Everything about Zheng He totally explained
» For the Three Kingdoms general, see Zhang He.
Zheng He (; Birth name: 馬三寶 / 马三宝; ;
Arabic/
Persian name: حجّي محمود شمس
Hajji Mahmud Shams) (
1371–
1433), was a
Chinese mariner of
Hui ethnic descent,
explorer,
diplomat and
fleet admiral, who made the voyages collectively referred to as the travels of "
Eunuch Sanbao to the Western Ocean" (Chinese:
三保太監下西洋
) or "
Zheng He to the Western Ocean", from 1405 to 1433 .
Life
Zheng He was born in 1371 in the
Hui ethnic group and the
Muslim faith in modern-day
Yunnan Province, one of the last possessions of the
Mongols of the
Yuan Dynasty before being conquered by the
Ming Dynasty. He served as a close confidant of the
Yongle Emperor of
China (reigned
1403–
1424), the third emperor of the
Ming Dynasty. Zheng He's ancestors include a general for
Genghis Khan.
According to his biography in the
History of Ming, he was originally named Ma Sanbao (馬三保), and came from
Kunyang (昆阳), present day
Jinning (晋宁),
Yunnan Province. Zheng belonged to the
Semu caste which practiced
Islam and were comprised of diverse
Turco-Persian groups who entered China. He was a sixth generation descendant of
Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, a famous
Khwarezmian Yuan governor of Yunnan Province from
Bukhara in modern day
Uzbekistan. His family name "Ma" came from Shams al-Din's fifth son Masuh (Mansour). Both his father Mir Tekin and grandfather Charameddin had traveled on the
hajj to
Mecca. Their travels contributed much to the young boy's education. In 1381, following the fall of the
Yuan Dynasty, a
Mingyuo's fought Ma Sanboa army was dispatched to
Yunnan to put down the
Mongol rebel
Basalawarmi. Zheng He, then only a young boy of eleven years, was taken captive by that army and
castrated, thus becoming a
eunuch. He soon became a servant at the Imperial court.
The name was given by the
Yongle emperor for meritorious service in his coup against the
Jianwen Emperor. He studied at
Nanjing Taixue (The Imperial Central College). Zheng He travelled to Mecca, though he didn't perform the pilgrimage itself.
At the beginning of the 1380s, his tomb was renovated in a more Islamic style, although he himself was
buried at sea. The government of the
People's Republic of China uses him as a model to integrate the Muslim minority into the Chinese nation. He himself was a living example of
religious tolerance, perhaps even
syncretism. The
Galle Trilingual Inscription set up by Zheng He around 1410 in
Sri Lanka records the offerings he made at a
Buddhist mountain temple.In around
1431, he set up a commemorative pillar at the temple of the
Taoist goddess Tian Fei, the
Celestial Spouse, in
Fujian province, to whom he and his sailors prayed for safety at sea. This pillar records his veneration for the goddess and his belief in her divine protection, as well as a few details about his voyages. Visitors to the
Jinghaisi (静海寺） in Nanjing are reminded of the donations Zheng He made to this non-Muslim area.
Expeditions
Between 1405 and 1433, the Ming government sponsored a series of seven naval expeditions. Emperor Yongle designed them to establish a Chinese presence, impose imperial control over trade, and impress foreign peoples in the Indian Ocean basin. He also might have wanted to extend the tributary system, by which Chinese dynasties traditionally recognized foreign peoples.
Zheng He was placed as the admiral in control of the huge fleet and armed forces that undertook these expeditions. Zheng He's first voyage consisted of a fleet of perhaps 300 ships (other sources say 200) holding almost 28,000 crewmen. These were probably mainly large six-masted ships - it's now thought that the large and flat nine-masted "
treasure ships" were probably river ships used by the Emperor.
On the first three voyages, Zheng He visited southeast Asia,
India, and
Ceylon (today known as Sri Lanka). The fourth expedition went to the
Persian Gulf and
Arabia, and later expeditions ventured down the east
African coast, as far as
Malindi in what is now
Kenya. Unspecified officials have reportedly endorsed the theory, so far unproven, that one of Zheng He's ships foundered on the rocks near Lamu island, off the coast of today's Kenya, with survivors swimming ashore, marrying locals and creating a family of Chinese-Africans that's now being reunited with the Chinese motherland . Throughout his travels, Zheng He liberally dispensed Chinese gifts of
silk,
porcelain, and other goods. In return, he received rich and unusual presents from his hosts, including African
zebras and
giraffes that ended their days in the
Ming imperial zoo. Zheng He and his company paid respects to local
deities and customs, and in
Ceylon they erected a monument honouring
Buddha,
Allah, and
Vishnu.
Zheng He generally sought to attain his goals through diplomacy, and his large army awed most would-be enemies into submission. But a contemporary reported that Zheng He "walked like a tiger", and didn't shrink from violence when he considered it necessary to impress foreign peoples with China's military might. He ruthlessly suppressed pirates who had long plagued Chinese and southeast Asian waters. He also intervened in a civil disturbance in order to establish his authority in Ceylon, and he made displays of military force when local officials threatened his fleet in Arabia and East Africa. From his fourth voyage, he brought envoys from thirty states who traveled to China and paid their respects at the Ming court.
In
1424, the Yongle Emperor died. His successor, the
Hongxi Emperor (reigned 1424–1425), decided to curb the influence at court. Zheng He made one more voyage under the
Xuande Emperor (reigned 1426–1435), but after that Chinese treasure ship fleets ended. Zheng He died during the treasure fleet's last voyage. Although he's a tomb in China, it's empty: he was, like many great admirals,
buried at sea.
Zheng He, on his seven voyages, successfully relocated large numbers of Chinese Muslims to
Malacca,
Palembang,
Surabaya and other places and Malacca became the center of Islamic learning and also a large international Islamic trade center of the southern seas.
His missions showed impressive demonstrations of organizational capability and technological might, but didn't lead to significant trade, since Zheng He was an admiral and an official, not a merchant. Chinese merchants continued to trade in Japan and southeast Asia, but Imperial officials gave up any plans to maintain a Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean and even destroyed most of the nautical charts that Zheng He had carefully prepared. The decommissioned treasure ships sat in harbors until they rotted away, and Chinese craftsmen forgot the technology of building such large vessels.
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Voyages
Further Information
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