After conquering the Liao territory, the Jin launched a century-long campaign against the Song dynasty (960–1279) based in southern China, whose rulers were ethnically Han Chinese.

Over the course of the Jin's rule, their emperors adapted to Han customs and even fortified the Great Wall against the ascendant Mongol Empire.

[5] Furthermore, the Jin emperors referred to their state as China, Zhongguo (中國) (“Middle Kingdom”), just as some other non-Han dynasties.

The Mohe were a primarily sedentary people who practiced hunting, pig farming, and grew crops such as soybean, wheat, millet, and rice.

From the Heishui Mohe emerged the Jurchens in the forested mountain areas of eastern Manchuria and Russia's Primorsky Krai.

[12] The Wuguo (五國) ("Five Nations") federation that existed to the northeast of modern Jilin are also considered to be ancestors of the Jurchens.

The Jurchens were mentioned in historical records for the first time in the 10th century as tribute bearers to the Liao, Later Tang, and Song courts.

Leveraging the Jurchens' desire for independence from the Khitans, chief Wugunai (1021–1074) of the Wanyan clan rose to prominence, dominating all of eastern Manchuria from Mount Changbai to the Wuguo tribes.

Aguda adopted the term for "gold" as the name of his state, itself a translation of "Anchuhu" River, which meant "golden" in Jurchen.

When the Song dynasty reclaimed the Han-populated Sixteen Prefectures, they were "fiercely resisted" by the Han Chinese population there who had previously been under Liao rule, while when the Jurchens invaded that area, the Han Chinese did not oppose them at all and handed over the Southern Capital (present-day Beijing, then known as Yanjing) to them.

[20] One crucial mistake that the Song made during this joint attack was the removal of the defensive forest it originally built along the Song-Liao border.

Because of the removal of this landscape barrier, in 1126/27, the Jin army marched quickly across the North China Plain to Bianjing (present-day Kaifeng).

[22] Having conquered Kaifeng and occupied northern China, the Jin later deliberately chose earth as its dynastic element and yellow as its royal color.

Over the span of twenty years, the new Jurchen ruling class constituted around half of a larger pattern of migration southward into northern China.

With a depleted military force, Wanyan Liang failed to make headway in his attempted invasion of the Southern Song dynasty.

In the early 1180s, Emperor Shizong instituted a restructuring of 200 meng'an units to remove tax abuses and help Jurchens.

Furthermore, Emperor Aizong won a succession struggle against his brother and then quickly ended the war and went back to the capital.

Two Han Chinese leaders, Shi Tianze and Liu Heima [zh],[31] and the Khitan Xiao Zhala defected and commanded the three tumens in the Mongol army.

The Jurchens tried to resist; but when the Mongols besieged Kaifeng in 1233, Emperor Aizong fled south to the city of Caizhou.

A Song–Mongol allied army surrounded the capital, and the next year Emperor Aizong committed suicide by hanging himself to avoid being captured in the Mongols besieged Caizhou, ending the Jin dynasty in 1234.

The Shuo Fu (說郛) records that the Jurchen tribes were not ruled by central authority and locally elected their chieftains.

[44] Tribal customs were retained after Aguda united the Jurchen tribes and formed the Jin dynasty, coexisting alongside more centralised institutions.

[47] The Jin had to overcome the difficulties of controlling a multicultural empire composed of territories once ruled by the Liao and Northern Song.

[51] The Jurchens followed Khitan precedent of living in tents amidst the Chinese-style architecture, which were in turn based on the Song dynasty Kaifeng model.

[52] A significant branch of Taoism called the Quanzhen School was founded under the Jin Dynasty by Han Chinese Wang Zhe (1113–1170), founder of formal congregations in 1167 and 1168.

[53] Zhangzong instructed the abbey's superintendent Sun Mingdao (孙明道) and two civil officials to prepare a complete Canon for printing.

[53] After sending people on a "nationwide search for scriptures" that yielded 1,074 fascicles of text that had not been included in the Huizong edition of the Canon and also securing donations to fund the new printing, Sun Mingdao proceeded to have the new woodblocks cut in 1192.

[56] The project was initiated in 1139 by a Buddhist nun named Cui Fazhen, who swore (and allegedly "broke her arm to seal the oath") that she would raise the necessary funds to make a new official edition of the Canon printed by the Northern Song.

[57] Completed in 1173, the Jin Tripitaka counted about 7,000 fascicles, "a major achievement in the history of Buddhist private printing.

[59] The donors who funded such inscriptions included members of the Jin imperial family, high officials, common people, and Buddhist priests.