Youzhou

Youzhou or You Prefecture (also known as You Province) is a place name for an ancient zhou or prefecture in northern China. Youzhou is cited in some ancient sources as one of the nine or twelve original provinces of China during early Chinese antiquity (22nd Century BC), but Youzhou was used in actual administration from 106 BC to the 10th Century AD. A prefecture as a political subdivision in Chinese history was at various times either the size of a province or sub-provincial unit known as commandery.

Youzhou was created in 106 BC as a province-sized prefecture during the Western Han Dynasty to administer a large swath of the dynasty's northern frontier that stretched from modern-day Shanxi Province in the west and Shandong Province in the south, through northeastern Hebei Province, southern Liaoning Province and southern Inner Mongolia to Korea. The prefectural capital was the City of Ji in modern Beijing. This prefecture continued to be centered in northern Hebei through the Three Kingdoms and Western Jin Dynasty.

You Prefecture (Inner Mongolia)

Youzhou or You Prefecture (宥州) was a zhou (prefecture) in imperial China in modern southern Inner Mongolia, China. It existed (intermittently) from 738 to early 13th century, when the Mongolian Yuan dynasty destroyed Western Xia (1038–1227). In the 9th-century it was briefly occupied by the Tibetan Empire. In the 10th-, 11th and 12th-centuries it was mostly controlled by the Tangut people as part of Western Xia or its precursor, the Dingnan Jiedushi.

Geography

The administrative region of Youzhou during the Tang dynasty is in modern southern Inner Mongolia. It probably includes parts of modern:

References