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< My Say >
Sunday, August 26, 2007
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About Zheng He
Zheng He was born in 1371. He was of the Hui ethnic group and the Muslim faith in modern-day Yunnan Province. He served as a close confidant of the Yongle Emperor of China (1403–1424), the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty. One of Zheng He's ancestors includes a general for Genghis Khan.
Zheng He was originally named Ma Sanbao and was from Kunyang, present day Jinning, Yunnan Province. Zheng He belonged to the S 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. When Zheng He was eleven years old, he 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 the war merit 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.
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 respect 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.
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