warrior-nomad tradition, making raids with the aid of nomad fighters. He
did not contemplate holding the territories of central and southern
China which he had conquered; he withdrew, and in the two years 314-315
he contented himself with bringing considerable expanses in
north-eastern China, especially territories of the Hsien-pi, under his
direct rule, as a base for further raids. Many Huns in Liu Ts'ung's
dominion found Shih Lo's method of rule more to their taste than living
in a state ruled by officials, and they went over to Shih Lo and joined
him in breaking entirely with Liu Ts'ung. There was a further motive for
this: in states founded by nomads, with a federation of tribes as their
basis, the personal qualities of the ruler played an important part. The
chiefs of the various tribes would not give unqualified allegiance to
the son of a dead ruler unless the son was a strong personality or gave
promise of becoming one. Failing that, there would be independence
movements. Liu Ts'ung did not possess the indisputable charisma of his
predecessor Liu Yuean; and the Huns looked with contempt on his court
splendour, which could only have been justified if he had conquered all
China. Liu Ts'ung had no such ambition; nor had his successor Liu Yao
(319-329), who gave the Hun Han dynasty retroactively, from its start
with Liu Yuean, the new name of "Earlier Chao dynasty" (304-329). Many
tribes then went over to Shih Lo, and the remainder of Liu Yao's empire
was reduced to a precarious existence. In 329 the whole of it was
annexed by Shih Lo.

Although Shih Lo had long been much more powerful than the emperors of
the "Earlier Chao dynasty", until their removal he had not ventured to
assume the title of emperor. The reason for this seems to have lain in
the conceptions of nobility held by the Turkish peoples in general and
the Huns in particular, according to which only those could become
_shan-yue_ (or, later, emperor) who could show descent from the Tu-ku
tribe the rightful _shan-yue_ stock. In accordance with this conception,
all later Hun dynasties deliberately disowned Shih Lo. For Shih Lo,
after his destruction of Liu Yao, no longer hesitated: ex-slave as he
was, and descended from one of the non-noble stocks of the Huns, he made
himself emperor of the "Later Chao dynasty" (329-352).

Shih Lo was a forceful army commander, but he was a man without
statesmanship, and without the culture of his day. He had no Chinese
ed