Zheng He | Biography, Facts, & Significance - Encyclopedia Britannica

Background and early years

Zheng He was from a Hui (Chinese Muslim) family. His father was a hajji, a Muslim who had made the hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca. His family claimed descent from an early Mongol governor of Yunnan province in southwestern China as well as from King Muḥammad of Bukhara (now in Uzbekistan). The family name Ma was derived from the Chinese rendition of Muḥammad.

In 1381, when he was about 10 years old, Yunnan, the last Mongol hold in China, was reconquered by Chinese forces led by generals of the Ming dynasty, which had overthrown the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty in 1368. The young Ma Sanbao (later Ma He), as he was then known, was among the boys who were captured, castrated, and sent into the army as orderlies. By 1390, when those troops were placed under the command of the prince of Yan, Ma He had distinguished himself as a junior officer, skilled in war and diplomacy. Ma also had made influential friends at court.

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In 1400 the prince of Yan revolted against his nephew, the Jianwen emperor, taking the throne in 1402 as the Yongle emperor. Under the Yongle administration (1402–24), the war-devastated economy of China was soon restored. The Ming court then sought to display its naval power to bring the maritime states of South and Southeast Asia in line.

For some 300 years the Chinese had been extending their power out to sea. An extensive seaborne commerce had developed to meet the taste of the Chinese for spices and aromatics and the need for raw industrial materials. Chinese travelers abroad, as well as Indian and Muslim visitors, widened the geographic horizon of the Chinese. Technological developments in shipbuilding and in the arts of seafaring reached new heights by the beginning of the Ming.