Uzana of Bassein ( my, ဥဇနာ, ; d. 1287) was the eldest son of King
Narathihapate
Narathihapate ( my, နရသီဟပတေ့, ; also Sithu IV of Pagan; 23 April 1238 – 1 July 1287) was the last king of the Pagan Empire who reigned from 1256 to 1287. The king is known in Burmese history as the "Taruk-Pyay Min" ("the King ...
, the last sovereign king of the
Pagan Empire, and the
heir-presumptive
An heir presumptive is the person entitled to inherit a throne, peerage, or other hereditary honour, but whose position can be displaced by the birth of an heir apparent or a new heir presumptive with a better claim to the position in question.
...
of the Pagan throne. Uzana, son of Queen Saw Nan and a grandnephew of powerful Queen
Shin Saw, was granted
Bassein (Pathein) in
fief
A fief (; la, feudum) was a central element in medieval contracts based on feudal law. It consisted of a form of property holding or other rights granted by an overlord to a vassal, who held it in fealty or "in fee" in return for a form ...
.
[Pe, Luce 1960: 179] Uzana was one of Narathihapate's sons ruling the southern parts of the kingdom. Uzana ruled the
Irrawaddy delta
The Irrawaddy Delta or Ayeyarwady Delta lies in the Irrawaddy Division, the lowest expanse of land in Myanmar that fans out from the limit of tidal influence at Myan Aung to the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, to the south at the mouth of the ...
from Bassein while his half-brothers
Thihathu
Thihathu ( my, သီဟသူ, ; 1265–1325) was a co-founder of the Myinsaing Kingdom, and the founder of the Pinya Kingdom in today's central Burma (Myanmar).Coedès 1968: 209 Thihathu was the youngest and most ambitious of the three brother ...
and
Kyawswa ruled
Prome
Pyay (, ; mnw, ပြန် , ; also known as Prome and Pyè) is principal town of Pyay Township in the Bago Region in Myanmar. Pyay is located on the bank of the Irrawaddy River, north-west of Yangon. It is an important trade center for the Aye ...
and
Dala
Dala may refer to:
Places
*Dala Airport, Dalarna province, Sweden
*Dala, Angola
* Dala, Bhutan
* Dala, Kano, Nigeria
**Dalla Hill, a hill in Kano, Nigeria
*Đala, Serbia
* Dalas, Khuzestan Province, Iran
*Dala Township, Yangon, Myanmar
People
* ...
(modern Twante) respectively.
In 1285, Narathihapate fled
Pagan (Bagan) to Lower Burma in panic as the
Mongol invasion
The Mongol invasions and conquests took place during the 13th and 14th centuries, creating history's largest contiguous empire: the Mongol Empire (1206- 1368), which by 1300 covered large parts of Eurasia. Historians regard the Mongol devastati ...
advanced. In 1287, Thihathu,
Viceroy of Prome (Pyay), arrested his father and forced the king to take poison. To refuse would have meant death by the sword, and with a prayer on his lips that in all his future existences "''may no male-child be ever born to him again''", the king swallowed the poison and died.
[Htin Aung 1967: 65–71]
Having killed the king, Thihathu next tried to kill off his two rival half-brothers, Uzana and Kyawswa as they were also potential claimants to the throne. Thihathu first went to Bassein, entered Uzana's chambers, and hacked Uzana, who laid sick in his chamber, to pieces. He then sailed to Dala to kill Kyawswa. At the Dala harbor, as he tried to shoot one of the guards with his crossbow, he accidentally killed himself by his own arrow.
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]
References
Bibliography
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Uzana Of Bassein
Pagan dynasty
13th-century Burmese people