Shandong West Circuit
Shandong Western Circuit was an administrative division during the Jurchen Jin dynasty.
After Jin defeated Song in 1127, the territory of the Song dynasty’s Jingdong East Circuit was reorganized and renamed Shandong Western Circuit. Its administrative seat was located at Dongping Prefecture, corresponding to present-day Dongping County, Shandong Province. This marked the beginning of “Shandong” as a regional name in the context of Chinese administrative geography.
The circuit covered the region south of Mount Tai, north of Chengwu County and Jinxiang County, west of Mount Meng, east of Liaocheng, Yanggu County, and Heze, as well as south of Gaotang County ; it also included the area west of Pizhou and Siyang County in Jiangsu Province, north of the former course of the Yellow River.
The circuit administered the following prefectures and subprefectures:
- Dongpingfu – present-day Dongping, Shandong
- Taianzhou – present-day Tai’an, Shandong
- Dezhou – present-day Ling County, Shandong
- Bozhou – present-day Liaocheng, Shandong
- Jizhou – present-day Jining, Shandong
- Yanzhou – present-day Yanzhou, Shandong
- Tengzhou – present-day Tengzhou, Shandong
- Xuzhou – present-day Xuzhou, Jiangsu
- Pizhou – present-day southern Pizhou, Jiangsu