Jurchens in the context of "Khitan large script"

Gunpowder weapons in the Song dynasty included fire arrows, gunpowder lit flamethrowers, soft shell bombs, hard shell iron bombs, fire lances, and possibly early cannons known as "eruptors". The eruptors, such as the "multiple bullets magazine eruptors" (bǎi-zi lián zhū pào, 百子連珠炮), consisting of a tube of bronze or cast iron that was filled with about 100 lead balls, and the "flying-cloud thunderclap eruptor" (fēi yún pī-lì pào, 飛雲霹靂炮), were early cast-iron proto-cannons that did not include single shots that occluded the barrel (thus called "co-viative" weapons). The use of proto-cannon, and other gunpowder weapons, enabled the Song dynasty to ward off its generally militarily superior enemies—the Khitan led Liao, Tangut led Western Xia, and Jurchen led Jin—until its final collapse under the onslaught of the Mongol forces of Kublai Khan and his Yuan dynasty in the late 13th century.

The 12th century is the period from 1101 to 1200 in accordance with the Julian calendar. In the history of European culture, this period is considered part of the High Middle Ages and overlaps with what is often called the "'Golden Age' of the Cistercians". The Golden Age of Islam experienced significant development, particularly in Islamic Spain.

In Song dynasty China, an invasion by Jurchens caused a political schism of north and south. The Khmer Empire of Cambodia flourished during this century, while the Fatimids of Egypt were overtaken by the Ayyubid dynasty. Following the expansions of the Ghaznavids and Ghurid Empire, the Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent took place at the end of the century.

The Khitan small script (Chinese: 契丹小字; pinyin: qìdān xiǎozì) was one of two writing systems used for the now-extinct Khitan language. It was used during the 10th–12th century by the Khitan people, who had created the Liao Empire in present-day northeastern China. In addition to the small script, the Khitans simultaneously also used a functionally independent writing system known as the Khitan large script. Both Khitan scripts continued to be in use to some extent by the Jurchens for several decades after the fall of the Liao dynasty, until the Jurchens fully switched to a script of their own. Examples of the scripts appeared most often on epitaphs and monuments, although other fragments sometimes surface.

The Duchers (Russian: дючеры or дучеры) was the Russian name of the people populating the shores of the middle course of the Amur River, approximately from the mouth of the Zeya down to the mouth of the Ussuri, and possibly even somewhat further downstream. Their ethnic identity is not known with certainty, but it is usually assumed that they were a Tungusic people, related to the Jurchens and/or the Nanais.

The name of this ethnic group is sometimes also written in English as "Jucher".

The Haixi Jurchens (Chinese: 海西女真) were a grouping of the Jurchens as identified by the Chinese of the Ming dynasty. They inhabited an area that consists of parts of modern-day Jilin, Heilongjiang, Liaoning and Inner Mongolia in China.