Gao Xianzhi
During the Tang dynasty parts of Afghanistan were under the control of China's Protectorate General to Pacify the West. In 659, Soghd and Ferghana, along with cities like Tashkent, Samarkand, Balkh, Herat, and Kabul, became part of the protectorate under Emperor Gaozong. Afghanistan's Herat and Uzbekistan's Bukhara and Samarkand became part of the Tang protectorate. The Indian historian K. P. S. Menon wrote about the Chinese "performed the remarkable feat of sending an army of 100,000 men which marched up the Pamirs from Kashgar" and then crossed Afghanistan to occupy the Hunza Valley in what is now Pakistan under Tang General Gao Xianzhi.