Mạc Thiên Tứ
18th century leader of Hà Tiên in modern-day Vietnam and Cambodia
Mạc Thiên Tứ (chữ Hán: 鄚天賜, pinyin: Mò Tiāncì, Khmer: ម៉ាក់ ធានទឺ, December 12, 1699 or December 16, 1705 or January 1, 1718 – June 18, 1780), also known as Mạc Thiên Tích (鄚天錫) or Mạc Tông (鄚琮, Khmer: ម៉ាក់ តុង), was a Vietnamese leader who ruled Hà Tiên from 1735 to 1771 and from 1773 to 1777. He was called Mo Shilin (Chinese: 莫士麟; pinyin: Mò Shìlín, Thai: ม่อซื่อหลิน) in Veritable Records of Qing dynasty.
He was the eldest son of Mạc Cửu, and born to a Vietnamese woman from Biên Hòa. He also had a sister, Mạc Kim Định, who was married to the son of the Chinese general Trần Thượng Xuyên. After his father's death, he received the title of Tổng binh of Hà Tiên and the noble title Marquess Tông Đức (Vietnamese: Tông Đức hầu) from Nguyễn lord. His reign saw the golden age of Hà Tiên. A proper bureaucratic structure was set up, their military saw a massive increase in size and power, castles and business streets were erected, and Hà Tiên's economy prospered under him. Hà Tiên became the trade center in Mekong Delta; it became the best-known port in the Gulf of Siam long before the founding of Saigon and Bangkok. In his 1742 letter to Japanese Tokugawa shogunate in Khmer, he called himself Reachea Krong Kampucea Tiptei (រាជាក្រុងកម្ពុជាធិបតី, "king of Cambodia") and later Neak Somdec Preah Sotoat (អ្នកសម្ដចព្រះសុទត្ដ). However, Siamese sources called him both Ong Chien Chun (องเชียงชุน, "Chinese general") and Phraya Rachasethi (พระยาราชาเศรษฐี), thus confusing him with Oknya Reachea Sedthei (ឧកញ៉ារាជាសេដ្ឋី), the Khmer governor of Banteay Meas.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Mạc Thiên Tứ” is 18th century leader of Hà Tiên in modern-day Vietnam and Cambodia. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Thiên, 18th and century, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6687408. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1699, 1705, 1718 and 1780.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mạc Thiên Tứ” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.