Fire inside the imperial palace
The Ming shi records a fire inside the palace during its sixth-month account of the capital's fall.
What this does and does not establish
明史/卷4, Wikisource revision 2594634; year heading 建文四年 at line 100. The palace is explicitly located inside the capital by line 112's immediate context, corresponding to Nanjing. The fire is not described as a natural disaster, and its cause is unstated. No separate day is attached to this clause. Lines 112–114 give conflicting traditions about the emperor's fate; neither establishes his death in this fire.
- Read through an AI working translation.
- Region
- East Asia
- Theme
- Environment, health and technology
- 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
- 建文四年六月；no separately stated day
- How we use it
- Year-level placement is limited to the dated source entry.
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
Read ming004.wikitext lines 100–118, including the alternative escape account at line 114. Compared sinica-1401-12-31.html and sinica-1402-12-31.html lines 31–32: the Chinese Ming sequence moves from Jianwen 3, month 11 day 27, on 1401-12-31 to Jianwen 4, month 12 day 7, on 1402-12-31. Jianwen 4 month 6 lies within Julian AD 1402. No neighboring day is assigned to the fire. Original quotation begins at line 112, character 4487.
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
Ming shi (History of Ming), basic annals
Zhang Tingyu et al., Qing court historians
Quoted text (Classical Chinese)
宮中火起AI working translation into English; not official or authoritative
Fire broke out inside the palace.
Source credit and reuse conditions recorded for this source: 明史/卷4 https://zh.wikisource.org/w/index.php?oldid=2594634 Public-domain historical original. Wikisource contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Attribute the fixed transcription and share adapted excerpts alike. Project working translation.
Exact source version
2dee7ca3ee519c6dabc48dca2414011ada1f5d202c464349adb3416d0d7407efChecks and changes
Source checked 2026-11-07. 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 s1401_annals_1401_1402_3
Exact revision fingerprint
018e9535be1d56fb423247e5718a42a4b236fc4106cac2df1a7c508013fa4291