Northern Wei

Founded by the Tuoba clan, a people of the steppe frontier usually counted among the Xianbei, the Northern Wei governed northern China from 386 to 535 and was the first and longest-lived of the Northern dynasties. It reunited the north in 439 after more than a century of division, carried out land and village reforms that outlasted it by centuries, and sponsored some of China's greatest Buddhist cave temples.

In the early 4th century the Tuoba were allies of the Jin dynasty, and their chief received the title Prince of Dai in 315. That small state fell to the Former Qin in 376. When the Former Qin broke apart after its defeat at the Fei River, Tuoba Gui revived Tuoba independence in 386, soon taking the title Prince of Wei. He defeated the Later Yan at Canhe Slope in 395, overran the North China Plain, settled his court at Pingcheng, near modern Datong, in 398, and proclaimed himself emperor the following year. The ethnic origins of the Tuoba are debated: they are traditionally classed as Xianbei, though some historians argue for Turkic connections.

Emperor Taiwu, who came to the throne in 423, set out to end the era of the Sixteen Kingdoms. He took the Xia capital of Tongwancheng in 427, drove the ruler of the Northern Yan to flee to Goguryeo in 436, and in 439 conquered the Northern Liang in the Hexi Corridor, completing the unification of northern China. Wars with the southern dynasties flared repeatedly; a Liu Song invasion in 450 ended in disaster. On the steppe, the Rouran Khaganate raided constantly, and the Wei built long defensive walls in 423 and 446.

Early Wei officials drew no salaries, and the mother of a newly named crown prince was forced to take her own life. Under Empress Dowager Feng, regent for the young Emperor Xiaowen, the state was rebuilt in 485 and 486. The equal-field system handed out abandoned or unworked land to households in return for taxes in grain, cloth and labour, while the three-elders system grouped households into neighbourhoods and villages so that people could be counted and taxed. These measures weakened the great landholding families and, by one estimate, doubled the number of registered households to more than five million.

Emperor Xiaowen moved the capital south to Luoyang in 493 or 494 and pursued a deliberate policy of adopting Chinese ways. Xianbei dress and customs were set aside, intermarriage with Chinese families was encouraged, and the royal clan took the Chinese surname Yuan. Buddhism, briefly persecuted under Taiwu at the urging of Taoist advisers, became the dominant faith of the court. The dynasty carved the Yungang Grottoes near Pingcheng and began the Longmen Grottoes outside Luoyang. The legend of Hua Mulan is set in this period.

The move south opened a gulf between the Chinese-style court and the frontier garrisons that still lived by older steppe ways. In 523 the Six Garrisons on the northern border rose in revolt, and unrest spread across the north for years. In 528 Empress Dowager Hu poisoned her son, Emperor Xiaoming, and the general Erzhu Rong marched on Luoyang and massacred the court, by some reports about 2,000 officials. Civil war followed. With the generals Gao Huan and Yuwen Tai each backing a rival emperor, in 534 to 535 the realm split into the Eastern Wei and Western Wei.

Both halves were soon usurped, becoming the Northern Qi in 550 and the Northern Zhou in 557, and in 581 a Northern Zhou official founded the Sui dynasty. The Northern Wei's equal-field system survived into the 8th century, and historians often credit its reforms with laying the economic groundwork for China's reunification under the Sui.

Our 500 map shows the Northern Wei, labelled Toba Wei, across northern China, with the Rouran (Ruanruan) to the north and Goguryeo and Silla to the east. The southern state beside it is labelled the Jin Empire, although in that year the south was ruled by the Southern Qi.