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Fang Xuanling
Early Tang chief minister who helped plan the Xuanwu Gate coup, ran the Department of State Affairs under Taizong, and directed the compilation of the Jin History
In a council hall, a long table holds an unrolled map scroll, a brass-cornered chest and a brush pot, with tall-backed chairs around it and a bronze lamp at the left; a figure stands with their back turned on the balcony at the right, with palace roofs beyond.
Also known as Fang Qiao · Liangguo Gong · Wen Zhao
Fang Xuanling, whose names are given as Qiao with courtesy name Xuanling (the New Tang History reverses them), came from Linzi in Qizhou (modern Zibo, Shandong). He passed the Sui jinshi examination at eighteen and, after Li Yuan rose in revolt, joined Li Shimin, Prince of Qin, north of the Wei River as his secretary, recruiting able men for the prince. In 626 he and Du Ruhui helped plan the Xuanwu Gate coup, and under Emperor Taizong he became President of the Secretariat and, from 629, Left Vice-Director of the Department of State Affairs for more than ten years. Contemporaries paired him and Du Ruhui as the planner and the decider; he also oversaw revisions of the legal code, the state history and the compilation of the Jin History (Jinshu). He was made Duke of Liang in 637, and his portrait was hung in the Lingyan Pavilion in 643. He died in 648, received the posthumous name Wenzhao and was buried near Taizong's Zhaoling tomb.
Life and times
Dates 579 CE–648 CE