Zheng+He

Zheng He was born in 1371 in modern-day Yunnan Province, which was at that time the last stronghold of the Yuan Dynasty in its struggle with the victorious Ming Dynasty. Like most Hui people, Zheng He was a Muslim.

According to the History of Ming, he was originally named Ma Sanbao and his home was Kunyang, present day Jinning. He belonged to the Semu social caste. He was a sixth-generation descendant of Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, a famous Khwarezmian Yuan governor of Yunnan Province, originally from Bukhara in modern day Uzbekistan. The family name "Ma" came from Shams al-Din's fifth son Masuh (Mansour). Both his father, Mir Tekin, and grandfather, Charameddin, had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and their travels contributed to the young boy's education.

In 1381, following the defeat of the Northern Yuan, a Ming army was dispatched to Yunnan to put down the Mongol rebel Basalawarmi. Ma Sanbao, then only eleven years old, was captured and made a eunuch. He was sent to the Imperial court, where he eventually became a trusted adviser of the Yongle Emperor, assisting him in deposing his predecessor, the Jianwen Emperor. In return for meritorious service, the eunuch received the name Zheng He from the Yongle Emperor. He studied at Nanjing Taixue and travelled to Mecca.

-Zheng He. Retrieved September 30, 2008, from wikipedia Web site: www.wikipedia.com

The admiral led seven expeditions of massive Chinese fleets around the rim the Indian Ocean, attempting to impress the countries there of China’s superiority in culture and technology. His fleets comprised hundreds of ships and with total crews of 20,000 sailors. The ships in these fleets were enormous, some with as many as nine masts.Zheng He’s fleet stopped in ports all along the Indian rim, as far as Mozambique in Africa’s east coast. The Chinese gave gifts to the local rulers, impressing them with China’s skills and products. In return, they were given gifts including a giraffe from an African king.

Zheng He was also personally motivated for the journey by his devotion to Islam. He, like Ibn Batutta, was able to fulfill his Muslim duty to complete the pilgrimage to Mecca. At the same time, he explored the Muslim world and established relationships between the countries on the Indian rim and the Ming emperors, bringing the region, for a brief time, into regular trade and exchange. The traffic of the Silk Road moved onto the sea lanes, bringing the vitality of exchange of culture and technology to the coastal countries and leaving the interior to wither in isolation.

-Zheng He. Retrieved September 30, 2008, from bangorschools.net Web site: http://www.bangorschools.net/hs/SR/Zhenghe.html

Zheng He is arguably China's most famous navigator. Starting from the beginning of the 15th Century, he traveled to the West seven times. For 28 years, he traveled more than 50,000 km and visited over 37 countries, including Singapore. Zheng He died in the tenth year of the reign of the Ming emperor Xuande and was buried in the southern outskirts of Bull's Head Hill in Nanjing.

In 1983, during the 580th anniversary of Zheng He's voyage, his tomb was restored. The new tomb was built on the site of the original tomb and reconstructed according to the customs of Islamic teachings

The Encyclopedia. Retrieved October 1, 2008

Although his precise religious views were not recorded, Zheng He has been portrayed by subsequent generations as either an orthodox Muslim who helped spread his faith into southeast Asia, or as a possible syncretist. The Galle Trilingual Inscription set up by Zheng He around 1410 in Sri Lanka records offerings he made at a Buddhist mountain temple. n around 1431, he set up a commemorative pillar at the temple of the Taoist goddess Tian Fei, the Celestial Spo and use, 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 in Nanjing are reminded of the donations Zheng He made to this non-Muslim area. Although he had been buried at sea, a monument was built to him on land, and this monument was later renovated in an Islamic style. In the modern world Zheng He has been used as a symbol of religious tolerance.The government of the People's Republic of China uses him as a model to integrate the Muslim minority into the Chinese nation.

Retrieved October 1, 2008, Web site: chinaculture.org

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Hi, im here today to tell you about the life, times, and accomplishents of the famous mariner Zheng He. Zheng He was born a muslim in 1371 in what is now the modern day providence of yunnan. in 1381 the ming dynasty attacked Zheng He's home, he was captured and made int a eunuch. He was sent to the Imperial court, where he eventually became a trusted adviser of the Yongle Emperor, assisting him in deposing his predecessor, the Jianwen Emperor. In return for meritorious service, the eunuch received the name Zheng He from the Yongle Emperor. He studied at Nanjing Taixue and travelled to Mecca. 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. The voygages dates are as followed, 1st Voyage 1405-1407, 2nd Voyage 1407-1409, 3rd Voyage 1409-1411, 4th Voyage 1413-1415, 5th Voyage 1416-1419, 6th Voyage 1421-1422, and his 7th Voyage 1430-1433. Zheng He led seven expeditions to what the Chinese called "the Western Ocean". He brought back to China many trophies and envoys from more than thirty kingdoms. The records of Zheng's last two voyages, which are 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 Iran. Zheng He generally sought to attain his goals through diplomacy, and his large army awed most enemies into submission.

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. Most modern scholars consider these descriptions to be exaggerated. Zheng He's sailing charts were published in a book entitled Wu Bei Zhi, written in 1621 and published in 1628 but traced back to Zheng He's and earlier voyages. It was originally a strip map 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. Zheng He's 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. 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.

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. 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.

Soon after Zheng He's death, the Ming Dynasty officials burned most of his charts and writings. By 1500, the Government ordered the destruction of all oceangoing ships and made it a capital offense to build a boat with more than two masts. 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. and finally in his rememberance, the People's Republic of China, Maritime Day is july 11 and is devoted to the memory of Zheng He's first voyage.