Start of Yellow Turban Rebellions (AD 184)

The Yellow Turbans were a popular religious movement named after the yellow headdresses by its followers. Adherents followed the Way of the Great Peace or taiping dao. The origins of the Yellow Turbans can be traced back to Lingdi's reign in the late Han dynasty, when a sect of healers led by Zhang Jue and his two brothers began preaching that sin was the cause of disease was sin, and that if one were to confess guilt and avoid sin, one would live in good health In addition to living without sin, obedience, loyalty, and filial piety were also emphasized.

As more and more peasants, and eventually middle class officials, adopted Zhang Jue's philosophy, he developed the idea that it was his duty to overthrow the Han dynasty. An official rebellion was planned for “when a new cycle of sixty years” began, but when word of the plot seeped out, Zhang Jue decided to move the date of rebellion forward. The official date of the rebellion is unknown but thought to be sometime in the March of 184 CE, as the first official court response to the uprising was recorded on April 1, 184.

While the Yellow Turban rebellion itself was controlled within a year, its consequences can be seen for years afterwards, all the way to the Taiping rebellions of the nineteenth century. In the years immediately following 184, there were many subsequent uprisings loosely connected to the Yellow Turbans. In order to countermand these insurrections, there were many new military titles hastily created for the men fighting rebels, including various eunuchs—which was a sign of a dynasty in decline by the standards of traditional historians. By May 189, when Lingdi died, the empire was in chaos due to the instability of the courts, eventually allowing a war general named He Jin to seize control of the throne. (Darrah Haffner)

Brian Hook, ed., The Cambridge Encyclopedia of China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 156-157.

Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe, The Cambridge History of China , vol. 1, The Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 B.C. – A.D. 220. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 325-339, 366-369, 815-820.

Last Modified: October 21, 2004