29 Facts About Ming

Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty.

The Ming dynasty was the last orthodox dynasty of China ruled by the Han people, the majority ethnic group in China.

Ming took great care breaking the power of the court eunuchs and unrelated magnates, enfeoffing his many sons throughout China and attempting to guide these princes through the Huang-Ming Zuxun, a set of published dynastic instructions.

Ming rewarded his eunuch supporters and employed them as a counterweight against the Confucian scholar-bureaucrats.

Ming continued policies of the Yuan dynasty such as continued request for Korean concubines and eunuchs, Mongol-style hereditary military institutions, Mongol-style clothing and hats, promoting archery and horseback riding, and having large numbers of Mongols serve in the Ming military.

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Ming frequently wrote to Mongol, Japanese, Korean, Jurchen, Tibetan, and Southwest frontier rulers offering advice on their governmental and dynastic policy, and insisted on leaders from these regions visiting the Ming capital for audiences.

Ming resettled 100,000 Mongols into his territory, with many serving as guards in the capital.

Ming used this line of argument to attempt to persuade Yuan loyalists to join his cause.

The Ming used the tribute they received from former Yuan vassals as proof that the Ming had taken over the Yuan's legitimacy.

In 1381, the Ming dynasty annexed the areas of the southwest that had once been part of the Kingdom of Dali following the successful effort by Hui Muslim Ming armies to defeat Yuan-loyalist Mongol and Hui Muslim troops holding out in Yunnan province.

Ming grew strong in the northeast, with forces large enough to threaten invasion of the newly founded Ming dynasty in order to restore the Mongols to power in China.

The Ming decided to defeat him instead of waiting for the Mongols to attack.

In 1387 the Ming sent a military campaign to attack Naghachu, which concluded with the surrender of Naghachu and Ming conquest of Manchuria.

In 1409, under the Yongle Emperor, the Ming Dynasty established the Nurgan Regional Military Commission on the banks of the Amur River, and Yishiha, a eunuch of Haixi Jurchen origin, was ordered to lead an expedition to the mouth of the Amur to pacify the Wild Jurchens.

Ming sporadically sent armed forays into Tibet during the 14th century, which the Tibetans successfully resisted.

Several scholars point out that unlike the preceding Mongols, the Ming dynasty did not garrison permanent troops in Tibet.

Ming ordered temples built in his honor throughout the Ming Empire, and built personal palaces created with funds allocated for building the previous emperor's tombs.

Ming offered to lead his armies to support Ming and Joseon armies against the Japanese invasions of Korea in the 1590s.

Ming officials declined the offer, but granted him honorific titles.

Peasant soldier named Li Zicheng mutinied with his fellow soldiers in western Shaanxi in the early 1630s after the Ming government failed to ship much-needed supplies there.

Descendants of the first Ming emperor were made princes and given military commands, annual stipends, and large estates.

Connoisseurship in the late Ming period centered on these items of refined artistic taste, which provided work for art dealers and even underground scammers who themselves made imitations and false attributions.

Ming revealed that a Xuande era bronze work could be authenticated by judging its sheen; porcelain wares from the Yongle era could be judged authentic by their thickness.

Dominant religious beliefs during the Ming dynasty were the various forms of Chinese folk religion and the Three Teachings – Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism.

Advent of the Ming was initially devastating to Christianity: in his first year, the Hongwu Emperor declared the eighty-year-old Franciscan missions among the Yuan heterodox and illegal.

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However, the 1642 flood caused by Kaifeng's Ming governor devastated the community, which lost five of its twelve families, its synagogue, and most of its Torah.

Wang Gen was able to give philosophical lectures to many commoners from different regions because – following the trend already apparent in the Song dynasty – communities in Ming society were becoming less isolated as the distance between market towns was shrinking.

Early Ming dynasty saw the strictest sumptuary laws in Chinese history.

Ming's Bencao Gangmu is a medical text with 1,892 entries, each entry with its own name called a gang.