Analysis of the Sabao System in the Tang Dynasty In-depth Interpretation and Theoretical Perspective from an Academic Perspective
What was the Sabao system in the Tang Dynasty and how should it be understood from an academic theory?Before answering this question, we must first know that Sabao is a position appointed by successive dynasties since the Northern Wei Dynasty to the leaders of the Hu people in the Western Regions to manage the Hu people who came to the Central Plains from the Western Regions.
Mr. Xiang Da, Mr. Luo Feng and Mr. Rong Xinjiang: Yes"Sabao"There are different interpretations of this appellation, but most of them think"Sabao"Yes"Caravan Leader"meaning. Sapukhara refers to the organizer of the caravan. The Hu people surnamed Zhaowu mainly came to the Central Plains through the Silk Road, and the Hu people traveled between Central Asia and the Central Plains in the form of caravans, rather than in the form of individuals.
In a group organization, the presence of a leader is inevitable. In the process of fighting the Central Plains, the caravan will encounter a lot of problems, how to solve them?Listen to whom?
This difficulty will accelerate the emergence of the leader, so that the caravan will have some excellent talents with strong organizational skills or strong adaptability, and these people can lead the caravan to communicate with the Han people in the Central Plains, and gradually become the leader of the entire caravan.
Caravan leader. The ancient Silk Road was not a smooth road, there would be thieves and robbers on the journey, there would be a lot of precious items such as jewelry and silverware in the exchanges, and there would be some people or organizations who needed to protect the life and property of the caravan, in this case, such people would be promoted"Sabo"of the chieftain. Sabo"is the name given to the position of caravan leader.
Sabo was not only the leader of the caravanserais, but also the political leader of the settlements established after the caravans entered China. The nobles surnamed Zhaowu brought their religious beliefs to the Central Plains. According to records, the nine surnames of Zhaowu believed in Zoroastrianism, and the Central Plains region called it Zoroastrianism.
As the needs of the caravan people changed, the main functions of the Sapo caravan leader became more and more diverse, including economic functions, functions to protect the caravan security, political leadership, and religious and spiritual leadership.
Sapo eventually evolved into the head of the caravan with these functions, and became a high-status, hippie-revered authority in the caravan. As such, Sapo was essentially the political, economic, and military leader of the Zhaowu nine caravanserais, which traveled to and from Central Asia and the Central Plains on the basis of clan ties and Zoroastrian beliefs.
After these caravans entered the Central Plains, they continued to gather together to form a unique autonomous group. As more and more Hu people entered the Central Plains, the Tang Dynasty formulated a series of ethnic policies to strengthen the rule of the Hu people with the surname of Zhaowu, so that the Hu people with the surname of Zhaowu gradually coexisted with the Han people in an orderly manner in the Central Plains.
With the entry of the Zhaowu nine surnames into the Central Plains, their influence in the Tang Dynasty increased, which made the Tang Dynasty constantly adjust the institutional design of the Zhaowu nine surnames, and finally gradually incorporated the Zhaowu nine surnames into the formal jurisdiction of the Tang Dynasty.
Due to the peculiarity of Sabao's position in the Hu caravan, the Tang Dynasty rulers attached great importance to him, hoping to indirectly use Sabao's position to effectively manage internal personnel and further control the Hu people surnamed Zhaowujiu. As a result, the Tang rulers gave Sabao a higher social status and more administrative functions in order to make better use of the Hu people for administration.
Due to the importance of the Tang Dynasty, Sabao was incorporated into the Tang Dynasty bureaucracy as an official position, and became a foreign official visual stream that only respected Hu leaders could have, in order to control the jurisdiction of the Hu people's nine Zhaowu settlements and manage the political, economic, and religious affairs of the Hu people's settlements. As the head of an internally autonomous community, Sabao gradually developed into an official Tang dynasty**.
In the early days, Sabao was not an official civil service;During the Sui Dynasty, Sabao was an official civil institution and an official subject;In the late Tang Dynasty, Zhaowu increasingly used the nine surnames of the Hu people, and the Tang Dynasty decided to set up the Sabao Mansion, which became the official civil institution of the Tang Dynasty court, which could only be held by outsiders.
After the Tang Dynasty, especially after the Kaiyuan Dynasty, as the early Hu merchants gathered more and more Hu people, the enlightened policy of the Tang Dynasty attracted more and more surrounding minority regimes, and Sabao's functions began to be fully implemented, and Sabao's official position was also promoted to about five grades.
Its development and evolution are mainly due to the increasingly important role played by the prominent position of the Hu people in important areas of the Tang Dynasty, which affected the exchange and integration of ethnic minorities with the Tang Dynasty, and the influence of the Tang Dynasty was increasingly strengthened. As an official position, Sabao played a protective and promoting role in the cultural and economic exchanges between the Tang Dynasty and foreign peoples.
Sabao Agency.
The main difference between the Tang Dynasty Sabao and the successor Sabao is that the Tang Dynasty Sabao was an independent ** administrative body and was regarded as the administrative organ of the Hu Dynasty, while the successor Sabao was regarded as an official position subordinate to the Tang Dynasty.
During the Tang Dynasty, the Han Chinese living in the Sabao and Hu settlements established the Sabao Province to exercise the unified administration of the Tang Dynasty, as these Hu settlements migrated eastward for a long time and were more populated and less populated than the Han people.
Later, with the invasion of Great Food and Turkey, a large number of Zhaowu Jiu surnamed Hu people had to move eastward, and some of the Hu Zhaowu nine surnames belonged to the Liuhu Prefecture area in Mobei Turkey, and some of them served in the military and political institutions at all levels in the Northern Wei, Northern Qi, Northern Zhou, Sui, and Tang dynasties, and some served in the Shang society.
The nine surnames of Zhaowu had no fixed residence, and the clans formed settlements and lived in settlements, some of whom stayed in the local area on the trade routes, and some of whom continued eastward to form new settlements, and the leaders of these settlements, the Sabaohu people, managed the group.
Since most of the Hu people with the surname of Zhaowu believed in Zoroastrianism and often built Zoroastrian temples in the settlement, Sabao, or the Hu people surnamed Zhaowu, became the political and religious leaders of the Hu tribe. During the Sui and Tang dynasties, Sabao was established to control these tribes and integrate them into the Chinese bureaucracy.
It took a long time for the **centralization** of the Sui and Tang dynasties to take control of the cycad tribe. Initially, most of the tribes were not under the jurisdiction of **, and there are few records about them. Later, Sapo was appointed to oversee the Hu tribe. After the establishment of the Tang Dynasty, the Hu tribes in the officially established counties were changed to counties, such as Anleli in Chonghua County, Xizhou, and Conghua in Dunhuang. Some Hu settlements in the neighboring areas of the Tang Dynasty, such as Liuhu Prefecture and Liucheng, basically retained the original appearance of the Hu settlements.
Six Lakes State Administrative System.
Liuhu Prefecture got its name from the six prefectures of Lu, Li, Han, Sai, Yi, and Qi that were established between Lingzhou (present-day southwest of Lingwu, Ningxia) and Xiazhou (present-day Baichengzi, Inner Mongolia), and was originally set up to house Turkic soldiers. Zhang Guangda said that most of the descendants of the six Tu people in Huzhou were people with the nine surnames of Zhaowu, and in the Tang Dynasty, among the six surnames of Zhaowu in Huzhou, the Tu people and the people with the nine surnames of Zhaowu established a relationship very early, just like the Zhou Dynasty.
According to the "Old Tang Dynasty Book - The Biography of Turghut": The Khan of Turghut appointed Zhaowu nine surnamed Hu people to take over the important task and alienate his fellow clansmen. From this point of view, the Hu people surnamed Zhaowu Jiu have long been the core role of Turkic politics, and the Hu people have become the political core of the Turks, directly affecting the internal affairs of the Turks.
In 646 B.C., Taizong of the Tang Dynasty accepted the worship of the ethnic minorities in the northwest in the Lingzhou area and respected it"Tianhan"The Turkic descendants of the Tang Dynasty with the surname Zhaowu Jiu as the core lived in this area, and the Tang Dynasty set up Liuhu County in order to better govern it. The Tang Dynasty set up the six counties of Huguang, on the one hand, to manage the tribes with the nine surnames of Zhaowu, and on the other hand, to allow their ethnic tribes to fully self-govern.
Therefore, the Zhaowu Jiu tribe was able to retain its ancient traditional way of life and tribal social organization in the Liuhu County area, and at the same time accept the management of *** on this basis. At the beginning of the establishment of Liuhu Prefecture, the leader of the Hu nationality served as the governor of Liuhu Prefecture. In the first year of Kaiyuan, Zhizhou was sent by the Tang Dynasty.
At the beginning of the establishment of Liuhu Prefecture, this practice was binding, and this administrative model was maintained for about 50 years. However, after the rebellion of the two Tu tribes under the jurisdiction of Liuhu Prefecture and the suppression of the rebellion by the Tang army, the Tang court changed the original management method of Liuhu Prefecture, and the Tang Dynasty sent Tang Dynasty ** to serve as the administrator of Liuhu Prefecture. In the third year of Shenlong, Liuhu Prefecture was changed to six counties, which means that Liuhu Prefecture was under the management of counties and counties in the Tang Dynasty.
The definition of the concept of the six districts of Huzhou in the Tang Dynasty is also relatively complex, and scholars interpret and summarize it according to two meanings. The first is defined according to the administrative divisions recorded in the New Tang Dynasty Book - Geographical Chronicles I, which means that the six districts of Huzhou were used as administrative divisions after the Tang Dynasty changed Huzhou into counties, and as mentioned above, the six districts of Huzhou literally ceased to exist.
Another interpretation of the Six Lakes region is the concept of ethnicity or geography. According to historical records, the Six Lakes are a common term for the inhabitants of the Six Lakes, who have migrated to different regions many times.
The nobles of the Nine Towns Zhaowu, who submitted to the settlement of the Turks, maintained their original tribal social organization in the early years, and according to historical records, in the later period, they rebelled"The Pain of Conscription", but this rebellion was suppressed by the Don army in a very short time.
Finally, the Anshi Rebellion broke out, and the Zhaowu Nine Divisions in the Liuzhou region belonged to the same tribe as An Lushan and Shi Siming, and had a relatively close relationship, so they quickly understood the charm of the Anshi Rebellion and directly participated in the struggle of the Anshi Rebellion.
Later, the Zhaowu Nine tribes in Liuhu Prefecture began to disperse and migrate, and the original Zhaowu Nine tribes in Liuhu Prefecture ceased to exist. The nine Zhaowu tribes of Liuhu Prefecture in Yunzhong, because Shatuo is in the east, these Jiuhu Zhaowu people who moved to Shuofang gradually allied with the Han nationality, Shatuo and other ethnic groups during the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, and followed the Shatuo that rose after the Anshi Rebellion and became the main military force in the north.
In general, the setting of the six counties of Huzhou in the Tang Dynasty brought the nine surnames of Zhaowu after the Tang Dynasty to the Central Plains in order to better manage the nine surnames of the Hu people, and with the continuous development of the Tang Dynasty, the six counties of Huzhou were also developing, and the six counties of Huzhou were in the main conclusions of subverting the rise of the Tang Dynasty in the north such as the Anshi Rebellion and the fall of the Tang Dynasty, etc., which directly or indirectly affected the formulation of Tang Dynasty policies. Develop.