enforced assimilation, and therefore, Yu infers, the Kaifeng Jews, under the Ming, claimed in their monumental stone inscriptions that their roots in China were ancient, going back at least to the nativist Song if not indeed to the Han period. The stele sought to assert proof of a long accommodation by Jews to Chinese civilization in order to avoid discriminatory measures. The early Kaifeng community Kaifeng was a cosmopolitan industrial metropolis with 600,000 to a million inhabitants in Northern Song times, which formed an intense hub for overland trade via the Silk Road and the commercial riverine networks connecting it to the eastern seabord. Through it vast amounts of grain tribute also passed. Its strategic importance and wealth were recognized by successive dynastic powers over the period 905–959, such as the Liang (who gave it its present name), Jin, Later Han and Later Zhou who all made it their capital, as did the Northern Song when they unified the empire, until the city was conquered by the Jurchen in 1127. Under siege, it surrendered to the Mongols in 1233. It would have been attractive to Persian Jewish merchants. The founding colony's members may have specialized in the manufacturing, dyeing, or pattern printing of cotton fabrics. By the early 16th century, an inscription mentions not only craftsmen, farmers and traders among them, but also scholars, physicians and officials, political and administrative, as well as military men in important posts. A Ming emperor conferred eight surnames upon the Jews. Other evidence points to 70-73 surnames. The late 1672 inscription states that at the synagogue's inception (1163) there were 73 clans (姓:xìng) and 500 families (家:jiā) in the Kaifeng Jewish community. The Hongzhi stele (1489) (弘治碑:hóngzhìbēi) registers the names of 14 clans. Ài (艾) (Heb.צי) Shí (石) (Heb.שה) Gāo (高) Mù (穆) Bó (白) Huáng (黄) Zhào (赵/趙) (Heb.שי) Zhōu (周) Zuǒ (左) Niè (聂/聶) Jin (金) (Heb.גין) Lǐ (李) (Heb.לי) Ăn (俺) Zhāng (張)(Heb.גך) Leaders among this community were called manla(暪喇:mánlǎ), a term usually explained as a loanword from Arabic mullah. It has been suggested however that it may well have been a phonetic transcription of the Hebrew ma'lā (מעלה) "the honourable". The Persian rubrics of the Kaifeng Jewish liturgy are written in the Bukharan dialect and the Bukharan Jews believe that in the past, some of their kin migrated to China and ceased to have contact with their country of origin.