Former Qin: A Visual History

Former Qin was a Sixteen Kingdoms state founded in 351 by the Di people at Chang'an. Under Fu Jian (357-385) and his Chinese minister Wang Meng it conquered Former Yan, Former Liang, Dai and the Sichuan basin, uniting north China for the first time since 316 and even taking the Tarim Basin. In 383 Fu Jian's invasion of the Eastern Jin ended in the rout at the Fei River; his subject peoples rebelled, he was strangled by a former subordinate in 385, and the state was extinguished in 394.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Former Qin. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Former Qin territory

Timeline of the Former Qin

1. 351
   Former Qin founded
2. 357
   Fu Jian seizes power
3. 370
   Former Yan conquered
4. 376
   North China unified
5. 383
   Fei River
6. 385
   Fu Jian killed
7. 394
   Former Qin ends

Fu Jian and Wang Meng

The Di were a people of the Gansu-Sichuan borderlands settled inside China. Fu Jian overthrew his cruel cousin in 357 and, guided by the brilliant scholar-official Wang Meng, built a Confucian-style state that welcomed talent regardless of ethnicity, promoted agriculture and, unusually, treated defeated rulers with mercy.

Unification of the north

Former Yan fell in 370, Former Liang and Dai in 376; Sichuan was taken from the Jin in 373. Fu Jian's general Lu Guang marched to Kucha in 383. The kingdom stretched from Korea to Central Asia, and Fu Jian planned to end the division of China by conquering the south. Wang Meng, dying in 375, warned him not to.

Fei River and disintegration

In 383 Fu Jian led an army said to number over 800,000, largely of recently subjugated peoples. At the Fei River the vanguard's tactical withdrawal turned into panic and rout. Murong Chui of the Xianbei and Yao Chang of the Qiang, both former enemies whom Fu Jian had spared, rebelled and founded Later Yan and Later Qin. Fu Jian was captured and strangled by Yao Chang in 385; his successors held out in Gansu until 394.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Eastern Jin dynasty (317 to 420)
• Later Zhao (319 to 351)
• Former Zhao (Han Zhao) (304 to 329)
• Northern Wei (386 to 535)
• Xianbei state (93 to 234)
• Western Jin dynasty (266 to 316)

8 surprising things about the Former Qin

1. Fu Jian famously boasted that his soldiers could dam the Yangtze by throwing their whips into it.
2. His mercy to defeated rulers, unique among the warlords of the age, was exactly what destroyed him.
3. The idiom 'grass and trees all look like soldiers' comes from Fu Jian's terror after Fei River.
4. The general Lu Guang brought the Buddhist translator Kumarajiva back from Kucha; he reached Chang'an only after Former Qin had fallen.
5. Wang Meng, a poor scholar found picking lice from his clothes while discussing strategy, became one of China's most admired ministers.
6. Former Qin was the only Sixteen Kingdoms state to rule the entire north.
7. Fu Jian sent troops as far as Korea and the Tarim Basin, a reach no northern state matched until the Northern Wei.
8. The Fei River battlefield lies in modern Anhui, near Shouxian.

Sources

• Former Qin Wikipedia
• Fu Jian Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Battle of Fei River Wikipedia
• Mark Edward Lewis, China Between Empires (2009) Harvard University Press

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