Bingzhou, or Bing Province, was a location in ancient China. According to legend, when

Yu the Great Yu the Great (大禹) was a legendary king in ancient China who was famed for his introduction of flood control, his establishment of the Xia dynasty which inaugurated dynastic rule in China, and his upright moral character. He figures prominent ...

(c. 2200 BC-2100 BC) tamed the flood, he divided the land of China into the

Nine Provinces The term Nine Provinces or Nine Regions (), is used in ancient Chinese histories to refer to territorial divisions or islands during the Xia and Shang dynasties and has now come to symbolically represent China. "Province" is the word used to ...

. Historical texts such as the ''

Rites of Zhou The ''Rites of Zhou'' (), originally known as "Officers of Zhou" () is a work on bureaucracy and organizational theory. It was renamed by Liu Xin to differentiate it from a chapter in the '' Book of History'' by the same name. To replace a lost ...

'', and "Treatise on Geography" section (volume 28) of the ''

Book of Han The ''Book of Han'' or ''History of the Former Han'' (Qián Hàn Shū,《前汉书》) is a history of China finished in 111AD, covering the Western, or Former Han dynasty from the first emperor in 206 BCE to the fall of Wang Mang in 23 CE. I ...

'', recorded that Bingzhou was one of the Nine Provinces. Bingzhou covered roughly the areas around present-day

Baoding Baoding (), formerly known as Baozhou and Qingyuan, is a prefecture-level city in central Hebei province, approximately southwest of Beijing. As of the 2010 census, Baoding City had 11,194,382 inhabitants out of which 2,176,857 lived in the b ...

Hebei Hebei or , (; alternately Hopeh) is a northern province of China. Hebei is China's sixth most populous province, with over 75 million people. Shijiazhuang is the capital city. The province is 96% Han Chinese, 3% Manchu, 0.8% Hui, and ...

, and

Taiyuan Taiyuan (; ; ; Mandarin pronunciation: ; also known as (), ()) is the capital and largest city of Shanxi Province, People's Republic of China. Taiyuan is the political, economic, cultural and international exchange center of Shanxi Province. ...

and

Datong Datong is a prefecture-level city in northern Shanxi Province in the People's Republic of China. It is located in the Datong Basin at an elevation of and borders Inner Mongolia to the north and west and Hebei to the east. As of the 2020 cen ...

Shanxi Shanxi (; ; formerly romanised as Shansi) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the North China region. The capital and largest city of the province is Taiyuan, while its next most populated prefecture-level ...

History

Han dynasty and earlier

Since the fifth century BC Bingzhou had been separated from the

Ordos Desert The Ordos Desert () is a desert/steppe region in Northwest China, administrated under the prefecture of Ordos City in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region (centered ca. ). It extends over an area of approximately , and comprises two sub-des ...

repeatedly by a series of walls that would form the

Great Wall of China The Great Wall of China (, literally "ten thousand ''li'' wall") is a series of fortifications that were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection against various nomadic group ...

In 106 BCE, during the

Western Han dynasty The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a war ...

(206 BCE – 9 CE), Emperor Wu divided the Han Empire into thirteen administrative divisions, of which Bingzhou was one. Bingzhou covered most of present-day

and parts of

and Inner Mongolia. During the

Eastern Han dynasty The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a wa ...

(25–220) Bingzhou's capital was designated in Jinyang County (晉陽縣; present-day

Jinyuan District Jinyuan District () is one of six districts of the prefecture-level city of Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi Province, North China. See also * Jinci The Jinci or Jin Temple (晉祠) is the most prominent temple complex in Shanxi, China. It ...

, Shanxi), and the regions under its jurisdiction included most of present-day Shanxi, northern

Shaanxi Shaanxi (alternatively Shensi, see § Name) is a landlocked province of China. Officially part of Northwest China, it borders the province-level divisions of Shanxi (NE, E), Henan (E), Hubei (SE), Chongqing (S), Sichuan (SW), Gansu (W), Ning ...

and parts of Inner Mongolia. In 213 Bingzhou was absorbed into another administrative division, Jizhou (or Ji Province). Near the end of the Eastern Han dynasty, during a succession dispute among the heirs of the warlord

Yuan Shao Yuan Shao (, ; died 28 June 202), courtesy name Benchu (), was a Chinese military general, politician, and warlord who lived in the late Eastern Han dynasty. He occupied the northern territories of China during the civil wars that occurred tow ...

(d. 202), Bingzhou eventually came under the control of Yuan's rival, Cao Cao (155–220). Yuan Shao's nephew

Gao Gan Gao Gan () (died 206), courtesy name Yuancai, was a minor warlord who lived during the late Eastern Han dynasty of China. He was a maternal nephew and subordinate of the warlord Yuan Shao. Life Gao Gan was from an influential family in Yu Count ...

surrendered to Cao in 203, rebelled in 205, but was defeated and killed by Cao in 206, and Bing Province was definitively annexed. Cao Cao moved

Xiongnu The Xiongnu (, ) were a tribal confederation of nomadic peoples who, according to ancient Chinese sources, inhabited the eastern Eurasian Steppe from the 3rd century BC to the late 1st century AD. Modu Chanyu, the supreme leader after 209& ...

herdsmen into Bingzhou and the adjacent

. By the 280s approximately 400,000 Xiongnu lived there, who later founded the states of

Han Zhao The Han Zhao (; 304–329 AD), or Former Zhao (), was a dynastic state of China ruled by the Xiongnu people during the Sixteen Kingdoms period of Chinese history. In Chinese historiography, it was given two conditional state titles, the Northern ...

(304-319) and

Later Zhao The Later Zhao (; 319–351) was a dynasty of the Sixteen Kingdoms in northern China. It was founded by the Shi family of the Jie ethnicity. The Jie were most likely a Yeniseian people and spoke next to Chinese one of the Yeniseian languages.Vo ...

(319–351).

Three Kingdoms period

Bingzhou was restored in 220 under the Cao Wei regime during the

Three Kingdoms The Three Kingdoms () from 220 to 280 AD was the tripartite division of China among the dynastic states of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu. The Three Kingdoms period was preceded by the Eastern Han dynasty and was followed by the Wester ...

period (220-280) but the area under its control was reduced as compared to during the Eastern Han dynasty.

Sixteen Kingdoms period

In 396 during the

Sixteen Kingdoms The Sixteen Kingdoms (), less commonly the Sixteen States, was a chaotic period in Chinese history from AD 304 to 439 when northern China fragmented into a series of short-lived dynastic states. The majority of these states were founded by ...

period (304–439), Bingzhou's capital was in Puban County (蒲坂縣; southwest of present-day Yongji,

), and the areas it covered were mainly in present-day southwestern Shanxi. Bingzhou was abolished in 399.

References

{{Han dynasty provinces Provinces of Ancient China Provinces of the Han dynasty