Zheng He (1371–1433;
simplified Chinese:
郑和;
traditional Chinese:
鄭和;
pinyin:
Zhèng Hé), also known as
Ma Sanbao (
simplified Chinese:
马三宝;
traditional Chinese:
馬三寶) and
Hajji Mahmud Shamsuddin (
Arabic:
حاجي محمود شمس الدين) was a
Hui-Chinese mariner,
explorer,
diplomat and
fleet admiral, who commanded voyages to
Southeast Asia,
South Asia, the
Middle East,
East Africa, and the
Horn of Africa collectively referred to as the
Voyages of Zheng He or
Voyages of Cheng Ho from 1405 to 1433.
Life
Zheng, born as
Ma He (馬和 / 马和), was the second son of a
Muslim family which also had four daughters, from Kunyang, present day
Jinning, just south of
Kunming near the southwest corner of
Lake Dian in
Yunnan.
He was the great great great grandson of
Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, a
Persian who served in the administration of the
Mongolian Empire and was appointed governor of Yunnan during the early
Yuan Dynasty.
Both his grandfather and great-grandfather carried the title of
Hajji, which indicates they had made the pilgrimage to Mecca. His great-grandfather was named Bayan and may have been a member of a
Mongol garrison in Yunnan.
In 1381, the year his father was killed, following the defeat of the
Northern Yuan, a
Ming army was dispatched to Yunnan to put down the army of the
Mongol Yuan loyalist
Basalawarmi during the
Ming conquest of Yunnan. Ma He, then only eleven years old, was captured by the Ming Muslim troops of Lan Yu and Fu Youde and made a
eunuch. He was sent to the court of one the
emperor's son,
Zhu Di the Prince of
Yan, where he was called
San Bao (三寶/三宝, or 三保
)
meaning 'Three Jewels.' The young eunuch eventually became a trusted
adviser of the Prince of Yan, and assisted the prince in his
insurrection against his nephew the
Jianwen Emperor.
For his valor in this war, the eunuch received the name Zheng He from
his master. Once Zhu Di deposed Jianwen and became crowned as
Yongle Emperor (r. 1403-1424), Zheng He continued serving in his court as a Eunuch Grand Director (太監,
taijian).
[2][4][8] It was during the Yongle era that Zheng He, with the rank of Chief Envoy (正使,
zheng shi) carried his first of six overseas missions.
In 1425 Yongle's successor the
Hongxi Emperor appointed Zheng He to be Defender of Nanjing. In 1428 the
Xuande Emperor ordered him to complete the construction of the magnificent Buddhist nine-storied
Da Baoen Temple in Nanjing, and in 1430 appointed him to lead the seventh and final expedition to the "Western Ocean".
It is commonly believed that Zheng He died during the treasure fleet's
last voyage, on the returning trip after the fleet reached
Hormuz in 1433.
Expeditions
Between 1405 and 1433, the Ming government sponsored seven naval
expeditions. The Yongle emperor designed them to establish a Chinese
presence, impose imperial control over trade, impress foreign peoples in
the Indian Ocean basin and extend the empire's tributary system. It has
also been claimed, on the basis of later texts, that the voyages also
presented an opportunity to seek out
Zhu Yunwen
(the previous emperor whom the Yongle emperor had usurped and who was
rumored to have fled into exile) – possibly the "largest scale manhunt
on water in the history of China".
Zheng He was placed as the admiral in control of the huge fleet and armed forces that undertook these expeditions.
Wang Jinghong was appointed his second in command. Zheng He's first voyage, which departed July 11, 1405, from
Suzhou,
consisted of a fleet of 317 ships
(other sources say 200 ships) holding almost 28,000 crewmen (each ship housing up to 500 men).
Zheng He's fleets visited
Arabia,
Brunei, the
Horn of Africa,
India,
Southeast Asia and
Thailand, dispensing and receiving goods along the way.
Zheng He presented gifts of gold, silver,
porcelain and
silk; in return, China received such novelties as
ostriches,
zebras,
camels,
ivory and a
giraffe from the
Swahili.
While Zheng He's fleet was unprecedented (compared to previous voyages
from China to the east Indian Ocean), the routes were not. Zheng He's
fleet was following long-established, well-mapped routes. Sea-based
trade links had existed between China and the
Arabian peninsula since the
Han Dynasty (there being trade with the
Roman Empire at that time.) During the
Three Kingdoms, the king of
Wu sent a diplomatic mission along the coast of Asia, reaching as far as the
Eastern Roman Empire. During the
Song Dynasty, there was large scale maritime trade from China reaching as far as the Arabian peninsula and
East Africa.
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 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 would defeat
Chen Zuyi, one of the most feared and respected pirate captains, and return him back to China for execution.
He also waged a
land war against the Kingdom of
Kotte 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 stop the voyages during his short
reign. Zheng He made one more voyage during the reign of Hongxi's son
Xuande Emperor
(reigned 1426–1435), but after that the voyages of the Chinese treasure
ship fleets were ended. Xuande believed his father's decision to halt
the voyages meritorious, and thus "there would be no need to make a
detailed description of his grandfather’s sending Zheng He to the
Western Oceans."
This, and the fact that the voyages "were contrary to the rules
stipulated in the Huangming zuxun, Ancestral Injunctions of the August
Ming,"
the royal founding documents laid down by the
Hongwu Emperor,
account for the Ming "neglect" of Zheng He in official accounts and the
scant records of the voyages available for later historians.
Zheng He died during the treasure fleet's last voyage. Although he has a
tomb in China, it is empty: he was, like many great admirals,
buried at sea.
The route of the 7th voyage of Zheng He's fleet. Solid line: main fleet; dashed line: a possible route of
Hong Bao's squadron; dotted line: a trip of seven Chinese sailors, including
Ma Huan, from
Calicut to
Mecca
on a native ship. Cities visited by Zheng He's fleet or its squadron on
the 7th or any of the previous voyages are shown in red.
One of a set of maps of Zheng He's missions (郑和航海图), also known as the Mao Kun maps, 1628.
Voyages
The
Kangnido map (1402) predates Zheng's voyages and suggests that he had quite detailed geographical information on much of the
Old World.
| Order |
Time |
Regions along the way |
| 1st Voyage |
1405–1407 |
Champa, Java, Palembang, Malacca, Aru (id:Aru), Samudera, Lambri, Ceylon, Kollam, Cochin, Calicut |
| 2nd Voyage |
1407–1409 |
Champa, Java, Siam, Cochin, Ceylon |
| 3rd Voyage |
1409–1411 |
Champa, Java, Malacca, Sumatra, Ceylon, Quilon, Cochin, Calicut, Siam, Lambri, Kayal, Coimbatore, Puttanpur |
| 4th Voyage |
1413–1415 |
Champa, Java, Palembang, Malacca, Sumatra, Ceylon, Cochin, Calicut, Kayal, Pahang, Kelantan, Aru, Lambri, Hormuz, Maldives, Mogadishu, Barawa, Malindi, Aden, Muscat, Dhofar |
| 5th Voyage |
1416–1419 |
Champa, Pahang, Java, Malacca, Samudera, Lambri, Ceylon, Sharwayn, Cochin, Calicut, Hormuz, Maldives, Mogadishu, Barawa, Malindi, Aden |
| 6th Voyage |
1421–1422 |
Hormuz, East Africa, countries of the Arabian Peninsula |
| 7th Voyage |
1430–1433 |
Champa, Java, Palembang, Malacca, Sumatra, Ceylon, Calicut, Fengtu ... (18 states in total) |
Zheng He led seven expeditions to what the Chinese called "the Western Ocean" (
Indian Ocean). He brought back to China many trophies and envoys from more than thirty kingdoms – including King Vira Alakeshwara of
Ceylon, who came to China as a captive to apologize to the Emperor.
There are speculations that some of Zheng's ships may have traveled beyond the
Cape of Good Hope. In particular, the
Venetian monk and cartographer
Fra Mauro describes in his 1459
Fra Mauro map the travels of a huge "
junk from India" 2,000 miles into the
Atlantic Ocean in 1420. What Fra Mauro meant by 'India' is not known and some scholars believe he meant an Arab ship.
However, Professor Su Ming-Yang thinks "the ship is European, as it is
fitted with a crow’s nest, or lookout post, at the masthead, and has
sails fitted to the yards, unlike the batten sails of Chinese ships.
Zheng himself wrote of his travels:
We have traversed more than 100,000
li
(50,000 kilometers or 30,000 miles) of immense water spaces and have
beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising in the sky, and we
have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue
transparency of light vapors, while our sails, loftily unfurled like
clouds day and night, continued their course [as rapidly] as a star,
traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a public
thoroughfare… — Tablet erected by Zheng He,
Changle,
Fujian, 1432. Louise Levathes
Detail of the
Fra Mauro map relating the travels of a
junk into the Atlantic Ocean in 1420. The ship also is illustrated above the text.
Sailing charts
Zheng He's sailing charts were published in a book entitled
Wubei Zhi (Treatise on Armament Technology) written in 1621 and published in 1628 but traced back to Zheng He's and earlier voyages.
It was originally a strip map 20.5 cm by 560 cm that could be rolled
up, but was divided into 40 pages which vary in scale from 7 miles/inch
in the Nanjing area to 215 miles/inch in parts of the African coast.
There is little attempt to provide an accurate 2-D representation; instead the sailing instructions are given using a 24 point
compass
system with a Chinese symbol for each point, together with a sailing
time/distance, which takes account of the local currents and winds.
Sometimes depth soundings are also provided. It also shows bays,
estuaries, capes and islands, ports and mountains along the coast,
important landmarks (pagodas, temples) and shoal rocks. Of 300 named
places outside China, more than 80% can be confidently located. There
are also fifty observations of stellar altitude.
Part of the chart showing India at top, Ceylon upper right and Africa along the bottom
Size of the ships
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. Some modern scholars consider these descriptions to be
exaggerated.
Chinese records
assert that Zheng He's fleet sailed as far as East Africa. According to
medieval Chinese sources, Zheng He commanded seven expeditions. The
1405 expedition consisted of 27,800 men and a fleet of 62 treasure ships
supported by approximately 190 smaller ships.
The fleet included:
- Treasure ships
(Chinese:宝船), used by the commander of the fleet and his deputies
(nine-masted, about 126.73 metres (416 ft) long and 51.84 metres
(170 ft) wide), according to later writers. This is more or less the size and shape of a football field.
- Equine ships (Chinese:馬船), carrying horses and tribute goods and
repair material for the fleet (eight-masted, about 103 m (339 ft) long
and 42 m (138 ft) wide).
- Supply ships (Chinese:粮船), containing staple for the crew (seven-masted, about 78 m (257 ft) long and 35 m (115 ft) wide).
- Troop transports (Chinese:兵船), six-masted, about 67 m (220 ft) long and 25 m (83 ft) wide.
- Fuchuan warships (Chinese:福船), five-masted, about 50 m (165 ft) long.
- Patrol boats (Chinese:坐船), eight-oared, about 37 m (120 ft) long.
- Water tankers (Chinese:水船), with 1 month's supply of fresh water.
Six more expeditions took place, from 1407 to 1433, with fleets of comparable size.
If the accounts can be taken as factual, Zheng He's treasure ships were
mammoth ships with nine masts, four decks, and were capable of
accommodating more than 500 passengers, as well as a massive amount of
cargo.
Marco Polo and
Ibn Battuta both described multi-masted ships carrying 500 to 1000 passengers in their translated accounts.
Niccolò Da Conti,
a contemporary of Zheng He, was also an eyewitness of ships in
Southeast Asia, claiming to have seen 5 masted junks weighing about 2000
tons.
There are even some sources that claim some of the treasure ships might have been as long as 600 feet.
On the ships were navigators, explorers, sailors, doctors, workers, and soldiers along with the translator and diarist
Gong Zhen.
The largest ships in the fleet, the
treasure ships described in Chinese chronicles, would have been several times
larger than any wooden ship ever recorded in history, surpassing
l'Orient
(65 m/213.3 ft long) which was built in the late 18th century. The
first ships to attain 126 m (413.4 ft) long were 19th century steamers
with iron hulls. Some scholars argue that it is highly unlikely that
Zheng He's ship was 450 feet (137.2 m) in length, some estimating that
they were 390–408 feet (118.9–124.4 m) long and 160–166 feet (48.8–50.6
m) wide instead
while others put them as small as 200–250 feet (61.0–76.2 m) in length,
which would make them smaller than the equine, supply, and troop ships
in the fleet.
One explanation for the seemingly inefficient size of these colossal
ships was that the largest 44 Zhang treasure ships were merely used by
the Emperor and imperial bureaucrats to travel along the Yangtze for
court business, including reviewing Zheng He's expedition fleet. The
Yangtze river, with its calmer waters, may have been navigable by these
treasure ships. Zheng He, a court eunuch, would not have had the
privilege in rank to command the largest of these ships, seaworthy or
not. The main ships of Zheng He's fleet were instead 6 masted 2000-liao
ships.
Early 17th century Chinese
woodblock print, thought to represent Zheng He's ships.
Ming dynasty 24 point compass
South and Southeast Asia
In his book 'The Overall Survey of the Ocean Shores' (Chinese: 瀛涯勝覽)
written in 1416, Ma Huan, one of Zheng He's chroniclers and
interpreters, gave very detailed accounts of his observations of the
peoples' customs and lives in ports they visited.
The
Galle Trilingual Inscription
stone tablet, erected by Zheng He around 1410 in Sri Lanka, records
details about contributions of gold, silver, and silk that Zheng He made
on behalf of the emperor at a
Buddhist mountain temple.
Also, a commemorative pillar at the temple of the
Taoist goddess Tian Fei, the
Celestial Spouse, in Fujian province records details about his voyages.
It has the inscription:
- We have traversed more than 100,000 li (50,000 kilometers) of
immense water spaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like
mountains rising in the sky, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions
far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, while our sails,
loftily unfurled like clouds day and night, continued their course [as
rapidly] as a star, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading
a public thoroughfare…
- —Erected by Zheng He, Changle, Fujian, 1432. Louise Levathes
In Malacca
At the time when his fleet first arrived in Malacca, Chinese people were already living there. Ma Huan refers to them as
tángrén
(Chinese: 唐人). Ming China found Malacca to be a useful transit centre
for replenishment of fleet supplies, and received valuable gifts from
Zheng He's fleet. The sultan and sultana of Malacca at the time visited
China at the head of over 540 of their subjects and ample tribute.
Sultan
Mansur Shah
(ruled 1459–1477) later dispatched Tun Perpatih Putih as his envoy to
China, carrying a letter from the sultan to the Ming emperor. The letter
requested the hand of an imperial daughter in marriage. In the year
1459, a princess (
Hang Li Po
or Hang Liu), was sent by the Ming emperor to marry the sultan. The
princess came with 500 sons of ministers and a few hundred handmaidens
as her entourage. They eventually settled in
Bukit Cina, Malacca. It is believed that a significant number of them married into the local populace.
The descendants of these mixed marriages are locally known today as
Peranakan and still use the honorifics Baba (male title) and
Nyonya (female title).
In Malaysia today, many people believe that Admiral Zheng He (who died
in 1433) sent princess Hang Li Po to Malacca in the year 1459. However
there is no record of Hang Li Po (or Hang Liu) in Ming history. She is
mentioned only within Malaccan folklore and in the
Sejarah Melayu or
Malay Annals.
San Bao Temple in Malacaa
Islam
Accounts contemporary to Zheng He's era suggest he may have been a Muslim; these include the writings of the Muslim Ma Huan.
Indonesian religious leader and Islamic scholar
Hamka (1908–1981) wrote in 1961:
"The development of Islam in Indonesia and Malaya is intimately related to a Chinese Muslim, Admiral Zheng He.
In Malacca he built granaries, warehouses and a stockade. Indonesian
scholar Slamet Muljana writes: "Zheng He built Chinese Muslim
communities first in Palembang, then in San Fa (West Kalimantan),
subsequently he founded similar communities along the shores of Java,
the
Malay Peninsula and the
Philippines. They preached Islam according to the
Hanafi school of thought and in Chinese language.
Li Tong Cai, in his book 'Indonesia – Legends and Facts', writes: "in
1430, Zheng He had already successfully established the foundations of
the Hui religion Islam. After his death in 1434, Hajji Yan Ying Yu
became the force behind the Chinese Muslim community, and he delegated a
few local Chinese as leaders, such as trader Sun Long from Semarang,
Peng Rui He and Hajji Peng De Qin. Sun Long and Peng Rui He actively
urged the Chinese community to 'Javanise'. They encouraged the younger
Chinese generation to assimilate with the
Javanese society, to take on Javanese names and their way of life. Sun Long's adopted son Chen Wen, also known as Radin Pada (
Raden Patah), is the son of King
Majapahit and his Chinese wife.
The Hanafi Islam that some from the fleet may have propagated lost
almost all contact with its parent in China, and gradually was totally
absorbed by the local Shafi’i school of thought. Long before 600 years
had elapsed, the presence of ethnic Chinese Muslims had declined to
almost nil.
Connection to the history of Late Imperial China
In the 1950s, historians such as
John Fairbank and Joseph Needham popularized the idea that after Zheng He's voyages China turned away from the seas due to the
Hai jin
edict and was isolated from European technological advancements. Modern
historians point out that Chinese maritime commerce did not totally
stop after Zheng He, that Chinese ships continued to dominate Southeast
Asian commerce until the 19th century and that active Chinese trading
with India and East Africa continued long after the time of Zheng. The
travels of the Chinese
Junk Keying to the
United States and
England between 1846 and 1848 testify to the power of Chinese shipping until the 19th century. Moreover
revisionist historians such as
Jack Goldstone argue that the Zheng He voyages ended for practical reasons that did not reflect the technological level of China.
Although the Ming Dynasty did ban shipping with the
Hai jin
edict, they eventually lifted this ban. By banning oceangoing shipping,
the Ming (and later Qing) dynasties had forced countless numbers of
people into
black market smuggling. This reduced government tax revenue and increased
piracy. The lack of an oceangoing navy then left China highly vulnerable to the
Wokou pirates that ravaged China in the 16th century.
Richard von Glahn (
University of California, Los Angeles
Professor of History and a specialist in Chinese history) commented
that a majority of school history texts present Zheng He wrongly; they "
offer counterfactual arguments", and "
emphasize China's missed opportunity." The "
narrative emphasizes the failure" instead of Zheng He's accomplishments. He goes on to claim that "
Zheng He reshaped Asia."
According to him, maritime history in the fifteenth century is
essentially the Zheng He story and the effects of Zheng He's voyages.
Von Glahn claims that Zheng He's influence lasted beyond his age, may be
seen as the tip of an iceberg, and there is much more to the story of
maritime trade and other relationships in Asia in the fifteenth century
and beyond.
State-sponsored Ming naval efforts declined dramatically after Zheng's
voyages. Starting in the early 15th century, China experienced
increasing pressure from resurgent
Mongolian
tribes from the north. In recognition of this threat and possibly to
move closer to his family's historical geographic power base, in 1421
the emperor Yongle moved the capital north from
Nanjing to present-day
Beijing.
From the new capital he could apply greater imperial supervision to the
effort to defend the northern borders. At considerable expense, China
launched annual military expeditions from Beijing to weaken the
Mongolians. The expenditures necessary for these land campaigns directly
competed with the funds necessary to continue naval expeditions.
In 1449 Mongolian
cavalry ambushed a land expedition personally led by the emperor
Zhengtong less than a day's march from the walls of the capital. In the
Battle of Tumu Fortress
the Mongolians wiped out the Chinese army and captured the emperor.
This battle had two salient effects. First, it demonstrated the clear
threat posed by the northern nomads. Second, the Mongols caused a
political crisis in China when they released Zhengtong after his
half-brother had proclaimed himself the new
Jingtai
emperor. Not until 1457 did political stability return when Zhengtong
recovered the throne. Upon his return to power China abandoned the
strategy of annual land expeditions and instead embarked upon a massive
and expensive expansion of the
Great Wall of China. In this environment, funding for naval expeditions simply did not happen.
Zheng Hoo (Zheng He) Mosque. A mosque named after the famous navigator in the Indonesian city of Surabaya
Cultural Influence
In the decades after the last voyage, Imperial officials sought to eliminate memories of the voyages.
However, the adventures of the fleet captured the imagination of the Chinese, and novelizations of the voyages flourished.
An author from far inland
Shaanxi
would in 1597 write the grandest of the epics, Romance of the
Three-Jeweled Eunuch, the distance from the coast and time gap since the
last voyage attest to continued cultural power.
In modern times, he is the continued subject of interest and a cultural reference. In
Vernor Vinge's
science fiction novel
A Deepness in the Sky
published in 1999, Qeng Ho, named after Zheng He, are the commercial
traders in human space. The expeditions of Zheng He were featured in the
2005 novel "The Map Thief" by
Heather Terrell. In 2009,
China's
CCTV released
Zheng He Xia Xiyang, a television series specially produced in 2005 to mark the 600th anniversary of Zheng He's voyages.
Gallen Lo starred as Zheng He.
Relics
- Nanjing Tianfeigong (南京天妃宫)
Zheng He built Tianfeigong (天妃宫, Tianfei palace) in Nanjing after the fleet returned from its first western voyage in 1407.
- Stele of Tongfan Deed (通番事跡碑)
The stele of Tongfan Deed (通番事跡, deed of foreign connection and exchange) is located in the Tianfeigong in
Taicang, where they started their journey. It was submerged and disappeared, but has been rebuilt.
- Stele of Record of Tianfei Showing Her Presence and Power (天妃靈應之記碑)
In order to thank
Tianfei for her blessings, Zheng He and his colleagues rebuilt Tianfeigong in Nanshan,
Changle County,
Fujian province before their seventh western voyage. They also raised a
stele with the inscription Tian Fei Ling Ying Zhi Ji (天妃靈應之記, Record of
Tianfei Showing Her Presence and Power), which tells about their
voyages.
- Zheng He Stele in Sri Lanka
The Galle Trilingual Inscription in Sri Lanka was discovered in the city of
Galle in 1911 and is preserved in the
National Museum of Colombo. Three languages were used for the inscription: Chinese,
Tamil and Persian. The
inscription gives praise to Buddha and describes the fleet's donations to a Buddhist temple, the famous
Tenavarai Nayanar temple of Tondeswaram.
Commemoration
Tomb and museum
Zheng He's tomb in Nanjing has been repaired and a small museum has
been built next to it, although his body is missing as he was buried at
sea off the
Malabar Coast near Calicut in Western India.
However, his sword and other personal possessions were interred in the typical Muslim tomb inscribed with Arabic characters.
Zheng He's assistant Hong Bao's tomb was unearthed recently in Nanjing.
Maritime Day
In the People's Republic of China, 11 July is
Maritime Day (中国航海日) and is devoted to the memory of Zheng He's first voyage.
-
Zheng He's tomb in Nanjing
-
Museum to honour Zheng He, Nanjing
-
Zheng He Gallery in Malacca
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