Weilüe
| Chinese traditional | 魏略 |
| Chinese pinyin | Weilüe |
| Japanese | ぎりゃく (Giriyaku) |
| Compiler | Yu Huan 魚豢 (3rd c. CE) |
| Date of Compilation | after 265 |
The Weilüe consists of twenty-five (25) juan 卷, largely arranged in the standard form of the officially commissioned histories. Thought to be lost as a cohesive treatise, it was recovered and reconstituted by the scholar Zhang Pengyi 張鵬一 (1867–1943).[1]
Major editions
The Weilüe exists only in the edition edited by Zhang Pengyi:
- Weilüe jiben 魏略輯本, by Yu Huan 魚豢, ed. by Zhang Pengyi 張鵬一 (Shaanxi：Wenxian zhengji chu 文獻徵輯處, 1924).
- Weilüe jiben 魏略輯本, by Yu Huan 魚豢, ed. by Zhang Pengyi 張鵬一, in ed., Sanguozhi fubian 三國志附編 (Taibei: Dingwen shuju 鼎文書局, 1990).
Africa
Don J. Wyatt, Middlebury College
The book is significant for any deliberations on the initial Chinese knowledge of Africa, whether maritime-acquired or otherwise, because of the single inconclusive reference that it contains referring to what might conceivably be the ancient Egyptian city of Alexandria, which is arguably specified by the Chinese name Wuchisan 烏遲散. The theory that Wuchisan is one and the same as the ancient Egyptian capital of Alexandria was first proposed by the scholar Paul Pelliot (1878-1945). It remains, however, a still debated but nonetheless unproven conjecture.
References
There is only one, to Wuchisan (Alexandria?). It occurs early in juan 22, amidst a description of the country of Daqin 大秦 (typically interpreted as having been either the Roman Empire or the Near East and, especially in the latter case, Syria—being that part of the Roman Empire in West Asia that was known to the Chinese). This seminal instance is immediately preceded by what appears as a more fragmentary one occurring in the very probable abbreviated form of just Chisan 遲散.[2]
Translation
- Hirth, Friedrich, “Early Chinese Notices of East African Territories”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 30.1 (1909), 46-57.
- Duyvendak, J. J. L., China’s Discovery of Africa: Lectures Given at the University of London on January 22 and 23, 1947 (London: Arthur Probsthain, 1949), 8–9.
Key secondary works
- Duyvendak (1949)
- Filesi, Teobaldo, China and Africa in the Middle Ages, trans. David L. Morison (London: Frank Cass, Central Asian Research Centre, 1972).
- Wilkinson, Endymion, Chinese History: A New Manual, 4th edn. (Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2015).
- Zhang Tiesheng 張鉄生. Zhong-Fei jiaotongshi chutan 中非交通史初探 [Preliminary Investigation of the History of Chinese-African Relations], 2nd ed. (Beijing: Shenghuo dushu xinzhi sanlian shudian 生活讀書新知三聯書店, 1973).
Digital access
- Weilüe jiben 魏略輯本 on Wikisource 維基文庫: Full mulu 目錄, but only j. shou 首, 1–7, and 10 (5 December 2020)
