Great Kien-k'ang

Great Kien-k'ang (大建康, lats-kyen-k'ang) by usual understanding encompasses the Citadel, the 8 districts within city walls, and the 12 adjoining walls of Kien-k'ang, covering an area of 38.4 km². The larger Metropolitan Kien-k'ang covers 9,077 km² and contains multiple satellite cities and areas not completely built up. Great Kien-k'ang represents the extent of the city prior to the incorporation of surrounding counties in 1948, 1957, and again in 1972. By geographic markers, the area is bound on the west by the banks of the River Kaung, on the east by the civil parish of Kran-bin, the north by the Superior Woods, and the south by Ting Creek.

History

The population of medieval Kien-k'ang may have reached as much as 200,000 prior to the plague of 1351, though this is difficult to verify as the government only enumerated taxable households, which could include hundreds or even thousands of dependents. Their distribution is equally difficult to establish due to later construction. However, it is known that most of this population resided outside of the walls of the Kien-k'ang Citadel, the 4.3 km² fortification still standing, as most of it was comprehended by palaces, government offices, and warehouses. A ditch and wooden palisade defended the residential areas, as Kien-k'ang was never besieged since Antiquity until the 1385 invasion by the Yi dynasty of Menghe. During the siege, the government believed that the population shut outside of the Citadel were taken hostage and therefore quickly sued for peace.

After the Yi invasion ended, the court ordered the construction of new fortifications, which resulted, with some later additions, in the outer walls of Kien-k'ang. These were completed between 1389 – 1403 and again, under the Republic, from 1407 – 1423. Owing to limited funds, the new walls enclosed an area smaller than that enclosed by the palisade and ditch. It is known that there were many temples and estates that were not within the new walls, but only some of them relocated within the walls, the prospect of war seemingly remote for much of the 15th century. As settlement outside of the Citadel was markedly uneven, with a tendency to congregate on roads, intersections, marketplaces, and monuments, there was farmland within the city walls.

As the civil authority of Kien-k'ang was established prior to its outer walls, its jurisdiction was not reckoned or bound by the outer walls, though, sub-jurisdictions like patrol precincts did develop along the walls. During the medieval period, the population of Themiclesian increased from around 5 to 10 million, and some rural areas within and without walls became residential. The farmland within walls were often converted from staple farms to fruit and vegetable gardens, as their produce could be marketed as soon as harvested and did not need to be tolled at the gates. The entire area within the palisades was under the purview of the Civil Administration of Kien-k'ang (建康邑), though maps drawn in this period show settlement levels were highly variable even within the palisades.

Some time during the 17th century, the phrase "Great Kien-k'ang" came into usage, probably as an abbreviation of some permutation of the phrase "Great Kien-k'ang Walls" (大建康城), as opposed to the old walls of the Citadel.  In Themiclesian literature, a city's defensive walls were a synecdoche for the city itself, so it is likewise possible in ocnversation the larger set of walls came to refer to the entire area outside of the Citadel. The distinction was useful because the Citadel itself was the source of the name Kien-k'ang, and a term was needed to comprehend the area outside.

Administration

Great Kien-k'ang consists of 21 wards and 113 manors or civil parishes.

Traditionally, the local administration of Great Kien-k'ang was carried out since Antiquity in units called manors or civil parishes (里, req). While most of the manors of rural areas actually originated as rural manors centred on a hereditary manor-lord who also provided administration, the Kien-k'ang manors are, as far as records show, only symbolic, with no known hereditary manor-holder; the manor-lords (里君) were appointed officials who had the administrative function of a manor-lord but did not own the land itself. The clue is that the preponderance of rural manors were named for their lords, while the Kien-k'ang manors have names like "Justice" and "Everlasting Peace". Indeed, the ancient natives of Kien-k'ang often called the sovereign the "great lord", possibly reflecting the idea that the sovereign was the holder of the manor.

In the mid-6th century, the area within the palisade walls fell under the Justiceship of Kien-k'ang, and in the following century officials divided the area into several wards for the patrols under that office. These areas may have been organized by roads that formed patrol routes like police beats, though owing to changes in urban landscape as well as in the functions of that office, their original organization is far from obvious. The justiceship was an imperial function unconnected to Kien-k'ang's civil administration, and so the districts did not originally correspond to the borders of the manors. This two-pronged administration lasted more than 1,000 years, until when the manors became sub-units of districts in 1897. By that time, the individual manors no longer resembled self-contained communities isolated by more rural areas, such as they once were in the middle ages.

See also

• Themiclesia