The steppe dynasty southern China mocked as barbarians shaped the Sui and Tang
Writers of China's southern dynasties sneered at the Northern Wei as Plaited Barbarians. Yet this Tuoba-ruled state reunified northern China in 439, carved tens of thousands of Buddhist images into cliff grottoes, and pushed reforms so lasting that one historian traced the roots of the Sui and Tang dynasties back to it.
The Tuoba clan, traditionally counted among the Xianbei though some evidence hints at Turkic roots, had been princes of a small state called Dai until Former Qin swallowed it in 376. When Former Qin fell apart after losing the Battle of Fei River, Tuoba Gui revived Tuoba independence in 386, soon renaming his realm Wei. He smashed a Later Yan army at Canhe Slope in 395, overran the Central Plains, moved his capital to Pingcheng in 398 and declared himself emperor the next year.
Emperor Taiwu, enthroned in 423, finished the job. He took the Xia capital of Tongwancheng, pressed the Northern Yan ruler into flight to Goguryeo in 436, and in 439 conquered Northern Liang, ending the chaotic Sixteen Kingdoms era. Along the way the Wei fought the southern Liu Song dynasty repeatedly; a massive Song invasion in 450 collapsed after Wei forces drew it across the Yellow River and outflanked it, and the retaliation left provinces south of the river devastated.
The dynasty's deepest mark came from reform. During the Taihe era, from 477 to 499, Empress Dowager Feng and Emperor Xiaowen tightened state control over the rural population, including measures in 485. Xiaowen went further, pursuing deliberate sinicization: the ruling clan took the Chinese surname Yuan, and in 494 the capital moved south from Datong to Luoyang.
Buddhism took firm root in these years. The Yungang Grottoes near Datong were carved in the mid-to-late 5th century, and later the Longmen Grottoes outside Luoyang, where more than 30,000 Buddhist images from the Wei period have been found. Internal strife split the empire into Eastern and Western Wei in 534 to 535, both soon replaced. Most modern historians see the Wei as a multi-ethnic blend of nomadic and Chinese traditions, and Chen Yinke argued that the aristocracy and institutions of the Sui and Tang grew from that legacy.
Source: Northern Wei
