Jurchen people

The Khitan language had similarities to both Turkic and Mongolic languages.

The Tungusic people were mostly in the eastern part of Siberia, but the largest speakers in this linguistic group were the Manchus and their predecessors, the Jurchens.

These all comprised the Altaic language group, Mongol, Turkic, and Tungusic.

They were quite different, but not so different that one couldn't easily learn the other's language.

It's full.

It actually has maritime trade, which is kind of unique in chinese history because they're not big fans of boats a lot of you will know about the treasure fleet that they go and send off and kind of disappears and then they're like we're never doing this boat stuff again also because it's something that happens in kublai khan's reign um but yeah the song have this very very built-up bureaucracy the jinn in the north are sort of flipped instead of having confucian bureaucrats be in charge of everything, you have the sort of military aristocracy of a group of people called the Jurchen.

Now, Jurchen aren't Han, what the Chinese will claim is the native Chinese people, just a whole other debate.

But they're ruling in a more militaristic style, and they've sort of abandoned the civil service exam, which during the reigns of the Khans has been around for decades.

a thousand years roughly.

And the concept of it is everyone, if you want to work in government, you take this exam.

And if you score well enough relative to everyone else, you get to work in the government.

The Jurchen up north just don't do that.

He was, as ever, aware of the possibility of an intervention by the Jin, who might think to use this opportunity to bloody the Mongols' nose through an 11th hour alliance with Xisha.

Therefore, he had additional units along the northern border placed to cut off any potential Jurchen reinforcement from advancing against him.

His strategy would be much as it had been in both northern China and, more recently, in Khwarazm, devastate the farmlands and cut the people off from their food supply.

A cold start to a campaign was usually taken as a fortuitous sign for Mongol war parties, but this was a particularly brutal winter.

Genghis' Mongol nation received its first major influx of such southern delights from the Uyghur tradesmen that made their way from the borders of the Taklamakan Desert far to the southwest.

The Uyghurs had, since the 1130s, been a vassal people of the Qara Khitan, a remnant of the old Khitan Liao dynasty founded by Yelü Dashi, who had fled to the west evading the Jurchen conquest of Manchuria in the 1120s.

The name Qara Khitan is most commonly understood as meaning the Black Khitans, which both fits with their dynastic color as well as their favored classical element, metal.

Fittingly, Qara Khitan is known in Chinese sources as the Western Liao Dynasty.

No, they would have to bring that endlessly rich lifestream of wealth to them, by force if necessary.

Until this point, virtually no one outside of the steppes had taken any note of the goings-on therein, of this Mongol band that had stitched the region together so suddenly, or of its charismatic, if aging, leader known as Genghis.

No one but the Jurchen Jin Empire cared what nomadic barbarian killed another and crowned himself king of the wastes.

And even then, the Jin only cared just far enough to ensure that they would ultimately tip the balance in their favor.