The Jurchen named their dynasty the Jin ("Golden") after a river in their homeland - For more detailed treatment of dynastic history and administration, see Jin Dynasty. At first, the Jurchen tribesmen were kept in readiness for warfare but decades of settled lifestyle eroded their pastoral identity. Eventually intermarriage with Chinese was permitted and peace with the Southern Song confirmed. The Jin rulers themselves came to follow Confucian norms. After 1189, the Jin became involved on two fronts in exhausting wars with the Mongols and the Southern song. By 1215, under Mongol pressure, they were forced to move their capital south from Beijing to Kaifeng, where the Mongols extinguished the Jin dynasty in 1234.
The early Jurchen script was based on the Khitan script, which in turn was inspired by Chinese characters. However, because Chinese is an isolating language and the Jurchen and Khitan languages are agglutinative, the script proved to be cumbersome. The written Jurchen language died out soon after the fall of the Jin Dynasty though its spoken form survived. Until the end of the sixteenth century, when Manchu became the new literary language, the Jurchens used a combination of Mongolian and Chinese.
The cultural conceptualisation of Jurchen society owes a great deal to the Mongols. Both Mongols and Jurchens used the title han for the leaders of a political entity, whether "emperor" or "chief". A particularly powerful chief was called beile ("prince, nobleman"), corresponding with the Mongolian beki and Turkish beg or bey. Also like the Mongols and the Turks, the Jurchens did not observe a law of primogeniture. According to tradition, any capable son or nephew could be chosen to become leader.
During Ming times the Jurchen people lived in social units that were sub-clans (mukun or hala mukun) of ancient clans (hala). Members of Jurchen clans shared a consciousness of a common ancestor and were led by a head man (mukunda). Not all clan members were blood related and division and integration of different clans was common. Jurchen households (boo) lived as families (booigon), consisting of five to seven blood-related family members and a number of slaves. Households formed squads (tatan) to engage in tasks related to hunting and food gathering; and formed companies (niru) for larger activities, such as war.
The Yongle Emperor found allies among the various Jurchen tribes against the Mongols. He bestowed titles and surnames to various Jurchen chiefs and expected them to send periodic tribute. Chinese commanderies were established over tribal military units under their own hereditary tribal leaders. In the Yongle period alone 178 commanderies were set up in Manchuria, an index of the Chinese divide-and-rule tactics. Later on, horse markets were also established in the northern border towns of Liaodong for trade. The increasing sinification of the Jurchens ultimately gave them the organisation structures to extend their power beyond the steppe. Later, a Korean army led by Yi-Il,and Yi Sun-sin would expell them from Korea.
Over a period of thirty years from 1586, Nurhaci, a chieftain of the Jianzhou Jurchens, united the three Jurchen tribes, and renamed the united tribe Manchu. He created a formidable synthesis of nomadic institutions, providing the basis of the Manchu state and later the conquest of China by the Qing Dynasty.