Cáo Cāo 曹操 (155–220 CE; zì Mèngdé 孟德; childhood name Āmǎn 阿瞞; posthumous temple name and title Wèi Wǔdì 魏武帝, Emperor Wu of Wei) was a warlord, statesman, and poet who effectively ended the Eastern Hàn 漢 dynasty and founded the military basis of the state of Cáo Wèi 曹魏. Native of Qiáo 譙 in Pèiguó 沛國 (modern Bózhōu 亳州, Ānhuī). He rose during the suppression of the Yellow Turban Rebellion (184 CE) and through the 190s established himself as the dominant power in the north, defeating rival warlords at Guāndù 官渡 (200 CE) and subsequently controlling the Han court in the name of Emperor Xiàn 獻帝. His southern campaign was checked at Chìbì 赤壁 (208 CE). From 208 he held the title Chancellor (chéngxiàng 丞相); in 213 he was made Duke of Wèi 魏公 and in 216 King of Wèi 魏王. He died in 220 without taking the final step to declare a new dynasty; his son Cáo Pī 曹丕 immediately deposed Emperor Xiàn and proclaimed the Wèi dynasty, posthumously elevating Cáo Cāo to Emperor Wǔ (Wǔdì). His biography is in Sānguó zhì 三國志, Wèishū 魏書 1.
As a poet, Cáo Cāo is one of the founders of the Jiàn’ān 建安 literary tradition. His yuèfǔ 樂府 adaptations — including 〈短歌行〉, 〈龜雖壽〉, 〈觀滄海〉, and the four-yán 四言 ceremonial songs — are noted for their directness, martial energy, and personal reflection on mortality and the recruitment of talent. Zhōng Róng 鍾嶸 placed him in the lower grade of his Shīpǐn 詩品 but acknowledged his power; Liú Xié 劉勰 praised his “ancient directness” (gǔzhí 古直). His collected works, originally compiled by his court as Wèi Wǔ Dì jí 魏武帝集 (30 juǎn + lù, listed in Suíshū Jīngjízhì), were lost by the early Táng; the corpus survives only in fragments reconstructed from encyclopaedias and commentary. See KR4b0020.