Zeng He; the Muslim Chinese Admiral who commanded the greatest armada of ships ever assembled is back in the limelight with the latest book “1421; the year China Discovered America.” The following is a 2 hours documentary of his exploits where the author theorized that he discovered America 70 years before Columbus and possibly without knowing circumnavigated the globe long before Magellan did.
WIKIPEDIA:
Zheng He (1371–1433), formerly romanized as Cheng Ho, was a Hui-Chinese court eunuch, mariner, explorer, diplomat and fleet admiral, who commanded expeditionary voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and East Africa from 1405 to 1433. As a favorite of the Yongle Emperor, whose usurpation he assisted, he rose to the top of the imperial hierarchy and served as commander of the southern capital Nanjing. These voyages were long neglected in official Chinese histories but have become well known in China and abroad since the publication of Liang Qihao's "Biography of Our Homeland's Great Navigator, Zheng He"[3] in 1904.[4] A trilingual stele left by the navigator was discovered on Sri Lanka shortly thereafter.
Zheng He was the second son of a family from Kunyang,[a] Yunnan.[5] He was originally born with the name Ma He.[1][6] His family were Hui people. He had four sisters[1][6][7][8] and one older brother.[1][7]
Zheng He's religious beliefs are uncertain. We know that he was born into a Muslim family[6][9][10] and that on his travels he built mosques while also spreading the worship of Mazu/Tianfei. He apparently never found time for a pilgrimage to Mecca but did send sailors there on his last voyage. He played an important part in developing relations between China and Islamic countries.[11][12] His religious beliefs may have become eclectic in his adulthood.[9][10] Zheng He also visited Muslim shrines of Islamic holy men in the Fujian province. In 1985 a Muslim-style tomb was built in Nanjing on the site of an earlier horseshoe-shape grave; it contains his clothes and headgear as his body was buried at sea.[13]
He was the great-great-great-grandson of Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, a Persian who served in the administration of the Mongol Empire and was the Governor of Yunnan during the early Yuan Dynasty.[14][15] His great-grandfather was named Bayan and may have been stationed at a Mongol garrisons in Yunnan.[6] His grandfather carried the title hajji.[1][16] His father had the surname Ma and the title hajji.[1][6][16] The title suggest that they had made the pilgrimage to Mecca.[1][6][16]
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