Battle of Talas
The Battle of the Talas, Battle of the Talas River, or Battle of Artlaj (in traditional Chinese, 怛羅斯戰役; Arabic: معركة نهر طلاس) was a military confrontation that took place in May–September year 751 in Central Asia, on the banks of the Talas River and north of the Sir Daria River, in the territory of present-day Kyrgyzstan, near the Kazakh city of Taraz. The battle pitted the Arab armies of the Abbasid Caliphate, along with their ally the Tibetan Empire, and the Karluk Turks under Ziyad ibn Salih with 200,000 troops (according to Chinese sources), and the Chinese armies of the Tang Dynasty under Gao Xianzhi with 10,000 Chinese and 20,000 Karluk mercenaries (the latter changed sides at the end of the battle), in order to settle control of Central Asia.
In July 751, Tang and Abbasid forces met in the Talas River valley to compete for control over the Sir Darya region of central Asia. After several days of stalemate, the Karluks, who were originally allied with the Tang, went over to the Abbasids, throwing the forces out of balance, resulting in a Tang defeat. Only 2,000 Chinese survived the battle. The Arab-Turkish victory marked the end of Chinese expansion in the Central Asian region, which was integrated from that moment and definitively into Islamic culture. Muslim control over Transoxiana was secured for the next 400 years. Control of this region was economically beneficial to the Abbasids because it was on the silk road. Historians debate whether Chinese prisoners captured after the battle brought the papermaking technology to the Middle East, where it eventually spread to Europe.
Location
The exact location of the battle has not been confirmed, but it is believed to have been near Taraz and Talas on the border of present-day Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The Chinese name (怛羅斯, Talas) was first seen in Xuanzang's account. Du Huan located the city near the western basin of the Chui River. The war was the contest between the Tang dynasty and the Abbasid Caliphate in the Transoxian region.
Background
Before the battle, there had been other indirect encounters between some of the combatants, and China's military might had extended beyond the harsh continental climate and harsh, barren terrain of the Tarim Basin, much of the which is formed by the Taklamakan desert, already at the time of the Han dynasty, when Emperor Wu of Han sent military expeditions to capture horses, which reached the Fergana Valley. Then, in 715, Alutar, the new king of Fergana, was installed with the help of Arabs from the Umayyad Caliphate. The deposed king, Ijshid, fled to Kucha (seat of the Anxi protectorate), and sought Chinese intervention. The Chinese sent 10,000 troops under Zhang Xiaosong to Fergana. He defeated the puppet ruler of the Alutar Arabs at Namangan and reinstated Ijshid. The inhabitants of the three Sogdian cities were massacred as a result of the battle.
The second encounter took place in 717, when the Arabs were led away by the Turgesh and besieged two cities in the Aksu area in the Battle of Aksu (717). The commander of the Chinese Protectorate General to pacify the west, Tang Jiahui, responded by using two armies, one composed of Karluk mercenaries led by Ashina Xin (Onoq's qaghan client) and another composed of Tang regulars led by the Jiahui itself. The Chinese Tang dynasty defeated the Umayyad invaders at the Battle of Aksu. The Umayyad Arab commander Al-Yashkuri and his army fled to Tashkent after the defeat.
Arab sources claim that Qutayba ibn Muslim briefly seized the city of Kashgar from China and withdrew after reaching an agreement, but modern historians totally dismiss this claim.
In the year 750, As-Saffah, the founder of the Abbasid Caliphate, launched a general rebellion (known as the Abbasid Revolution) against the then-ruling Umayyad Caliphate from the province of Khorasan. After his decisive victory at the Battle of the Zab and eliminating those of the Umayyad family who could not flee to Al-Andalus, As-Saffah sent his forces to consolidate his caliphate, including central Asia, where his forces clashed with many powers. regional, including those of China's Tang dynasty.
Battle
The number of combatants involved in the Battle of Talas is unknown with certainty; however, there are several calculations. The Abbasid army (200,000 Muslim troops according to Chinese estimates, although these figures may be greatly exaggerated) which included contingents from their Tibetan ally faced the combined army of 10,000 Chinese Tang and 20,000 mercenaries Karlukos (Arab documents state that Chinese forces were 100,000, which can also be grossly exaggerated).
In July 751, the Abbasid forces joined in combat with the Chinese force (the combined army of Tang Chinese and Karluk mercenaries) on the banks of the Talas River.
The Tang army suffered a crushing defeat. The defeat of the Tang dynasty was due to the defection of the Karluk mercenaries and the withdrawal of the Fergan allies who initially supported the Chinese. The Karluk mercenaries, two-thirds of the Tang army, went over to the Abbasids during the battle; Karluk troops attacked the Tang army at close range while the main Abbasid forces attacked them from the front. The Tang troops were unable to hold the position, and their commander, Gao Xianzhi, recognized that defeat was imminent and managed to escape with some of the Tang regulars from him with the help of Li Siye. Out of a total estimated 10,000 soldiers for the Tang, only 2,000 managed to return from Talas to their territory in Central Asia. Despite losing the battle, Li inflicted heavy losses on the pursuing Arab army after being rebuked by Duan Xiushi. After the battle, Gao was prepared to organize another Tang army against the Arabs when the devastating An Lushan rebellion broke out in 755. When the Tang capital was taken by the rebels, all Chinese armies stationed in central Asia were ordered back. to China proper to crush the rebellion.
Consequences and historical significance
Shortly after the Battle of the Talas, the domestic An Lushan rebellion (755–63) and subsequent warlord ascendancy gave the Arabs the opportunity to expand further into central Asia as the Tang influence in the region was receding. Local Tang tributaries then passed over to the authority of the Abbasids, Tibetans or Uyghurs and this facilitated the introduction of Islam among the Turkic peoples.
It was the An Lushan rebellion and not the defeat of the Talas that ended the Tang Chinese presence in central Asia and forced them to withdraw from Xinjiang—Talas was of no strategic importance, because the Arabs advanced no further after the battle.
A small minority of Karluks converted to Islam after the battle. Most Karluks did not convert to Islam until the mid-X century under Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan when they established the Khanate Karakhanid. This occurred long after the Tang dynasty had left Central Asia.
Al-Saffah, whose forces were known to the Chinese as the Black-robed Ta-Shih, spent their wealth on war. He died in 752. His brother Abu Jafar al-Mansur (A-p'uch'a-fo), who succeeded him as the second Abbasid Caliph [(r. 754-775) assisted the emperor Chinese Tang Suzong after he asked for help during the An Lushan rebellion to regain control of his capital Chang'an from the traitorous commander, An Lushan, or his successors in the failed Yan dynasty. Abu Jafar al-Mansur responded by sending 4,000 men who helped the Tang troops recapture the city and were well rewarded by the Chinese emperor. After the rebellion was suppressed they were allowed to settle in China permanently, helping to found China's oldest Muslim communities. Some of them intermarried with local Chinese people and their descendants became native Muslims who preserved their religious tradition and unique way of life.
In 760, a large-scale massacre of wealthy Arab and Persian merchants took place in China, during the Yangzhou Massacre (760), by Chinese rebels led by Tian Shengong. In 879 during the Guangzhou massacre, 120,000 to 200,000 Muslim Arab, Zoroastrian Persian, Jewish and Christian foreign merchants in Guangzhou were massacred by Chinese rebels under Huang Chao.
Central Asian culture, once a mixture of Persian, Indian and Chinese influences, disappeared under power struggles between the empires of the Arabs, Chinese, Turks, Tibetans and Uyghurs. Islam grew to become the cultural force of Central Asia.
With the decline of Buddhism in Central Asia, Chinese Buddhism was then separated from Indian Buddhism and developed into an independent religion with distinctive spiritual elements. Indigenous Buddhist traditions such as Pure Land Buddhism and Zen arose in China. China became the center of East Asian Buddhism, following the Chinese Buddhist canon, as Buddhism spread to Japan and Korea from China.
Among the first historians to proclaim the significance of this battle was the great Russian historian of Muslim Central Asia, Vasily Bartold, of the 20th century , according to which, “the first Arab historians, occupied with the narration of events then taking place in western Asia, do not mention this battle; but it is undoubtedly of great importance in the history of (western) Turkestan as he decided the question of which of the two civilizations, the Chinese or the Muslim, should predominate in the land (of Turkestan).& # 34;
The loss of 8,000 troops of the Tang empire can be compared to a force of more than 500,000 troops before the Anshi rebellion. According to Bartold, for the history of the first three centuries of Islam, al-Tabari was the main source (survived in Ali ibn al-Athir's compilation), which was made to disappear in 915. (Unfortunately, this important work was only collected and published by a group of Orientalists in 1901.[citation needed]) It is only in Athir that an accurate account is found of the conflict between the Arabs and the Chinese in 751. Neither Tabari nor the earliest historical works of the Arabs that have come down to us in general mention anything of this; however, Athir's claim is fully confirmed by the Chinese History of the Tang Dynasty. In all Arabic sources, events that occurred in the eastern part of the empire are often briefly dealt with. Another notable informant of the battle on the Muslim side was Al-Dhahabi (1274-1348).
The Battle of Talas marked neither the end of Buddhism nor Chinese influence in the region. The Buddhist Kara-Kitai Khanate defeated Muslim Seljuk Turks and Muslim Karakhanid Turks in 1141, conquering much of Central Asia from the Muslim Karluk Karakhanid Khanate in the XII. The Karakhitans also reintroduced the Chinese system of imperial government, as China was well regarded and respected in the region, including among the Muslim population, and the Karakhitans used Chinese as their main official language. The Karakhitans ruled they were called "the Chinese" by Muslims.
Professor Denis Sinor said that it was this interference in the internal affairs of the Western Turkic Khaganate that ended Chinese supremacy in Central Asia, as the destruction of the Western Khaganate freed the Muslims from their greatest opponent, and that it was not the Battle of Talas that ended the Chinese presence.
Later during the reign of the Abbasid caliph Haroun al-Rashid, the Arabs ended their alliance with the Tibetan empire, and established an alliance with China after sending envoys to China in 789.
Paper manufacturing
The Battle of the Talas was a watershed event in the history of paper—the technological transmission of the papermaking process. According to legend, after the Battle of Talas, Chinese POWs with the knowledge to do so were ordered to produce paper in Samarkand. In fact, high-quality paper had already been known and made in Central Asia for ages. centuries; a IV century paper letter survives from a merchant in Samarkand. But the Islamic conquest of central Asia in the late VII and early VIII facilitated the spread of this knowledge for the first time to what would become the Islamic world, so that by the year 794, paper manufacturing could already be found in Baghdad, what is now Iraq. The technology of paper making was thus transmitted to the Islamic world, and later to the European West. Paper production was a state secret, and only a few places and Buddhist monks knew of the technology. Of course, paper was transported many kilometers as a Chinese luxury product, and was traded with it, the finding of paper in various places is not proof of its production, but of its use.
Geopolitical consequences
Other than the transfer of the role, there is no evidence to support demographic or geopolitical change as a result of the battle. In fact it seems that Tang influence in Central Asia even strengthened after 751 and that by 755, Tang power in Central Asia was at its zenith. Several of the post-battle factors were already in place before 751. First, the Karluks never in any sense opposed the Chinese government after the battle. In 753, the Karluk Yabgu Dunpijia submitted under Cheng Qianli's column and captured A-Busi, a treacherous Chinese Tongluo (Tiele) mercenary chief (who had defected earlier, in 743), and received his title at court on 22 February. October. Chinese Muslim historian Bai Shouyi wrote that furthermore, at the same time as the Battle of the Talas was taking place, the Tang also sent an army from the city of Shibao in Qinghai to Suyab and consolidated Chinese control over the Turgesh. Chinese expansion into Central Asia did not stop after the battle; the Chinese commander Feng Changqing, who took over from Gao Xianzhi through Wang Zhengjian, virtually laid waste to the Kashmir region and captured Gilgit just under two years later. Even Tashkent re-established its vassal status in 753, when the Tang gave their ruler a title. Chinese influence west of the Pamirs certainly did not cease as a result of the battle; Central Asian states under Muslim control, such as Samarkand, continued to petition the Tang for help against the Arabs despite the Talas and hence in 754, the nine kingdoms of western Turkestan again sent petitions to the Tang to attack the Arabs. and the Tang continued to refuse such requests as they did for decades. Ferghana, who participated in the battle earlier, actually joined the Central Asian auxiliaries with the Chinese army after they were called up, and they entered Gansu during the An Lushan revolt in 756. Bai also noted that they did not even worsen the Sino-Arab relations, as the Abbasids, like their Umayyad predecessors (since 652), continued to send embassies to China uninterrupted after the battle. Such visits resulted in a total of 13 diplomatic gifts between 752 and 798. Nor did all the Turkic tribes in the region convert to Islam after the battle, the date of their mass conversion to Islam being much later, in the X under Muse.