An Lushan rebellion: A Visual History

The An Lushan Rebellion (755-763) was launched by An Lushan, a general of Sogdian and Turkic parentage who commanded three frontier armies for the Tang. He marched on Luoyang in December 755, proclaimed himself emperor of Yan and took Chang'an in 756, forcing Emperor Xuanzong to flee to Sichuan and to allow the strangling of his beloved consort Yang Guifei. An was murdered by his son in 757; the war passed to his general Shi Siming and Shi's son until 763. The Tang recovered with Uyghur help but lost the north-east to autonomous governors, and the census dropped from 53 million to 17 million.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

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Tang registered population

The drop reflects the collapse of registration as much as deaths.

Timeline of the An Lushan Rebellion

1. 755
   An Lushan revolts16 December.
2. 756
   Luoyang, then Chang'an fall; Mawei incident
3. 757
   An Lushan murdered; capitals retaken
4. 759
   Shi Siming retakes Luoyang
5. 761
   Shi Siming murdered
6. 763
   Rebellion ends; Tibetans sack Chang'an

An Lushan

An Lushan, huge, jovial and fluent in six languages, rose through the frontier armies and won the favour of Xuanzong and Yang Guifei, who adopted him as her son. By 751 he commanded 160,000 troops in the north-east. Rivalry with the chief minister Yang Guozhong pushed him to revolt; his veterans swept down from Fanyang (Beijing) and took Luoyang in five weeks.

The fall of Chang'an

Tang generals holding the Tong Pass were ordered to attack and were destroyed at Lingbao in July 756. Xuanzong fled; at Mawei his guards killed Yang Guozhong and demanded Yang Guifei's death, and the emperor had her strangled. His son took the throne as Suzong at Lingwu and hired Uyghur cavalry. An Lushan, blind and diseased, was murdered by his son An Qingxu in January 757; the Tang and Uyghurs retook Chang'an and Luoyang that year, the Uyghurs looting the latter.

Aftermath

Shi Siming killed An Qingxu, retook Luoyang and was killed by his own son Shi Chaoyi in 761; the last rebels surrendered or were pardoned in 763. To end the war the Tang confirmed rebel generals as governors of the north-eastern provinces, which stayed autonomous until the dynasty's end. The Tibetans took the western lands and sacked Chang'an in 763. The poets Du Fu and Li Bai lived through the war; the great age of Tang was over.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Tang dynasty (618 to 907)
• Uyghur Khaganate (744 to 840)
• Tibetan Empire (618 to 842)
• Abbasid Caliphate (750 to 1258)
• Sui dynasty (581 to 618)

8 surprising things about the An Lushan Rebellion

1. An Lushan was so fat he needed help to dress, yet danced the Sogdian whirl for the emperor.
2. The census drop of 36 million made this, on paper, the deadliest event in history until the twentieth century; most historians think most of the missing were unregistered, not dead.
3. Yang Guifei's death at Mawei is the subject of Bai Juyi's 'Song of Everlasting Sorrow', one of China's most famous poems.
4. The Tang hired 4,000 Arab mercenaries from the Abbasid caliph to help retake the capitals; some settled in China.
5. The rebellion's disruption of the Silk Road forced Chinese trade south to the sea routes.
6. Du Fu's poem 'Spring View' ('The state is shattered, mountains and rivers remain') was written in occupied Chang'an.
7. The Tibetans took advantage to occupy the Hexi corridor for a century and to briefly install a puppet Tang emperor.
8. An Lushan's rebel state was called Yan after the ancient state of the Beijing region.

Sources

• An Lushan Rebellion Encyclopaedia Britannica
• An Lushan rebellion Wikipedia
• An Lushan Rebellion World History Encyclopedia
• Edwin G. Pulleyblank, The Background of the Rebellion of An Lu-shan (1955) Oxford University Press

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