Home / Dynasties / Division and Reunion / Sixteen Kingdoms
Sixteen Kingdoms十六国
304 – 439
A patchwork of short-lived states founded by non-Han peoples across the north.
States of this period
The 16 states this heading covers, in rough date order.
- 前凉Former Liang 301 – 376
- 成汉Cheng-Han 304 – 347
- 前赵Former Zhao 304 – 329
- 后赵Later Zhao 319 – 351
- 前燕Former Yan 337 – 370
- 前秦Former Qin 351 – 394
- 后燕Later Yan 384 – 407
- 后秦Later Qin 384 – 417
- 西秦Western Qin 385 – 431
- 后凉Later Liang 386 – 403
- 北凉Northern Liang 397 – 439
- 南凉Southern Liang 397 – 414
- 南燕Southern Yan 398 – 410
- 西凉Western Liang 400 – 421
- 夏Xia 407 – 431
- 北燕Northern Yan 407 – 436
前凉 · Former Liang301 – 376
- Duke Wu of Former Liang Zhang Gui, ? – 314 · founder of Former Liang Zhang Gui was a Confucian official of the Western Jin, appointed inspector of Liang province in 301 and governing the Hexi corridor from Guzang until his death in 314, taking over a frontier ruined by revolt and leaving it the one stable government in the north-west. He gave it a school for the sons of its leading families, a currency ordinance, and land for refugees from the central plains, and he refused the promotions and noble titles the court offered, never taking a reign title or the title of king, so that the state which grew from his appointment rested on a loyalty he never renounced.
- Duke Zhao of Former Liang Zhang Shi, ? – 320 · ruler of Former Liang Zhang Shi, the eldest son of Zhang Gui, governed Former Liang from 314 to 320 as a Jin provincial officer rather than as a king, keeping his father's school, coinage and provincial establishment intact. When Chang'an fell in 316 and the court at Jiankang proclaimed new era names, he went on dating every document at Guzang by the Jianxing era of the deposed Emperor Min, a refusal that made a calendar the practical constitution of a state, and he was killed in 320 by the clients of a wonder-worker named Liu Hong and was succeeded by his brother Zhang Mao.
- Duke Cheng of Former Liang Zhang Mao, 277 – 324 · ruler of Former Liang Zhang Mao (277–324) was the younger brother of Zhang Shi and the third ruler of the Zhang house in Liang province, which he held from 320 until his death. In 323, after a Han Zhao army came west and his river defences collapsed, he sent an envoy to submit to Liu Yao and accepted the title king of Liang, the first of his family to hold a royal rank from a sovereign other than Jin; he kept the province intact but paid tribute for it, and in 324 he died childless and left the province to his brother's son Zhang Jun.
- Duke Zhongcheng of Former Liang Zhang Jun, 307 – 346 · ruler of Former Liang Zhang Jun held the province of Liang from 324 to 346 and never took a royal title, though he founded an academy, commissioned a state history in fifty scrolls, divided his territory into three provinces and turned the oasis of Gaochang into a commandery in 327. He kept the dead Western Jin era Jianxing on his documents, took and shelved titles from Jin, Han Zhao and Later Zhao as the balance of power required, and left behind a court that survived him and an heir chosen over an elder son.
- Duck Huan of Former Liang Zhang Chonghua, ? – 353 · ruler of Former Liang Zhang Chonghua (?-353) ruled Former Liang from 346, at sixteen, survived a Later Zhao invasion that had already taken Jincheng, and set aside the senior frontier families to give command to Xie Ai, a Dunhuang secretary whose victories at Zhenwu, Linhe and Changzui in 346 and 347 saved the corridor while losing the south bank of the Yellow River. Dying in 353, he wrote an order making Xie Ai regent for his ten-year-old son Zhang Yaoling, but his half-brother Zhang Zuo suppressed it, and within weeks both the order and the general were gone.
- Marquis of Liangning Zhang Yaoling, ? – 355 · ruler of Former Liang Zhang Yaoling, son and heir of Zhang Chonghua of Former Liang, held the ruler's titles for about a month in the winter of 353, aged ten, before his father's elder brother Zhang Zuo had him deposed to marquis of Liangning. Killed in the Eastern Garden at Guzang in 355, aged twelve, he was privately named Duke Ai by the man who ordered his death, and survives in the record only because the year, the usurpation and the restoration proclaimed in his name all required him to have ruled.
- King Wei of Former Liang Zhang Zuo, ? – 355 · ruler of Former Liang Zhang Zuo, the eldest son of Zhang Jun by a concubine and the elder half-brother of Zhang Chonghua, used a forged testament and the dowager Lady Ma's order to set aside his ten-year-old nephew Zhang Yaoling in 353 and take the government. In 354 he claimed the imperial title and replaced the Jin era with his own era of Peace; that change of calendar, more than any failure of administration, turned the province's officials against him, and after Zhang Guan and Song Hun rose in 355 his own guard commander speared him and a cook killed him, leaving his body in the road.
- Duke Chong of Former Liang Zhang Xuanjing, 350 – 363 · ruler of Former Liang Zhang Xuanjing was put on the seat of Former Liang in 355 at seven, by a palace faction that brought him and his grandmother out to bless a coup already won, and for eight years every order in his name came from a regent: Zhang Guan, Song Hun, Song Cheng, Zhang Yong and finally his uncle Zhang Tianxi, four of whom died in office and the fifth killed him. He was killed in 363 at fourteen and the government announced a sudden illness; the chapter preserves almost nothing but the dates on which the men around him died, which describes where power lay more exactly than any account of his rule.
- Duck Dao of Former Liang Zhang Tianxi, ? – ? · ruler of Former Liang Zhang Tianxi was the last ruler of Former Liang, a younger son of Zhang Jun who took the Guzang throne in 363 by killing his nephew Zhang Xuanjing and then held it for thirteen years, sending envoys to Jiankang and buying time from the Former Qin with titles, tribute and delays. When the Qin army came in 376 he chose not to fight: he rode out of the eastern gate dressed in white with his hands bound and a coffin standing on the cart behind him, and surrendered a province his family had held for three generations, an ending that preserved the city and cost him nothing except the state.
Contemporary regimes
States that existed at the same time as the Sixteen Kingdoms, in whole or in part.