tuoba

Tuoba Shiyijian (Chinese: 拓跋什翼犍; pinyin: Tuòbá Shíyìjiàn; 320–376) was the last prince of the Tuoba Dai and ruled from 338 to 376 when Dai was conquered by theFormer Qin. He was the son of Tuoba Yulü and the younger brother of Tuoba Yihuai, whom he succeeded in 338. In 340 he moved the capital to Shengle (盛樂) (near modernHoringer County, Inner Mongolia). His grandson Tuoba Gui would go on to found the Northern Wei dynasty.

The Northern Wei (Chinese: 北魏; pinyin: Běi Wèi), also known as the Tuoba Wei (拓跋魏), Later Wei (後魏), or Yuan Wei (元魏), was a dynasty founded by the Tuoba clan of the Xianbei, which ruled northern China from 386 to 534 (de jure until 535). Described as "part of an era of political turbulence and intense social and cultural change",^[6] the Northern Wei Dynasty is particularly noted for unifying northern China in 439: this was also a period of introduced foreign ideas; such as Buddhism, which became firmly established. Many antiques and art works, both Daoist and Buddhist, from this period have survived. During the Taihe period (477-499) of Emperor Xiaowen, court advisers instituted sweeping reforms and introduced changes that eventually led to the dynasty moving its capital from Datong to Luoyang, in 494. It was the time of the construction of the Yungang Grottoesnear Datong during the mid-to-late 5th century, and towards the latter part of the dynasty, the Longmen Caves outside the later capital city of Luoyang, in which more than 30,000 Buddhist images from the time of this dynasty have been found. The Tuoba renamed themselves the Yuan as a part of systematic Sinicization. Towards the end of the dynasty there was significant internal dissension resulting in a split into Eastern Wei and Western Wei.