East Asia · Confederacies, Han and the steppe
Xianbei
drawn on the map AD 60–237
The Xianbei were a Proto-Mongolic/para-Mongolic people of the eastern steppe, descended from the Donghu. After the Northern Xiongnu's collapse (2nd century CE), the Xianbei under Tanshihuai (fl. c. 156–181) briefly unified a vast confederation.
- Shown on the map
- AD 60–237
- Peak area
- 5.4M km²
- Region
- East Asia
Overview
The Xianbei were a Proto-Mongolic/para-Mongolic people of the eastern steppe, descended from the Donghu. After the Northern Xiongnu's collapse (2nd century CE), the Xianbei under Tanshihuai (fl. c. 156–181) briefly unified a vast confederation. They fragmented into clans—Murong, Tuoba, Duan, Yuwen, Qifu, Tufa—each of which founded states during the Sixteen Kingdoms and Northern Dynasties, most importantly the Tuoba Northern Wei that reunified northern China.
Common questions
- What was Xianbei?
- The Xianbei were a Proto-Mongolic/para-Mongolic people of the eastern steppe, descended from the Donghu. After the Northern Xiongnu's collapse (2nd century CE), the Xianbei under Tanshihuai (fl. c. 156–181) briefly unified a vast confederation.
- When is Xianbei shown on the map?
- The border data draws Xianbei AD 60–237. The source samples borders at fixed dates, so a span can begin late or run on past the end.
- How large was Xianbei?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, Xianbei covered about 5.4 million km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia article for each polity as the basis of these profiles, supplemented by Encyclopaedia Britannica, chinaknowledge.de, the World History Encyclopedia, museum and university sources, and the academic works it lists. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Xianbei en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xianbei
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
See Xianbei in its world
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