Zheng He

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: General history; Historical figures

Zheng He ( Traditional Chinese: 鄭和; Simplified Chinese: 郑和; Hanyu Pinyin: Zhèng Hé; Wade-Giles: Cheng Ho; Birth name: 馬三寶 / 马三宝; pinyin: Mǎ Sānbǎo; Arabic name: حجّي محمود Hajji Mahmud) ( 1371– 1433), was a famous Chinese mariner, explorer, diplomat and fleet admiral, who made the voyages collectively referred to as the travels of "Eunuch Sanbao to the Western Ocean" ("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 of 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. According to his biograhy 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 Semur or Semu caste who practiced Islam. He was the sixth generation descendant of Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, a famous Yuan governor of the Yunnan Province from Bukhara in modern day Uzbekistan. His family name "Ma" came from Shams al-Din's fifth son Masuh. Both his father Mir Tekin and grandfather Charameddin had travelled on pilgrimage to Mecca. Their travels contributed much to the young boy's education. He grew up speaking Arabic and Chinese, learning much about the world to the west and its geography and customs. After the Ming army conquered Yunnan, he was taken captive as a young boy in 1381, and castrated, thus becoming a eunuch, to become a servant at the Imperial court. The name Zheng He was given by the Yongle emperor for the war merit in the Yongle rebellion aganst the Jianwen Emperor. He studied at Nanjing Taixue (The Imperial Central College).

Zheng He was a Muslim by birth. He travelled to Mecca, though he did not peform the pilgrimage itself. His tomb was recently (at the beginning of the 1980's) renovated in a more Islamic style, although he himself was buried at sea. The PRC government 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 institution.

Zheng He's missions

His missions showed impressive demonstrations of organizational capability and technological might, but did not lead to significant trade, since Zheng He was an admiral and an official, not a merchant. There were also rumors that he was at least two meters (six feet seven inches) tall. 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 has a tomb in China, it is 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 converted the natives to Islam. Malacca became the center of Islamic learning and also a large international Islamic trade centre of the southern seas.

Voyages

Zheng He led seven expeditions to what the Chinese called "the Western Ocean" (Indian Ocean.) The places in Asia and Africa that Zheng He visited included:

• Southeast Asia * Sumatra * Malacca * Java * Ceylon * India * Persia * The Persian Gulf * Arabia * The Red Sea as far north as Egypt * Africa as far south as the Mozambique Channel * Taiwan seven times.

The number of his voyages varies depending on the method of division, but he travelled at least seven times to "The Western Ocean" with his fleet. He brought back to China many trophies and envoys from more than thirty kingdoms -— including King Alagonakkara of Ceylon, who came to China to apologize to the Emperor.

There are speculations that some of Zheng's ships may have travelled beyond the Cape of Good Hope. In particular, the Venetian monk and cartographer Fra Mauro describes in his 1457 Fra Mauro map the travels of a huge " junk from India" 2,000 miles into the Atlantic Ocean in 1420.

Zheng himself wrote of his travels:

"We have traversed more than 100,000 li (50,000 kilometers) of immense waterspaces 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 Zhen He, Changle, Fujian, 1432. Louise Levathes)

His voyages, records, maps are one of the explanations and supposed sources of some of the other Ancient world maps, which are claimed to have depicted the Americas, Antarctica, the tip of Africa etc.. before the (European) official discovery, such as the Fra Mauro map or the De Virga world map.

Former submarine commander Gavin Menzies in his book "1421: The Year China discovered the World" claims that several parts of Zheng's fleet explored virtually the entire globe, discovering West Africa, North and South America, Greenland, Antarctica and Australia. A related book, "The island of seven cities : where the Chinese settled when they discovered America" by Paul Chiasson maintains that a nation of native peoples known as the Mi'kmaq on the east coast of Canada are descendants of Chinese explorers, offering evidence in the form of archaeological remains, customs, costume, artwork, etc.

Treasure Ships

Treasure ship is the name of a type of vessel that the Chinese admiral Zheng He sailed in. His fleet included 62 treasure ships, with some reaching 600 feet (146 meters) long. The fleet was manned by over 27,000 crew members, including navigators, explorers, sailors, doctors, workers, and soldiers. See also Junk (ship).

According to the Chinese chronicles, 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", used by the commander of the fleet and his deputies (nine-masted, about 120 meter (400 ft) long and 50 m (160 ft) wide). (Some reached up to 600 feet long) The treasure ships weighed as much as 1,500 tons, while the largest European ships 80 years later only weighed 150 tons.
• " Horse ships", carrying tribute goods and repair material for the fleet (eight-masted, about 103 m (339 ft) long and 42 m (138 ft) wide)
• " Supply ships", containing staple for the crew (seven-masted, about 78 m (257 ft) long and 35 m (115 ft) wide).
• " Troop transports", six-masted, about 67 m (220 ft) long and 25 m (83 ft) wide).
• " Fuchuan warships", five-masted, about 50 m (165 ft) long).
• " Patrol boats", eight-oared, about 37 m (120 feet) long).
• " Water tankers", with 1 month supply of fresh water.

Six more expeditions took place, from 1407 to 1433, with fleets of comparable size.

The enormous characteristics of the Chinese ships of the period are confirmed by Western travelers to the East, such as Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo. According to Ibn Battuta, who visited China in 1347:

…We stopped in the port of Calicut, in which there were at the time thirteen Chinese vessels, and disembarked. China Sea travelling is done in Chinese ships only, so we shall describe their arrangements. The Chinese vessels are of three kinds; large ships called chunks ( junks), middle sized ones called zaws ( dhows) and the small ones kakams. The large ships have anything from twelve down to three sails, which are made of bamboo rods plaited into mats. They are never lowered, but turned according to the direction of the wind; at anchor they are left floating in the wind.

Three smaller ones, the "half", the "third" and the "quarter", accompany each large vessel. These vessels are built in the towns of Zaytun and Sin-Kalan. The vessel has four decks and contains rooms, cabins, and saloons for merchants; a cabin has chambers and a lavatory, and can be locked by its occupants.

This is the manner after which they are made; two (parallel) walls of very thick wooden (planking) are raised and across the space between them are placed very thick planks (the bulkheads) secured longitudinally and transversely by means of large nails, each three ells in length. When these walls have thus been built the lower deck is fitted in and the ship is launched before the upper works are finished." (Ibn Battuta).

Zheng He and Islam in Southeast Asia

Islam in China History

Architecture

Chinese mosques Niujie Mosque

Major figures

Zheng He • Ma Bufang Haji Noor

People Groups

Hui • Salar • Uygur Kazakhs • Kyrgyz • Tatars Uzbeks • Tibetans • Dongxiang Bao'an • Tajiks

Islamic Cities/Regions

Quanzhou • Linxia • Xinjiang Ningxia • Kashgar

Culture

Islamic Association of China Cuisine • Calligraphy Education • Martial arts

Indonesia 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, and most probably he left behind many of his Muslim crews. Much of the information on Zheng He's voyages were compiled by Ma Huan, also Muslim, who accompanied Zheng He on several of his inspection tours and served as his chronicler / interpreter. In his book 'The Overall Survey of the Ocean Shores' (Chinese: 瀛涯勝覽) written in 1416, Ma Huan gave very detailed accounts of his observations of the peoples' customs and lives in ports they visited. Zheng He had many Muslim Eunuchs as his companions. At the time when his fleet first arrived in Malacca, there were already Chinese of the ' Mohammedan' faith living there. Ma Huan talks about them as Tang-Ren (Chinese: 唐人) who were Muslim. At places they went, they frequented mosques, actively propagated the Islamic faith, established Chinese Muslim communities and built mosques.

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 propagated the Islamic faith 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 named Radin Pada is the son of King Majapahit and his Chinese wife."

After Zheng He's death, Chinese naval expeditions were suspended. The Hanafi Islam that Zheng He and his people propagated lost almost all contact with Islam in China, and gradually was totally absorbed by the local Shafi’i sect. When Melaka was successively colonised by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and later the British, Chinese were discouraged to convert into Islam. Many of the Chinese Muslim mosques became San Bao Chinese temples commemorating Zheng He. After a lapse of 600 years, the influence of Chinese Muslims in Malacca declined to almost nil.

In Malacca

According to the Malaysian history, Sultan Mansur Shah (ruled 1459 - 1477) dispatched Tun Perpatih Putih as his envoy to China and carried a letter from the Sultan to the Ming Emperor. Tun Perpatih succeeded in impressing the Emperor of Ming with the fame and grandeur of Sultan Mansur Shah that the Emperor decreed that his daughter Hang Li Po should marry the Sultan. In the year 1459, a princess Hang Li Po (or Hang Liu), was sent by the emperor of Ming to marry Malacca Sultan Mansur Shah (ruled 1459 - 1477). The princess came with her entourage 500 sons of ministers and a few hundred handmaidens. They eventually settled in Bukit Cina, Malacca. The descendants of these people, from mixed marriages with the local natives, are known today as Peranakan: Baba (the male title) and Nyonya (the female title).

In Malaysia today, many people believe it was admiral Zheng He (died 1433) who sent princess Hang Li Po to Malacca in year 1459. However there is no record of Hang Li Po (or Hang Liu) in Ming documents, she is known only from Malacca folklore. In that case, Ma Huan's observation was true, the so-called Peranakan in Malacca was in fact Tang-Ren or Hui Chinese Muslims. These Chinese Muslims together with Parameswara were refugees of the declining Srivijaya kingdom, they came from Palembang, Java and other places. Some of the Chinese Muslims were soldiers and so they served as warrior and bodyguard to protect the Sultanate of Malacca.

Connection to the history of Late Imperial China

One popular belief holds that after Zheng's voyages, China turned away from the seas and underwent a period of technological stagnation. Although historians such as John Fairbank and Joseph Needham popularized this view in the 1950s, most current historians of China question its accuracy. They point out that Chinese maritime commerce did not 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 to 1848 testify to the power of Chinese shipping until the 19th century.

Although the Ming Dynasty did ban shipping for a few decades with the Hai jin edict, they eventually lifted this ban. The alternative view cites the fact that by banning ocean going shipping the Ming (and later Qing) dynasties forced countless numbers of people into blackmarket smuggling. This reduced government tax revenue and increased piracy. The lack of an ocean going navy then left China highly vulnerable to the Waku (wakou) pirates that ravaged China in the 16th century.

One thing is certain. 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.

More fundamentally, unlike the later naval expeditions conducted by European nations, the Chinese treasure ships appear to have been doomed in the long run because the voyages lacked any economic motive. They were primarily conducted to increase the prestige of the emperor and the costs of the expeditions and of the return gifts provided to foreign royalty and ambassadors more than offset the benefit of any tribute collected. Thus when China's governmental finances came under pressure (which like all medieval governments' finances they eventually did), funding for the naval expeditions melted away. In contrast, by the 16th century, most European missions of exploration made enough profit from the resulting trade to become self-financing, allowing them to continue regardless of the condition of the state's finances.

Cultural echoes

A recent controversial theory (the 1421 hypothesis) put forward by Gavin Menzies in his book asserts that Zheng He circumnavigated the globe and arrived in America in the 15th century before Ferdinand Magellan and Christopher Columbus.

The Qeng Ho space-faring society alluded to in Vernor Vinge's science fiction novel A Fire Upon the Deep (and later prominently featured in A Deepness in the Sky) reflects the name of Zheng. His voyages and the subsequent possible abandonment (as some have argued) of maritime exploration by the Chinese emperors have become symbolic in the space advocacy community of the success and cancellation of the Apollo Program.

Zheng features as a character in Kim Stanley Robinson's alternative history The Years of Rice and Salt.

It has been suggested by some historians and mentioned in a recent National Geographic article on Zheng that Sindbad the Sailor (also spelled "Sinbad", from Arabic السندباد—As-Sindibad) and the collection of travel-romances that make up the Seven Voyages of Sindbad the Sailor found in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) were influenced heavily by the cumulative tales of many seafarers that had followed, traded and worked in various support ships as part of the armada of Chinese Ming Imperial Treasure Fleets. This belief is supported in part by the similarities in Sindbad's name and the various iterations of Zheng in Arabic and Mandarin (pinyin: Mǎ Sānbǎo;Cantonese: Mah Senbau; Arabic name: Hajji Mahmud Shams) along with the similarities in the number (seven) and general locations of voyages between Sindbad and Zheng.

The "Zheng He map"

In January 2006, BBC News and The Economist both published news regarding the exhibition of a Chinese sailing map claimed to be dated 1763, which was stated to be a copy of another map purportedly made in 1418. The map has detailed descriptions of both Native Americans and Native Australians. According to the map's owner, Liu Gang, a Chinese lawyer and collector, he purchased the map in 2001 for $500 USD from a Shanghai dealer.

After Liu read the book "1421: The Year China discovered the World" by Gavin Menzies, he realized the significant potential value of the map. The map has been tested to verify the age of its paper, but not the ink. Even though the map has been shown to date from a period that could cover 1763, the question remains as to whether it is an accurate copy of an earlier 1418 map, or simply a copy of a contemporary 18th-century European map.

A number of authorities on Chinese history have questioned the authenticity of the map. Some point to the use of the Mercator-style projection, its accurate reckoning of longitude and its North-based orientation. None of these features was used in the best maps made in either Asia or Europe during this period (for example see the Kangnido map (1410) and the Fra Mauro (1459). Also mentioned is the depiction of the erroneous Island of California, a mistake commonly repeated in European maps from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.

Geoff Wade of the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore has strongly disputed the authenticity of the map and has suggested that it is either an 18th or 21st-century fake. He has pointed out a number of anachronisms that appear in the map and its text annotations. For example, in the text next to Eastern Europe, which has been translated as "People here mostly believe in God and their religion is called 'Jing'", Wade notes that the Chinese word for the Christian God is given as "Shang-di", which is a usage that was first coined by Jesuit missionaries in the 16th century.

In May 2006, it was reported by the Dominion Post that Fiona Petchey, head of the testing unit at Waikato University, which had carbon dated the map, had asked Gavin Menzies to remove claims from his website that the dating proved the map was genuine. The carbon dating indicated with an 80% probability a date for the paper of the map between either 1640-1690 or 1730-1810. However as the ink was not tested, it was impossible to know when it was drawn. Ms Petchey said, "we asked him to remove those, not because we were not happy with the dates, but because we were not overly happy with being associated with his interpretations of those dates."

Possible contact of Ming Chinese with Pre-Columbian America

In June 2006, Siu-Leung Lee (Columbus, Ohio) presented evidence that might indicate contact of Ming Chinese and Pre-Columbian Americans. A 7-cm diameter brass disk has been unearthed in a scantly populated Appalachian region of west North Carolina. It bears the inscription of six Chinese words "Da Ming Xuan De Wei Ci", meaning "commissioned to be granted by Xuan De the emperor of Great Ming". Xuan De was the fifth emperor of Ming dynasty that dispatched Zheng He for the last voyage (1431). The disk (or medallion) is unearthed at a site that was the cultural centre of Cherokee, which is known to be one of the most culturally advanced of the native American tribes.

The Cherokee tribe had a flag with Big Dipper, but they only associate that with the seven clans without knowing the meaning of the Big Dipper as constellation. This flag may be an imported concept from China. The Big Dipper has been a symbol of Chinese emperors since Zhou dynasty. According to the official history of Song, Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing, a Big Dipper flag was always used as a central display in the imperial parade. The Big Dipper was especially revered during the Ming dynasty as a symbol of Daoism, a favorite of the Ming emperors. Zheng He also used the Big Dipper as his navigation guide. Peace and war flags were used by Zheng He's fleet when encountering friends or foes in their visit to new lands. The Cherokees also had the Big Dipper flag made for peace (white with red stars) and war (red with white stars).

The Catawba tribe along the coast of South Carolina is still the most capable potters among native Americans. They continue to make a three-legged pot resembling the famous Xuan De censer, a special design by the Ming emperor. The knowledge of the Catawba on processing raw clay into refined clay for pottery was notably advanced. While England had been trying to learn the secret of porcelain making from China without success, their first porcelain industry came only after importing the china clay from Catawba/Cherokee. The word for china clay in Cherokee is "unaker", a corruption of English transliteration of Chinese southern dialect "uk-na(ke)" (-ke is silent). The term was used during Ming dynasty and later gradually replaced by Kaolin (Gaolingtu) in Qing dynasty.

All these cultural relics seem to imply that there may have been contact between the Ming Chinese and the Catawba and Cherokee during Ming period. It is therefore possible that some of Zheng He's 27,000 crew members actually landed in America.

Appearances in Games

WizKids' Pirates of the Spanish Main constructible strategy game contained a convention-exclusive Admiral Zheng He game piece packed with a treasure ship game piece in 2005.