Map of the Sixteen Kingdoms

This map runs from 300, when Western Jin still held China together, to 439, when Northern Wei unified the north. For every year it records which state held each city at the end of the year, taken from the histories, and draws each state's territory from that. Move the year to watch the borders shift; click a city to see who held it, year by year, with the source passage. This map overlaps the Northern and Southern Dynasties map in 420–439; for those 20 years both maps use the same cities, the same holders and the same drawing rules, so the same year gives the same map.

The darker bands mark the borders between states. Where the colour fades out, no city's control can be said to have reached (steppe, mountains), and no border is drawn. The red square marks each state's capital that year. The bands under the year slider show, on the upper row, the main states of the north (when two stood side by side, the eastern one above and the western one below), and on the lower row Jin and Liu Song; click one to jump to its first year. The states of the Hexi Corridor, western Liaoning and Shu are not shown in the bands.

Under each state's name is the emperor reigning at the end of that year. Years in which the ruler did not call himself emperor but “king” or “heavenly king” (Shi Hu of Later Zhao, Fu Jian of Former Qin, Yao Xing of Later Qin from 399, Northern Wei until 397, and others), and states that never claimed the title (most of Former Liang, Western Qin, Later Liang, Southern Liang, Northern Liang, Western Liang, Northern Yan and Dai), show no name. Nor do years in which an emperor was killed or gave up the throne during the year and there was no emperor at its end (Huan Chu in 404, for example). “The end of the year” is the last day of the Chinese calendar year: Huan Xuan took the throne in the twelfth month of the second year of Yuanxing, which fell in January 404 by the Western calendar but counts here as the end of 403.

For 126 major cities (not shown in years before a city or garrison was set up), we took from the histories which state's inspector, governor or commanding officer was there at the end of each year, and attached the source passage to every change of hands. The main source is the Zizhi Tongjian, checked against the Book of Jin (including its “Records” of the Sixteen Kingdoms), the Book of Wei and the Book of Song: 1,228 passages in all, each machine-checked to appear word for word in the text, and, for the Zizhi Tongjian, to fall under the heading of that year. Sieges and occupations given up within the year do not change a city's holder. Years in which a city cannot be said to belong to anyone (Luoyang in ruins, for example) are left uncoloured.

The borders are inferred by machine from who held the cities. The land is divided into 4 km squares, and each square is given to the state whose city can be reached from it with the least effort, allowing for steep mountains and the difficulty of crossing great rivers. Land far from every city (steppe, plateau, the uplands of non-Han peoples) is left uncoloured and fades out.

Where the cities of one state lie apart and its colour breaks off, they are joined by a band along a route that does not cross another state's land (up to about 400 km on level ground). Gaps surrounded on all sides by the states' land and the sea, and gaps in the mountains south of the Qinling that reach deep into a state's land (today's Guizhou, western Hunan and so on), are filled with the colour of the nearest state. A city surrounded by another state's land (an exclave) is drawn as a circle about 36 km in radius, because dividing the land halfway between cities would make an exclave look larger than it was. Commanderies and counties also lay within these areas, but as they have no city dot on the map, actual control there was thinner than around the cities.

Borders at the time were zones rather than lines, and the lines on this map show only roughly where those zones lay.