, Jürched), tribes of Tungus origin that from ancient times inhabited the eastern part of Northeast China (Manchuria) and the Primor’e.

Until the tenth century, the Jurchens were independent and maintained ties with China and Korea. In the tenth and 11th centuries they were dependent on the Khitans. In the early 12th century the various Jurchen tribes were united by Akuta, who in 1114 led an uprising against the Khitans that resulted in the formation of the independent Chin state (1115–1234), which was eventually destroyed by the Mongol conquerors. Under the Mongols, the Jurchens once again split up into several tribal groups and until the 16th century played a minor role in the history of Eastern Asia.

At the end of the 16th century a tribal elder named Nurhachi emerged from the Chienchou Jurchens, whose designation is derived from the area they inhabited. Between 1583 and 1625 he managed to unite the Chienchou tribes and several other tribes, which were subsequently known as the Manchus.

REFERENCE

Vorob’ev, M. V. Chzhurchzheni i gosudarstvo Tszin’ (X v.–1234): Istoricheskii ocherk. Moscow, 1975.

Mentioned in

References in periodicals archive

In any case, the Chinese and their enemies (such as the Khitan, the Jurchens, and the Mongols) were using iron ammunition well before European even had guns.

Garbage In, Garbage Out: Challenges of Model Building in Global History, A Military Historical Perspective

The Chinese Song Empire planned with Din'ang and Jurchens a military campaign against Liao.

The historiography of Bohai in Russia

Three centuries earlier these peoples had organized a powerful state, eventually conquering North China where they ruled for the better part of a century before being overcome by the Mongol armies of Cinggis Qavan in 1234; the Tungusic groups that created the confederation that we know as the Jin [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] dynasty (1115-1234) are known to history as the Jurchens (Nuzhen [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in Chinese).

The Manchus and their language (presidential address)

Of the four major conqueror peoples examined, namely the Khitans, the Jurchens, the Mongols, and the Manchus, only the Mongols had their home base on the steppe.

Imperial China, 900-1800

The existence of a significant corpus of Mongolian loan words used to translate these terms, combined with the fact that some of them occur in Jurchen, suggests that among the northern border peoples there may have been a kind of tradition of Lunyu interpretation which began in the twelfth century with the reign of the Jurchens, and possibly even as early as the tenth century with the Khitans.

The Manchu exegesis of the 'Lunyu.'