Later Zhao: A Visual History

Later Zhao was one of the Sixteen Kingdoms of north China, founded in 319 by Shi Le, a Jie tribesman who had been sold into slavery and rose to be a general of the Xiongnu Han Zhao state before destroying it. At its height under Shi Le and his nephew Shi Hu it ruled almost all of north China from Xiangguo and Ye. Shi Hu's brutality and succession chaos after his death in 349 led to the massacre of the Jie by the Chinese general Ran Min and the state's collapse in 351.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Later Zhao. 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.

Later Zhao territory

Timeline of the Later Zhao

1. 311
   Shi Le destroys the Jin army
2. 319
   Later Zhao founded
3. 329
   Han Zhao destroyed
4. 330
   Shi Le takes the imperial title
5. 333
   Shi Hu seizes power
6. 349
   Shi Hu dies
7. 350
   Ran Min's massacre of the Jie
8. 351
   Later Zhao ends

Shi Le

Shi Le was captured and sold as a slave during the famines of the War of the Eight Princes, escaped, led a bandit band and joined Liu Yuan's Xiongnu Han. He destroyed the Jin's main army in 311 and, after Liu Yuan's successors weakened, declared himself prince of Zhao in 319, then emperor in 330 after crushing Han Zhao. Illiterate, he had histories read to him and admired Liu Bang; he protected Buddhist monks including the miracle-worker Fotudeng.

Shi Hu

Shi Hu seized power in 333, killed Shi Le's sons and moved the capital to Ye. He conquered the last independent enclaves of the north but ruled through terror: enormous forced labour for palaces and hunting parks, harems of tens of thousands, and executions of his own sons, one of whom he had tortured to death with his family. He took the imperial title in 349 and died months later.

Collapse and massacre

Shi Hu's sons murdered each other; his adopted Chinese grandson Ran Min seized Ye in 350, ordered the killing of all Jie and 'barbarians' with high noses and beards, and founded his own Ran Wei state. The last Later Zhao ruler died at Xiangguo in 351; Ran Min was destroyed by the Murong Xianbei in 352, and the Jie people vanished from history.

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

• Former Zhao (Han Zhao) (304 to 329)
• Western Jin dynasty (266 to 316)
• Eastern Jin dynasty (317 to 420)
• Former Qin (351 to 394)
• Northern Wei (386 to 535)
• Xianbei state (93 to 234)

Wars of the same era and region

• Three Kingdoms period (184 to 280)

8 surprising things about the Later Zhao

1. Shi Le is the only emperor in Chinese history known to have been sold as a slave.
2. The Jie may have spoken a Yeniseian language, based on one surviving sentence transcribed in Chinese characters.
3. Shi Hu kept an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 women in his palaces at Ye.
4. The monk Fotudeng was said to predict battles for Shi Le and became the first Buddhist adviser to a Chinese ruler.
5. Shi Hu had his son Shi Sui, who plotted against him, killed along with 26 family members, buried in one coffin.
6. Ran Min's extermination order is one of the earliest recorded attempts at ethnic annihilation in East Asia.
7. The Later Zhao is one of the 'Sixteen Kingdoms', a period when north China had 16 major and many minor states in 135 years.
8. Shi Le refused to be compared to Cao Cao or Sima Yi, saying he would not 'bully orphans and widows' to gain the empire.

Sources

• Later Zhao Wikipedia
• Shi Le Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Sixteen Kingdoms Wikipedia
• Mark Edward Lewis, China Between Empires (2009) Harvard University Press

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