Zheng He (pronounced Jung Ha) was born in Kunyand, near Yunnan in 1371 and he died in 1433 in Cochin (to-day Kozhikode), on the Malabar coast of India. Zheng He was the Admiral and top diplomat, who helped extend the maritime and commercial influence of China all through the regions of the Indian Ocean in the fifteenth century. During his lifetime, Zheng He would make seven naval expeditions in the Indian Ocean – an exploit that occurred almost a century before the Portuguese Vasco da Gama reached India by sailing round the tip of the Cape of Good Hope in 1498.
Zheng He’s real name was Haji Mahmud Shams. He was a Hui and Muslim by faith. His father was a Hajji – one who had accomplished the Pilgrimage to Mecca. As a matter of fact, Zheng He’s family claimed descent from a governor of the Province of Yunnan in Southern China as well as King Muhammad of Bukhara in Uzbekistan. His family name was Ma – a derivative of the Chinese rendition of the name Muhammad.
In 1381, when Zheng was around ten years old, Yunnan, which was the last Yuan (Mongol) stronghold in China, was reconquered by the Chinese forces of the Ming dynasty. Young Zheng He, who was known as Ma Sanbao, later changed to Ma He, was captured with other boys of his age, “ritually castrated” and sent into the army as orderlies and later as a eunuch to the Emperor’s palace. By 1390, he served with the troops, under the command of the prince of Yuan and showed his skills as a junior officer and also as a fighter in battles and, later, even in diplomacy – skills that made a good impression on the Emperor and his Court.
In 1401, Prince Yan rebelled against his nephew, Emperor Jianwen and ended up taking the throne in 1402 as the Yongle Emperor. The war lasted two years (1402-24) that literally devastated the country’s economy. However, it would soon rebound thanks to the new strategies brought in by the Emperor. In fact, by that time the Ming Court opted to display its naval power in order to bring the maritime states in the South and Southeast Asia under their influence and also in line with its new policies, which was to control trade and commerce. The result was that soon the kingdom’s economy rebounded.
As a matter of fact, for almost three hundred years, the Chinese had been slowly trying to expand their influence out to the sea. And, in the process, they had developed a seaborne commerce that helped satisfy the growing taste of the Chinese for spices and also the need for raw materials for their industries. Chinese travellers as well as Indian and Muslim visitors widened the horizon of the Chinese in technological developments in shipbuilding, and the art of sea-faring reached new heights by the beginning of the Ming dynasty.
Ma He very quickly became a big influence at the Emperor’s Yongle’s Court and it was not long before the Emperor rewarded him with the title of “Zheng” and from then on, he became “Zheng He” — the name by which he is known till to-day. The Emperor Yongle eventually chose him as the Commander-in-Chief of his fleet and, as such, Zheng He would embark on a series of missions in the “Western Ocean”– which was how they called the ‘Indian Ocean’ then – to push Chinese influence as well as trade and commerce.
The Chinese fleet was an impressive armada probably hitherto unseen before. It is said that one ship was as large as one football field and the fleet comprised over one hundred such vessels with a crew of some 28,000 men under Zheng He’s command. Compared to Zheng He’s ship, Christopher Columbus’ flagship, the Santa Maria, that headed his historic expedition through the Atlantic Ocean by sailing West in search for a new sea-route to the East, was a “coque de pistache” yet he did accomplish his mission.
The imposing Chinese fleet was designed, as one writer rightly put it, to show not only China’s power but also “to establish a Chinese presence, impose control over trade and impress the foreign peoples in the Indian Ocean.”
Zheng He’s first mission was undertaken in 1405. He visited Champa (to-day Vietman), Siam, (to-day Thailand), Maleka (now Malacca), the island of Java, in Indonesia, and then he sailed through the Indian Ocean to Calicut ((Kozhikode) on the Malabar coast, and then to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Zheng He would return home to China in 1407 bringing home, among other things exotic gifts for the Emperor.
On his second voyage, completed in 1408-1409, Zheng He visited Calicut with stops at Cochin (Kochi) along the South coast of India. However, during his stop-over in Ceylon (Shri Lanka), he encountered some challenges on the part of pirates. Zheng He met the pirates head on, defeated them and took the leader prisoner and handed him to the Emperor in Nanging.
In 1409, Zheng He would undertake his third trip — this time going beyond the ports of India. He sailed to the port of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea – a trip that gave him the opportunity to visit Mecca, in Arabia (now Saudi Arabia) and perform the Hajj (Pilgrimage) as demanded upon every able-bodied Muslim who can afford the journey. On his return trip home, he sailed down the east coast of Africa, visited the East African ports and towns bringing home, among others, giraffes, ostriches and zebras –that created quite a sensation among the Chinese public. Apparently, they had never seen such animals before.
Zheng He was, no doubt, also a proselytizer. He loved his religion and whenever he stopped, he never failed to talk about it among the local Muslims for he was also a community-builder. It is said that in many of the islands in the south-east Asian peninsula, there already were many Muslims converted by Arab traders who had long been carrying on a lucrative trade in spices with the islanders. Zheng He took advantage of his visits to organize and strengthen the Islamic communities – which leads us to the question that people often ask: How come Indonesia, in the Far East, is the largest Muslim country (population-wise) in the world to-day when everybody knows, no Islamic army or conqueror ever went to that region at the head of any army to conquer and/or convert the people? The answer is simple: It was all due the work of Arab traders and Muslims like Admiral Zheng He. It is a fact that the Far East, in Southeast China has large Muslim communities and how Islam came to the Far East is no longer a mystery. Everybody knows it was the Arab traders and mariners – including the likes of Admiral Zheng He.
Zheng He’s embarked on his seventh and final voyage in 1431 and was on his return journey home when he died at sea near Calicut, India, and was seemingly ‘buried’ at sea. However, there is a tomb of his in Nanging in China but it is presumed to be empty. Only his gear was interred in the tomb, it is said. However, the memories of his maritime exploits live on … Also, it is interesting to observe that following Zheng He’s death, because of new political and social changes in China, the Chinese Emperor decided to destroy all the records of Zheng He’s voyages and his ships. So much so, for many years, Zheng He remained an unsung hero in Chinese history until some ‘relics’ of one of his ships – presumably a mast – were dug up and identified as part of one of his fleet. That suddenly revived interest in him and his exploits and his reputation and fame as a Master-mariner restored. To-day, Zheng He is honoured as one of the great naval heroes of China’s illustrious history.
“We have traversed more than 100,000 miles of immense water spaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising in the sky, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, while our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds day and night, continued their course [as rapidly] as a star, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a public thoroughfare… “ (From Zheng He’s log)