Battle of Talas

Coordinates: 42°31′30″N 72°14′0″E / 42.52500°N 72.23333°E / 42.52500; 72.23333
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

  • Battle of Talas
  • 怛羅斯戰役
  • معركة نهر طلاس‎
Part of the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana

Movement into Central Asia:
  Chinese (Tang army)
  Turks (Tang army, later Abbasid army)
  Arabs (Abbasid army)
  Tibetans (Tibetan army)
DateMay – September 751
Location
Taraz or Talas
Result Abbasid victory
Belligerents
Commanders and leaders
Strength
30,000 Abbasid troops 10,000 Tang troops
20,000 Turkic mercenaries[a][2][3]
Casualties and losses
Unknown Unknown

The Battle of Talas (

Arabic: معركة نهر طلاس Maʿrakat nahr Ṭalās) was an armed confrontation between the Abbasid Caliphate and the Tibetan Empire against the Tang dynasty in 751 AD. In July of that year, the Tang and Abbasid armies clashed at the Talas River over control of the regions surrounding the Syr Darya. According to Chinese sources, it was initially marked by several days of military stalemate before the balance of power was decisively tipped in the Abbasids' favour due to the defection of a Tang-allied mercenary column, consisting of some 20,000 Karluk Turks
, who subsequently played a vital role in routing the Tang army.

This defeat was seen[

caliph quickly dispatched an envoy to Chang'an, who arrived on 7 December 752 to ask for the restoration of diplomatic relations.[4] In response, the Tang emperor forgave the Abbasids' provocation, but continued to expand into Central Asia; the Tang army, under the leadership of Feng Changqing, launched an offensive against the Great Blue Kingdom in present-day Kashmir in 753. By 821, the Arab Muslims had lost direct control over their Central Asian territories, and the Turkic-origin Ghaznavids rose to power in the region in 977. The gains brought about by the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana were entirely lost in 1124, when the non-Muslim Qara Khitai conquered the region. The Abbasids placed great value on controlling this area as it was a strategic point on the Silk Road; Chinese prisoners captured at Talas in 751 are said to have introduced papermaking to the peoples of West Asia
.

Location

Map of Transoxiana, with the Talas River in the upper right

The exact location of the battle has not been confirmed but is believed to be near

Chui River.[1]

Background

The territorial extent of the Tang dynasty c. 700, showing the long and narrow Hexi Corridor connecting its expanded western frontier to China proper

The oasis towns on the

Kuqa and requested the aid of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang; 10,000 Tang soldiers reinstated Ikhshid as Fergana's king. In 717, Arab Umayyad soldiers, assisted by the Tibetan Empire, besieged Aksu City in the Tarim Basin, but were defeated by the Tang military in the Battle of Aksu
.

Penjikent mural depicting the siege of Samarkand

In 715, the Tang emperor declined the demand of the Türgesh tribe leader Suluk to be recognized as Khagan, instead offering him the rank of duke within the Tang military. In response, Suluk invaded the Tarim Basin along with the Tibetans, but they were driven out by the cavalry of Ashina Xian.[7] Suluk and his soldiers regularly challenged Umayyad–Tang control of the oasis towns. Before Suluk's death, his soldiers were defeated by the Tang in 736 and by the Caliphate in 737.[8] At the same time, Türgesh tribes established metal industries in Tang-controlled Fergana Valley, an area that was also home to important centres of iron production. The Karluks, a federation of three Türgesh tribes with settlements around Tian Shan, were producers and exporters of iron weapons to the Tibetan Empire and the Tang dynasty.[9]

In 747, the Tang general

Ferghana sought the support of their imperial overlords in a battle of dominance. Gao Xianzhi conquered the Abbasid-controlled Tashkent after a siege. The Abbasid general Ziyad ibn Salih [ar][1] escaped from Tashkent to Samarkand, where he gathered troops and marched eastwards to confront the Tang army. In Fergana, the Tang general Gao Xianzhi raised an army by recruiting Karluk Turks. During the reign of Lalitaditya Muktapida, the Karkota dynasty of Kashmir that acknowledged the Tang as suzerain or their vassal lord, supported the Chinese against the Tibetans.[11] Kashmir participated in the battle to aid the Tang.[12][13]

Battle

Modern view of Talas River, which starts in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan and winds down into Kazakhstan. On the right side of the river is the city of Taraz.

The numeric quantities of the combatants involved in the battle of Talas are not known with certainty. The Abbasid army consisted of 200,000 soldiers according to Chinese estimates, which included contingents from their Tibetan ally. On the opposite side, Arab records put the combined Chinese forces at 100,000. But Chinese sources record a combined army of 10,000 Tang infantry and 20,000 Karluk mercenaries.

Al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh (1231) suggests 50,000 deaths and 20,000 prisoners.[15] Gao Xianzhi's official position was that of the Anxi Jiedu envoy,[16] The total number of Tang troops in the jurisdiction was 24,000 and was stationed in the four countries of Qiuzi, Yanqi, Khotan, and Shule.[17]

In July 751, the Muslim forces, including the Karluk mercenaries faced with the Tang forces on the banks of the Talas River. The Muslim General had assembled his troops in a standard formation, with his archers in the front, the spearmen behind them and heavy cavalry with his guard. Gao Xianzhi had assembled his army in a similar manner, with his professionally-trained heavy infantry of crossbowmen and spearmen in the front and in the second line respectively, and the lighter columns of Ferghana mercenaries behind, with the Karluk Turks on the extreme far right and left flanks.[18]The sequence of the first three days of the battle were similar to each other, with the Chinese attacking first from the front, with their archers and crossbowmen dealing substantial damage to the Arab archers with greater accuracy and ranged superiority in crossbows.[19][18] The Arab archers had to retreat behind their spearmen and the Arab spearmen charged ahead, with the infantry lines colliding between the Tang and Abbasid spearmen. However, the Tang professional heavy infantry were better armoured and could sustain more injuries than their Arab counterparts, and managed to push the Arab infantry backwards despite being outnumbered.[20] The Muslim general attempted to alleviate the pressure on his infantry by sending his heavy cavalry to attack the lighter column cavalry on the Chinese flanks. However, this attack failed to outflank Gao's units, but the Chinese general had to move his reserves into a fray. A similar sequence of events happened on the second and third days, but on the fourth day, the Karluk mercenaries betrayed the Chinese and attacked their flanks from the left and right while the Arab infantry made a frontal assault.[21]

The Tang army was subjected to a devastating defeat, owing to the defection of the Karluk mercenaries and the retreat of Ferghana allies who originally supported the Chinese. The Karluk mercenaries, two-thirds of the Tang army, defected to the Abbasids during the battle; Karluk troops attacked the Tang army from close quarters while the main Abbasid forces attacked from the front. The Tang troops were unable to hold their positions, and the commander of the Tang forces, Gao Xianzhi, recognized that defeat was imminent and managed to escape with some of his Tang regulars with the help of Li Siye. Out of an estimated 10,000 Tang troops, only 2,000 managed to return from Talas to their territory in central Asia. Despite losing the battle, Li did inflict heavy losses on the pursuing Arab army after being reproached by Duan Xiushi.[22]

Aftermath

Semirechye, c. 800. Anikova dish, Hermitage Museum.[23][24]

According to a text by

Khurasan.[25] After the Battle of Talas, the Arabs coerced the Chinese army to evacuate the Gilgit region.[26][27][28][29][30]

The An Lushan rebellion ended the Tang presence in central Asia and forced them to withdraw from the northwestern frontier; because the Arabs did not advance any further after the battle, Talas was of no strategic importance.[31][32] After the battle, a small number of Karluks converted to Islam. However, the majority would not convert until the mid-10th century, when Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan established the Kara-Khanid Khanate.[33][34][35][36][37] This occurred well after Tang dynasty was gone from central Asia.

Caliph Al-Saffah died in 754. Chinese sources record that his successor, the Abbasid caliph

warlordism gave the Arabs the opportunity to further expand into central Asia as Tibetans took over the region between the Arabs and China and Tang influence in the region retreated.[39] The An Lushan rebellion broke out in 755 and lasted until 763, forcing the Tang army to retreat from the northwestern frontier after enjoying around a century of sovereignty. This effectively ended the Tang presence in central Asia.[40] In 756 Al-Mansur sent 3,000 mercenaries to assist Emperor Xuanzong of Tang in the An Lushan rebellion.[41] A massacre of foreign Arab and Persian Muslim merchants by Tian Shengong happened during the An Lushan rebellion in the Yangzhou massacre (760).[42]

Tang dynasty officer of the Guard of Honour c. 644

The Tang dynasty recovered its power decades after the An Lushan rebellion and was still able to launch offensive conquests and campaigns like its destruction of the Uyghur Khaganate in Mongolia during 840–847.[43] It was the Huang Chao rebellion (874–884) that permanently destroyed the power of the Tang dynasty since Huang not only devastated the north but marched into southern China which An Lushan failed to do due to the Battle of Suiyang. Huang's army in southern China committed the Guangzhou massacre against foreign Arab and Persian Muslim, Zoroastrian, Jewish and Christian merchants in 878–879 at the seaport and trading entrepôt of Guangzhou,[44] and captured both Tang dynasty capitals, Luoyang and Chang'an. A medieval Chinese source claimed that Huang Chao killed 8 million people.[45] Even though Huang Chao was eventually defeated, the Tang Emperors lost all their power to regional jiedushi and Huang Chao's former lieutenant Zhu Wen who had defected to the Tang court turned the Tang emperors into his puppets and completed the destruction of Chang'an by dismantling Chang'an and transporting the materials east to Luoyang when he forced the court to move the capital. Zhu Wen deposed the last Tang Emperor in 907 and founded Later Liang (Five Dynasties), plunging China into the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period as regional jiedushi warlords declared their own dynasties and kingdoms.

The Tibetan Empire began attacking China, during a period where the Tibetan army also conquered territory in the

Tarim basin. Arab sources record that in the 10th century Aksu and Fergana had markets for arms traders.[9]

Mahayana Buddhism first entered China during the Han dynasty through the Silk Road during the Kushan Empire's existence. Maritime and overland trade routes were interlinked and complementary, forming what scholars have called the "great circle of Buddhism".[48]

Talas is in modern-day

Central Asian Buddhism went into decline after the battle of Talas.[49]

Following the An Lushan rebellion, the diplomatic exchange between Buddhist Indian kingdoms and the Tang dynasty all but ceased. Prior to the An Lushan rebellion, between 640 and 750 diplomatic envoys from Indian kingdoms, often accompanied by

Kara-Khitan Khanate defeated the Seljuk and Kara-Khanid Turks at the Battle of Qatwan in 1141, conquering a large part of central Asia from the Karluk Kara-Khanid Khanate during the 12th century. The Kara-Khitans also reintroduced the Chinese system of Imperial government, since China was still held in respect and esteem in the region among even the Muslim population,[51][52] and the Kara-Khitans used Chinese as an official language.[53] The Kara-Khitan rulers were called "the Chinese" by the Muslims.[54]

Papermaking

The oldest printed book in the world to be reliably dated, a Chinese copy of the Diamond Sutra found at Dunhuang, printed around 868

According to the 11th-century Persian historian

Loulan. One such letter was a communication with Samarkand. According to Jonathan Bloom, paper was used in Samarkand, and probably produced there, several decades before the battle. Several paper documents have also been discovered near Panjakent at Mount Mugh, a mountain stronghold, that likely predate the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana. They were either local or came from Buddhist monks active in the region. By the 8th century, Chinese paper was mostly made of bast fibers while Islamic papers were mostly made of rag fibers. Bloom suggests that papermakers were already active in Central Asia for quite some time and had learned to use rag fibers rather than bast fibers as their primary papermaking material.[58]

No historic Chinese source records this transfer of technology through prisoners of war and no contemporary Arabic accounts of the transfer of paper exist.

Khorasan. It was only after the first paper mill was built in Baghdad in 794–795 that paper was manufactured throughout the Islamic world and paper started to replace papyrus.[59]

Modern evaluation

Among the earliest historians who proclaimed the importance of this battle was the Russian historian Vasily Bartold, according to whom: "The earlier Arab historians, occupied with the narrative 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 it determined the question which of the two civilizations, the Chinese or the Muslim, should predominate in the land [of Turkestan]."[60]

The Tang loss of 8,000 troops can be compared to a total strength of more than 500,000 on the eve of the An Lushan rebellion.

Ibn al Athir—which was brought down to 915. Neither Tabari nor the early historical works of the Arabs make any mention of this; however, Athir's statement is confirmed by the Chinese History of the Tang Dynasty.[62]

Professor Denis Sinor said that it was interference in the internal affairs of the Western Turkic Khaganate which ended Chinese supremacy in central Asia, since the destruction of the Western Khaganate rid the Muslims of their greatest opponent, and it was not the Battle of Talas which ended the Chinese presence.[63]

The Chinese historian

Ferghana, which participated in the battle earlier, in fact joined among the central Asian auxiliaries with the Chinese army under a summons and entered Gansu during the An Lushan Rebellion in 756.[64] Bai also noted that neither did the relations between the Chinese and Arabs worsen, as the Abbasids continued to send embassies to China after the battle without interruption. Such visits had overall resulted in 13 diplomatic gifts between 752 and 798.[65]

Professor Xue Zongzheng came to the conclusion that other than the transfer of paper, there is no evidence to support a geopolitical or demographic change resulting from this battle. In fact, it seems that Tang influence over central Asia even strengthened after 751 and that by 755, Tang power in central Asia was at its zenith. Several of the factors after the battle had been taken note of prior to 751. Firstly, the Karluks never in any sense remained opposed to the Chinese after the battle. In 753, the Karluk Yabghu submitted under the column of Cheng Qianli and captured A-Busi, a Chinese mercenary who had defected to the Tongluo chief earlier in 743, receiving his title in court on 22 October.[66]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Tang-allied Karluks, later defected to the Abbasid army

References

Citations

  1. ^ a b c d e Bai 2003, pp. 224–225.
  2. ^ Barthold, William (2003), Turkestan down to the Mongol invasion, London: Oxford University Press, p. 196
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  4. ^ Bai 2003, pp. 241–242.
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  14. ^ Bai 2003, pp. 224–226.
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  16. ^ 新唐书.高仙芝传 (in Literary Chinese). 1060. pp. volume70. 帝乃擢仙芝鸿胪卿、假御史中丞，代灵察为四镇节度使
  17. ^ 旧唐书.地理一 (in Literary Chinese). 945. pp. ch18.
  18. ^ a b Lewis 2009.
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  20. JSTOR 48578413
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  22. ^ Bai 2003, pp. 226–228.
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  26. ^ Rabbani, G. M. (1981). Ancient Kashmir: A Historical Perspective. Gulshan. p. 15.
  27. ^ Shaiva, Pirzada Ghulam Rasool (2021). The Wonderful Miracles of Sufi Saints of Kashmir: Majmmoa Masmooa. Ashraf Fazili. p. 22.
  28. ^ Shah, Sayid Ashraf (2021). Islam in Kashmir. Ashraf Fazili. p. 91.
  29. ^ Shah, Sayid Ashraf (2021). Flower Garden: Posh-i-Chaman. Ashraf Fazili. p. 70.
  30. ^ J & K Research Biannual. Directorate of Libraries, Research, Museums and Archaeology. 1976. p. 46.
  31. ^ ed. Starr 2004 Archived 30 November 2022 at the Wayback Machine, p. 39.
  32. ^ Millward 2007 Archived 30 November 2022 at the Wayback Machine, p. 36.
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  34. ISBN 978-0-521-51441-5. Archived
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  35. ^ Esposito 1999, p. 351.
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  37. ^ Soucek 2000, p. 84.
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  45. ^ 《殘唐五代史演義傳》：“卓吾子評：‘僖宗以貌取人，失之巢賊，致令殺人八百萬，血流三千里’”
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  51. ^ Biran, Michal. "Biran 2012, p. 90". Archived from the original on 31 July 2021. Retrieved 2 November 2017.
  52. ^ Biran 2012, p. 90. Archived 2014-04-14 at the Wayback Machine
  53. ^ Pozzi & Janhunen & Weiers 2006, p. 114.
  54. ^ Biran 2005, p. 93.
  55. ISBN 0-471-29198-6
  56. ^ Quraishi, Silim "A survey of the development of papermaking in Islamic Countries", Bookbinder, 1989 (3): 29–36.
  57. ^ Park 2012, p. 25.
  58. ^ Bloom 2001, pp. 38–45.
  59. ^ Park 2012, pp. 25–26; Bloom 2001, pp. 38–45.
  60. ^ Bartold 1928, pp. 180–196.
  61. ^ Bai 2003, pp. 219–223.
  62. ^ Bartold 1928, pp. 2–3.
  63. ^ [The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, Sinor 1990, p. 344.]
  64. ^ Bai 2003, pp. 233–234.
  65. ^ Bai 2003, pp. 239–242.
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Works cited

42°31′30″N 72°14′0″E / 42.52500°N 72.23333°E / 42.52500; 72.23333

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