Wubei Zhi
military book from china
The Wubei Zhi (Chinese: 武備志; Treatise on Armament Technology or Records of Armaments and Military Provisions) is a military book in Chinese history. It was compiled in 1621 by Mao Yuanyi (茅元儀 Máo Yuányí; 1594–1640?), an officer of waterborne troops in the Ming dynasty. The Wubei Zhi contains 240 volumes, 10,405 pages, and more than 200,000 Chinese characters.
Structure
Wubei Zhi consists of five sections, "Bing Jue Ping", "Zhan Lue Kao", "Zhen Lian Zhi", "Jun Zi Sheng", and "Zhan Du Zai".
"Bing Jue Ping" (Commentary on Military Formulae)
Containing 18 chapters, this section includes military theories from significant figures including, but not limited to, Sun Tzu. Some of these theories date back to the last years of the Eastern Zhou dynasty, more than 1,800 years before the editor.
"Zhan Lue Kao" (Consideration of Tactics)
This section consists of 31 chapters, and describes more than 600 specific examples of battles that took place between the Eastern Zhou dynasty and the Yuan dynasty. Among these are the Battle of Maling and Battle of Red Cliffs, the latter of which is a classic example of defeating an overpowering enemy.
"Zhen Lian Zhi" (Record of Formations and Training)
This section of the book contains 41 chapters. It contains different methods of training troops, including infantry, cavalry, and chariots, as well as individual martial arts training with different weapons such as the spear and Dao.
“Wubei Zhi” enters the record as military book from china. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Wubei, military and book can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2553722. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1621, 1594 and 1640.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wubei Zhi” 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.