Person
Quang So Khach
The An Nam protector-general under the Tang who, by the New Book of Tang and the An Nam chi luoc, joined Duong Tu Huc on Ma Yuan's old road to attack Mai Thuc Loan. The Complete Annals record his name as Nguyen So Khach, but the Cuong muc later notes that the Nguyen is a mistake.
At a glance
- Also known as
- Nguyen So Khach — the name recorded in the Complete Annals; the Cuong muc later notes that the old history's Nguyen is a mistake12
- Dates
- The biography of Duong Tu Huc in the New Book of Tang, where his name appears, says only early in Kaiyuan; the basic annals place the campaign against Mai Thuc Loan in the tenth year of Kaiyuan, that is 72234
- Role
- Grand Protector-General of An Nam under the Tang; by the New Book of Tang, he joined Duong Tu Huc on Ma Yuan's old road and struck where he was not expected, and the bandits were utterly defeated3
- Earliest record
- Among the versions cited, his name first appears in the biography of Duong Tu Huc in the New Book of Tang (1060) — this version adds him on the Tang side, where the Old Book of Tang's biography does not have him3
Life
The old chronicles say
The biography of Duong Tu Huc in the Old Book of Tang does not have him. The New Book of Tang, completed in 1060, more than three hundred and thirty years after the events, rewrote that biography and added him on the Tang side: Tu Huc asked to go himself, an edict had a hundred thousand sons and younger kin of the chieftains recruited, and together with the Grand Protector-General of An Nam, Quang So Khach, he followed Ma Yuan's old road and struck where he was not expected; the bandits were utterly defeated, and the corpses were heaped into a kinh quan before the army returned. The An Nam chi luoc of Le Tac, compiled around 1335, still has Duong Tu Huc together with the Protector-General Quang So Khach, following Ma Yuan's old road and breaking the bandits utterly.35
When Ngo Si Lien brought the event into the Complete Annals in 1479, his name was recorded as Nguyen So Khach, standing beside Duong Tu Huc in the Tang ruler's order to put the rising down. In the nineteenth century, the Cuong muc noted that the old history's Nguyen is a mistake. The same court historians who compiled the Cuong muc held, in their respectfully examined comment, that Tu Huc and So Khach took advantage of the remote and rugged distance to inflate the bandits' strength in hope of reward — nineteenth-century commentary, not new evidence.126
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