Seizing power in 618
The Tang came to power in the chaos that ended the Sui dynasty. The Sui had reunified China in 589 after centuries of division, but its building projects, including the Grand Canal, and its costly failed wars in Korea provoked revolt. Li Yuan, a Sui official and military governor at Taiyuan with family ties to the Sui court, rebelled in 617 and took the capital with his sons. When the Sui emperor Yang was murdered in 618, Li Yuan proclaimed the Tang dynasty and took the temple name Gaozu.
His second son, Li Shimin, did much of the fighting that defeated rival warlords. In 626, in a coup at the Xuanwu Gate of the palace, he killed his elder brother and forced his father to hand over power. As the Taizong emperor, he ruled from 626 to 649. Later writers praised his reign as a model of good government and of open debate between ruler and ministers, although historians note that the official record was shaped by his own court. Taizong’s armies also defeated the Eastern Turks and extended Tang influence deep into Central Asia.
Government and the empire’s shape
The Tang inherited and refined Sui institutions, including a legal code, a system of prefectures and counties, and examinations for selecting officials. The examination system remained smaller than it later became, and aristocratic families still held much influence in the early Tang. Over time, degrees earned through examination, especially the jinshi, gained prestige.
The dynasty’s high point is often placed in the early eighth century. One striking episode was the reign of Wu Zetian, a former consort of Taizong who became the wife of his son Gaozong and held great power at court. In 690 she took the throne herself, founding a new dynasty named Zhou, and she ruled until 705. She is the only woman to have held the title of emperor in Chinese imperial history, and the court politics of her era is a subject of long-running debate, because later Confucian historians were hostile to her.
The Xuanzong emperor (reigned 712 to 756) presided over what many regard as the brilliant years of the Kaiyuan era, in which the economy grew, the capital flourished and the arts thrived. He also ruled over a frontier defence system that gave increasing authority to military governors, which proved a long-term risk.
Changan, a cosmopolitan capital
The Tang capital, Changan (modern Xi’an), was laid out on a strict grid, with a palace city to the north, wide avenues and walled wards, and two large government-supervised markets. It was among the largest cities in the world, with a population that is often put at close to a million including the surrounding districts, although estimates vary. The city drew merchants, envoys, monks and students from many places.
Tang China is often described as cosmopolitan because of these contacts. Sogdian merchants from Central Asia were prominent traders, and they and other travellers brought goods, music, fashion and religions. Along the Silk Road trade routes came Buddhist monks and missionaries, and Buddhism was a major presence in Tang society. The monk Xuanzang left China in 629 and spent years travelling in India before returning in 645 with a large collection of scriptures, which he then helped translate. Other religions had communities in the capital as well, among them Christians of the Church of the East, whose presence is attested by a stele set up in 781, as well as Zoroastrians and, later, Muslims. Envoys and students from Japan and the Korean kingdom of Silla visited, and Tang practices influenced court culture and city planning in those countries. The Three Kingdoms of Korea had by then given way to Silla’s unification of the peninsula, achieved with Tang help.
Not all contacts were peaceful. In 751 a Tang army fought an army of the Abbasid caliphate and its allies near the Talas River in Central Asia, and the Tang side lost. Historians disagree about how much strategic effect the battle really had, but it marked the limits of Tang expansion westward, and the rise of Abbasid Baghdad would shape the region’s later history.
Poetry and culture
The Tang is often called the golden age of Chinese poetry. Li Bai (701 to 762) is known for vivid, imaginative verse, and Du Fu (712 to 770) for poems that record the hardship of war and ordinary life. Wang Wei was both poet and painter. Poetry was part of official culture, since composing verse formed part of the examination, and it was also a social activity at banquets and farewells. Calligraphy and painting were similarly prized, and the tradition of brush calligraphy produced masters who were studied for centuries. Printing, in the form of woodblocks used for Buddhist texts and calendars, was developing during this time.
The An Lushan rebellion
The turning point came in 755. An Lushan, a general of mixed Sogdian and Turkic background who commanded large forces on the north-eastern frontier, rebelled against the court and in 756 proclaimed his own dynasty, the Yan. His troops took Luoyang and then moved on Changan. Xuanzong fled toward Sichuan, and at Mawei his guards demanded the death of his consort Yang Guifei, whom they blamed for the crisis. She died there in 756.
An Lushan was murdered by his own son in 757, and the war dragged on until 763, with the help of Uyghur troops and loyalist commanders. The cost was heavy. Population registers show a large drop in recorded households, though part of this reflects collapsing administration rather than only deaths. Territory in the west was lost, and the court, to restore order, left many frontier and provincial commanders with great autonomy.
Slow decline and end
After the rebellion the Tang continued for more than a century, but central control was uneven. Military governors, known as jiedushi, ruled many regions almost as hereditary lords, and eunuchs gained influence at court. Fiscal reforms, such as the two-tax system of 780, tried to adapt to new realities, and the dynasty retained a core of economic strength in the Yangtze region. But the Huang Chao rebellion of 875 to 884 devastated much of the country, and in 907 the military governor Zhu Wen deposed the last Tang emperor. The period of division that followed prepared the ground for the Song. In the broad sweep of the Chinese dynastic timeline, the Tang remained a model of confidence and openness that later generations looked back on with pride.