Information AboutZheng He |
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Zheng He (; Birth name: 馬三寶 / 马三宝; ; – 1433 ), was a Chinese mariner, 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 of the 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 or Semur caste which practiced Islam . 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 Ming 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 ''Zheng He'' was given by the Yongle Emperor for meritorious service in the Yongle rebellion against the Jianwen Emperor . He studied at Nanjing Taixue (The Imperial Central College). Zheng He travelled to Mecca, though he did not perform the pilgrimage itself. At the beginning of the 1980s, 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. A Peaceful Mariner and Diplomat In around (静海寺） in Nanjing are reminded of the donations Zheng He made to this non-Muslim area. ZHENG HE'S MISSIONS 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 317 ships holding almost 28,000 armed troops. Many of these ships were mammoth nine-masted " Treasure Ships " which were by far the largest marine craft the world had ever seen. It is believed that Zheng He's fleets included several foreigners like Tamil Muslim s of south India. {Link without Title} On the first three voyages, Zheng He visited southeast Asia, India , and Ceylon . 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 . 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 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. 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 . The Seventh and Final Grand Voyage of the Treasure Fleet 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 did not 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. VOYAGES (1402) predates Zheng's voyages and suggests that he had quite detailed geographical information on much of the Old World .]] 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 Alagonakkara of Ceylon , who came to China to apologize to the Emperor. The records of Zheng's last two voyage, which is believed to be his farthest, were unfortunately destroyed by the Ming emperor. Therefore it is never certain where Zheng has sailed in these two expeditions. The traditional view is that he went as far as to Persia . It is now the widely accepted view that his expeditions went as far as the Mozambique Channel in East Africa, from the Chinese ancient artifact discovered there. The latest view, advanced by Gavin Menzies (see below) suggested Zheng's fleet has travelled every part of the world. However, virtually every authority in the field denounces Menzies' claims as speculation. relating the travels of a Junk into the Atlantic Ocean in 1420. The ship also is illustrated above the text.]] 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 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:
His voyages, records, and maps are suggested to be the sources of some of the other Ancient World Maps , which are claimed by Menzies to have depicted the Americas , Antarctica , and the tip of Africa before the (European) official discovery and drawings of the Fra Mauro Map or the De Virga World Map . Former submarine commander '' claims that several parts of Zheng's fleet explored virtually the entire globe, discovering West Africa, North and South America, Greenland, Iceland, Antarctica and Australia (except visiting Europe). Menzies also claimed that Zheng's wooden fleet passed the Arctic Ocean. However none of the citations in ''1421'' are from Chinese sources and scholars in China do not share Menzies's assertions. 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. It is worth noting that several advocates of these theories believe that Zheng He also discovered modern day New Zealand on either his sixth or seventh expedition. SIZE OF THE SHIPS Ancient chronicles 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 said to have reached 600 Feet (146 Meter s) long. The fleet was manned by over 27,000 crew members, including Navigator s, Explorer s, Sailor s, Doctors , Workers , and Soldier s. See also Junk (ship) . As the size estimates are those given in later works of fiction, it's likely that actual ships may have been smaller, since in later historical periods ships approaching this size(such as HMS ''Orlando'' ) were unwieldy and visibly undulated with the waves, even with steel braces. The problem of "hogging", the tendency of the Largest Wooden Ships to sag (like a Pig 's body) because of buoyancy in the middle, would have been impossible to solve. According to ancient 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.Dreyer (2006): 122–124 Briton charts Zheng He's course across globe The fleet included: , according to the Fra Mauro Map . Chinese junks are described as very large, three or four-masted ships.]] The dimensions of the Zheng He's ships according to ancient Chinese chronicles and disputed by modern scholars (see below):
Six more expeditions took place, from 1407 to 1433 , with fleets of comparable size.Dreyer (2006) Chinese Woodblock print, thought to represent Zheng He's ships.]] Modern scholarship The dimensions of the treasure ship as recorded in historical chronicles are disputed by scholars, since the length-to-width ratio of 2.47 isn't very well suited for fast navigation on the oceans. Hydrodynamic models have proved ships with such dimensions are unsailable in the open ocean. Also the treasure ships described in Chinese chronicles would have been several times larger than any wooden ship ever recorded since, including the largest, ''l'Orient'' (65 m long). The first ships to attain such lengths were twentieth-century aircraft carriers with metal hulls. Research on the first source of these dimensions indicated that they came from a novel in the 16th century. Recent research traced the earliest reports of the treasure ships' gigantic dimensions to a 16th-century novel.http://proj.ncku.edu.tw/chengho/ National Cheng Kung University of Taiwan Other research suggests that the actual length of the biggest treasure ships may have been between 59 m and 84 m.Sally K. Church: The Colossal Ships of Zheng He: Image or Reality ? (p.155-176) Zheng He; Images & Perceptions In: South China and Maritime Asia , Volume 15, Hrsg: Ptak, Roderich /Höllmann Thomas, O. Harrasowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, (2005) Accounts of medieval travellers The characteristics of the Chinese ships of the period are described by Western travelers to the East, such as Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo . According to Ibn Battuta, who visited China in 1347 :
ZHENG HE AND ISLAM IN SOUTHEAST ASIA ' faith living there. Ma Huan talks about them as ''tangren'' (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 from converting to 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.1 In many ways, Zheng He can be considered a major founder of the present community of Chinese Indonesian s. In Malacca According to the (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. On his return trip from China, Parameswara was so impressed by Zheng He that he converted to Islam and adopted the name Sultan Iskandar Shah. Malacca prosper under his leadership and became the half-way house, an entreport, for trade between India and China. CONNECTION TO THE HISTORY OF LATE IMPERIAL CHINA brought from Africa in the Twelfth Year Of Yongle (AD 1414) .]] | ||||||||||||||||||
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