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Zheng He
Zheng He (Zhenghe, Cheng-ho, Ma He, or Ma Sanbao) was a Chinese mariner, explorer, diplomat, fleet admiral, and court eunuch during China's early Ming dynasty. He was originally born as Ma He in a Muslim family and later adopted the surname Zheng conferred by the Yongle Emperor.
Commissioned by the Yongle Emperor and later the Xuande Emperor, Zheng commanded seven expeditionary treasure voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia, and East Africa from 1405 to 1433. According to legend, his larger ships carried hundreds of sailors on four decks and were almost twice as long as any wooden ship ever recorded.
Zheng He, (Wade-Giles romanization Cheng Ho), original name Ma Sanbao, later Ma He, (b. c. 1371, Kunyang, near Kunming, Yunnan province, China — d. 1433, Calicut [now Kozhikode], India), helped extend the maritime and commercial influence of China throughout the regions bordering the Indian Ocean. He commanded seven naval expeditions almost a century before the Portuguese reached India by sailing around the southern tip of Africa.
Zheng He was from a Hui (Chinese Muslim) family. His father was a hajji, a Muslim who had made the hajj (the pilgrimage) to Mecca. His family claimed descent from an early Mongol governor of Yunnan province in southwestern China as well as from King Muḥammad of Bukhara (now in Uzbekistan). The family name Ma was derived from the Chinese rendition of Muḥammad.
In 1381, when he was about 10 years old, Yunnan, the last Mongol hold in China, was reconquered by Chinese forces led by generals of the Ming dynasty, which had overthrown the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty in 1368. The young Ma Sanbao (later Ma He), as he was then known, was among the boys who were captured, castrated, and sent into the army as orderlies. By 1390, when those troops were placed under the command of the prince of Yan, Ma He had distinguished himself as a junior officer, skilled in war and diplomacy. Ma also had made influential friends at court.
In 1400, the prince of Yan revolted against his nephew, the Jianwen emperor, taking the throne in 1402 as the Yongle emperor. Under the Yongle administration (1402–24), the war-devastated economy of China was soon restored. The Ming court then sought to display its naval power to bring the maritime states of South and Southeast Asia in line.
For some 300 years the Chinese had been extending their power out to sea. An extensive seaborne commerce had developed to meet the taste of the Chinese for spices and aromatics and the need for raw industrial materials. Chinese travelers abroad, as well as Indian and Muslim visitors, widened the geographic horizon of the Chinese. Technological developments in shipbuilding and in the arts of seafaring reached new heights by the beginning of the Ming.
Ma He quickly became a eunuch of great influence in the Yongle court. Soon after he ascended the throne, the emperor conferred on Ma the surname Zheng, and he was henceforth known as Zheng He. Zheng was then selected by the emperor to be commander in chief of what became a series of missions to the “Western Oceans.” He first set sail in 1405, commanding 62 ships and 27,800 men. The fleet visited Champa (now in southern Vietnam), Siam (Thailand), Malacca (Melaka), and the island of Java and then through the Indian Ocean to Calicut (Kozhikode) on the Malabar Coast of India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Zheng He returned to China in 1407.
On his second voyage, in 1408–09, Zheng He again visited Calicut—stopping as well in Chochin (Kochi) along the coast to the south—but encountered treachery from King Alagonakkara of Ceylon. Zheng defeated Alagonakkara’s forces and took the king back to Nanjing as a captive. In October 1409, Zheng He set out on his third voyage. This time, going beyond the seaports of India, he sailed to Hormuz on the Persian Gulf. On his return in 1411, Zheng He touched at Samudra, on the northern tip of Sumatra.
On his fourth voyage, Zheng He left China in 1413. After stopping at the principal ports of Asia, he proceeded westward from India to Hormuz. A detachment of the fleet cruised southward down the coast of Arabia, visiting Dhofar (Oman) and Aden (Yemen). A Chinese mission visited Mecca and continued to Egypt. The fleet visited towns along the east coast of Africa of what are now Somalia and Kenya and almost reached the Mozambique Channel. On his return to China in 1415, Zheng He brought the envoys of more than 30 states of South and Southeast Asia to pay homage to the Chinese emperor.
During Zheng He’s fifth voyage (1417–19), the Ming fleet revisited the Persian Gulf and the east coast of Africa. A sixth voyage was launched in 1421 to take home the foreign emissaries from China. Again Zheng He visited Southeast Asia, India, Arabia, and Africa. In 1424, the Yongle emperor died. In a shift of policy, his successor, the Hongxi emperor, suspended naval expeditions abroad. Zheng He was appointed garrison commander in Nanjing, with the task of disbanding his troops.
Zheng He’s seventh and final voyage left China in the winter of 1431. He visited the states of Southeast Asia, the coast of India, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the east coast of Africa. Zheng died in Calicut in the spring of 1433, and the fleet returned to China that summer.
As a favorite of the Yongle Emperor, whom Zheng assisted in the overthrow of the Jianwen Emperor, Zheng He rose to the top of the imperial hierarchy and served as commander of the southern capital Nanjing.
Zheng He was born Ma He to a Muslim family of Kunyang, Kumming, Yunnan, during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) of China. He had an older brother and four sisters.
Zheng He's religious beliefs were eclectic in his adulthood. The Liujiagang and Changle inscriptions suggest that devotion to Tianfei, the patron goddess of sailors and seafarers, was the dominant faith to which he adhered, reflecting the goddess's central role to the treasure fleet. However, when Zheng He, the Muslim eunuch leader of the great expeditions to the Indian Ocean in the early fifteenth century, embarked on his voyages, it was not only the Divine Woman from whom he sought protection, but also the Muslim saints entombed on Lingshan Hill, above the city of Quanzhou.
Zheng He was a great-great-great-grandson of Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, who served in the administration of the Mongol Empire and was the governor of Yunnan during the early Yuan dynasty. His great-grandfather Bayan may have been stationed at a Mongol garrison in Yunnan. Zheng He's grandfather carried the title hajji, and his father had the sinicized surname Ma and the title hajji, which suggests that they had made the pilgrimage to Mecca.
In the autumn of 1381, a Ming army invaded and conquered Yunnan, which was then ruled by the Mongol prince Basalawarmi, Prince of Liang. In 1381, Ma Hajji, Zheng He's father, died in the fighting between the Ming armies and Mongol forces. Zheng He's father died at the age of 39. It is unclear if Ma Hajji was helping the Mongol Army or was just caught in the onslaught of battle when he died.
Wenming, the oldest son, buried Ma Hajji outside Kunming. In his capacity as Admiral, Zheng He had an epitaph engraved in honor of his father, composed by the Minister of Rites Li Zhigang on the Duanwu Festival of the third year in the Yongle era (June 1, 1405).
Ma He (Zheng He) was captured by the Ming armies at Yunnan in 1381. General Fu Youde saw Ma He on a road and approached him to inquire about the location of the Mongol pretender. Ma He responded defiantly by saying that the Mongol pretender had jumped into a lake. Afterwards, the general took Ma He prisoner. Ma He was castrated at some point between the ages of 10 and 14, and was placed in the service of the Prince of Yan.
Ma He was sent to serve in the household of Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan,jwho later became the Yongle Emperor. Zhu Di was eleven years older than Ma. Enslaved as a eunuch servant, Ma He eventually gained the confidence of Zhu Di, who, as his benefactor, would gain the allegiance and loyalty of the young eunuch.
From 1380, the prince (Zhu Di) had been governing Beiping (later Beijing), which was near the northern frontier, with hostile Mongol tribes. Ma would spend his early life as a soldier on the northern frontier.
Ma He often participated in Zhu Di's military campaigns against the Mongols. On March 2, 1390, Ma accompanied the Prince when the Prince commanded his first expedition. The Prince achieved a great victory, as the Mongol commander Naghachu surrendered as soon as he realized he had fallen for a deception.
Eventually, Ma He gained the confidence and trust of the prince. Ma was also known as "Sanbao" during his service in the household of the Prince of Yan. This name was a reference to the Buddhist Three Jewels (Sanbao, also known as triratna). This name could also be interpreted literally as "Three Protections." Ma received a proper education at Beiping (Beijing) which he would not have had if he had been placed in the imperial capital, Nanjing, as the Hongwu Emperor did not trust eunuchs and believed that it was better to keep them illiterate. The Hongwu Emperor purged and exterminated many of the original Ming leadership and gave his enfeoffed sons more military authority, especially those in the north, like the Prince of Yan.
Ma He's appearance as an adult was recorded. He was seven chi tall. A chi is a Chinese measure thought to vary between 10.5 to 12 inches in length. Using a conservative measure of 11 inches for the length of the chi, Ma He would have been about 77 inches (or about 6'5") tall. Ma He also had a waist that was five chi in circumference, cheeks and a forehead that was high, a small nose, glaring eyes, meaning that his waist measured about 55 inches. In other words, Ma He was a very large man.
Ma He also had teeth that were white and well-shaped as shells, and a voice that was as loud as a bell. It is also recorded that he had great knowledge about warfare and was well-accustomed to battle.
The young eunuch eventually became a trusted adviser to the prince and assisted him when the Jianwen Emperor's hostility to his uncle's feudal bases prompted the 1399–1402 Jingnan Campaign, which ended with the emperor's apparent death and the ascension of Zhu Di, Prince of Yan, as the Yongle Emperor.
In 1393, the Crown Prince had died, thus the deceased prince's son became the new heir apparent. By the time the emperor died (June 24, 1398), the Prince of Qin and the Prince of Jin had perished, which left Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan, as the eldest surviving son of the emperor. However, Zhu Di's nephew succeeded the imperial throne as the Jianwen Emperor (r. 1398-1402). In 1398, the Jianwen Emperor issued a policy known as xuefan, or "reducing the feudatories", which entailed eliminating all princes by stripping their power and military forces.
In August 1399, Zhu Di openly rebelled against his nephew. In 1399, Ma He successfully defended Beiping's city reservoir Zhenglunba against the imperial armies. In January 1402, Zhu Di began with his military campaign to capture the imperial capital Nanjing. Ma He would be one of his commanders during that campaign.
In 1402, Zhu Di's armies defeated the imperial forces and marched into Nanjing on July 13, 1402. Zhu Di accepted the elevation to emperor four days later. After ascending the throne as the Yongle Emperor, Zhu Di promoted Ma He to be the Grand Director (taijian) of the Directorate of Palace Servants. During the Chinese New Year on February 11, 1404, the Yongle Emperor conferred the surname "Zheng" to Ma He, because he had distinguished himself defending the city reservoir Zhenglunba against imperial forces in the Siege of Beiping of 1399. Another reason was that the eunuch commander also distinguished himself during the 1402 campaign to capture the capital, Nanjing.
In the new administration, Zheng He served in the highest posts as Grand Director and later as Chief Envoy (zhengshi) during his sea voyages. Over the next three decades, Zheng He conducted seven of the voyages on behalf of the emperor of trading and collecting tribute in the eastern Pacific and Indian Oceans.
In 1424, Zheng He traveled to Palembang in Sumatra to confer an official seal and letter of appointment upon Shi Jisun, who was placed in the office of Pacification Commissioner. The Taizong Shilu February 27, 1424 entry reports that Shi Jisun had sent Qiu Yancheng as envoy to petition the approval of the succession from his father Shi Jinqing, who was the Pacification Commissioner of Palembang, and was given permission from the Yongle Emperor. On September 7, 1424, Zhu Gaozhi inherited the throne as the Hongxi Emperor after the death of the Yongle Emperor on August 12, 1424. When Zheng He returned from Palembang, he found that the Yongle Emperor had died during his absence.
On September 7, 1424, the Hongxi Emperor terminated the undertaking of further treasure voyages. On February 24, 1425, the Hongxi Emperor appointed Zheng He as the defender of Nanjing and ordered him to continue his command over the treasure fleet for the city's defense. On March 25, 1428, the Xuande Emperor ordered Zheng He and others to take over the supervision for the rebuilding and repair of the Great Bao'en Temple at Nanjing. He completed the construction of the temple in 1431.
On May 15, 1426, the Xuande Emperor ordered the Directorate of Ceremonial to send a letter to Zheng He to reprimand him for a transgression. Earlier, an official petitioned the emperor to reward workmen who had built temples in Nanjing. The Xuande Emperor responded negatively to the official for placing the costs to the court instead of on the monks themselves, but he realized that Zheng He and his associates had instigated the official's petition. Zheng He's behavior in the situation caused friction with the Xuande Emperor. Nevertheless, the Xuande Emperor would eventually come to trust Zheng He.
In 1430, the new Xuande Emperor appointed Zheng He to command over a seventh and final expedition into the "Western Ocean" (Indian Ocean). In 1431, Zheng He was bestowed with the title Sanbao Taijian, using his informal name Sanbao and the title of Grand Director.
The Yuan dynasty and the expanding Sino-Arab trade during the 14th century had gradually expanded Chinese knowledge of the world since "universal" maps previously displaying only China and its surrounding seas began to expand farther and farther southwest, with much more accurate depictions of the extent of Arabia and Africa. Between 1405 and 1433, the Ming government sponsored seven naval expeditions. The Yongle Emperor, disregarding the Hongwu Emperor's expressed wishes, designed them to establish a Chinese presence and impose imperial control over the Indian Ocean trade, impress foreign peoples in the Indian Ocean basin, and extend the empire's tributary system.
Zheng He was placed as the admiral in control of the huge fleet and armed forces that undertook the expeditions. Wang Jinghong was appointed as second in command. Preparations were thorough and wide-ranging, including the use of so many linguists that a foreign language institute was established at Nanjing. Zheng He's first voyage departed on July 11, 1405, from Suzhou and consisted of a fleet of 317 ships holding almost 28,000 crewmen.
Zheng He's fleets visited Brunei, Java, Siam (Thailand), Southeast Asia, India, the Horn of Africa, and Arabia, dispensing dispensing and receiving goods along the way. Zheng He presented gifts of gold, silver, porcelain, and silk, and in return, China received such novelties as ostriches, zebras, camels, and ivory from the Swahili Coast. The giraffe that he brought back from Malindi was considered to be a qilin -- a mythological Chinese hooved chimerical creature -- and taken as proof of the Mandate of Heaven upon the administration.
While Zheng He's fleet was unprecedented, the routes were not. His fleet followed long-established, well-mapped routes of trade between China and the Arabian Peninsula that had been used since at least the Han dynasty (202 BCT - 9 CC and 25 CC - 220 CC). That fact, along with the use of a more-than-abundant number of crew members who were regular military personnel, leads to some speculation that the expeditions may have been geared at least partially at spreading China's power through expansion.
During the Three Kingdoms Period, the king of Wu sent a 20-year diplomatic mission led by Zhu Ying and Kang Tai along the eastern coast of Asia, which reached as far as the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. After centuries of disruption, the Song dynasty (960 CC - 1296 CC) restored large-scale maritime trade from China in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans and reached as far as the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa. When Zheng He's fleet first arrived at Malacca, there was already a sizable Chinese community. The General Survey of the Ocean Shores (Yingya Shenglan), composed by the translator (and fellow Muslim) Ma Huan in 1416, gives very detailed accounts of Ma Huan's observations of people's customs and lives in the ports that they visited. Ma Huan referred to the expatriate Chinese as "Tang" people (Tangren).
Zheng He generally sought to attain his goals through diplomacy, and his large army awed most would-be enemies into submission. However, a contemporary reported that Zheng He "walked like a tiger" and did not 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. For example, he defeated Chen Zuyi, one of the most feared and respected pirate captains, and returned him to China for execution. He also waged a land war against the Kingdom of Kotte on Ceylon (today's Sri Lanka), and he made displays of military force when local officials threatened his fleet in Arabia and East Africa.
From his fourth voyage, Zheng He brought envoys from 30 states, who traveled to China and paid their respects at the Ming court.
In 1424, the Yongle Emperor died. His successor, the Hongxi Emperor (r. 1424–1425), stopped the voyages during his short reign. Zheng He made one more voyage during the reign of Hongxi's son, the Xuande Emperor (r. 1426–1435). After the seventh and last voyage of Zheng He, the voyages of the Chinese treasure ship fleets came to an end. Xuande believed his father's decision to halt the voyages had been meritorious and that there would be no need to make a detailed description of his grandfather's sending Zheng He to the Western (Indian) Ocean. The voyages were contrary to the rules stipulated in the Huang Ming Zuxun, the dynastic foundation documents laid down by the Hongwu Emperor (1328-1398, r. 1368-1398). The voyages also violated longstanding Confucian principles. They were only made possible by (and therefore continued to represent) a triumph of the Ming's eunuch faction over the administration's scholar-bureaucrats. Upon Zheng He's death and his faction's fall from power, his successors sought to minimize him in official accounts, along with continuing attempts to destroy all records related to the Jianwen Emperor or the manhunt to find him.
Although unmentioned in the official dynastic histories, Zheng He probably died in 1433 during the treasure fleet's last voyage. Although he has a tomb in China, it is empty since he was buried at sea.
Zheng He led seven expeditions to the "Western" or Indian Ocean. He brought back to China many trophies and envoys from more than thirty kingdoms, including King Vira Alakeshwara of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), who came to China as a captive to apologize to the Emperor for offenses against his mission.
Traditional and popular accounts of Zheng He's voyages have described a great fleet of gigantic ships far larger than any other wooden ships in history. The most grandiose claims for Zheng He's 1405 fleet are entirely based on a calculation derived from an account that was written three centuries later and was accepted as fact by one modern writer but was rejected by numerous naval experts. There are even some sources that claim some of the treasure ships might have been as long as 183 m (600 ft). However, the claims that the Chinese treasure ships reached such size is disputed.
The largest ships in the fleet, the Chinese treasure ships described in Chinese chronicles, would have been nearly twice as long as any other wooden ship recorded thereafter until the 20th century, surpassing Admiral Nelson's HMS Victory, 69.34 meters (227 ft 6 in) long, which was launched in 1765, and the 68.88-meter (226 ft 0 in) Vasa of 1627. The first ships to attain 126 m (413 ft) long were 19th century steamers with iron hulls. Many scholars consider it unlikely that any of Zheng He's ships were 135 m (450 ft) in length and have proposed much shorter lengths, as low as 60–75 m (200–250 feet).
It is theorized that Zheng He died in 1433, during or shortly after the seventh voyage. Another is that Zheng He continued to serve as the defender of Nanjing, dying in 1435.
A tomb was built for Zheng He at the southern slope of Cattle Head Hill, Nanjing. The original tomb was a horseshoe-shaped grave. It is a cenotaph (a body less tomb) believed to contain Zheng He's clothes and headgear. In 1985, the tomb was rebuilt following a Muslim style.
In the decades after the last voyage, Imperial officials minimized the importance of Zheng He and his expeditions throughout the many regnal and dynastic histories they compiled. The information in the Yongle and Xuande Emperors' official annals was incomplete and even erroneous, and other official publications omitted them completely. Although some have seen that as a conspiracy seeking to eliminate memories of the voyages, it is likely that the records were dispersed throughout several departments and that the expeditions, unauthorized by, and in fact counter to, the injunctions of the dynastic founder, presented a kind of embarrassment to the dynasty.
State-sponsored Ming naval efforts declined dramatically after Zheng's voyages. Starting in the early 15th century, China experienced increasing pressure from the surviving Yuan Mongols from the north. The relocation of the capital to Beijing in the north exacerbated this threat dramatically. At considerable expense, China launched annual military expeditions from Beijing to weaken the Mongolians. The expenditures necessary for the land campaigns directly competed with the funds necessary to continue naval expeditions. Further, in 1449, Mongolian cavalry ambushed a land expedition personally led by the Zhengtong Emperor (r. 1435-1449 and 1457-1464) at Tumu Fortress, less than a day's march from the walls of the capital. The Mongolians wiped out the Chinese army and captured the emperor. The battle had two salient effects. Firstly, it demonstrated the clear threat posed by the northern nomads. Secondly, the Mongols caused a political crisis in China when they released the emperor after his half-brother had already ascended and declared the new Jingtai era. Not until 1457 and the restoration of the former emperor would political stability return to China. Upon the return to power of the Zhengtong Emperor, China abandoned the strategy of annual land expeditions and instead embarked upon a massive and expensive expansion of the Great Wall of China. In that environment, funding for naval expeditions was simply absent.
Nevertheless, missions from Southeastern Asia continued to arrive for decades. Depending on local conditions, they could reach such frequency that the court found it necessary to restrict them. The History of Ming records imperial edicts that forbade Java, Champa, and Siam from sending their envoys more often than once every three years.
Among the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, Zheng He became a figure of folk veneration. The temples of the cult, called after either of his names, Cheng Hoon or Sam Po, are peculiar to overseas Chinese.
The oldest and most important Chinese temple in Malacca is the 17th-century Cheng Hoon Teng, dedicated to Guanyin. During Dutch colonial rule, the head of the Cheng Hoon Temple was appointed as chief over the community's Chinese inhabitants.
The Chinese Indonesian community members have established temples dedicated to Zheng He in Jakarta, Cirebon, Surabaya, and Semarang. In 1961, the Indonesian Islamic leader and scholar Hamka credited Zheng He for playing an important role in the development of Islam in Indonesia. The Brunei Times credits Zheng He with building Chinese Muslim communities in Palembang and along the shores of Java, the Malay Peninsula, and the Philippines. These Muslims followed the Hanafi school in the Chinese language. The Malay Annals also record a number of Hanafi mosques – in Semarang and Ancol, for instance – were converted directly into temples of the Zheng He cult during the 1460s and the 1470s. The Sam Poo Kong temple in Semarang was built to commemorate Zheng He's voyage to Java.
On his travels, Zheng He built mosques and also spread the worship of Mazu. He apparently never found time for a pilgrimage to Mecca but sent sailors there on his last voyage. He played an important part in developing relations between China and Islamic countries. Zheng He also visited Muslim shrines of Islamic holy men in the Fujian.
Zheng He's tomb in Nanjing has been repaired and a small museum built next to it, but his body was buried at sea off the Malabar Coast near Calicut, in western India. However, his sword and other personal possessions were interred in a Muslim tomb inscribed in Arabic.
In the People's Republic of China, July 11 is Maritime Day (Zhongguo Hánghǎi Rì) and is devoted to the memory of Zheng He's first voyage.
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