An Lushan

An Lushan the Chinese general of Turco-Sogdian origin and Tang dynasty border commander (c. 703-757) who led the devastating rebellion that bears his name, nearly toppling the dynasty and bringing to an end the golden age of Tang prosperity. His revolt, which began in 755, caused immense loss of life and permanently weakened the empire.

Origins and Rise to Power

An Lushan was born around 703, the son of a Sogdian father and a Turkic mother, in the frontier region of the northeast where the Tang empire met the world of the steppe. His name was a transliteration of his Turkic or Sogdian title, and his mixed ancestry placed him among the many peoples of the frontier who entered Tang service as soldiers and interpreters.

He rose through the ranks of the frontier army by a combination of military ability, personal charm and skill in navigating the politics of the imperial court. He learned the languages of the steppe and of China, and his knowledge made him useful both as a commander and as a mediator with the nomadic tribes beyond the border. In time he was appointed to command the garrisons of the northeast.

His ascent was assisted by the favour of the emperor Xuanzong's chief minister, Li Linfu, who saw him as a useful ally, and by his own gifts of flattery and self-presentation. He came to control several frontier commands, holding an unprecedented concentration of military power, and he built up a personal army loyal to himself rather than to the distant court in Chang'an.

Tension with the Court

The prosperity and confidence of the Tang court under the emperor Xuanzong masked growing dangers. The central government had come to rely on frontier generals of non-Chinese origin, men with their own troops and local power bases, and the influence of the eunuchs and of the emperor's favourite consort Yang Guifei complicated the politics of the capital. An Lushan cultivated the favour of the emperor and even became a nominal adoptive son of the consort.

The death of Li Linfu in 753 removed the minister who had understood how to manage the general, and his successor, Yang Guozhong, became An Lushan's bitter enemy. Fearful that the court would move against him, and ambitious for greater power, An Lushan prepared for open revolt. He gathered his forces, secured his frontier commands and waited for the moment to strike.

In 755 he rose in rebellion, claiming that he was acting to purge the government of the corrupt minister Yang Guozhong rather than to overthrow the emperor. The pretext allowed him to appeal to those who believed the court had fallen into evil hands, and it gave his revolt a semblance of legitimacy that helped it to spread.

The Rebellion

The rebellion of An Lushan shattered the peace of the empire. His armies swept south from the northeast and east across the plain toward the capital, and city after city fell. The imperial forces, long unused to serious warfare after decades of peace, were unprepared, and the government suffered a series of disastrous defeats. Within a year the rebels had taken Luoyang and were advancing on Chang'an.

The emperor fled the capital in 756, and in the disorder of the retreat his soldiers mutinied and killed Yang Guozhong, forcing the emperor to consent to the death of Yang Guifei. The heir apparent took the throne as the emperor Suzong and organised resistance, while An Lushan declared himself emperor of a new dynasty in the captured lands. The fighting continued for years, devastating the northern heartland of China.

The scale of the destruction was enormous. Great cities were ruined, whole regions were depopulated, and the census records show a collapse in the registered population that testifies to the slaughter, famine and displacement of the war. The Tang state never fully recovered its former strength, and the rebellion is conventionally treated as the dividing line between the high Tang and its long decline.

Death and the Course of the Revolt

An Lushan did not live to see the end of the war he had begun. He had become ill and perhaps blind, and his temper grew violent and suspicious. In 757 he was murdered by his own son, An Qingxu, in a palace intrigue, and the leadership of the rebellion passed to members of his family and to his generals. The fighting dragged on under new commanders, including the formidable Shi Siming.

After An Lushan's death the rebels continued to resist for several more years, and the war only ended in 763, when the Tang court, in return for peace, granted wide powers to the surviving rebel commanders in the northeast. The empire was preserved, but the price was the permanent fragmentation of authority, for the regions of the north passed into the hands of semi-independent military governors.

The rebellion thus achieved, in a strange way, a lasting division of power even in defeat. The dynasty survived for another century and a half, but it ruled over a country in which the central government had lost much of its control, and the balance between the throne and the provincial commands was never restored. The consequences were felt for generations.

Legacy and Historical Reputation

An Lushan's name became a byword for treachery and destruction in Chinese history. The rebellion he led is treated as one of the great catastrophes of the imperial age, comparable in its effects to the collapse of a dynasty, and it is studied as a case of how the concentration of military power in frontier commands can fatally undermine a state. His revolt accelerated the decline of the Tang order.

The war he set in motion transformed the culture of the empire as well as its politics. The confident, cosmopolitan world of the high Tang gave way to a more inward and troubled age, and the poetry of Du Fu, who lived through the catastrophe, records its grief and ruin. The rebellion entered literature and memory as a moment when a great civilisation turned from its height toward a long twilight.

For all his notoriety, An Lushan remains a figure of considerable historical importance. His career illustrates the tensions of a multiethnic empire that both used and feared the peoples of its frontiers, and his rising exposed the weaknesses of a system that had grown too reliant on military commanders beyond the reach of the court. He is remembered as the man whose ambition brought down the prosperity of an age.

See also

• An Lushan Rebellion
• Emperor Xuanzong of Tang
• Yang Guifei
• Tang dynasty