History of the Naxi

The Naxi are one of the most ancient peoples who inhabit the north-western region of the province of Yunnan. It is thought that they are progeny of the ancient peoples called Qiang, who were living in predynastic times in the region of Gansu and Shaanxi.

The Qiang turned out to be displaced by the expansion of the imperial China, some of his peoples fled towards the west and others migrated on the south across the current Sichuan province. In fact, the history books mention that in the IIIrd century, a few peoples called Moxie or Moxie Yi, possibly ancestors of the Naxi, were living in the region placed to the east of his current place. It is possible that the Naxi and the Moso have had a common origin, but there have news about that in the VIIIth century are in Lijiang and Yongning respectively, where they establish each kingdoms.

The Moso are in a region much isolated by high mountains. The Naxi, in Lijiang, suffer the attacks of the Kingdom of Nanzhao, turning into one of his vassal states. The resistances naxis it does to Nanzhao and Dali that some of them are deported to Kunchuan and Xicuan, where some of them mixed with the ancestors of the Bai.

At the end of the Song, the chief naxi of Lijiang Zhang Maizong joins several small tribes of the outskirts, and is liberated of the domination of the Kingdom of Dali. When in the year 1253 the Kublai army goes so far as to attack to the Kingdom of Dali, the Maizong son, Aliangzeng is going to receive him to the shore of the Jinshajiang. From this first alliance with the Mongols the relation of the Naxi with the domineering dynasties in China is unbeatable.

In the XIIIth century the dynasty Yuan establishes the prefecture of Lijiang that will be governed by a Tusi. From the following century the Tusi they belong to the family Mu, considered since then hereditary kings of Lijiang, whose dynastic line was supported until 1949.

During the dynasty Yuan and Ming, Lijiang, Ninglang, Weixi, Yanyuan and Muli are under the system of prefectures and districts of the Tusi. The descendant in the fourth generation of Aliangzen, Mudeqin is going in person to deliver the tribute to the emperor Hong Wu to Nanjing, receiving the title of King Mutian, with what it keeps on agglutinating about his power in Lijiang, to the tribes Naxi.

During the XIVth and XVth centuries they played an excellent role in the containment of the Tibetan navies that dispute to the Chinese the Yunnan control. In fact in the epoch of Wanli they conquer the Tibetan ones in a battle and it incorporates for Lijiang the Weixi district. Some years later the military importance of the Naxi diminishes, turning Lijiang in the most important economic, commercial and cultural center between Dali (capital of Yunnan) and Lhasa.

His narrow relation with the Chinese generates important cultural, technical and artistic influences. In 1418 schools are already founded to the Chinese style on Baoshan, Tongan and Julu. With the narrow contact with the Han, the power of Tusi de Lijiang is on the increase, the agricultural skills brought from they have help them to develop an economy more advanced that generates a major social division.

While in Lijiang, Weixi, and Zhongdian increases the production and with her the inequality, which live in Ninglang, Yanyuan, Yanbian and Muli, stay more isolated of the exterior world, supporting thus his traditional society in the state of transition of the matriarchal society the patriarchal one.

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