Later Yan

Later Yan was a dynastic state of China ruled by the Xianbei people during the era of the Sixteen Kingdoms, existing from 384 to 407 or 409. The prefix 'Later' distinguishes it from the Former Yan before it and the other Yan states of the period; although both were ruled by the same imperial family, historiographers treat Former and Later Yan as separate states, and the Later Yan's founder, Murong Chui, had intended his state to be a restoration of the earlier kingdom. Because the old Yan capital of Ye had been devastated, the city of Zhongshan — in modern Baoding, Hebei — became the first capital of the Later Yan. By 394 the state had recovered most of the old Yan territory in Liaoning, Hebei, Shaanxi, Shandong and Henan. After the Northern Wei invasion of 396, however, it was reduced to Liaoning and parts of northeastern Hebei, where it made Longcheng its new capital; the war with Goguryeo then cost it the Liaodong Peninsula. The Later Yan rulers initially declared themselves emperors, but towards the end adopted the lesser title of Heavenly King; whether Murong Xi or Gao Yun, an adopted member of the imperial family of Goguryeo ethnicity, was its last ruler remains a matter for historians.