ABSTRACT
A general schema that has the aristocratic commanders of the seventh century giving way to the military specialists of the eighth century is not without merit. The basic pattern of martial skills and hands-on military leadership remained characteristic throughout the early Tang, from the founding of the dynasty up to about 660. Insofar as the court was concerned, the rebellion of An Lushan underlined the unwisdom of appointing purely military men to powerful independent commands and placed the military men themselves under a cloud of suspicion. The redefinition of military leadership can also be seen in the way the violence of combat is treated in the biographies of military men in the Old Tang History. The Old Tang History was compiled several decades after the fall of the dynasty in 907, but its contents were based on the work of generations of official historians drawn from the most precociously literate members of the Tang civil-bureaucratic elite.
