[General_Zhaoyun]

Well, we all knew Anlushan led a rebellion in 755 AD that shook the foundation of Tang dynasty that eventually led to decline of Tang dynasty. We know that Anlushan was a turkic general...but what tribes or ethnic group does he belong to ?

Was he a Tujue?

[Yun]

The histories state that An Lushan's mother was a Tujue. We don't know the ethnicity of his father, who died when Lushan was still a child. But Lushan's mother remarried into a Sogdian family, so he described himself as half Tujue and half Hu (Sogdian).

[Yihesan]

I've always read that his father was Soghdian. The drawings describing him, as I saw, show him with a thick and long beard, which suggests that he has Soghdian genes.

His mother was from the Ashina tribe of Tujue.

[Yun]

Wasn't the Ashina tribe the ruling family of the Eastern Turuk? This ties in with David Graff's "Medieval Chinese Warfare", in which he writes:

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The son of a Turkish mother, he belonged to a Sogdian (Central Asian) family associated with the rulers of the second Eastern Turk qaghanate. In 716 a bloody coup at the Turkish court drove the An family to seek refuge in the Tang empire. An Lushan was the only one of several relatives who eventually rose to high rank after entering the Tang frontier armies.

Graff also says that Geshu Han, another half-Turkish general who remained loyal to the Tang and was defeated by An Lushan at the famous battle for the Tongguan Pass, was actually from the Turgish people. His mother was a princess from the Central Asian state of Khotan. Yihesan wrote in an article for AE that the Turgish are the Western Turuk.

Interestingly, although my theory that the Jie (see the thread on the "Five Hu") were Sogdians has not yet been widely accepted, in Tang documents the rebellion of An Lushan and his subordinate Shi Siming is often referred to as that of the Jie Hu (Jie barbarians). This has led the Chinese historian Wang Yongxing (a student of Chen Yinke) to propose the term "Jiehu Luanhua" (the Jie barbarians over-running China) to replace the traditional term "An Shi zhi Luan" (the rebellion of An and Shi). Wang finds a clear parallel between the "barbarian rebellions" of the Western Jin and the rebellion of An Lushan.

[Yihesan]

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Wasn't the Ashina tribe the ruling family of the Eastern Turuk?

Not just the Eastern, but also the Western.

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In 716 a bloody coup at the Turkish court drove the An family to seek refuge in the Tang empire.

Hmm, interesting, I didn't know that the An family fled to China after Kül Tigin's bloody coup in 716 :blink:

Another thing for me to research B)

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Graff also says that Geshu Han, another half-Turkish general who remained loyal to the Tang and was defeated by An Lushan at the famous battle for the Tongguan Pass, was actually from the Turgish people.

Yes, the Türgiş (Türgish), called Tuqishi 突騎施 in Chinese, were one of the five tribes of Dulu 咄六 (Tardush?), which was one of the two branches of the On Oq (Shixing 十姓 [Ten Tribes) or Shijian 十箭 [Ten Arrows] in Chinese). The Türgish were divided into three tribes and they were living in the Ili Valley in Semirechie. The On Oq were the Western Tujue.