officials were allotted only "office land" (jikjeon 職田) from which they were allowed to procure only taxes on grain. This was clearly meant to sever the landed power base of aristocratic officialdom. In time, however, this royal initiative would prove no match against an aristocracy united in its determination to protect the sources of its power. Eventually (though not in Sinmun's reign) the old stipend village system would be revived. It was also in 689 that Sinmun made an ultimately abortive attempt to move the Silla capital from Gyeongju to Dalgubeol 達句伐, at what is now Daegu, evidence again that Sinmun was keen on extricating the base of royal power away from the aristocratic clans, and in so doing to empower it. The Samguk Sagi, the source of this attempt at capital shifting, provides no details as to why it failed, though it is safe to assume it encountered stiff resistance by capital aristocrats. It was following the attempted revolt Kim Heumdol that Sinmun rescinded the fiefdom granted earlier to Anseung, the would-be king of Goguryeo, and had him come live in the Silla capital of Gyeongju in 683. Perhaps related to this, the following year Sinmun was again faced with rebellion when the general and relation to Anseung was implicated in a revolt and executed. His followers then launched the rebellion without him, seizing what is now Iksan, location of Anseung's erstwhile fief. This revolt too was put down. Sinmun's reign also saw the expansion of the Silla government and reorganization of Silla territory. Several new departments were established and for the first time were organized a system of nine national provinces (an organization that had clear allusions to the nine provinces of China during the reign of King Yu 禹王, legendary founder of the Xia Dynasty). Established as well were a series of "secondary capitals" 小京, to which it was Sinmun's policy to relocate many of the peoples subjugated by the defeats of Baekje and Goguryeo. In 682 Sinmun also established the Gukhak, or National Academy, dedicated to training officials in the Confucian classics. He soon thereafter dispatched an embassy to Tang, now under the rule of Empress Wu, to request copies of the Book of Rites and other classics. Sinmun died in 692, having weathered several serious challenges to royal authority and set the framework for the organization and governance of the expanded Silla state. The aristocratic