Tang Chang’an was the world’s busiest medieval megacity
From 618 to 907—with Wu Zetian’s Zhou interruption from 690 to 705—the Tang dynasty became China’s cosmopolitan high-water mark. Chang’an topped global population charts while empire censuses rose from about 50 million toward 80 million.
Li Yuan, Duke of Tang and a first cousin of Sui’s Emperor Yang through their mothers, rebelled in 617; his daughter Princess Pingyang raised and led her own troops. Some historians doubt the family’s claimed descent from the prestigious Longxi Li clan, and Howard Wechsler notes a suggestion that it sprang from a minor Hebei branch.
Son Li Shimin killed two rival brothers and forced his father out in 626. As Taizong he nonetheless heeded frank advisers, held a Buddhist memorial for war dead in 628, and destroyed the Eastern Turkic Khaganate when general Li Jing captured Illig Qaghan; the Turks then accepted him as their khagan. Campaigns in the Western Regions took Gaochang in 640, struck Karasahr in 644 and 648, and took Kucha in 648.
Consort Wu rose after Gaozong’s stroke in 655. When he died in 683, their son Zhongzong lasted six weeks before she replaced him with his brother Ruizong, provoking a revolt by Tang princes; in 690 she proclaimed her own Zhou dynasty, using the Great Cloud Sutra for legitimacy. The Shenlong Coup of 20 February 705 restored Zhongzong, and the Tang name returned by 3 March.
Women stayed prominent at court afterwards: the poet Shangguan Wan’er ran Wu’s private office, and in 706 Empress Wei had her husband staff offices with female relatives. Culture flourished too, with Li Bai, Du Fu, and Wang Wei among the poets of the Three Hundred Tang Poems, and painters such as Han Gan and Zhang Xuan setting court taste.
Source: Tang dynasty
