Tang Empire

Assembled from 33 blocks · 3 evidence · 30 related

1. Story
2. Chinese imperial dynasty, 618 to 907, capital at Chang'an. Tang control of the Tarim Basin ran through the Anxi Protectorate, established after the conquest of Gaochang at Turfan in 640, and this was the period of densest documented traffic on the overland routes. Chang'an under the Tang hosted resident communities of Sogdian, Persian, Turkic and Indian merchants and clergy, and the court tolerated Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and the Church of the East until the proscription of 845. The An Lushan rebellion from 755 broke Tang power in Central Asia permanently. An abstract polity, not a place.
3. Knowledge
4. Chang'an
5. Northern Tarim route
6. Tang Empire
7. Connections
8. Chang'an
9. Northern Tarim route
10. Gunpowder
11. Alopen reaches Chang'an
12. Tang conquest of Gaochang and the Anxi Protectorate
13. Battle of Talas
14. The Nestorian Stele is erected at Chang'an
15. Xi'an
16. Church of the East (Nestorian Christianity)
17. Tang Empire
18. Zhang Qian returns to Chang'an
19. Alopen reaches Chang'an
20. Xuanzang travels to India and back
21. The Nestorian Stele is erected at Chang'an
22. Taklamakan Desert
23. Dunhuang
24. Kashgar
25. Maritime Silk Road
26. Tang Empire
27. Turfan oasis
28. Tang conquest of Gaochang and the Anxi Protectorate
29. Chang'an-Tianshan corridor inscribed by UNESCO
30. Evidence
31. Records in Chinese, with a Syriac colophon listing clergy, that the missionary Alopen reached Chang'an in 635 and received Tang imperial permission to preach, and summarises a century and a half of the Church of the East in China. The primary documentary object for Christianity on the overland routes.
32. Eyewitness description of the Tarim oasis kingdoms, the Pamir crossing, Central Asia and seventh-century India, compiled the year after Xuanzang's return. It records the state of Buddhist communities city by city and has been used by archaeologists to identify and locate sites.
33. A transnational serial property of 33 component sites across China, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, covering roughly 5,000 km of corridor: capitals, palace complexes, trading settlements, Buddhist cave temples, beacon towers, passes and sections of the Great Wall. The property is defined as a network of routes, not a road.