Battle of Talas

The Battle of Talas (Chinese: 怛羅斯戰役; pinyin: Dáluósī Zhànyì; Arabic: معركة نهر طلاس, romanized: Maʿrakat nahr Ṭalās) was an armed confrontation between the Abbasid Caliphate against the Tang dynasty in 751. 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, the engagement began with several days of military stalemate, before a mercenary column of 20,000 Karluks—representing two-thirds of the initial Tang army strength—defected to the Abbasids, and played a vital role in routing the Tangs.
After the battle, the caliph dispatched an envoy to the emperor, who arrived in December 752 to negotiate the restoration of diplomatic relations. In response, the Tangs reconciled with the Abbasids, but continued to expand into Central Asia. With the An Lushan rebellion in 755, Abbasid influence and control west of the Pamir Mountains was able to spread without opposition from the Tang government, which redeployed all available military forces back into China's interior in order to suppress the rebellion. By 821, though the Abbasids had lost direct control over their Central Asian territories, and the Mamluk Turkic 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, although this account is disputed by several findings.
The exact location of the battle has not been confirmed but is believed to be near Taraz and Talas, on the border between present-day Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The Chinese name 怛羅斯; Dáluósī was first seen in the account of Xuanzang. Du Huan located the city near the western drain of the Chui River.
The oasis towns on the Silk Road in central Asia had once been controlled by the Türgesh, but the Turkic tribal confederation plunged into chaos in the latter half of the 7th century. Empress Wu had retaken control of the Tarim Basin from the Tibetan Empire in 692 as part of the Tang expansion in Inner Asia and the oasis towns became a major source of income for the Tang. In 705, Qutayba ibn Muslim started to lead the Umayyad army on campaigns to conquer towns across along the Silk Road, exploiting Türgesh infighting. The caliphate conquered the oasis towns Bukhara and Samarkand, expanding the border of their empire eastwards. At the same time, the Türgesh khagan Suluk began uniting the infighting Türgesh tribes. The Muslim, Tibetan and Tang armies would have two encounters. In 715, Alutar was established as king of Fergana with the help of Umayyad and Tibetan soldiers. The deposed Ikhshid fled to the Tang controlled Kuqa and requested the aid of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang; 10,000 Tang soldiers reinstated Ikhshid as Fergana's king. In 717, 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.
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. 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. 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.
In 747, the Tang general Gao Xianzhi, who had successfully fought the Tibetan empire in the Pamir Mountains, established control over the Gilgit region. In early 748, the Abbasid general Abu Muslim occupied Merv, the capital of Greater Khorasan, and went on to lead what has become known as the Abbasid Revolution. In 750, Abu al-'Abbas al-Saffah was proclaimed the first Abbasid caliph in the great mosque of Kufa. The Umayyad Caliphate fell in 750 at the Battle of the Zab. Abu Muslim had raised an army that included Muslims and non-Muslims, which he dispatched westwards to take control over Umayyad territory. 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. According to art historians Denise Patry Leidy and Donna K. Strahan, Kashmir "helped defeat the Arabas at the Battle of Talas in 751".
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, Arabic 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. The Tongdian (801), the earliest narrative for battle itself by either side, suggests 30,000 deaths, and the Old Book of Tang (945) counted 20,000 deaths in this battle. The earliest Arabic account for the battle, itself from Al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh (1231) suggests 50,000 deaths and 20,000 prisoners. Gao Xianzhi's official position was that of the Anxi Jiedu envoy, 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.
In July 751, the Abbasid 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.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. The Abbasid archers had to retreat behind their spearmen and the Abbasid 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 Abbasid counterparts, and managed to push the Arab infantry backwards despite being outnumbered. 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 Abbasid infantry made a frontal assault.
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.
According to a text by Al-Maqdisi, one of the few Arabic sources on the battle that has survived, Abbasid general Abu Muslim took 5,000 Chinese prisoners and confiscated possessions from the Tang military camp. According to Al-Maqdisi, Abu Muslim prepared his forces and equipment to invade more Tang controlled territory. However, he was first presented with a letter from the caliph As-Saffah, in which he was informed that his services were needed as governor of Khurasan. After the Battle of Talas, the Abbasids coerced the Tang army to evacuate the Gilgit region.
The An Lushan rebellion ended the Tang presence in central Asia and forced them to withdraw from the northwestern frontier; because the Abbasids did not advance any further after the battle, Talas was of no strategic importance. 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. 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 Al-Mansur, sent his diplomatic delegations regularly to China. Al-Mansur's delegations were known in China as Khayi Tashi (Black Clothes). Shortly after the battle of Talas, the domestic An Lushan rebellion and subsequent warlordism gave the Abbasids the opportunity to further expand into central Asia as Tibetans took over the region between the Abbasids and Tangs and Tang influence in the region retreated. 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. In 756 Al-Mansur sent 3,000 mercenaries to assist Emperor Xuanzong of Tang in the An Lushan rebellion. A massacre of foreign Muslim merchants by Tian Shengong happened during the An Lushan rebellion in the Yangzhou massacre (760).
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. 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 Muslim, Zoroastrian, Jewish and Christian merchants in 878–879 at the seaport and trading entrepôt of Guangzhou, and captured both Tang dynasty capitals, Luoyang and Chang'an. A medieval Chinese source claimed that Huang Chao killed 8 million people. 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 Hindu Kush and Pamir Mountains from Indian kingdoms and assisted the establishment of the eastern Indian Pala Empire in the latter half of the 8th century. It was only under the fifth Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid that a formal military alliance was established between the Tang, the Uighurs engaged the Tibetan army on the western Tibetan frontier with the Abbasids. At the same time, the Uighurs fought the Tibetans along the Silk Road. The Karluks expanded their settlements around Tian Shan, and also settled westwards in Abbasid-controlled Fergana and Tukharistan. Iron weapons continued to be exported to Tibet and China on the Silk Roads between Kuqa and Aksu near the Tarim basin. Arabic sources record that in the 10th century Aksu and Fergana had markets for arms traders.
Talas is in modern-day Kyrgyzstan and had been part of the Silk Road. From Dunhuang in China, along the edge of the Takla Makan desert, passing through oasis towns such as Kucha, roads went through a region Arabs called Transoxiana. The Silk Roads in Transoxiana went through Talas, Tashkent, Samarkand, and Khwarazm. Turning south, roads went through Kunduz in present-day Afghanistan, the Pamir Mountains could be crossed on roads going through Kulob and Balkh in the Bactria region. From there present day India could be reached on a road through Bamyan that lead over the Hindu Kush. Muslim influence along these central Asian trade routes had started in the 8th century, one key event being the battle of Talas. Prior to Talas, Buddhists controlled much of the roads. Central Asian Buddhism went into decline after the battle of Talas.
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 Buddhist monks, had regularly visited the Tang court. Chinese Buddhism developed into an independent religion with distinct spiritual elements, such as Pure Land Buddhism and Zen. China became the center of East Asian Buddhism, creating a canon and spreading on to Japan and Korea. The Battle of Talas did not mark the end of Buddhism or Chinese influence in the region. The Buddhist 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, and the Kara-Khitans used Chinese as an official language. The Kara-Khitan rulers were called "the Chinese" by the Muslims.
According to the 11th-century historian Al-Thaʽālibī, Chinese prisoners captured at the Battle of Talas in 751 introduced paper manufacturing to Samarkand. They engaged in the craft of papermaking while living on land occupied by the Abbasids following Talas. However, this account is unlikely to be factual. Paper was already in use throughout Central Asia by the 8th century; paper fragments dating to the 4th and 5th centuries have been found in the areas of Turpan and Gaochang, and letters written in the Sogdian language between the 4th and 6th centuries have been found in Dunhuang and 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.
No historic Chinese source records this transfer of technology through prisoners of war and no contemporary Arabic accounts of the transfer of paper exist. Du Huan, who was captured by the Abbasid army at the battle of Talas and upon his return to China published his travel writings, documented that Chinese crafts such as silk weaving were practiced by Chinese prisoners of war while living on territory controlled by the Abbasids. It may have been a convention to reference Chinese craftsmen, who had long been esteemed in Islamic lands, and Chinese paper remained a prized product for centuries. According to Al-Nadim, a writer in Baghdad during the 10th century, Chinese craftsmen made paper in 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.
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]."
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. According to Bartold, during the first three centuries of Islam, al-Tabari was the chief source—which has survived to the present in a compilation by Ibn al Athir—which was brought down to 915. Neither Tabari nor early Arabic historical works make any mention of this; however, Athir's statement is confirmed by the Chinese History of the Tang Dynasty.
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.
The Chinese historian Bai Shouyi wrote that, at the same time that Talas took place, the Tang also sent an army from Shibao city in Qinghai to Suyab and consolidated Chinese control over the Turgesh. According to Bai, Chinese expansion in central Asia did not halt after the battle of Talas. The Tang commander Feng Changqing, who took over the position from Gao Xianzhi through Wang Zhengjian, virtually swept across the Kashmir region and captured Gilgit shortly two years later. Even Tashkent re-established its vassal status in 753, when the Tang bestowed a title to its ruler. Bai also maintains that the Chinese influence to the west of the Pamir Mountains certainly did not cease as the result of the battle. Central Asian states under Muslim control, such as Samarkand, continued to request aid from the Tang against the Abbasids and in 754, all nine kingdoms of Western Turkestan again sent petitions to the Tang to attack the Abbasids and the Tang continued to turn down such requests as it did for decades. 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. 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.
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.
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