Northern Sòng 北宋 court official and Daoist-exegetical scholar, author of the ten-juàn [[KR5c0064|Sòng Huī zōng Dàodé zhēn jīng jiě yì]] 宋徽宗道德真經解義 (DZ 681) — a subcommentary on the imperial Dàodé jīng commentary of Sòng Huīzōng (徽宗; KR5c0063, DZ 680). Composed before the Jurchen fall of the Northern Sòng in 1125–26.
Office. Zhāng Ān is identified in his own preface to DZ 681 by the official title 承議郎 (chéng yì láng, “Gentleman of the Consultation”) — an eighth-grade imperial court rank attested in the Sòng huì yào jí gǎo 宋會要輯稿 for the Zhènghé 政和 era (1111–1118) and later. No other biographical details are available; he does not appear in the Sòng shǐ 宋史 biographies.
Work. His one transmitted work, DZ 681, is a major document of the Northern-Sòng imperial-Daoist exegetical tradition. The subcommentary responds to Huīzōng’s yù jiě of c. 1111–1118 and was probably addressed personally to the emperor shortly after. Its philosophical character — echoes of 郭象’s Zhuāngzǐ commentary, sustained articulation of the Chóngxuán 重玄 doctrine of fēi yǒu fēi wú 非有非無, and a wú wéi 無為 reading of the Lǎozǐ as a doctrine of róu ruò 柔弱 (weakness) and bù zhēng 不爭 (non-contention) — places it within the late Northern-Sòng synthesis of Chóngxuán, Mādhyamika-Buddhist, and emergent Neo-Confucian philosophical vocabularies.
Preface highlights. Zhāng Ān’s preface is an elegant specimen of Sòng imperial-memorial prose. He frames Huīzōng as a sage-ruler of divinely endowed learning (tiān zòng shén shèng 天縱神聖), whose imperial commentary has made the Dàodé jīng “match Lǎozǐ across a thousand years as if by tally”; and positions his own subcommentary as a humble gloss — “a well-frog before Heaven, a firefly before the sun and moon” — written at the emperor’s charge. The rhetorical self-positioning is a classical instance of court-Daoist commentary-writing convention.
Dating. Activity attested for the late Zhènghé era (c. 1115–1125). No lifedates are known. No CBDB record.
Disambiguation. Not to be confused with 章安大師 Zhāng’ān dàshī (Guàn dǐng 灌頂, 561–632), the Suí-early-Táng Tiāntái 天台 Buddhist patriarch and compiler of Zhìyǐ’s 智顗 lectures — a different figure from a different era.