"The Yellow River is far above the white clouds, a lonely city of Wanlingshan.
Qiang Di why should he complain about Yang Liu, the spring wind does not pass the jade door.
Shan Yu looked at the clouds in the north and killed the Madden altar several times.
The Heavenly Son of the Han Family is now a god and martial, and refuses to return with his relatives. ”
——[Tang] Wang Zhizhuo, "Two Songs of Liangzhou Words"
In the northwest of China's Gansu Province, there is a narrow main road that can connect Chang'an and the Silk Road Gate Dunhuang, which is sandwiched between the mountain ranges on both sides (Beishan and Qilian Mountains), about 1000 kilometers long, and is located just west of the Yellow River, so it is called the Hexi Corridor. When the Qin destroyed the Six Kingdoms, the Yueshi people were nomadic here, and were later driven away by the more powerful Xiongnu.
However, the Xiongnu also failed to occupy the Hexi Corridor for a long time, just as the so-called mantis catches cicadas and yellow finches after that, the young hero Huo Huo of the Han Dynasty during the Han Dynasty finally incorporated the entire Hexi Corridor into the territory of the Han Dynasty, which became One of the Thirteen Prefectures of the World. Liangzhou is the entrance and exit of cultural exchanges between the East and the West, and because of its relatively remote location, it has become the shelter of the Central Plains civilization to avoid war, and it is also a must for soldiers in the northwest since ancient times.
In the great chaos in the Central Plains at the end of the Western Jin Dynasty, "the country of refuge, only liang Tu'er", when the vast Central Plains region fell into war, Liangzhou stabbed Shi Zhang Rail decisively received a large number of displaced people, the history books record that Zhang Rail here "taught the farmers Sang, plucked the talents, put on the Chongwen sacrifice wine, enlisted 500 people in the nine counties, set up schools to teach it", production and culture blossomed, making the Liangzhou area a rare refuge.
However, as the situation spiraled out of control, the Hexi Corridor region was not able to stand alone, and during the Sixteen Kingdoms period, after the demise of the Former Liang regime established by Zhang Rail, there were five regimes in this land: Western Qin, Houliang, Northern Liang, Southern Liang, and Xiliang, and the founder of one of the regimes was also related to the Tang Dynasty royal Li clan hundreds of years later, he was the monarch of the Western Liang State, the Han Chinese Li Xuan (hào).
Interestingly, the tomb of this Li Wei has probably been discovered.
Sixteen National Paper Paintings unearthed in Turpan, Xinjiang
<h1>The discovery of the "Tomb of Li Xuan" and the presumption of the owner of the tomb</h1>
As early as the 1950s, archaeologists found a large group of tombs located in the west of Jiuquan City, Gansu Province, where there were more than 1,400 tombs from the Wei and Jin dynasties to the Tang Dynasty, the most prominent of which was a "small earth mountain" (because the tombs were piled up in a mountain, the name given by the local people).
In the late 1970s, the Gansu Provincial Museum archaeological team first excavated several tombs near the "Xiaotu Mountain", including the famous Jiuquan Dingjiazha No. 5 mural tomb. The burial chamber of this tomb is located 12 meters underground, the most famous is the fresco inside, the front of the tomb mural is rich in content, well-preserved, the entire mural content is divided into five layers, containing the celestial realm, the human world and the underworld three different parts, the picture reflects the rich life and the tomb owner wearing three beams into the xian crown, riding the Tong tong (xiǎn) car (a kind of high-class ox cart at that time) the prominent position is completely consistent. According to research, the tomb is from the Sixteen Kingdoms to the Northern Liang period (386 ~ 441 AD), and the owner of the tomb is a prince or a nobleman of the rank of three dukes.
The image of the owner of the Dingjiazha mural tomb
Tianma figure in the tomb of the Dingjiazha mural
In 1999, archaeologists excavated a tomb one kilometer east of Xiaotu Mountain, and this time unearthed a fragmentary tomb table (i.e., tombstone) inscribed with the words "Longxi Di Dao Li Chao's wife Yin's tomb table" and "Liang Jiaxing Second Year ... "Tombstone", according to the "Book of Jin" we know that "Jiaxing" is the era name of Li Xin (Li Huan's son), the second year of Jiaxing, which is 419 AD, and it seems that this Li Chao's wife Yin died in the second year of Xiliang Jiaxing. The excavation and shape of the above two tombs have laid a good foundation for the dating of the "small earth mountain".
Yin's tomb table
In 2001, archaeologists carried out rescue excavations to protect the "small earth mountain" due to the collapse of farmland irrigation. It turned out that the largest tomb in the area had been excavated many times, almost empty, and even the coffin bed had been destroyed, leaving only a mess. There are no written inscriptions (there are information on the Internet that introduce this tomb, saying that hundreds of words of epitaphs have been unearthed, which is a rumor), and there are no cultural relics with great research value - then it is clear that how to determine the identity of the owner of the tomb is a problem.
The brick carvings in the Xiaotushan tomb are limited, and the so-called sealed photos of the so-called Xiaotushan tombs that can be found on the Internet are all wrong, which is the tomb of Qingdao Tushan Tunhan
By comparing the location, scale, architectural style and shape of the Xiaotushan Tomb with the Dingjiazha No. 5 Mural Tomb and the Tomb of Li Chao's Wife Yin, archaeologists speculate that the Tomb of Xiaotushan is a tomb of the king built around 410 AD. Why is it said that it is the tomb of the king, for example, the length of the tomb of Xiaotushan Tomb alone is more than 70 meters, while the tomb of Ding Jiazha No. 5 tomb is only more than 30 meters, and the two are obviously very different in rank. Then combined with the "Biography of King Liangwu Zhao of the Book of Jin" recorded that "thirteen years (417 AD) Xue, when the age of sixty-seven." The tomb of The King of Wuzhao, the tomb of Jianshi Mausoleum, and the "Tomb of King Wuzhao of Xiliang in the Fifteen Mile West of the County" recorded in the "Records of Yuanhe County, Jiuquan County", scholars boldly speculate that the owner of this tomb is most likely Li Xuan, the founding monarch of Xiliang.
<h1>How Li Huan contacted Li Tang</h1>
Li Xuanqi was "a few but studious, a man of deep and broad sex, a beautiful instrument, a generalist in the history of the classics, and a good literary meaning." And long, quite learned martial arts, reciting Sun Wu's art of war", in general, it is both literary and martial, gentle personality, good-looking, a look is the dragon and phoenix among people, but what is the origin between him and the Li Tang Dynasty?
According to the Old Book of Tang, "Emperor Gaozu Shenyao Dasheng Daguangxiao was surnamed Li (李氏), and was secretly from the Yuan. His predecessor was the Longxi Di Daoren, the seventh generation grandson of Liangwu Zhaowang(暠), that is to say, Li Yuan was the seventh grandson of Li Huan, and the Tang history also posthumously named Li Huan as the "Xingsheng Emperor". What is even more interesting is that when writing about the genealogy of Li Xuan's family in the Book of Jin, it is said: "King Wuzhao of Wuzhao, the character Xuansheng, the small character Changsheng, the Longxi Chengji people, surnamed Li, the former Han general Guangzhi sixteenth grandson also." Guang's great-grandfather Zhongxiang, who was a general in the early Han Dynasty, rebelled against Suchang, and Suchang, that is, Di Daoye, was outnumbered and died. Zhongxiangzi Bo kaoben was buried in the Dongchuan of Di Dao, Sui Jia Yan, and was born as the right surname of Xizhou. According to this statement, Li Kuan's ancestor was actually Li Guang. If Li Huan is the sixteenth grandson of The Han Dynasty Fei general Li Guang, let's calculate what the relationship between Li Yuan and Li Guang is.
Li Guangtu on a Wei and Jin portrait brick unearthed in Dunhuang
Are these all true? Obviously worth a question mark. After all, when the Tang Dynasty was founded, it not only climbed Li Huan's relatives, but also recognized Lao Zi Li Er as an ancestor and was named "Emperor Xuanyuan of the Great Saint Ancestor Gao Shang Daguang Dao Jin Que Xuanyuan Emperor", and there was also a long debate about the Hu blood of the Li Tang royal family. In addition, the "Biography of Li Bai" says "Li Bai, the word is too white, the ninth grandson of the Xingsheng Emperor", calculated carefully or tang Xuanzong's elders, if it is true, I am afraid that this is the basis for him to dare to let the noble concubine hold the stone, take off his boots, and even "the son of heaven will not come to the ship".
Resources:
Suzhou District Museum: Briefing on the Cleaning of Jiuquan Xiaotushan Tombs, Longyou Wenbo, No. 2, 2004
Fan Xiaodong, "Archaeological Excavation of Jiuquan Xiaotushan Tomb and Preliminary Investigation of the Identity of the Tomb Owner", Silk Road, No. 24, 2014