The History of Kazakhstan from the Earliest Period to the Present time. Volume I. Zhanat Kundakbayeva
of the Arabs. Battle of Talas in 751 was a conflict between the Arab Abbasid Caliphate and the Chinese Tang Dynasty for control of the Syr Darya. The Chinese army was defeated following the routing of their troops by the Abbasids on the bank of the Talas River. The defeat was partly a result of the defection of Qarluq mercenaries and the retreat of Ferghana valleys who originally supported the Chinese. The Ferghana forces successfully (though inadvertently) cut the Chinese troops off from the rest of their army and their route of retreat. The commander of the Tang forces, Gao Xianzhi, realized his defeat was imminent and managed to escape with some of his Tang regulars with the help of Li Siye. Despite losing the battle, Li did inflict heavy losses on the pursuing Arab army after being reproached by Duan Xiushi. Though Gao was able to rebuild his forces within months, he never again gained the confidence of the local tribes residing in the area. The Chinese name Daluosi was first seen in the account of Xuanzang. Du Huan located the city near the western drain of the Chui River. The exact location of the battle has not been confirmed but is believed to be near Taraz (once named Zhambyl), in present day Kazakhstan. Shortly after the battle of Talas, the domestic rebellion of An Lushan (755－763) and subsequent warlords (763 onwards), caused the decline of Tang influence in Central Asia by the end of the 700's. The local Tang tributaries then switched to the authority of the Abbasids, Tibetans, or Uighurs and the introduction of Islam was thus facilitated among the Turkic peoples. Well supported by the Ummayads, the Qarluqs established a state that would be absorbed in the late 9th century by the Kara-Khanid Khanate. With the successful cooperation of Arabs and Turkic peoples, Islam began to exert its influence on the Turkic culture. Among the earliest historians to proclaim the importance of this battle was the great Russian historian of Muslim central Asia, Barthold, 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)." However, claims that the battle itself was significant are not well-supported by historical evidence. The dry and simplistic recounting of the battle itself in Chinese accounts shows that it may have been no more than a border skirmish. Most of the sources for this battle barely mention the Chinese defeat, leaving a duration of five days undescribed, with exception for the dialogues after the defeat. According to Barthold, for the history of the first three centuries of Islam, al-Tabari was the chief source (survived in Ibn al Athir's compilation), which was brought down to 915. (Unfortunately, this important work was only compiled and published by a group of Orientalists in 1901.) It is only in Athir that we find an accurate account of the conflict between the Arabs and the Chinese in 751, one which decided the fate of the western part of central Asia. Neither Tabari nor the early historical works of the Arabs which have come down to us in general make any mention of this; however, Athir's statement is completely confirmed by the Chinese History of the Tang Dynasty. It must be noted that in all Arab sources, the events which occurred in the eastern part of the empire are often dealt with briefly. Another notable informant of the battle on the Muslim side was Al-Dhahabi (1274-1348). It is of interest to note that the Battle of Talas is seen as the key event in the technological transmission of the paper-making process. The Chinese court eunuch Cai Lun had invented the process in 105 CE. After the battle of Talas, knowledgeable Chinese prisoners of war were ordered to produce paper in Samarkand, and by the year 794 CE, a paper mill could be found in Baghdad, modern-day Iraq. The technology of paper making was thus transmitted to the Islamic world and later to the West. Other than the transfer of paper, there is no evidence to support a geopolitical or demographic change resulting from this battle. Several of the factors after the battle had been taken note of prior to 751. Firstly, the Qarluq never in any sense remained opposed to the Chinese after the battle. In 753, the Qarluq Yabgu Dunpijia submitted under the column of Cheng Qianli and captured A-Busi, a betrayed Chinese mercenary of Tongluo (Tiele) chief (who had defected earlier in 743), and received his title in the court on October 22. Nor did the Chinese expansion halt after the battle; the Chinese commander Feng Changqing, who took over the position from Gao Xianzhi through Wang Zhengjian, virtually swept across the Kashmir region and captured Gilgit shortly in the same year. The Chinese influence to the west of the Pemir Mountains certainly did not cease as the result of the battle; the Ferghana, who participated in the battle earlier, in fact joined among the central Asian auxiliaries with the Chinese army under a summons and entered Gansu during An Lushan's revolt in 756. Neither did the relations between the Chinese and Arabs worsen, as the Abbasids, like their predecessors (since 652), continued to send embassies to China uninterruptedly after the battle. Such visits had overall resulted in 13 diplomatic gifts between 752－798. Not all Turkic tribes of the region converted to Islam after the battle either – the date of their mass-conversion to Islam was much later, in the 10th century under Musa5. The Qarluqs with their participation in the Battle of Talas in 751 did not spoil relations with Tang China. The reason for approaching the Qarluqs and the Chinese became their common struggle against the Uighurs’ strengthening. In 752 the Qarluqs, having enlisted the Chinese support declared war on the Uighurs. The Qarluq Yabgu struggled for the Eastern Turk khaganate inheritance. His allies became the Yenisei Kyrghyz, Basmils и Turgesh. The war with variable success lasted two years and waged in the very center of the Uighurs lands. With great troubles the head of the Uighurs achieved victory. Consequences of the war were the great importance for the Qarluqs future. The Qarluq Yabgu once and for all lost hopes concerning the khaganate and stopped his struggle for the Turk inheritance. Since then his aspirations were directed on capturing Semirechye and consolidating in Dzhungar and towns of the Tarim Basin. В Semirechye the Qarluqs met with resistance not small Turgesh principalities that on the contrary became allies and vassals of Yabgu, but the Oghuz tribes. General events of the struggle with the Oghuz have been poorly reflected in sources. It is known that in the second half of the VIII в. Oghuz left Semirechye и and went to lower reaches of the Syr Darya. Their head took the Yabgu title, aspirating domination over the Western Turk tribes. During the ninth and tenth centuries, the nomadic Turkic Oghuz tribes formed a principality on the middle and lower reaches of the Syr Darya (Jaxartes), in the Aral Sea region and the area of the northern Caspian with its Yangikent, the town on the Syr Darya. The Oghuz’s power was finally consolidated in Semirechye in 766 г., when they occupied towns Taraz и Suab. Then the Qarluks began was with the Uighurs for Eastern Turkestan. Despite failures in the wars of the beginning of the IX в. the Qarluqs’s situation, supported by rich Semirechye towns was firm. Trade with Turkic slaves for Abbasids’s quad and control over transit to China on the area from Taraz to Issyk-Kul lake favoured the Yabgu’s enrichment. The futher history of the Qarluqs was absorbed in the late of the 9th century by the Kara-Khanid Khanate. In the East of the Kazakhstan in the Irtysh river steppes formed a community of Turkic tribes, which were called the Kimeks, by contemprory authors. Up to the middle of the eighth century, they lived with the Turkic tribes of the southern Altai and the Tarbagatay to the south and the Kyrgyz of the Yenisei to the east. At some time during the second half of the eighth century or at the beginning of the ninth, the Kimek clans and several tribes moved to north-eastern Semirechye and the foothills of the Dzhungar range, while at the same time, the Kipchak tribes of the Irtysh migrated southwards and westwards. From the ninth to the eleventh century, the Kimek were more densely concentrated in the basin of the middle Irtysh and in north-eastern Semirechye. Individual Kimek groups and a large proportion of the Kipchak occupied the steppes of central Kazakhstan and the northern Lake Balkhash region, extending as far west as the Aral Sea region and the southern Urals. On the middle reaches of the Syr Darya, they roamed the area of Sawran and the town of Turkistan, while their eastern borders stretched to the Tarbagatay Mountains and the Dzhungarian Alatau. Up to the middle of the seventh century, the Kimek, along with other steppe peoples, had been part of the Khaganate of the Western Turks. After its collapse in 656, they gradually developed into an independent tribal confederation. This process received considerable impetus during the ninth century from the fall of the Uighur Khaganate. The head of the Kimek, who had previously held the modest title of shad tutuk, was subsequently called the Khagan. According to Arab and Persian writers of the ninth to the twelfth century, the Khagan enjoyed considerable power appointing the leaders of tribes, referred to in the sources as muluk (kings). According to al-Idrisi, power in the clan of the Kimek rulers was transmitted on a hereditary basis. The supreme ruler, the Khagan, had eleven ‘stewards’ whose duties
Battle of Talas in 751. See online encyclopedia Statemaster.com URL: http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Battle-of-Talas