The Tang Dynasty brought ancient China to its peak. How big was the territory of the Tang Dynasty at that time?

The largest territory in the Tang Dynasty was in the Longshuo period of Tang Gaozong, with an area of about 18 million square kilometers (15.76 million square kilometers).

after the founding of the Tang dynasty, it gradually ended the separatist regime since the end of Sui Dynasty and unified the whole country. During the reign of Emperor Taizong and Tang Gaozong, they constantly fought against Turkic, Xueyantuo, Tuguhun, western countries (Gaochang, Qiuci, etc.) and destroyed these regimes, thus gradually controlling Monan, Mobei and western regions.

The territory area of the Tang Dynasty reached its maximum during the Longshuo period in Tang Gaozong, and the restoration of Turks in the Wu and Zhou Dynasties led to the restoration of Mobei and Lake Baikal to Turks. Internal strife such as Anshi Rebellion, Zhuba Rebellion, and the disaster of the buffer region weakened the Tang Dynasty. After 79 AD, the western regions were gradually captured by Tubo. In 851 AD, Zhang Yichao, a Han Chinese, occupied Hexi and Longyou and joined the Tang Dynasty. At the end of the Tang dynasty, the territory shrank to the Han Dynasty, but the Hetao area remained.

expanding information

territorial scope

At its peak, the territory of the Tang Dynasty started from the Korean Peninsula in the east, arrived in Hue, Vietnam in the south, reached the Aral Sea and Khorasan area in Central Asia in the west, and covered Lake Baikal to the lower reaches of Yenisei River in the north.

There are many ethnic minorities in the Tang Dynasty. In order to effectively manage the Turkic, Uighur, Tiele, Shiwei, Qidan, Mohong and other ethnic groups, six capitals, namely Anxi, Anbei, Anton, Annan, Chanyu and Beiting, were established respectively, as well as a large number of prefectures and Jimi Prefecture belonging to the six capitals.

However, in the decades after the Anshi Rebellion, because a large number of border guards in Helong participated in the rebellion, the frontier defense was empty, and the Tubo took advantage of the situation to advance and occupied Helong and Huangshui areas, while the Hetao area was still under the jurisdiction of Tiande Army and Zhenwu Army. During the period from Dazhong to Xian Tong in the late Tang Dynasty, Zhang Yichao, a native of Shazhou, set out to recover the Helong area, reopened the Silk Road, and defeated Tubo in Xian Tong for seven years, splitting it into more than 1 tribes.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Tang Dynasty