Yishiha

It is speculated by modern historians that he rose to prominence by participating in imperial court politics and serving the Yongle Emperor's concubines of Manchu (Jurchen) origin.

[6][7] Yishiha's Amur expeditions belong to the same period of the Yongle Emperor's reign (1402–1424) which saw another eunuch admiral, Zheng He, sail across the Indian Ocean, and Chinese ambassador Chen Cheng reach the Timurid Empire's capital Herat (in today's Afghanistan) overland.

[8] By 1409, the Yongle Emperor's government, which had already established relations with the Haixi and Jianzhou Jurchens in southern Manchuria, ordered Yishiha to start preparations for an expedition to the lower Amur River region, to demonstrate the power of the Ming Empire to the Nurgan Jurchen populating the area and induce them to enter into relations with the empire, and to ensure that they would not create trouble for the Ming state when the latter went to war with the Eastern Mongols.

He gave generous gifts to their tribal leaders, and established a Nurgan Regional Military Commission,[1] at the place the Chinese called Telin (特林), near the present-day village of Tyr in Russia's Khabarovsk Krai.

[10] According to some evidence (a seal issued by the empire's Ministry of Rites, found in Yilan County, Heilongjiang), in 1413 Yishiha also visited the nearby coast of the Sakhalin Island, and granted Ming titles to a local chieftain.

[5] While no detailed ethnographic data about the "Nurgan Jurchens" has been found in Chinese records, it was, apparently, a collective name for the Tungusic peoples and possibly other groups (e.g. Nivkh[11]) populating the area.

In the 1430s, the Xuande government stopped sending sea and river expeditions, and the naval (or, rather, riverine) career of Yishiha came to an end, as did that of his colleague Zheng He.

Yishiha's voyages in the context of military and diplomatic activities in the Yongle era of the Ming dynasty . Yishiha's route is in blue, along with those of Zheng He (in black) and Chen Cheng (in green).
A pillar on top of the Tyr Cliff, remaining from, apparently, Yishiha's second temple, as seen ca. 1860