How to evaluate such an unprecedented figure today? Princess Taiping had shielded Li Longji from her mother when he was young and supported him in his efforts to take the throne. The cambridge history has a fascinating take on this period - the author of the chapter on Wu's reign keeps reminding the reader that the imperium was peaceful; the economy was booming; government was rational, efficient and effective; and a parade of highly qualified top officials presided. Pronunciation: Woo-jeh-ten. She did not hold that title but she was the power behind the office and took care of imperial business even when pregnant in 665 CE with her daughter Taiping. Thank you for your help! It was Lu Zhi who, in 194 B.C., wreaked revenge on a rival by gouging out her eyes, amputating her arms and legs, and forcing her to drink acid that destroyed her vocal chords. We contribute a share of our revenue to remove carbon from the atmosphere and we offset our team's carbon footprint. The Tang empire in 700, at the end of Wus reign. Some Rights Reserved (2009-2023) under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license unless otherwise noted. Hailing from the Tang dynasty, Empress Wu made some great positive strives for the Tang dynasty, but also got caught up in scandals - a couple even involving murder! "Wu Zetian (624705) An official under the former Han dynasty, he took the Han throne and founded his own, CHARLEMAGNE "Empress Wu (Wu Zhao) Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. Vol. Favoring the power base in the Northeast, the royal family finally moved to Luoyang in 683. Last modified March 17, 2016. We are told that through cruel manipulations, including strangulating her own infant daughter to falsely implicate Gaozong's then current barren empress, Wu Zetian replaced her as empress in 657 and dominated the rest of Gaozong's reign. Please note that some of these recommendations are listed under our old name, Ancient History Encyclopedia. The Chinese TV series Women of the Tang Dynasty (2013) featured the actress Hui Yinghong as Wu Zetian and was very popular, attesting to the continued interest in China's first and only female ruler. Omens were extremely important to the people of ancient China and played a significant role in Tang politics. Her paranoia resulted in a purge of her administration. When she was an infant dressed in boy's clothes, Wu Zetian's potential for emperorship was predicted by an official. The Shiji Fitzgeraldwho reminds us that Tang China emerged from 400 years of discord and civil warwrites, Without Wu there would have been no long enduring Tang dynasty and perhaps no lasting unity of China, while in a generally favorable portrayal, Guisso argues that Wu was not so different from most emperors: The empress was a woman of her times. "Wu Zetian." disadvantages of food transportation. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine She was the daughter of Wu Shihuo, a chancellor of the Tang Dynasty. Wu, characteristically, admired the virtuosity of Luos style and suggested he would be better employed at the imperial court. True, Taizongan old warrior-ruler so conscientious that he had official documents pasted onto his bedroom walls so that he would have something to work on if he woke in the nighthad lost his empress shortly before Wu entered the palace. In 605 the Qidan, who lived in Manchuria in the marginal areas between the open steppe and settled areas, invaded the Tang empire and gained a dramatic victory over Wus armies near the site of modern Beijing. Su, Tong. We contribute a share of our revenue to remove carbon from the atmosphere and we offset our team's carbon footprint. After the latter died in 684, she took on four or five lovers, including a monk whom she ordered executed when weary of his greed and abuse of power. Traders from the Mediterranean and Persia also came from both the overland and maritime trade routes, where Buddhism and Central Asian culture, dress, and music reached China. 1, 1993, pp. Tang China during the 7th century was a period of military strength and cultural attainments, its empire stretching into Central Asia and Southwest Asia and ruled by the Li-Tang imperial family from the capital city of Xi'an (Xian), Shanxi province. Wu was forced to abdicate in favor of her exiled son Zhongzong and his wife Wei. In her new position, she was constantly involved in affairs of state at the highest level and must have performed her duties well because she became a favorite of Taizong. And while Chinas imperial chronicles were too rigidly run and too highly developed for Wus name to be simply wiped from their pages, the stern disapproval of the Confucian mandarins who compiled the records can still be read 1,500 years later. To further separate her Zhou Dynasty from the Tang, she created new characters for the Chinese writing system which are known today as Chinese Characters of Empress Wu or Zetian Characters. womeninworldhistory.com. In 654 CE, Wu had a daughter who died soon after birth. 1, 1990, pp. Empress Wu, or Wu Zhao, challenged the patriarchal system by advocating women's intellectual development and sexual freedom. She attracted the attention of many of the young men at court and one of these was the Prince Li Zhi, son of Taizong, who would become the next emperor, Gaozong. She did not ask any man's permission to lead these women to Mount Tai; she felt she knew what was best and did it. Privacy Statement Wu could have murdered her daughter but her position as a female in a male role brought her many enemies who would have been happy to pass on a rumor as truth to discredit her. $1.99. If it does not yield, I'll hit it with the iron hammer. Empress Theodora. When he fell out of favor, he burned the building to the ground. Empress Wu was buried in a tomb in Qian County, Shanxi Province, alongside Gaozong. Her reign witnessed a healthy growth in the population; when she died in 705 her centralized bureaucracy regulated the social life and economic well-being of the 60 million people in the empire. Bellingham, WA: Center for Asian Studies, Western Washington University, 1978. The story of Wu's murder of her daughter and the framing of Lady Wang to gain power is the most infamous and most often repeated incident of her life but actually there is no way of knowing if it happened as the historians recorded it. Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2007; Dora Shu-Fang Dien, Empress Wu Zetian in Fiction and in History: Female Defiance in Confucian China. Historians remain divided as to how far Wu benefited from the removal of these potential obstacles; what can be said is that her third son, who succeeded his father as Emperor Zhongzong in 684, lasted less than two months before being banished, at his mothers instigation, in favor of the more tractable fourth, Ruizong. World History Encyclopedia. Image taken from An 18th-century album of portraits of 86 emperors of China, with Chinese historical notes. Unknown, . Carved in limestone, the colossal statue is reputed to have been carved in Wus own likeness. So much for the supposed facts; what about the interpretation? Edward Schafer, The Divine Women: Dragon Ladies and Rain Maidens in Tang Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973). There are abundant signs that Wu was viewed with deep suspicion by later generations of Chinese. Empress Wu is the only female to have ever ruled in her own name in China. Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. She reigned during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) and was one of the most effective and controversial monarchs in China's history. 145154. When she saw she would not be able to control the court as her mother did, she killed herself and Xuanzong decreed that no member of Wu's family would be allowed to hold public office because of their ruthless scheming and underhanded politics. During her reign she ordered the erection of temples in every province to explain the Dayunjingy which predicted the emergence of a female world ruler seven hundred years after the passing of the Buddha. "Empress Wu and the Historians: A Tyrant and Saint of Classical China," in Nancy Auer Falk and Rita M. Gross, eds., Unspoken Worlds: Religious Lives of Women. Wu Zetian came to the throne when she was 67, making her the oldest person ever be crowned. Numerous educational institutions recommend us, including Oxford University. A woman in the most powerful position in government threatened the traditional patriarchy and the court counselors, ministers, and historians claimed Wu had upset the balance of nature by assuming a power which belonged to a man. "Wu Zetian." Her social, economic and judicial views could hardly be termed advanced, and her politics differed from those of her predecessors chiefly in their greater pragmatism and ruthlessness. Even the terror of the 680s, in this view, was a logical response to entrenched bureaucratic opposition to Wus rule. The Fall of Kaifeng [ edit] In 1126, Emperor Huizong abdicated in favor of his son, Emperor Qinzong, the elder brother of Gaozong. Wu also accused Lady Wang and her mother of practicing witchcraft and implicated Lady Xiao; Lady Wang was found guilty of all the charges and so were the others. A 17th-century Chinese depiction of Wu, from Empress Wu of the Zhou, published c.1690. World History Foundation is a non-profit organization registered in Canada. "Wu Zetian (624705) Still, Xuanzong continued many of Wu's policies, including keeping her reforms in taxation, agriculture, and education. "The Reigns of the Empress Wu, Chung-tsung and Jui-tsung," in Denis Twitchett, ed., Cambridge History of China. One of the brothers, she declared, had a face as beautiful as a lotus flower, while it is said she valued the other for his talents in the bedchamber. Map: Wikicommons. In defiance of convention Emperor Gaozong started an affair with her, and she bore him a son in 652. She thus arranged marriages between her children and grandchildren with her brothers' sons and their grandchildren. In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Even though there were many important and influential women throughout China's history, only one ever became the most powerful political figure in the country. When Wu could no longer tolerate her daughter-in-law's antics and disrespect, and her son's refusal to discipline her and obey Wu's dictates, she had him charged with treason and banished along with his wife. McMullen, David. World History Encyclopedia. With her exceptional intelligence, extraordinary competence in politics, and inordinate ambition, she ruled as the "Holy and Divine Emperor" of the Second Zhou Dynasty (690-705) for fifteen years. Since candidates normally tried to win favor with an examiner prior to the tests, some could use their family connections to send samples of their verse in an effort to impress the men who held the keys to government positions. A Japanese example: In the late 7th century, Japans Emperor Shomu and Empress Komyo both were involved in Buddhist buildings. She then began to plot against Gaozongs consort, Empress Wang, incriminating the empress in the death of Wus infant daughter. Give me three tools to tame that wild horse. At a nunnery she established, Empress Komyo sponsored the creation of a statue of the Bodhisattva Kannon which, like Wu Zetians statue at Longmen, was felt to be done in her likeness. Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. Sunzi/Sun Wu, Eastern Zhou Period (770-221 BCE) Selections from the Sunzi: Art of War [PDF] Agriculture, Han Period. Before Smithsonian.com, Dash authored the award-winning blog A Blast From the Past. Our latest articles delivered to your inbox, once a week: Our mission is to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. Her Buddhist supporters interpreted the Madamegha (Great Cloud) sutra to predict a maitreya Buddha (Buddha-to-come) in female form, presumably Wu Zetian herself, who would embody the concept of the cakravartin (wheel-turner, universal emperor, or the ideal man who is king). His rule covered a span of 63 years, a reign lo, Zhao Kuang-yin In 710 CE Zhongzong died after being poisoned by Wei who hid his body and concealed his death until her son Chong Mao could be made emperor. This page titled 4.16: Links to Primary Sources is shared under a CC BY-SA license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by George Israel (University System of Georgia via GALILEO Open Learning Materials) . The most serious charges against Wu are handily summarized in Mary Andersons collection of imperial scuttlebutt, Hidden Power, which reports that she wiped out twelve collateral branches of the Tang clan and had the heads of two rebellious princes hacked off and brought to her in her palace. Wu Zhao viewed the situation differently: she claimed the mountain was a good omen which reflected the Buddhist mountain of paradise, Sumeru. Forte, Antonino. At the end of this spirit road, the tomb itself lies in a remarkably inaccessible spot, set into a mountain at the end of a winding forest path. She was painted as a usurper who was both physically cruel and erotically wanton; she first came to prominence, it was hinted, because she was willing to gratify certain ofthe Taizong emperors more unusual sexual appetites. World History Publishing is a non-profit company registered in the United Kingdom. To recruit a new class of administrators through competition, the examinations that had played only a secondary role in the recruitment and promotion of civil servants in Han times (206 B.C.E.-220 C.E.) False: In fact, the Roman Empire was in decline at this time. 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. World History Foundation is a non-profit organization registered in Canada. Her success in the campaigns against Korea inspired confidence in her generals and Wu's decisions on military defense or expeditions were never challenged. According to Wu's own account, they conspired against her but, according to other historians, Wu started and finished the problems she had with them. Wu Zetian's tough character and good equestrian skills were perceived by observers even when she was a teenager. In promoting Buddhism over Confucianism and Daoism as the favored state religion, the Empress countered strongly held Confucian beliefs against female rule. Lineage Wills, John E., Jr. "Empress Wu," in Mountain of Fame: Portraits in Chinese History. The term Confucianism is derived from Confucius, the convention. One of the most powerful champions of Buddhism in China was the Empress Wu Zetian. They came to power, mostly, by default or stealth; a king had no sons, or an intelligent queen usurped the powers of her useless husband. Therefore, its best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publications requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. So queens and empresses regnant were forced to rule like men, and yet roundly criticized when they did so. It is a challenge to recover real people from this morass of bias. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. Her travel writing debuts in Timeless Travels Magazine. At age 14 she became a concubine of Emperor TaiZong of the Tang Dynasty and was given the title of CaiRren (Guardian Immortal) and a new name, Wu Mei. Controversial ruler of Tang China who dominated Chinese politics for half a century, first as empress, then as empress-dowager, and finally as emperor of the Zhou Dynasty (690705) that she founded . She founded a secret police and conducted a reign of terror, justifying the mass executions on the grounds that discrimination against a womans open exercise of power forced her to use terror to defend her authority. In her last years Wu lost influence, although she remained energetic and cruel. "The Real Judge Dee: Ti Jen-chieh and the T'ang Restoration of 705," in Asia Major. correct answers: the roman empire constructed significantly more roads and developed inland economic resources more extensively than its predecessors the roman empire integrated many Greek and Phoenician trade routes, regional products and trade cities into its own economic system . We would much rather spend this money on producing more free history content for the world. June 2, 2022 by by She also organized military campaigns against Korea in 668 CE which were so effective that they reduced Korea to the status of a vassal state. All in all, Wus policies seem less scandalous to us than they did to contemporaries, and her reputation has improved considerably in recent decades. by Unknown. Wu Zetian's politics can be considered as feminist initiatives to reinforce the legitimacy of women in the political arena. To enhance her position as a woman, in 688 she constructed a "hall of light" in the eastern capital of Luoyang to serve as a cosmic magnet to symbolize the harmony of heaven and earth and the balance of male (yang) and female (yin) forces. In 705, Wu Zetian's grandson, the later Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712756), slaughtered the Zhang brothers in spite of Wu Zetian's protest and forced her to return the Li-Tang imperial family to power. Wu Zetian is believed to have been born in Wenshi County, Shanxi Province around 624 CE. This was a common practice after the death of the emperor. Cold, ruthless, and ambitious, the Han dynasty dowager murdered her rival, the beautiful concubine Lady Qi, by amputating all her limbs, turning her into a human swine and leaving her to die in a cesspit. She was also able to re-open the Silk Road, which had been closed because of the plague of 682 CE and later raids by nomads. T.H. Wu began her life at court taking care of the royal laundry but one day dared to speak to the emperor when they were alone and talked about Chinese history. One reason, as we have already had cause to note in this blog, is the official nature and lack of diversity among the sources that survive for early Chinese history; another is that imperial history was written to provide lessons for future rulers, and as such tended to be weighted heavily against usurpers (which Wu was) and anyone who offended the Confucian sensibilities of the scholars who labored over them (which Wu did simply by being a woman). Her patronage of Buddhism also expanded to other temples and sects, and much work was done on the cave temples at Longmen on her orders. No-one knows what secrets it holds, for like many of the tombs of the most celebrated Chinese rulers, including that of the First Emperor himself, it has never been plundered or opened by archaeologists. In 652 CE, Wu gave birth to a son, Li Hong, and in 653 CE had another son, Li Xian. She also reformed the department of agriculture and the system of taxation by rewarding officials who produced the greatest amount of crops and taxed their people the least. These monumental statues, like the one carved into the mountain at Bamiyan, Afghanistan, which was destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, alerted the populous to the dominance of Buddhism. Guo, Moruo. Running a website with millions of readers every month is expensive. Empress and emperor appear at the center of each scene, larger than the other figures to show their importance, bedecked in imperial purple, and sporting . Gaozongs third son succeeded to the throne in 683 after his death, but Empress Wu became the empress dowager in a few months, after forcing the young emperor to abdicate. C.P. To ensure imperial male progeny, the Chinese emperor's harem was an elaborate organization of eunuchs who attended to hundreds of concubines, of whom one was appointed empress, the principal wife of the emperor. Wu Zetian's father was a successful merchant and military official who reached ministerial ranks. Modern popular novels and plays, in Chinese, Japanese, and English, also exaggerate the sexual aspect of her rule. In sum, within the social and political context of her time, Wu Zetian was a leader who went beyond the traditional roles of submissive wife and home-bound mother to emerge as ruler, lawmaker, and head of state and society while her second husband, lovers, and sons were relegated to less powerful positions than traditionally expected. Belmont: Wadsworth, 1989, pp. Van Gulik, Robert. In 704 CE, court officials could no longer tolerate Wu's behavior and had the Zhang brothers murdered. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1977. Given Tang Chinas rich history of inter-regional connections and communications with its East Asian neighbors, it is not surprising that Wus sponsorship of Buddhism resulted in a flurry of scholarly exchanges, and the construction of many new pilgrimage Buddhist sites. She began her life at court as a concubine of the emperor Taizong. Books Lyn Reese is the author of all the information on this website Wu was given the privileged position of first concubine even though by law she should have been left in the temple as a nun. Pomacanthus imperator (emperor angelfish) See CHAETODONTIDAE. 1, Sui and T'ang, pp. The Turkic chieftain was insulted by the fact that the groom did not come from the Li-Tang imperial family but descended from what he perceived to be the inferior Wu clan, so he promptly imprisoned the unlucky groom and in 698 returned him to China. Overall Wu Zetian was a decisive, capable ruler in the roles of empress, empress dowager, and emperor. Historians have documented Wu Zetian's resort to slander, torture, and murders to reinforce the propaganda of omens. On the question of succession after her death, Wu Zetian entertained notions of an heir from a Wu and Li marriage. While functioning and surviving in the male-ruled and power-focused domain, she exhibited strengths traditionally attributed to men, including political ambition, long-range vision, skillful diplomacy, power drive, decisive resolve, shrewd observation, talented organization, hard work, and firm dispensal of cruelty. The most spectacular are the stone temples and statues chiseled into grottoes at Longmen, near her capital. Terms of Use Political Propaganda and Ideology in China at the End of the Seventh Century. These characters were supposed to replace between 10 and 30 of the older characters and were Wu's attempt to change the way her people thought and wrote. To legitimize her position, Empress Wu turned mainly to Buddhism, proclaiming herself an incarnation of Maitreya (Mi-le), the Buddhist savior. She commissioned statues of the Maitreya in the Longmen Caves outside Luoyang. The Tang emperor Taizong was the first to promote Wu, whom he gave the nickname Fair Flatterera reference not to her personal qualities but to the lyrics of a popular song of the day. Theodora. In her seventies, Wu showered special favor on two smooth-cheeked brothers, the Zhang brothers, former boy singers, the nature of whose private relationship with their imperial mistress has never been precisely determined. | READ MORE. She organized teams to survey the land and build irrigation ditches to help grow crops and redistributed the land so that everyone had an equal share to farm. She whispered slander from behind her sleeves, and swayed her master with vixen flirting and insisted that she was the arch manipulator of an unprecedented series of scandals that, over two reigns and many years, cleared her path to the throne. She held power, in one guise or another, for more than half a century, first as consort of the ineffectual Gaozong Emperor, then as the power behind the throne held by her youngest son, and finally (from 690 until shortly before her death in 705) as monarch. Empress Wu Zetian (Empress Consort Wu, Wu Hou, Wu Mei Niang, Mei-Niang, and Wu Zhao, l. 624-705 CE, r. 690-704 CE) was the only female emperor of Imperial China. An active imagination produced pornographic novels in the 16th century focusing on her alleged sexual practices. Buddhism was carried into East Asia by merchants and Buddhist monks traveling the Silk Road from Northern India, Persia, Kashmir and Inner Asia. 22 Feb. 2023 . (February 22, 2023). Therefore, its best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publications requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. For centuries she was excoriated by Chinese historians as an offender against a way of life. Her spy network and secret police stopped rebellions before they had a chance to start and the military campaigns she sent out enlarged and secured the borders of the country. In Chinese mythology , Huang-Di (pronounced hoo-arng-DEE), also k, Ho-shen Some historians have viewed her as blazing the trail for the women who came after her, and indeed her daughter, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter aspired to emulate her success, but they failed and even died violently in the process. Bellingham : EAS Press, 1978; Robert Van Gulik. The baby was strangled in her crib and Wu claimed that Lady Wang had killed her because she was jealous. Wu was now raised to the position of first wife of Gaozong and empress of China. Her usurpation marked a significant social revolution, the rise of a new class, which the empress tried to use in her struggle against the traditionalist, northwest nobility. There must also be some doubt as to whether Wu really was guilty of some of the most monstrous crimes that history has charged her with. But in 705, when she was 81 years old, the combined forces of the Li-Tang family took advantage of her weakening grip on the state and removed her from power. Her mother ne Yang was of aristocratic birth with mixed Chinese and Turkic blood, the result of generations of intermarriage when five nomadic tribes overran north China and founded dynasties in the 4th to 6th centuries. The system of Neo-Confucianism of which Chu Hsi is regarded as the spo, Mutsuhito Her last name, "Wu" is associated with the words for 'weapon' and 'military force' and she chose the name 'Zeitan' which means 'Ruler of the Heavens'. Her overall rule, in spite of the change of dynasty, did not result in a radical break from Tang domestic prosperity and foreign prestige. 23 Feb. 2023 . Her one mistake had been to marry this boy to a concubine nearly as ruthless and ambitious as herself. However, despite establishing an autocratic and centralised state, Emperor Wu adopted the principles of Confucianism as the state philosophy and code of ethics for his empire and started a school to teach future administrators the Confucian classics. By 655 she had consolidated her position after her son inherited the throne. ." Mutsuhito It was Taizong who called her 'Mei-Niang' meaning 'beautiful girl' (one of the names commonly, and wrongly, attributed to her as her birth name). Shanghai: Sibu congkan ed., 1929. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. Anticipating Wu Zetian's political ambitions, 60,000 flatterersincluding Confucian officials, imperial relatives, Buddhist clergy, tribal chieftains, and commonerssupported the petition to proclaim the Zhou Dynasty with herself as the founding emperor. When Gaozong died in 683, she became empress dowager and ruled on behalf of two adult sons, emperors Zhongzong (r. 684, 705710) and Ruizong (r. 685689, 710712). Wu Zetian argued that since mothers were indispensable to the birth and nourishment of infants, the three years when the infant totally depended on the mother as caregiver should be requited with three years of mourning her death. But 28 other consorts still stood between her and the throne.