History of the Khmer Empire

The Khmer Empire is the name commonly used for the kingdom whose principal capitals stood in what is now Cambodia from the ninth to fifteenth centuries CE. Its center was the Tonle Sap plain, but royal campaigns and foundations reached into parts of mainland Southeast Asia. The court moved between cities, and each move reshaped the setting of royal temples and settlement. Inscriptions, archaeological layers, temple images and a Chinese visitor’s account preserve different parts of this history.

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Earlier kingdoms and the remembered foundation

Khmer political and artistic traditions predated Angkor. At Sambor Prei Kuk, identified with Ishanapura, the capital of Chenla in the late sixth and early seventh centuries, more than a hundred temples preserve an earlier architectural tradition. Brick towers with carved sandstone doorways and lintels helped establish forms later developed at Angkor. The earlier kingdom was not simply an Angkorian state under another name; its monuments and inscriptions belong to a distinct regional setting.

The customary date for the start of Angkorian rule is 802. A long inscription carved at Sdok Kak Thom in 1052 recounts that King Parameśvara, the posthumous name of Jayavarman II, established a royal deity at Mahendraparvata, the upland of Phnom Kulen. The inscription preserves a later royal foundation account, written more than two centuries after the event. Jayavarman II also established a center at Hariharalaya near present-day Roluos, where later kings built the first major Angkorian capital complex.

From Hariharalaya to Yasodharapura

Indravarman I, who ruled from 877 to 889, made Hariharalaya a major royal center. He built Preah Ko, a temple honoring royal ancestors, and Bakong, a stepped temple mountain that served as his state shrine. Nearby, the Indratataka reservoir gathered water in a large embanked basin. Temples, royal commemoration and water storage thus formed connected parts of the Roluos capital.

Yasovarman I shifted the royal center north to Yasodharapura around the end of the ninth century. Phnom Bakheng stood at its center, and the East Baray extended across the plain to its east. The move established a new ceremonial landscape rather than ending settlement at Roluos. The succeeding kings continued to build and adapt Angkor’s temples and reservoirs as their political centers changed.

Koh Ker and the return to Angkor

Jayavarman IV established his capital at Koh Ker, about 90 kilometres northeast of Angkor, from 928 to 941. Its state temple, Prasat Prang, rose as a tiered pyramid and housed a great Shiva linga, a sacred emblem of the Hindu god Shiva. The surrounding settlement had temples, reservoirs and roads. Pollen and sediment evidence indicates that people continued to use Koh Ker’s landscape for centuries after the court returned to Angkor.

Rajendravarman restored Angkor as the royal center in the mid-tenth century. He founded Pre Rup in 961, with a central sanctuary dedicated to Shiva, a major Hindu god, and built East Mebon on an island in the East Baray. These foundations joined Angkor’s sacred geography to older waterworks.

Suryavarman I came to power after conflict among claimants around 1002–1004. Historian Mitch Hendrickson’s reconstruction of dated campaigns records his intervention at Lopburi, in present-day central Thailand, in the 1020s. These campaigns linked the Khmer court to regional networks beyond Angkor.

Campaigns, Angkor Wat and Jayavarman VII

Suryavarman II, king from 1113 to about 1150, commissioned Angkor Wat as a royal temple dedicated to Vishnu, a major Hindu god. Its galleries include scenes of warfare and royal ceremony, including a procession identified with Suryavarman’s court. His reign also saw military campaigns toward Champa, a kingdom along the coast of present-day central and southern Vietnam, and Đại Việt in northern Vietnam. Hendrickson’s study lists expeditions against Đại Việt in 1128, 1129 and 1136 and a Khmer conquest of Vijaya in 1145.

Jayavarman VII took the throne in 1181 and made Angkor Thom a new royal center, with the Bayon at its heart. He sponsored major Buddhist temples including Ta Prohm and Preah Khan. A Ta Prohm inscription claims that 102 hospitals were established across the kingdom, while the Preah Khan inscription lists 121 rest houses along named roads. These records present the king’s building program as a network linking the capital to other communities. Roads and water infrastructure had older histories, and his foundations expanded those existing connections.

War with Champa continued during and after Jayavarman VII’s reign. Hendrickson’s survey places campaigns attributed to the Khmer court in 1190, 1192 and 1203, including an attack at Mỹ Sơn, a temple complex in central Vietnam. By the thirteenth century, the Khmer court had withdrawn from Champa, while Khmer authority and religious life continued to change within the Angkor region.

Angkor’s changing role and the southern capitals

In 1296–1297, the Chinese visitor Zhou Daguan spent nearly a year at Angkor as part of a Yuan mission. His later Record of Cambodia describes the city and its people from the perspective of one visitor. It is a rare account from this period, alongside the more formal royal inscriptions, and it belongs to the late thirteenth century rather than describing every earlier reign.

Evidence for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries points to a gradual change in Angkor’s political and economic role. Geoarchaeological research at the city’s central moat finds a long decline in settlement and land use beginning in the fourteenth century, consistent with the court’s political focus shifting elsewhere. Later chronicles associate an Ayutthayan attack with 1431, while archaeological work records a longer transition rather than an abrupt end to activity.

Royal centers moved south toward the Mekong, first to the Basan and Srei Santhor region and then to Chaktomuk, the river confluence at modern Phnom Penh. In the sixteenth century, Longvek became another important royal capital. At Angkor Wat, excavations identify a change in use after the thirteenth century, followed by habitation from the fourteenth or early fifteenth century through the seventeenth or eighteenth. The temple continued as a Buddhist pilgrimage center. The shift of the court changed the political geography of Cambodia, while Khmer religious practice and community life continued at Angkor and in the southern capitals.