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 education; he hated the Chinese and would have been glad to make north China a grazing ground for his nomad tribes of Huns.  Accordingly he had no desire to rule all China.  The part already subjugated, embracing the whole of north China with the exception of the present province of Kansu, sufficed for his purpose.

The governor of that province was a loyal subject of the Chinese Chin dynasty, a man famous for his good administration, and himself a Chinese.  After the execution of the Chin emperor Huai Ti by the Huns in 313, he regarded himself as no longer bound to the central government; he made himself independent and founded the “Earlier Liang dynasty”, which was to last until 376.  This mainly Chinese realm was not very large, although it had admitted a broad stream of Chinese emigrants from the dissolving Chin empire; but economically the Liang realm was very prosperous, so that it was able to extend its influence as far as Turkestan.  During the earlier struggles Turkestan had been virtually in isolation, but now new contacts began to be established.  Many traders from Turkestan set up branches in Liang.  In the