Hanpu (), later Wanyan Hanpu (), was a leader of the Jurchen Wanyan clan in the early tenth century. According to the ancestral story of the Wanyan clan, Hanpu came from Goryeo when he was sixty years old, reformed Jurchen customary law, and then married a sixty-year-old local woman who bore him three children. His descendants eventually united Jurchen tribes into a federation and established the Jin dynasty in 1115. Hanpu was retrospectively given the temple name Shizu () and the posthumous name Emperor Yixian Jingyuan () by the Jin dynasty.
Chinese historians have long debated whether Hanpu was of Silla, Goryeo, or Jurchen ethnicity. Since the 1980s, they have chiefly argued that he was a Jurchen who had lived in Silla, the state that had dominated the Korean peninsula until it was destroyed by Goryeo in 935. Western scholars usually treat Hanpu's story as a legend, but agree that it hints to contacts between some Jurchen clans and the states of Goryeo and Balhae (a state located between Jurchen lands and Silla until it was destroyed in 926) in the early tenth century. In Korea, a recent KBS history special treated Hanpu as a native Silla man who moved north and settled in Jurchen lands during the demise of Silla.
Name
Hanpu is known under different transliterations in Chinese sources. He is called Kanfu () in the Songmo Jiwen (; after 1155), the memoirs of a Song Chinese ambassador who was forced to stay in Jin territory for more than 10 years starting in 1131. The Shenlu Ji , a lost book cited in the Collected Documents on the Treaties with the North during Three Reigns (; 1196), refers to him as Kenpu (), whereas Research on the Origin of the Manchus (; 1777) calls him Hafu ().
Ancestor of the Wanyan clan
Because the early Jurchens had no written records, the story of Hanpu was first transmitted orally. According to the History of Jin (compiled in the 1340s), Hanpu was originally from Balhae. He arrived from Goryeo at the age of sixty and settled among the Jurchen Wanyan clan. Other sources claim that Hanpu was from Silla, the state that had ruled the Korean peninsula but was annexed by the kingdom of Goryeo in 935. The same story recounts that when Hanpu left Goryeo, his two brothers remained behind, one in Goryeo and one in the Balhae area. Because the Jurchens considered Hanpu to be the sixth-generation ancestor of Wanyan Wugunai (1021–1074), historians postulate that Hanpu lived in the early tenth century, when the Jurchens still consisted of independent tribes, or sometime between the founding of Goryeo in 918 and its destruction of Silla in 935.
The Wanyan clan then belonged to a group of Jurchen tribes that Chinese and Khitan documents called "wild", "raw", or "uncivilized" (shēng ). These "wild Jurchens" lived between the Changbai Mountains in the south (now at the border between North Korea and Northeast China) and the Sungari River in the north, outside the territory of the rising Liao dynasty (907–1125) and little influenced by Chinese culture.
To resolve an endless cycle of vendettas between two clans, Hanpu managed to make both parties accept a new rule: from then on, the family of a killer would compensate the victim's relatives with a gift of horses, cattle, and money. Historian Herbert Franke has compared this aspect of Jurchen customary law to the old Germanic practice of Wergeld. As a reward for putting an end to the feuds, Hanpu was married to a sixty-year-old woman who then bore him one daughter and two sons. A lost book called the Shenlu Ji states that Hanpu's wife was 40 years old. Hanpu and his descendants were then formally received into the Wanyan clan.
Hanpu's ethnicity
Chinese scholars have debated the ethnicity of Hanpu. They usually agree that Hanpu's "coming from Goryeo" does not mean he was of Goryeo ethnicity, since Goryeo territory was populated by several ethnic groups back then. The people of the time did not always distinguish between state and ethnic group, so that in modern terms Hanpu may have been a Jurchen from the state of Silla, a man of Goryeo, or a Silla man. According to Songmo Jiwen, Hanpu's surname was already Wanyan before he moved from Goryeo. Historian Sun Jinji has therefore argued that Hanpu was a Jurchen whose family had lived in Silla and then Goryeo before moving back to Jurchen land. Chinese historians Menggutuoli and Zhao Yongchun both argue that Hanpu's ancestors were Jurchens who had lived in Silla and had been absorbed into Goryeo after the latter defeated Silla. Furthermore, Zhao theorizes that Wanyan Yingge calling Goryeo his "parent country" may have been part of the Jurchens' diplomatic efforts to obtain Goryeo's help in fighting the Liao dynasty.