in terms of death and devastation not many events in the world could match unlu sun's rebellion or as it's known in china anz rebellion because it was a two-man job between unlu sun and his deputy zuming in this episode we are going to talk about the ethnic dimension of this disaster and some of the rarely mentioned gruesome incidents surrounding it the reign of emperor tang chuenzong the tang dynasty reached the height of its golden age the empire was powerful prosperous influential and cosmopolitan as i've discussed in the previous episode it hosted a diverse variety of people traders and religion from places as far west as persia and arabia to the near east of korea and japan hiding underneath this veneer of utopian cultural melting pot however was tightly strong tension between the different ethnicities that made up tang dynasty china the turkic peoples were probably the most numerous non-han chinese ethnic group in the tang dynasty both the eastern and western turkey cabinet had at one time been vassals of the tang dynasty the turks made up a significant amount of the tongue fighting force as the empire expanded deep into central asia in return their loyalty and services were richly rewarded but some of the turks did not look too kindly to the wealth of gold offered the orkon inscription which was erected in the 8th century before unlucan's rebellion already claimed that the fortune offered by the tang empire was a corrupting influence to the good and stout turkic people tang taitung the co-founder of the tang dynasty and its second emperor ruled the chinese people as the son of heaven and the turks as the khan of heaven well he at least ruled them according to that term but the emperors after him became more and more culturally distant as they engage in the high tongue culture and preoccupied themselves with palace intrigues sure the tang dynasty might be a cosmopolitan empire but if you look at it from the other people's perspective melting pots or chinese it is still a corruption of their people's culture one person who thrived in this corruption is your good old unlu sun and lusan's parentage is unclear his father is commonly believed to be sobbian and according to official chinese history his mother was a turkic shaman during his youth he was known to be cruel and cunning he knew six non-chinese languages and worked as interpreter in the frontier markets one day in 732 he was caught stealing sheep and he managed to talk his way out of the execution by joining the army this is also where he met his friend susuming this career change turned out to be a boon for anusan he rose through the ranks quickly as he fought against the kitan and sea people best of all he lost some weight the chinese official histories are pretty savage they just love to keep mentioning how fat he was when he was eventually granted an audience with the emperor he played his cards really well how by ignoring the crown prince nah he didn't show him any respect when asked why he didn't he pulled out his barbarian card saying that he didn't understand what a crown prince was since he was just a simple barbarian this actually was a power move the tongue court at the time was rife with factionalism and the three most prominent factions were the crown prince li khan's faction the chancellor li lingfu's faction and yankue face relatives consort yang was considered to be one of the four great beauties of ancient china and she was also the emperor's most favorite concubine so he knew who to suck up to unlu son asked her to be his adoptive mother keep in mind that at the time she was in her mid-20s around 16 years younger than him yet his request was granted he then gave his greetings to her first before the emperor saying that it was his people's custom to greet the mother first before the father since this performance pleased her the emperor was pleased as well and from then on both of them showed him plenty of favors lee lingfu on the other hand had other plans for unlusan as chancellor he was always wary of other han chinese who would compete for his position and one common way to rise up to his position is to be a commander in the frontier so to prevent competition he assigned non-han chinese generals to many of these posts because they usually don't get to be promoted to his ministrial position or just because most of them are not interested in court position but against all expectation unlu sun was thriving amid the palace intrigue playing the role of a foolish barbarian general he was given treasures and luxurious mansion and to him it was all worth it even if he had to participate in yankuefe's elaborate joke of having him appear in court wearing nothing but babies rapping eventually however he made some powerful enemies li lingfu who he had good relationship with died in 753 and yang wozen the cousin of yankuefe became the new chancellor he hated anu's son and tried to get rid of him by accusing him of plotting rebellions failing to do so he went on to frame and execute unlucan subordinates one by one and he kept on the pressure gaslighting the emperor the crown prince who was initially skeptical was then convinced unlu sun seeing that the emperor was already in his 70s became worried that once his protector was gone all the different factions would finally close in on him he wanted to rebel they say well he's tired of pretending that he didn't want to so in 755 he established his own dynasty the yin dynasty and launched the rebellion anlu sun had the confidence to win because he commanded the battle-hardened frontier soldiers central china and the area near the capital were lagging in soldiers they had started to implement the jnr system to recruit volunteer professional soldiers but it was still in the early stages of the policy so they were no match for unlu sun's force and loyang the second capital was quickly conquered to make things worse a series of in-fighting and palace intrigue prevented the tang army to mount an effective defense thus the frontier soldiers from the western region was recalled led by kaushinsel a general of kokuryo ancestry he and general fung chang ching put up a strong defense at tong pass but due to them offending a eunuch false reports were made against them and they were executed then yang wozhong appointed a new general gesuhan an lu-sun's rival who was of turkic origin but he was defeated too as the rebels approached changhan the emperor and the crown prince fled and went separate ways along the way the emperor's entourage blamed the disaster on the young family and demanded that death or they will mutiny so the emperor had no choice but to execute yang guozong and sentence his favorite concubine death by strangulation the crown prince then declared himself the new emperor suzong and his father shenzhong just accepted his claim and became a retired emperor the devastation caused by this rebellion that lasted for eight years was horrific census figures before the rebellion showed that china had around 52 million people the census after the rebellion only accounted for 16.9 million this huge drop in number is mostly attributed to the changes in the census-taking methodology it is unlikely that 35 million people two-thirds of the population was killed during this period not all deaths were caused by the anlu sun's side either a significant part can be attributed to the chaos caused by the lack of central leadership that led to other rebellions and horror stories to spring from all across china in the battle of sway young tongue defenders were trapped by unlu sun's army for months despite running out of provisions they continued that resistance and even resorted to eating their own citizens they started with the dead then followed by the old and young before finally being overrun was the sacrifice worth it in the same year another prince li ling used the chaos to try to establish himself in southern china a civil war almost broke out until he was killed by the magistrate in 758 arab and persian raiders hit guangzhou and in 760 when a local official in the wealthy trading city of yangzhou rebelled the tongue general who suppressed the rebellion used the opportunity to rob and massacre the local arab and persian population even though there were han and non-han chinese fighting on both sides this animosity between the chinese population and the foreigners they blamed for the rebellion was at an all-time high this is further exacerbated when the new emperor suzong sought assistance from the uyghur cagnet to secure their alliance he signed an unequal trade deal having to pay exorbitant amount of silk for their few horses and also the privilege to loot royang and several chinese cities after their recapture as for the rebellion itself it successfully imploded with the assassination of anusan in 757 by his own disgruntled subordinates who he abused he was then replaced by his son anjin chu and like clockwork every two years the new leader was usurped anjin chu was killed and replaced by alu-san's deputy suming and he himself was taken out by his son tawi one of the rebel generals called chiuran refused choi's command and went on to carve his own domain in phan yang by massacring the southern population there including their children possibly to wipe out anlu sun supporters eventually the rebellion ended in 763 and so did the golden age of tang dynasty and its dream of a cosmopolitan empire never again shall the tang dynasty reach the same height as before on the next episode we are going to look at changboko a korean expat in post-rebellion tang dynasty china who returned to korea and became a god be sure to subscribe so that you won't miss it and if you want to support us come to patreon and be our bro until next time stay cool my bros