Great Kien-k'ang
Great Kien-k'ang (建大邦, kyen-lats-prang) 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 City of Kien-k'ang covers 9,077 km² and contains multiple satellite cities and areas not built up. Great Kien-k'ang represents the extent of the city prior to the incorporation of surrounding counties in 1957, 1962, and again in 1972. By geographic markers, the area is bound on the west by the banks of the River Kaung, in the east by the civil parish of Kran-bin, the north by the Superior Woods, and the south by Ting.
Name
The name kyen-lats-prang (建大邦) is the usual term referring to this area since medieval times. The term prang means "to plant" in relation to plants or "to build", to structures. As ancient Themiclesians often demarked a city's external borders with sign posts, the series of "buildings" came to signify a political state, including the city proper and its external precincts. So the lats-prang logically means "great boundaries" or "great state".
For a long time, it was believed kyen must be an abbreviation for kyen-k'ang, the name of the Royal Citadel found within its precincts, but nowhere is the hypothesized full form actually found in literature. Most writers now accept the word kyen is understood with its common meaning of "erect", since the city's borders were originally marked with erect logs that formed a pallisade. Thus, the full phrase kyen-lats-prang may have meant "great boundaries of pallisades", implying the state represented by the city.
The translation of kyen-lats-prang as "Great Kien-k'ang" predates the widespread adoption of this more historical understanding of the term. However, there are also those who defend this translation, arguing even though the phrase kyen-lats-prang may not have been a reference to the Kien-k'ang Citadel originally, it was certainly understood that way by many people across centuries and so should be legitimately retained.
History
Antiquity and medieval period
The recorded history of Great Kien-k'ang begins with the continued settlement of the area during the Classical Period, when it became the permanent home of the Tsins polity, which previous migrated from settlement to settlement with political power. The Tsins City or Old City (晉邑, 舊邑), which is still the seat of the Kien-k'ang Magistracy, was built around the start of the Common Era identifying the centre of religion, trade, manufacture, and political life. Evidence of pottery, bronze, and other industries abound in this city and its peripheries.
But as royal power aggregated around a more formal dynasty in the 2nd century, it built a new structure called the Royal Citadel (公成) around its seat, as a statement of its independence and power over the urban aristocracy. This new structure was intentionally grander and at a distance of 2.5 km from the Old City, which remained the most developed region for many years afterwards. As opposed to the Old City's winding streets and crowded plazas, the Royal Citadel was calculated to be dominated by the royal palaces and temples to the royal ancestors; its streets were rectilinear, and the palace overlooked the walled area. The principal road leading to the palace was 40 m wide and extended far beyond the Citadel. But the Citadel was the residence of only its patron, his servants, and favourites invited to live there.
The practical importance of the Royal Citadel increased as the dynasty came to lead a hegemonic, international order in 281; an new bureaucracy formed in the Citadel to serve the prince's hegemonic rule. At the same time, the existing business of the aristocracy and commoners continued stood steadfast in the Old City. Even though the royal dynasty was usurped in the 420 by the Sungh family and again by the Rang family in 489, a new hegemonic prince's first order of business was to secure the approval of the aristocracy based in the Old City, whose collective wealth and power still rivalled that of any prince. There thus appeared a sometimes-conflicted but usually mutualistic relationship between the aristocracy and the prince, based in their respective cities.
At the deposition of the Rangs in 542, the aristocracy in the Old City endorsed the Meng emperor as the new prince, resulting in a bloodless coup d'état when the barons and retainers of the Rang hegemony abandoned their prince.
Republic and modern period
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.
Transit
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.