Volta
Person1371 – 1433

Zheng He

Also called: Ma He, Cheng Ho, Sanbao

Ming eunuch admiral from a Muslim family of Yunnan who, at the Yongle Emperor’s command, led seven great fleets from 1405 through Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean to East Africa

Born Ma He into a Muslim family at Kunyang in Yunnan, he had a father and grandfather who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Captured and castrated when Ming forces conquered Yunnan in 1381, he went to serve in the household of Zhu Di, Prince of Yan. For his services in the Jingnan campaign the Yongle Emperor gave him the surname Zheng in 1404 and made him a grand eunuch. From 1405 he led seven great fleets, and is said to have died around 1433 during the seventh voyage. A tomb holding his clothes and cap stands on Niushou Hill in Nanjing.

Show on the map

Where they went

Open the full map

OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles © OpenStreetMap contributors

2 related events

  1. 1
    1400 – 1511The Malacca Sultanate and the Spread of Islam in Southeast Asiarelated figure

    Malacca on the Malay Peninsula prospered as an entrepôt between east and west, and its ruler embraced Islam. Following the merchants, Islam spread across the Malay Peninsula and Indonesia.

  2. 2
    1405 – 1433Voyages of Zheng Hecommander

    At the Yongle Emperor’s command the eunuch Zheng He led seven great fleets between 1405 and 1433 through Southeast Asia to India, the Persian Gulf, Arabia and East Africa, displaying Ming power and enlisting new tributary states.

People who appear alongside

  • Parameswara

    Founder of the Malacca Sultanate (c. 1400), a prince from Palembang in Sumatra who built Malacca into a trading port under Ming patronage

  • Yongle Emperor (Chengzu of Ming)1360 – 1424

    Third Ming emperor (r. 1402–1424), who seized the throne from his nephew the Jianwen Emperor in the Jingnan campaign, moved the capital to Beijing and sent out Zheng He’s fleets

Themes this person appears in

  • Song, Ming and Samurai JapanAD 960 – 1500

    The age when the civil-minded Song bought peace from Liao, Western Xia and Jin while the lower Yangtze boomed and Neo-Confucianism took shape, and the Ming, having driven out the Yuan, rebuilt the East Asian order through imperial autocracy, the sea ban and tribute — as Japan passed through the Kamakura and Muromachi warrior governments into the Warring States era, and Korea from Goryeo to Joseon

  • Turkic-Islamic Empires and Other Civilizations1000 – 1533

    From the Ghaznavid raids on India to the Mughal Empire and Suleiman I — five centuries in which Turkic-led Islamic empires took western Asia and India, while Africa, Southeast Asia and the Americas raised civilisations of their own