The Tran of Hai Ap and Tuc Mac

Who he is

Name

Tran Ly (Trần Lý)

Title

Head of a wealthy coastal clan of boatmen, fishers and landowners

Since

not pinned

Born

1151 (English Wikipedia on the Trần dynasty)

Family

Grandson of Tran Kinh, who by the clan's own story came from Fujian and settled at Tuc Mac living by fishing; his sons Tran Tu Khanh and Tran Thua, his daughter Tran Thi Dung, his brother-in-law To Trung Tu (Thi Dung's uncle)

Confidence

medium

English Wikipedia (Trần dynasty, Lý dynasty, Ly Cao Tong)

What it holds

• Landing places, boats and fishing on the Luoc and the lower Red River at Hai Ap (Luu Gia) and Tuc Mac (Nam Dinh)
• Rice land worked by their kin and tenants
• A following of boatmen and kin

How things stand that morning

Rich, local and unremarked. Tran Ly is about forty-eight. The site of Hai Ap is not fixed: the campaign board's dot is on the Luoc reach near Hung Ha; the Tuc Mac village is at Nam Dinh.

Wealth

Boats, fish and salt from the sea edge, rice land; later tradition says the Tran were fishers.

Military

Boatmen and kin; no army.

Threats

• None yet; they are not on the court's list

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

1. 1209Prince Sam takes refuge with Tran Ly, marries Tran Thi Dung; Tran Ly and To Trung Tu lead the army that retakes Thang Long in late 1209; Tran Ly dies in battle (English Wikipedia).Depends on: The palace guard under Quach Boc stays in the capital. Stopped by: Sam flees elsewhere.
2. 1239Tuc Mac becomes the second capital Thien Truong.Depends on: The Tran hold the throne. Stopped by: A Ly restoration.

Places of note

• Hai Ap (Luu Xa): Board's site for the Tran landing, approximate
• Tuc Mac: Tran home village, Nam Dinh

Where the sources disagree

• Board 'luu-xa-hai-ap' says Tran Ly 'held' a landing on the Luoc; the English Wikipedia does not give Hai Ap or Luu Gia, only Tuc Mac as the clan village and Tran Ly as a wealthy landowner. The campaign board's coordinate is a lead only.
• The campaign board entry and MSA brief: the Tran are a coastal clan at Hai Ap, not a court, on 1 January 1200: agreed.

Evidence: Everything about the Tran before 1209 is told by the Tran-era annal; the Fujian origin is a later claim.

"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.

On the map: The real Tran ground was a few villages; the lower-delta polygon is a stand-in.

Primary sources for Dai Viet (Ly)

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• The Abridged History of Viet, Anonymous (attributed by some to Su Hy Nhan) (about 1377, probably as an abridgement of Le Van Huu's lost history of 1272). The oldest surviving Vietnamese history, a century older than the Complete Annals and in places fuller for the Ly dynasty, which fills its second and third books.
• The Complete Annals of Dai Viet, Ngo Si Lien, drawing on Le Van Huu's Dai Viet su ky (1272) and Phan Phu Tien; continued by Pham Cong Tru and Le Hi (1479; printed 1697 in the standard Chinh Hoa edition). The main narrative source for Dai Viet in 1200, compiled in 1479 from Le Van Huu's lost history of 1272. Read online
• History of Song, chapters 488 and 489: Jiaozhi, Dali, Champa, Zhenla, Pagan, Srivijaya, Java, Brunei, Chola and Tambralinga, Toqto'a (Tuotuo) and the Yuan history office, from the Song court records (1343 to 1345, from Song veritable records and court diaries). The Chinese court's record of its southern neighbours, compiled from Song archives. Read online
• The Unofficial History of Nanzhao, Yang Shen; revised by Hu Wei (16th century, revised 1775, from Dali and Yunnan traditions and lost local histories). The kingdom of Dali has no surviving text of 1200: its own records were destroyed in the Mongol conquest and after, and the Song shi's Dali entry ends in 1175. Read online
• History of the Song, the chapters on Xia and on foreign states, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office (1343 to 1345). The Song court's accounts of its neighbours, each arranged as an annal of embassies and wars. Read online
• Draft Compilation of the Collected Statutes of the Song, Various; the Song huiyao were compiled by the Song state, the surviving draft reassembled by Xu Song from the Yongle dadian in the nineteenth century (the original Song compilations date from the eleventh to the thirteenth century; the surviving extracts were recovered in 1809 to 1820 and printed in 1936). Dated extracts from the Song government's own statute collections, arranged by office. Read online
• Corpus of the Inscriptions of Campa (EFEO and ISAW), Various (the Cham kings and their officers), edited by Arlo Griffiths, Amandine Lepoutre, William Southworth and Thanh Phan (inscriptions of the 4th to 15th centuries; the online corpus from 2012). The online edition of the Cham inscriptions, with photographs, texts and translations, keyed to the C. numbers. Read online
• The Inscriptions of Cambodia, Various (the Khmer kings and their officers), edited by George Coedes (inscriptions of the 6th to 14th centuries; edited 1937 to 1966). The Khmer empire of 1200 is known almost entirely from the great foundation stelae of Jayavarman VII (reigning from 1181), which Coedes edited: the Ta Prohm stele of 1186 (K. Read online

2 more in the sources library for Mainland Southeast Asia.