East Asia · Sui, Tang and the khaganates
Gao Kaidao
drawn on the map AD 623–625
Gao Kaidao (died 624) was an agrarian rebel leader in the Sui–Tang transition who founded a short-lived state of Yan in far northern Hebei. Born in Cangzhou, he had supported himself boiling seawater for salt and was noted as strong and a fast rider.
- Shown on the map
- AD 623–625
- Peak area
- 82k km²
- Region
- East Asia
Overview
Gao Kaidao (died 624) was an agrarian rebel leader in the Sui–Tang transition who founded a short-lived state of Yan in far northern Hebei. Born in Cangzhou, he had supported himself boiling seawater for salt and was noted as strong and a fast rider. He joined the rebel Ge Qian (before 616), and after Ge's death gathered his troops, pillaging northern Hebei. In 617–618 he besieged and took Beiping, captured Yuyang (in modern Tianjin), and declared himself Prince of Yan (r. 618–624), setting his capital first at Yuyang, later moving to Huairong (near modern Zhangjiakou) after killing the rival Gao Tansheng and absorbing his troops. Allied with the Eastern Turkic Khaganate, he briefly submitted to Tang in 620 (receiving the imperial surname Li, becoming "Li Kaidao") after aiding the besieged Li Yi (Luo Yi), but reasserted independence and rebelled against Tang in 621. In 624 his general Zhang Jinshu launched a coup; realizing it would succeed, Gao Kaidao committed suicide, and Yan was absorbed into Tang.
Common questions
- What was Gao Kaidao?
- Gao Kaidao (died 624) was an agrarian rebel leader in the Sui–Tang transition who founded a short-lived state of Yan in far northern Hebei. Born in Cangzhou, he had supported himself boiling seawater for salt and was noted as strong and a fast rider.
- When is Gao Kaidao shown on the map?
- The border data draws Gao Kaidao AD 623–625. The source samples borders at fixed dates, so a span can begin late or run on past the end.
- How large was Gao Kaidao?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, Gao Kaidao covered about 82,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia article for each polity as the basis of these profiles, supplemented by Encyclopaedia Britannica, chinaknowledge.de, the World History Encyclopedia, museum and university sources, and the academic works it lists. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Gao Kaidao en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gao_Kaidao
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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