Death of the Wei emperor Taizu (Tuoba Gui)
The Wei shu basic annals record that on the wuchen day of the tenth lunar month of Tianci 6 (AD 409) the emperor [Taizu, Tuoba Gui] died in the Tian'an hall, aged thirty-nine.
What this does and does not establish
An official history compiled 551-554 by Wei Shou under the Northern Qi from Northern Wei records; the English is an AI working translation. Juan 2 states only that he died; juan 3 (a Song restoration) places the death together with the revolt of Shao, Prince of Qinghe. A collation note in juan 3 confirms the wuchen date as the 13th day of that month.
- Read through an AI working translation.
- Region
- East Asia
- Theme
- Politics and institutions
- Kind of record
- Placed in a year. A source places this in one year. It is listed under that year; no day precision is invented.
How it is dated
- Date reference
- 天賜 6 (天賜六年 as numbered by the annals), lunar month 10
- How we use it
- Year assigned from the lunar month under which the Wei shu annals enter the item; the sexagenary day was not converted to a Julian day.
The date reference is this project’s reading of the source’s date. It may give an era name, a reign or a calendar in a normalised form rather than in the source’s own words; the dating notes say what the source prints.
Dating notes from the research record
Lunar month 10 of 天賜 6 = Julian 409-10-25 to 409-11-22, per Academia Sinica 兩千年中西曆轉換 year table(s) 天賜6.html (sha256 ecfc48627c02…); 天賜6-m2.html (sha256 c92d861a3b1f…); 天賜6-m3.html (sha256 b9e34a2b0b18…); 天賜6-m4.html (sha256 a5da711148ba…); 天賜6-m5.html (sha256 2304c8993241…); 天賜6-m6.html (sha256 fe14334ef05b…); 天賜6-m7.html (sha256 00679cf470cb…); 天賜6-m8.html (sha256 70e0b5444138…); 天賜6-m9.html (sha256 b5f5a2975d10…); 永興1-m10.html (sha256 f6ca01a6355e…); 永興1-m11.html (sha256 6bd02ebc03f5…); 永興1-m12.html (sha256 7dacd9cdecb5…); the whole month lies in AD 409.
File names and line numbers in these notes, and in the limits above, refer to the project’s retained copies of the cited sources. Names such as calendar_headers are the project’s calendar look-ups, and “the investigator” is the research step that prepared the record.
Sources and quoted text
Line and character numbers under “Location” refer to the project’s retained copy of the source. For database rows, “Edition” names the batch of rows that was fetched together.
Source 1 · Supports the statement
Wei shu (Book of Wei), basic annals
Wei Shou (魏收), Northern Qi court historian
The credit or link shown here was corrected after an audit of the retained source.
Quoted text (Classical Chinese)
冬十月戊辰，帝崩於天安殿，時年三十九。AI working translation into English; not official or authoritative
Winter, tenth month, wuchen day: the emperor died in the Tian'an hall, at the age of thirty-nine.
Source credit and reuse conditions recorded for this source: Source: Wei shu, juan 2, zh.wikisource transcription (revision 2312019). English renderings are AI working translations, not published translations.
Exact source version
819c11dfb406c184ff9cbbc5ec344c1b8caef748a23d39a974ce0d6829e629e1Checks and changes
Source checked 2026-11-05. An independent AI evidence review supports this bounded, attributed wording. That review does not guarantee historical truth. How records are checked
No correction has been made to this record’s statement or limits.
Revision s1h_409_wei_2
Exact revision fingerprint
4ee8fb905240fd4bfa38700cade3906975c8be981a9aeb7d5cddecd5bf28b97b