An Lushan Rebellion

Background Political The 10 major jiedushi before An Lushan's rebellion Beginning in 742, Eurasia entered a 13-year period of major political turmoil, with the regional empires generally suffering "a major rebellion, revolution, or dynastic change." [ 1 ] In this year the Second Turkic Khaganate of the eastern Eurasian Steppe was overthrown and then replaced by Sogdian-influenced Uighur rulers. [ 1 ] This was apparently the first of several revolutionary events either led by or intimately connected with the merchants and tradespeople involved with the international commerce often referred to as the Silk Road . [ 2 ] In 747, the Abbasids began their rebellion against the Umayyad Caliphate in Merv , Khurasan , resulting in the proclamation of a new Abbasid Caliph in about 750. [ 3 ] This rebellion also seems to have been organized by merchants and persons identifying themselves as merchants. [ 3 ] The western expansion of the Tang Empire was checked in 751 by the defeat of a large expeditionary force led by General Gao Xianzhi in the Battle of Talas in the modern Fergana Valley , with the Abbasid victory attributable to the defection of the Karluk Turks in the midst of the battle. However, the Arabs did not proceed any further after the battle, and the Tang retained their Tarim Basin territory until the An Lushan rebellion. [ 4 ] [ 5 ] Further, southern expansion of the Tang was limited by the ineffective, and even disastrous, campaigns against the Kingdom of Nanzhao . However, the concurrent Tang campaign against the Tibetan Empire was proceeding more successfully, with the campaign to capture the Tibetans' Central Asian territories appearing nearly successful. With the assassination of the Tibetan emperor Me Agtsom in 755 in the midst of a major rebellion within the Tibetan polity, final Tang victory over the Tibetan Empire seemed all but assured. However, back in the increasingly financially challenged Chinese heartland, the Sogdian-Turkic General An Lushan had worked himself into a position of trust with the Tang emperor Xuanzong and his consort Yang Guifei . General An Lushan Main article: An Lushan Tang dynasty sancai pottery camel with a Sogdian groom An Lushan was a general of uncertain birth origins, but thought to have been adopted by a Sogdian father and Göktürk mother of the Ashina tribe . [ 6 ] Eventually he managed to become a favorite of the reigning emperor of China. His success in this regard is shown, for example, by the luxurious house Emperor Xuanzong built for him in 751, in the capital Chang'an . The house was furnished with luxuries such as gold and silver objects and a pair of ten-foot-long (3.0 m) by six-foot-wide (1.8 m) couches appliqued with rare and expensive sandalwood. [ 7 ] He was appointed by Emperor Xuanzong (following the suggestion of Xuanzong's favorite concubine Yang Guifei and with the agreement of Chancellor Li Linfu ) to be Jiedushi of three garrisons in the north— Pinglu , Fanyang and Hedong . In effect, An was given control over the entire area north of the lower reaches of the Yellow River , including garrisons about 164,000 strong. He took advantage of various circumstances, such as popular discontent with an extravagant Tang court, the synchronous Sogdian-involved Abbasid Revolution against the Umayyad dynasty , [ 8 ] and eventually the absence of strong troops guarding the palace coupled with a string of natural disasters. An Lushan was very influential in the Tang court, his close relationship with Emperor Xuanzong led to him being adopted by the imperial concubine Yang Guifei. The positions of power of Yang clan members (the family of the preceding Sui dynasty into which the Tang emperor had married) were important in this situation, especially complicated by the position of Yang Guifei's relative Yang Guozhong in the Tang governmental administration. [ 9 ] [ failed verification ] ^ a b Beckwith 2009 , p. 140. ^ Beckwith 2009 , p. 141. ^ a b Beckwith 2009 , p. 143. ^ Starr 2004 , p. 39. ^ Millward 2007 , p. 36. ^ Beckwith 2009 , p. 145, note 19. ^ Schafer 1985 , p. 137. ^ Beckwith 2009 , p. 146. ^ Stevens, Keith. "Images on Chinese popular religion altars of the heroes involved in the suppression of the An Lushan Rebellion [AD 755–763]." Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 40 (2000): 155–184.

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Legacy Death toll "Traitorous officials did not rescue [them], so a lone town was surrounded. A father and son perished, their nest was flipped and the eggs were crushed ." (metaphor, in Chinese: 賊臣不救，孤城圍逼，父陷子死，巢傾卵覆。 ) — Excerpt from Yan Zhenqing 's Draft of a Requiem to My Nephew about the deaths of Yan Gaoqing (Magistrate of Changshan) and Yan Jiming Emperor Ming Huang with his concubine Yang Guifei and various attendants on a terrace, by Kano Eitoku, 16th century Censuses taken in the half-century before the rebellion show a gradual increase in population, with the last census undertaken before the rebellion, in 755, recording a population of 52,919,309 in 8,914,709 taxpaying households. However, a census taken in 764, the year following the end of the rebellion, recorded only 16,900,000 in 2,900,000 households. Later censuses count only households, but by 855 this figure had risen to only 4,955,151 households, little over half the number recorded in 755. [ 1 ] The difference in the census figures amounts to 36 million people less, two-thirds of the population of the empire, though scholars have attributed this to factors including a breakdown in taxation and census gathering. [ 2 ] The figure of 36 million was used in Steven Pinker 's book The Better Angels of Our Nature , where it is presented as proportionally the largest atrocity in history with the loss of a sixth of the world's population at that time, [ 3 ] though Pinker stated that the figure was controversial. [ 4 ] Matthew White, from whom Pinker had taken the figure of 36 million, later revised his figure down to 13 million (based on a different calculation from the census results) in his book The Great Big Book of Horrible Things . [ 5 ] White's revised figure is repeated by cultural historians such as Johan Norberg . [ 6 ] [ 7 ] Historians such as Charles Patrick Fitzgerald argue that claims of massive depopulation are incompatible with contemporary accounts of the war, which was fought intermittently over three or four provinces. [ 8 ] They point out that the numbers recorded on the postwar registers reflect not only population loss, but also a breakdown of accuracy of the census system as well as the removal from the census figures of various classes of untaxed persons, such as those in religious orders, foreigners and merchants. [ 2 ] In addition, several of the northern provinces, with approximately a quarter of the empire's population, were no longer subject to the imperial revenue system. [ 9 ] For these reasons, census numbers for the post-rebellion Tang are considered unreliable. [ 10 ] The An Lushan rebellion was one of several wars in northern China along with the Uprising of the Five Barbarians , Huang Chao Rebellion, the wars of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms and Jin–Song Wars which caused a mass migration of Han Chinese from northern China to southern China ( 衣冠南渡 ; yì guān nán dù ). [ 11 ] [ 12 ] [ 13 ] [ 14 ] [ 15 ] [ 16 ] These mass migrations led to southern China's population growth, economic, agricultural and cultural development as it stayed peaceful unlike the north. [ 17 ] [ 18 ] [ 19 ] [ 20 ] [ 21 ] [ 22 ] [ 23 ] Massacres of foreigners A massacre of foreign Arab and Persian Muslim merchants by former Yan rebel general Tian Shengong happened during the An Lushan rebellion in the Yangzhou massacre (760) . [ 24 ] [ 25 ] Since Tian Shengong was defecting to the Tang dynasty and wanted them to publicly recognize and acknowledge him as a regional warlord without him giving up territory, and the Tang court portrayed the war as between rebel Hu barbarians of the Yan against Han Chinese of the Tang dynasty, Tian Shengong slaughtered foreigners as a blood sacrifice to prove he was loyal to the Han Chinese Tang dynasty state. He killed other foreign Hu barbarian ethnicities as well whose ethnic groups were not specified, not only Arabs and Persians, since it was directed against all foreigners. [ 26 ] : 91, 92, 93  [ a ] The former Yan rebel general Gao Juren, of Goguryeo descent, ordered a mass slaughter of West Asian (Central Asian) Sogdians in Fanyang, also known as Jicheng (Beijing) , in Youzhou. They were identified through their big noses and lances were used to impale their children when he rebelled against the rebel Yan emperor Shi Chaoyi and defeated rival Yan dynasty forces under the Turk Ashina Chengqing . [ 27 ] [ 28 ] High nosed Sogdians were slaughtered in Youzhou in 761. Youzhou had Linzhou, another "protected" prefecture attached to it, and Sogdians lived there in great numbers. [ 29 ] : 110, 111  [ 30 ] Gao Juren, like Tian Shengong, wanted to defect to the Tang dynasty and wanted them to publicly recognize and acknowledge him as a regional warlord, according to the book, "History of An Lushan" ( 安祿山史記 ). [ 26 ] : 93, 94  [ b ] Another source says the slaughter of the Hu barbarians serving Ashina Chengqing was done by Gao Juren in Fanyang in order to deprive him of his support base, since the Tiele, Tongluo, Sogdians and Turks were all Hu and supported the Turk Ashina Chengqing against the Mohe, Xi, Khitan and Goguryeo origin soldiers led by Gao Juren. Gao Juren was later killed by Li Huaixian, who was loyal to Shi Chaoyi. [ 31 ] [ 32 ] Weakening of Tang The Small Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an (formerly Chang'an) The rebellion of An Lushan and its aftermath greatly weakened the centralized bureaucracy of the Tang dynasty, especially in regards to its perimeters. Virtually autonomous provinces and ad hoc financial organizations arose, reducing the influence of the regular bureaucracy in Chang'an. [ 33 ] The Tang dynasty's desire for political stability in this turbulent period also resulted in the pardoning of many rebels. Indeed, some were even given their own garrisons to command. Political and economic control of large swathes of the empire became intermittent or was lost, and these areas came to be controlled by fanzhen , autonomous regional authorities headed by the jiedushi (regional military governors). In Hebei, three fanzhen became virtually independent for the remainder of the Tang dynasty. Furthermore, the Tang government also lost most of its control over the Western Regions , due to troop withdrawal to central China to attempt to crush the rebellion and deal with subsequent disturbances. Continued military and economic weakness resulted in further subsequent erosions of Tang territorial control during the ensuing years, particularly in regard to the Tibetan empires. By 790 Chinese control over the Tarim Basin was completely lost. [ 34 ] Moreover, during the rebellion, the Tang general Gao Juren massacred all the Sogdians in Fanyang, who were identified through their noses and faces. The political decline was paralleled by economic decline, including large Tang governmental debt to Uighur money lenders. [ 35 ] The old taxation system of Zu Yong Diao no longer functioned after the rebellion. In addition to being politically and economically detrimental to the empire, the rebellion also affected the intellectual culture of the Tang dynasty. Many intellectuals had their careers interrupted, giving them time to ponder the causes of the unrest. Some lost faith in themselves, concluding that a lack of moral seriousness in intellectual culture had been the cause of the rebellion. [ 36 ] However, a political and cultural recovery eventually did occur within Tang China several decades after the rebellion, until about 820, [ 37 ] the year of the death of Emperor Xianzong of Tang . Much of the rebuilding and recovery occurred in the Jiangnan region in the south, which had escaped the events of the rebellion relatively unscathed and remained more firmly under Tang control. However, due in part to the jiedushi system, the Tang Empire by 907 devolved into what is known as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period . [ 38 ] The Tang dynasty recovered its power decades after the An Lushan rebellion and was still able to launch offensive conquests and campaigns like its destruction of the Uyghur Khaganate in Mongolia in 840–847 . [ 39 ] The Yenisei Kyrgyz Khaganate of the Are family bolstered his ties and alliance to the Tang dynasty Imperial family against the Uyghur Khaganate by claiming descent from the Han dynasty Han Chinese general Li Ling who had defected to the Xiongnu and married a Xiongnu princess, daughter of Qiedihou Chanyu and was sent to govern the Jiankun (Ch'ien-K'un) region which later became Yenisei. Li Ling was a grandson of Li Guang (Li Kuang) of the Longxi Li family descended from Laozi which the Tang dynasty Li Imperial family claimed descent from. [ 40 ] The Yenisei Kyrgyz and Tang dynasty launched a victorious successful war between 840–848 to destroy the Uyghur Khaganate in Mongolia and its centre at the Orkhon valley using their claimed familial ties as justification for an alliance. [ 41 ] Tang dynasty Chinese forces under General Shi Xiong wounded the Uyghur Khagan (Qaghan) Ögä, seized livestock, took 5,000–20,000 Uyghur Khaganate soldiers captive, killed 10,000 Uyghur Khaganate soldiers on 13 February 843 at the battle of Shahu (kill the barbarians) mountain in 843. [ 42 ] [ 43 ] [ 44 ] It was the Huang Chao rebellion in 874–884 by the native Han rebel Huang Chao that permanently destroyed the power of the Tang dynasty since Huang Chao not only devastated the north but marched into southern China which An Lushan failed to do due to the Battle of Suiyang. Huang Chao's army in southern China committed the Guangzhou massacre against foreign Arab and Persian Muslim, Zoroastrian, Jewish and Christian merchants in 878–879 at the seaport and trading entrepot of Guangzhou , [ 45 ] and captured both Tang dynasty capitals, Luoyang and Chang'an. A medieval Chinese source claimed that Huang Chao killed 8 million people. [ c ] Even though Huang Chao was eventually defeated, the Tang Emperors lost all their power to regional jiedushi. Huang Chao's former lieutenant Zhu Wen , who had defected to the Tang court, turned the Tang emperors into his puppets and completed the destruction of Chang'an by dismantling Chang'an and transporting the materials east to Luoyang when he forced the court to move the capital. Zhu Wen deposed the last Tang Emperor in 907 and founded Later Liang (Five Dynasties) , plunging China into the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period as regional jiedushi warlords declared their own dynasties and kingdoms. Cultural influence Further information: Sogdia § Sogdian merchants, generals, and statesmen of Imperial China Sogdian donors to the Buddha (fresco, with detail), Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves , eastern Tarim Basin , China, 8th century The Tang dynasty hired 3,000 mercenaries from Abbasid territories, and the Uyghur Khaganate intervened for the Tang dynasty against An Lushan. The Uyghur Khaganate exchanged princesses in marriage with Tang dynasty China in 756 to seal the alliance against An Lushan. The Uyghur Khagan Bayanchur Khan had his daughter Uyghur Princess Pijia ( 毗伽公主 ) married to Tang dynasty Chinese Prince Li Chengcai  [ zh ] , Prince of Dunhuang ( 敦煌王 ), son of Li Shouli, Prince of Bin , while the Tang dynasty Chinese princess Ninguo married Uyghur Khagan Bayanchur. Sogdian merchants continued as active traders in China following the defeat of the rebellion, but many of them were compelled to hide their ethnic identity. A prominent case was An Chongzhang, Minister of War and Duke of Liang, who in 756 requested of Emperor Suzong to allow him to change his name to Li Baoyu , due to his shame in sharing the same surname with the rebel leader. [ 46 ] This change of surnames was enacted retroactively for all of his family members, so that his ancestors would also be bestowed the surname Li . [ 46 ] The events involved in the An Lushan rebellion had an immense cultural influence both in China and beyond. Many poets of the time wrote about their lives and emotions, which were deeply impacted by war and rebellion, but few poets wrote outwardly about the rebellion. In fact, only eighteen of around one hundred poems produced between the years of 755 and 763 discussed the rebellion. [ 47 ] Although the majority of poems written at the time simply do not mention the rebellion, a few poets attempted to write openly about their experiences living during the rebellion. Some examples of this include: The great poet Li Bai (also known as "Li Bo" or "Li Po", who lived about 701–762) avoided the rebels, but at the cost of getting involved on the wrong side of a power struggle between the princes of the royal family. He was convicted of involvement with rebellion and sentenced to exile, although he was later reprieved. His surviving poems reflect the golden days before the An Lushan rebellion, his lengthy and deliberately protracted journey toward exile (and then return as in his poem "Departing from Baidi in the Morning" , together with his hardships, wandering and disillusionment as the Tang re-consolidated control after the rebellion. He died in 762, before the final defeat of the rebel forces a year later. Li Bai's colleague Du Fu (712–770) had finally attained a minor appointment in the imperial bureaucracy when the rebellion broke out. He spent the winter of 756 and the summer of 757 as a captive in rebel-occupied Chang'an, [ 48 ] but later managed to escape and join with Suzong's side and thus avoid charges of treason. Living until 770, his subsequent poetry is a primary source of information about the massive upheavals of the period. Wang Changling (698–756?), was another Tang official and renowned poet who died in the rebellion, in about 756. [ 49 ] Wang Wei (approximately 699–759) was captured by the rebels in 756 and sent to Luoyang, where he was forced to serve as an official in their governmental administration, for which he was briefly imprisoned after his capture by loyalist forces. [ 50 ] Dying before the end of the rebellion, somewhere between 759 and 761, Wang Wei lived his last years in retirement at his country home in Lantian, secluded in the hills. Wei Yingwu (737–792) of Three Hundred Tang Poems fame is credited with writing the poem "At Chuzhou on the Western Stream", apparently written in response to the seemingly helmless ship of state of the times. [ 51 ] Later poets, such as Bai Juyi (772–846), also wrote famous verses about the events of the period of the Anshi affairs. 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