King Wen of Zhou

King Wen of Zhou (; 1152–1050 BC, the Cultured King) was the posthumous title given to Ji Chang , the patriarch of the Zhou state during the final years of Shang dynasty in ancient China. Ji Chang himself died before the end of the Zhou Shang War, and his second son Ji Fa completed the conquest of Shang following the Battle of Muye, and posthumously honored him as the founder of the Zhou dynasty. Many of the hymns of the Classic of Poetry are praises to the legacy of King Wen. Some consider him the first epic hero of Chinese history. Although frequently confused with his fourth son Duke of Zhou, also known as "Lord Zhou", they are different historical persons.

Chinese scholars (e. g. Wang Yunwu (王雲五), Li Xueqin (李学勤), etc.) identified King Wen with a mentioned in inscriptions H11:82 & H11:84 among oracle bones excavated at Zhouyuan (周原), Qishan County.

Born Ji Chang (姬昌), Wen was the son of Tairen and Ji Jili, the Elder of Zhou, a vassal clan of the Kingdom of Shang along the Wei River in present day Shaanxi. Jili was betrayed and executed by the Shang king Wen Ding in the late 12th century BC, leaving the young Chang as the Elder of the Zhou lineage. Wen married Taisi and fathered ten sons and one daughter by her, plus at least another eight sons with concubines. At one point, King Zhou of Shang, fearing Wen's growing power, imprisoned him in Youli (present day Tangyin in Henan) after he was slandered by the Marquis of Chong. His eldest son, Bo Yikao, went to King Zhou to plead for his freedom, but was executed in a rage by lingchi and made into meat cakes which were fed to his father in Youli. However, many officials (in particular San Yisheng and Hong Yao) respected Wen for his honorable governance and gave King Zhou so many gifts including gold, horses, and women that he released Wen, and also bestowed upon him his personal weapons and invested him with the special rank of Overlord of the West (Western Shang). Wen offered a piece of his land in Western Luo to King Zhou, who in turn allowed Wen to make one last request. He requested that the Burning Pillar punishment be abolished, and so it was

Subsequently, upon returning home Wen secretly began to plot to overthrow King Zhou. In his first year as Overlord of the West, he settled a land dispute between the states of Yu and Rui, earning greater recognition among the nobles. It is by this point that some nobles began calling him "king". The following year, Wen found Jiang Ziya fishing in the Pan River and hired him as a military counselor. He also repelled an invasion of the Quanrong barbarians and occupied a portion of their land. The following year, he campaigned against Mixu, a state whose chief had been harassing the smaller states of Ruan and Gong, thus annexing the three of them. The following year, he attacked Li, a puppet of Shang, and the next year he attacked E, a rebel state opposed to Shang, conquering both. One year later he attacked Chong, home of Hu, Marquis of Chong, his arch enemy, and defeated it, gaining access to the Ford of Meng through which he could cross his army to attack Shang. By then he had obtained about two thirds of the whole kingdom either as direct possessions or sworn allies. That same year he moved his administrative capital city one hundred kilometers east from Mount Qi to Feng, placing the Shang under imminent threat. The following year, however, the Overlord of the West died before he could cross the Ford. Nonetheless, that other sources suggest he died in battle during the Zhou campaign against the Shang. Four years after his death, his second son, known as King Wu, followed his footsteps and crushed the Shang at Muye, founding the Zhou dynasty. The name "Wen" now means "the Cultured" or "the Civilizing" and was made into an official royal name by King Wu in honor of his father. He was the only noble to bear the posthumous name "Wen" for almost the entire first half of the Zhou dynasty, despite its common usage as an epithet of eulogy, suggesting a special privilege.

The theory of political legitimacy that prevailed during the Zhou dynasty and found adherents throughout the following millennia was known as the Mandate of Heaven. According to this theory, Heaven established the sovereign lexically the same way a sovereign would establish a vassal, The sovereign was held to be Heaven's eldest son in a manner analogous to the patrilineal kin based society of Predynastic Zhou. If the sovereign was insufficiently virtuous, Heaven would choose a new successor, portended by various omens or disasters. King Wen was said to be mandated by Heaven because the virtue of the Shang kings had declined too greatly. While this political theory gained a great deal of sophistication over time, it seems to have begun with King Wen reading the skies. In 1059 , two unusual celestial phenomena took place. In May, the densest clustering in five hundred years' time of the five planets visible to the naked eye could be seen in the constellation of Cancer, followed a few seasons later by an apparition of Comet 1P/Halley. One or more of these was interpreted by King Wen as a visible sign indicating his divine appointment. Early records, such as the inscription on the Da Yu ding, describe Heaven's Mandate in terms of an actual astronomic event: "the great command in the sky" cannot be securely slotted into King Wen's timeline.

Many of the older odes from the Classic of Poetry (Shijing 詩經) are hymns in praise of King Wen. He was additionally a great hero of Confucius, whose followers played a significant role in shaping Chinese culture.

King Wen is also credited with having stacked the eight trigrams in their various permutations to create the sixty four hexagrams of the I Ching. He is also said to have written the judgments which are appended to each hexagram. The most commonly used sequence of the 64 hexagrams is attributed to him and is usually referred to as the King Wen sequence.

In 196 BC, Han Gaozu gave King Wen the title "Greatest of All Kings".