Let's say that, for one reason or another, the An Lushan Rebellion never happened. Maybe An Lushan choked on a dumpling, or maybe he just never decides to rebel. What's more important to me than the why is the consequences for China and the wider world. So, what would happen if An Lushan didn't rebel?
 
A whole lot of wars between Tang, their Sassanid clients and the Abbasids, but also more contact leads to more transfer of knowledge.

Anxi is never lost. What is Xinjiang today is more Sinified, perhaps never Turkified. Tang does not suffer massive population loss, and lasts longer. With no conservative backlash against foreign barbarians, successive Chinese dynasties are likely more Tang like, more cosmopolitan and multi-cultural.
 
Given the heights the Tang had reached prior to the rebellion, had they continued their political evolution, they might have broken the Han Dyansty's record and become the longest lasting dynasty of the post Qin dynastic cycles. Who knows what effects that might have.
 
Given the heights the Tang had reached prior to the rebellion, had they continued their political evolution, they might have broken the Han Dyansty's record and become the longest lasting dynasty of the post Qin dynastic cycles. Who knows what effects that might have.

Well, a different political situation in China might cause butterflies that impact the steppes up north, which in turn might mean no Mongol conquests. That would have enormous, far-reaching effects.
 
How do you think this would impact Islam in China?

It’s unlikely to be bigger than OTL IMO. Tang elites were very Buddhist and IIRC there was a religious conflict between Buddhism and Taoism at the time. Plus a small number of elites had converted to Zoroastrianism by exiled Sassanids. This were wasn’t a market for yet another foreign religion, one that is extremely intolerant of other faiths at that.

Plus a surviving Tang would be in for a period of war with the Abbasids in Central Asia. Hard to see the government welcoming Muslim missionaries under the circumstances. But it will spread among the merchants plying the silk road. One would expect China would expand trade links during Islamic Golden Age had they not lost the western part of the empire.
 
Top