Questions about Turkic people in the Tang dynasty

HIST: Discussions about the last 4000 years of history, give or take a few days.

Moderator: K. A. Pital

Post Reply
User avatar
mr friendly guy
The Doctor
Posts: 11235
Joined: 2004-12-12 10:55pm
Location: In a 1960s police telephone box somewhere in Australia

Questions about Turkic people in the Tang dynasty

Post by mr friendly guy »

Its well known that during the Tang dynasty China experienced an influx of Turkic people. Some of them played big roles in history, such as An Lushan (yes I know he is of mixed heritage). So I have a few questions.

1. How large of the empire's population was made up of Turkic people. Contrast to say the Han chinese population. Obviously it depends on which period, but I was thinking in terms of either at the dynasty's height, or around the time just prior to the An Lushan rebellion.

2. What were their contributions during the entire period of the Tang dynasty - cultural, political, military etc. Any famous examples?

3. And this has sort of bugged me, but what did they look like? Dress, fashion, physical features etc?
Bear with me. Modern Turkic people vary between the central Asian states and Turkey, so I don't think looking at one of the modern Turkic people is necessarily going to help. You might say, so what? Why should you care what they look like? Its just that in Chinese historical fiction epics, they just have a Han Chinese actor, do their hair in a different manner (presumably the style of the people) with different clothes, and there you have An Lushan. I am just wondering how accurate this representation is.

Any help or any references to look up would be appreciated.
Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.

Countries I have been to - 14.
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA.
Always on the lookout for more nice places to visit.
Post Reply