“FÚ JIĀN”
(reigned as “heavenly prince of great qin” from 357 – 385)
(the Former Qin (351-394) was a state of the “Sixteen Kingdoms” in eastern asia, mainly ‘china’)
(funded by an officer in Shi Le’s dynasty, it completed the unification of North China in 376)
(its capital was Xi’an up to the death of the ruler Fu Jiān in 385)
(despite its name, the Former Qin was much later and less powerful than the Qin Dynasty which had ruled all of China during the 3rd century BC)
(the adjective “former” is used to distinguish it from the “Later Qin” state (384-417))
(the severe defeat of the ‘Former Qin’ in the ‘Battle of Fei River’ in 383 encouraged uprisings, which split the ‘Former Qin’ territory into 2 noncontiguous pieces after the death of ‘Fu Jiān’)
(one fragment, at present-day ‘Taiyuan’, ‘Shanxi’ was soon overwhelmed in 386 by the ‘Xianbeiunder the Later Yan’ and the ‘Dingling’)
(the other struggled in greatly reduced territories around the border of present-day ‘Shaanxi’ and ‘Gansu’ until disintegration in 394 following years of invasions by ‘Western Qin’ and ‘Later Qin’)
(in 327, the ‘Gaochang’ commandery was created by the ‘Former Liang’ under the Han Chinese ruler ‘Zhang Gui’)
(after this, significant ‘Han Chinese’ settlement occurred, meaning that a major part of the population became ‘chinese’)
(in 383, the “General Lu Guang” of Former Qin seized control of the region)
(all rulers of “Former Qin” proclaimed themselves “Emperor”, except for ‘Fu Jiān’ who claimed the title “Heavenly Prince” (Tian Wang) but was posthumoustly considered an emperor)