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班固
Ban Gu (AD32–92) was a Chinese historian, politician, and poet best known for his part in compiling the ''Book of Han'', the second of China's 24 dynastic histories. He also wrote a number of '' fu'', a major literary form, part prose and part poetry, which is particularly associated with the Han era. A number of Ban's ''fu'' were collected by Xiao Tong in the '' Wen Xuan''. Family background The Ban family was one of the most distinguished families of the Eastern Han dynasty. They lived in the state of Chu during the Warring States Period but, during the reign of the First Emperor, a man named Ban Yi ( or ''Bān Yī'') fled north to the Loufan ( t s ''Lóufán'') near the Yanmen Pass in what is now northern Shanxi Province. By the early Han Dynasty, Ban Gu's ancestors gained prominence on the northwestern frontier as herders of several thousand cattle, oxen, and horses, which they traded in a formidable business and encouraged other families to move to the frontier. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ban Chao
Ban Chao (; 32–102 CE), courtesy name Zhongsheng, was a Chinese diplomat, explorer, and military general of the Eastern Han Dynasty. He was born in Fufeng, now Xianyang, Shaanxi. Three of his family members—father Ban Biao, elder brother Ban Gu, younger sister Ban Zhao—were well known historians who wrote the historical text ''Book of Han'', which recorded the history of the Western Han Dynasty. As a Han general and cavalry commander, Ban Chao was in charge of administrating the "Western Regions" (Central Asia) while he was in service. He also led Han forces for over 30 years in the war against the Xiongnu and re-established Han control over the Tarim Basin region. He was made Protector General of the Western Regions by the Han government for his efforts in protecting and governing the regions. Ban Chao is depicted in the Wu Shuang Pu (無雙譜, Table of Peerless Heroes) by Jin Guliang. As a well-known historian, Ban Chao's family was poor and he worked as a copy-clerk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ban Biao
Ban Biao (, 3–54 CE), courtesy name (), was a Chinese historian and politician born in what is now Xianyang, Shaanxi during the Han Dynasty. He was the nephew of Consort Ban, a famous poet and concubine to Emperor Cheng. Ban Biao began the ''Book of Han'', which was completed by his son, Ban Gu and daughter Ban Zhao while their brother Ban Chao was a famous general who contributed his stories to expand the Book of Han. Ban Biao wrote an essay titled ''Treatise on the Mandate of Kings'' (王命論), which was influential on the Chinese concept of sovereignty and is included in Wenxuan. Ban Biao and his descendants * Ban Biao ( 班彪; 3–54; father) ** Ban Gu ( 班固; 32–92; first son) ** Ban Chao ( 班超; 32–102; second son) *** Ban Xiong ( 班雄; ?–after 107; Ban Chao's eldest son) **** Ban Shi ( 班始; ?–130; Ban Xiong's son) *** Ban Yong ( 班勇; ?–after 127; Ban Chao's youngest son) ** Ban Zhao ( 班昭; 45–116; daughter) See also *Book of Han No ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ban Zhao
Ban Zhao (; 45 or 49 – c. 117/120 CE), courtesy name Huiban (), was a Chinese historian, philosopher, and politician. She was the first known female Chinese historian and, along with Pamphile of Epidaurus, one of the first known female historians. She completed her brother Ban Gu's work on the history of the Western Han, the ''Book of Han''. She also wrote ''Lessons for Women'', an influential work on women's conduct. She also had great interest in astronomy and mathematics and wrote poems, commemorative writings, argumentations, commentaries, essays and several longer works, not all of which survive. She became China's most famous female scholar and an instructor of Taoist sexual practices for the imperial family. Ban Zhao is depicted in the Wu Shuang Pu (無雙譜, Table of Peerless Heroes) by Jin Guliang. Family Ban Zhao was born in Anling, near modern Xianyang, Shaanxi province. At age fourteen, she married a local resident named Cao Shishu and was called in the court ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ban (surname)
Ban is the Mandarin pinyin romanization of the Chinese surname written in Chinese character. It is romanized Pan in Wade–Giles. Ban is listed 235th in the Song dynasty classic text ''Hundred Family Surnames''. It is not among the 300 most common surnames in China. In 2013 it was the 269th most common surname shared by 273,000 people, comprising 0.021% of the total population and the provincial level unit with the most people having the name being Guangxi. Origin The surname Ban originated from Mi 芈, the royal surname of the State of Chu of ancient China. Dou Gouwutu ( 鬬穀於菟; fl. 7th century BC), a grandson of the Chu ruler Ruo'ao, was said to have been abandoned as an infant and nursed by a tigress. His given name Gouwutu, meant nursed (穀 gòu, milk) by a tiger (於菟 wūtú, tiger) in the Chu language. Dou Gouwutu grew up to become a general and the Prime Minister of Chu. His descendants adopted Ban (meaning "stripes", an allusion to tiger's stripes) as their s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sima Qian
Sima Qian (; ; ) was a Chinese historian of the early Han dynasty (206AD220). He is considered the father of Chinese historiography for his ''Records of the Grand Historian'', a general history of China covering more than two thousand years beginning from the rise of the legendary Yellow Emperor and the formation of the first Chinese polity to the reigning sovereign of Sima Qian's time, Emperor Wu of Han. As the first universal history of the world as it was known to the ancient Chinese, the ''Records of the Grand Historian'' served as a model for official history-writing for subsequent Chinese dynasties and the Chinese cultural sphere (Korea, Vietnam, Japan) up until the 20th century. Sima Qian's father Sima Tan first conceived of the ambitious project of writing a complete history of China, but had completed only some preparatory sketches at the time of his death. After inheriting his father's position as court historian in the imperial court, he was determined to fulfill ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shanxi Province
Shanxi (; ; Chinese postal romanization, formerly romanised as Shansi) is a landlocked Provinces of China, province of the China, People's Republic of China and is part of the North China region. The capital and largest city of the province is Taiyuan, while its next most populated prefecture-level cities are Changzhi and Datong. Its one-character abbreviation is "" (), after the Jin (Chinese state), state of Jin that existed there during the Spring and Autumn period. The name ''Shanxi'' means "West of the Mountains", a reference to the province's location west of the Taihang Mountains. Shanxi borders Hebei to the east, Henan to the south, Shaanxi to the west and Inner Mongolia to the north. Shanxi's terrain is characterised by a plateau bounded partly by mountain ranges. Shanxi's culture is largely dominated by the ethnic Han Chinese, Han majority, who make up over 99% of its population. Jin Chinese is considered by some linguists to be a distinct language from Mandarin and its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hanshu
The ''Book of Han'' or ''History of the Former Han'' (Qián Hàn Shū,《前汉书》) is a history of China finished in 111AD, covering the Western, or Former Han dynasty from the first emperor in 206 BCE to the fall of Wang Mang in 23 CE. It is also called the ''Book of Former Han''. The work was composed by Ban Gu (32–92 CE), an Eastern Han court official, with the help of his sister Ban Zhao, continuing the work of their father, Ban Biao. They modeled their work on the ''Records of the Grand Historian'', a cross-dynastic general history, but theirs was the first in this annals-biography form to cover a single dynasty. It is the best source, sometimes the only one, for many topics such as literature in this period. A second work, the ''Book of the Later Han'' covers the Eastern Han period from 25 to 220, and was composed in the fifth century by Fan Ye (398–445). Contents This history developed from a continuation of Sima Qian's ''Records of the Grand Historian'', in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Empress Dou (Zhang)
Empress Dou (, personal name unknown; 63–97 CE), formally Empress Zhangde (, literally "the polite and virtuous empress"), was an empress of the Chinese Han dynasty. Her husband was Emperor Zhang. She was already influential and powerful during her husband's reign, but became particularly highly powerful and influential as empress dowager and regent between 88 and 92 for her adoptive son Emperor He after Emperor Zhang's death.Lily Xiao Hong Lee, A.D. Stefanowska, Sue Wiles:Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: Antiquity Through Sui, 1600 B.C.E ' Her family members, particularly her brother Dou Xian, became extremely powerful, until they were toppled in a coup d'etat by Emperor He, in 92. Empress Dou lost her power, but remained honored until her death. Family background Lady Dou's father Dou Xun () was a grandson of the statesman Dou Rong (). Her mother was Princess Piyang (), a daughter of Liu Jiang (), the Prince of Donghai, who was a highly honored older br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central Asia
Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes the former Soviet Union, Soviet republics of the Soviet Union, republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, which are colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as the countries all have names ending with the Persian language, Persian suffix "-stan", meaning "land of". The current geographical location of Central Asia was formerly part of the historic region of Turkestan, Turkistan, also known as Turan. In the pre-Islamic and early Islamic eras ( and earlier) Central Asia was inhabited predominantly by Iranian peoples, populated by Eastern Iranian languages, Eastern Iranian-speaking Bactrians, Sogdians, Khwarezmian language, Chorasmians and the semi-nomadic Scythians and Dahae. After expansion by Turkic peop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emperor Guangwu Of Han
Emperor Guangwu of Han (; 15 January 5 BC – 29 March AD 57), born Liu Xiu (), courtesy name Wenshu (), was a Chinese monarch. He served as an emperor of the Han dynasty by restoring the dynasty in AD 25, thus founding the Eastern Han (Later Han) dynasty. He ruled over parts of China at first, and through suppression and conquest of regional warlords, the whole of China proper was consolidated by the time of his death in AD 57. During his reign, Taoism was made the official religion of China, and the Chinese folk religion began to decline. Liu Xiu was one of the many descendants of the Han imperial family. Following the usurpation of the Han throne by Wang Mang and the ensuing civil war during the disintegration of Wang's short-lived Xin dynasty, he emerged as one of several descendants of the fallen dynasty claiming the imperial throne. After assembling forces and proclaiming himself emperor in the face of competitors, he was able to defeat his rivals, destroy the peasant ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Records Of The Grand Historian
''Records of the Grand Historian'', also known by its Chinese name ''Shiji'', is a monumental history of China that is the first of China's 24 dynastic histories. The ''Records'' was written in the early 1st century by the ancient Chinese historian Sima Qian, whose father Sima Tan had begun it several decades earlier. The work covers a 2,500-year period from the age of the legendary Yellow Emperor to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han in the author's own time, and describes the world as it was known to the Chinese of the Western Han dynasty. The ''Records'' has been called a "foundational text in Chinese civilization". After Confucius and the First Emperor of Qin, "Sima Qian was one of the creators of Imperial China, not least because by providing definitive biographies, he virtually created the two earlier figures." The ''Records'' set the model for all subsequent dynastic histories of China. In contrast to Western historical works, the ''Records'' do not treat history as "a cont ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emperor Ming Of Han
Emperor Ming of Han (15June 28 – 5September 75), born and also known as and as , was the second emperor of China's Eastern Han dynasty. He was the fourth son and second crown prince of Emperor Guangwu. It was during Emperor Ming's reign that Buddhism began to spread into China. Emperor Ming was a hard-working, able administrator of the empire who showed integrity and demanded integrity from his officials. He also extended Chinese control over the Tarim Basin and eradicated the Xiongnu influence there, through the conquests of his general Ban Chao. The reigns of Emperor Ming and his son Emperor Zhang were typically considered the golden age of the Eastern Han Empire and known as the Rule of Ming and Zhang. Family background Liu Yang was born in AD28 to Emperor Guangwu and his first love, Consort Yin Lihua. Emperor Guangwu, then still an official under Gengshi Emperor, had married Yin in 23. After he became emperor in 25, had wanted to create her empress, but she dec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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