The ancient city of Jingzhou has a long history. The brick city wall has a history of more than 1,000 years. Anyone who has visited the ancient city wall of Jingzhou will praise it when they see the towering city wall rising from the ground, hovering over the lake and water, like a dragon flying in the clouds, and admiring the majesty of the ancient city.
The bricks with inscriptions on the ancient city walls are also called text bricks. On the horse path leading to Binyang Tower at the East Gate and Chaozong Tower at the North Gate, those who pay attention will find text tiles. The text bricks record the long history of the construction of Jingzhou City Wall in the past dynasties, reflect the changes in the administrative areas under Jingzhou's jurisdiction, and illustrate the glorious history of Jingzhou's economic development and cultural progress.
According to historical records, the original brick city wall in Jingzhou began in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. When Gao Jixing became king in Jingzhou and established the Jingnan Kingdom, he mobilized hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians to excavate tomb bricks everywhere near the capital to build the capital. At this time, brick cities began to exist. He borrowed bricks from Han tombs to build the city. The bricks have typical Han Dynasty decorations, but there are no inscriptions. There are tomb brick relics.
In the Southern Song Dynasty, "special city bricks" began to be fired. There were only simple responsibility inscriptions on the bricks, but no record of the year.
Jingzhou’s brick city wall has experienced hundreds of years of ups and downs. The earliest bricks with year names on the city wall are from 1369, which is nearly 700 years old. The bricks before that only have the characteristics of the times. No year number text bricks have been found yet.
Jingzhou city bricks are not only from the original prefectures and counties in the Jianghan Plain. Judging from the discovered bricks with characters, in addition to more than 20 states and counties in the Han River Basin and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, there are also bricks from far away. At the junction of the three provinces of Hubei, Henan and Shaanxi in the northwest, Xiangyang Prefecture governs Junzhou, Yunxian, Fangxian, Gucheng, Zaoyang, Nanzhang and other prefectures and counties.
There are also those from Jingzhou at the junction of Hunan, Guangxi and Guizhou provinces in the southwest, and those from Guiyang in the south include Changde Prefecture in northern Hunan, Chenzhou Prefecture in western Hunan, Yongzhou Prefecture in southern Hunan, and central Hunan. Hengzhou Prefecture and Changsha Prefecture in eastern Hunan.
At that time, it was not easy to transport city bricks from various places to Jingzhou to build the city wall from a place hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away from Jingzhou, under the conditions of extremely inconvenient water and land transportation.
Judging from the origin of the text bricks in Jingzhou City, there are 8 prefectures and more than 40 counties in the country. This proves that the jurisdiction of Jingzhou at that time was large and the territory was vast. Without a high degree of responsibility, unified specifications, and strict discipline, it was difficult to transport city bricks from various places to Jingzhou.
City building in ancient times was an important political task. According to the "County Chronicle" of Jiangling:
Gai Xian governed his city, which was the permanent administration of the princes and county guards.
Therefore, the construction and maintenance of city walls in the past dynasties all left simple or detailed responsibility documents to control the construction of the city at all levels. From this we can see that the ancient reputation of "Iron-Strengthened Jingzhou" is not an empty lie.
Judging from the written content on the city bricks, the inscriptions are very strict and particular. The place where the bricks were made and the time when the bricks were made are clearly recorded. There are also detailed inscriptions on the names of the supervisors, brick makers, kiln burners, those who paid for the brick making, and the local officials responsible for the specific operations.
Among the officials inscribed on the inscription are the names of chief executives at levels such as prefect, prefecture, county magistrate, Zhengtang, and magistrate with the title of magistrate, as well as the names of assistants to chief officials such as tongzhi, tongpan, limu, and county magistrate. There are also Dian Li and general Secretary Li.
In addition, the inscriptions on the bricks also record the specific personnel who performed the operations. For example, the names of political committee members, construction supervisors, li chiefs, armor chiefs, potters, grain households or households, and brick makers were all strictly inscribed.
Suppose there is an inscription on a brick:
The governor of Yun County, Junzhou, Xiangyang Prefecture, Cheng Kangtai of Titiao County, the person who supervised the construction was Deng Jun, and the craftsmen Wang Cheng and Jia Yuan In the middle, people live in Xuxing.
It was built on a certain day and month in the 16th year of Hongwu.
This brick is intact and has a history of nearly 700 years.
Another example, there is a brick engraved with:
Jingzhou government official Baihu Zhang En supervised the construction of Qiao Yingshi, a kiln owner in Jingzhou.
The first day of the sixth month of the tenth year of Wanli.
From the inscriptions on these bricks, it can be seen that when the Jingzhou City Wall was built at that time, the approach of "mobilizing the whole people, working from top to bottom, clear division of labor, and assigning responsibilities to each person" was implemented.
During the Hongwu period, the city-building project was large-scale, requiring high craftsmanship, strict management, detailed responsibility inscriptions, and the use of "engraved bricks" to ensure the quality of the city wall. By the Wanli period, the "impression brick" method was invented, which was convenient for maintenance.
You can imagine how spectacular the busy scene was when all the prefectures, prefectures, and counties under the jurisdiction of Jingzhou mobilized thousands of troops and transported bricks from all directions to build the "Beijing City".
There are various types of bricks with inscriptions on the walls of Jingzhou City. Most of them have words arranged vertically on one or both sides of the bricks, and a few have words arranged horizontally. Some bricks have dozens of characters on them, and there are also bricks with only one character, such as "fish", "dragon", "clothes", etc., which usually represent the work name or craftsman name, but there is no year name.
In terms of text carving, there are Yin carvings, Yang carvings, and both Yin and Yang carvings, but most of the characters on bricks are Yang carvings. In terms of fonts and calligraphy, there are running script and regular script, traditional characters and simplified characters.
In short, the bricks with inscriptions on Jingzhou City are all over the entire city wall. The bricks with inscriptions reflect that Jingzhou has not only a very developed economy but also a very progressive culture in history. It records the historical process of the construction of Jingzhou City. Its inscriptions Bricks are the "living" city wall archives.
Each brick with an inscription is the best physical testimony of the ancient city of Jingzhou built in the past dynasties, and is also an extremely precious historical relic.