Ava Kingdom

The Ava Kingdom, the Inwa Kingdom, was the power of upper Burma from 1364 to 1555, raised by Thado Minbya on the wreck of Sagaing and Pinya after Shan raids smashed them. It inherited the fragments of central Burma that had floated loose since Pagan fell in the late thirteenth century, Myinsaing, Pinya and Sagaing in turn, Myinsaing, Pinya and Sagaing in turn, and its Bamarised Shan kings claimed the blood of Pagan, though scholars quarrel whether the Shan in them is a mistranslation. Calling itself Pagan's rightful heir, Ava spent two centuries trying to stitch the old empire together, hammering the Mon Hanthawaddy kingdom of the south in war after war, above all the Forty Years' War of 1385 to 1424 that bled both sides white. Prome and the Shan north broke away in the 1480s, Mohnyin sacked Ava in 1527 and set up puppet kings, and 1555 closed the Ava centuries.