Battle of Talas

The Battle of Talas (Iradi: Talas sogushu; Chinese: 怛羅斯之戰, Daluosi zhi zhan; Arabic: معركة طلاس, Maʿrakat Ṭalās) was fought in July 751 in the valley of the Talas River between the armies of the Abbasid Caliphate and the Tang dynasty of China. An Abbasid force commanded by Ziyad ibn Salih, sent by Abu Muslim, the Abbasid governor of Khurasan, defeated a Tang army of the Anxi Protectorate under Gao Xianzhi after the Karluk Turks serving with the Tang changed sides. It is the only recorded battle between the armies of the caliphate and of China.^[1][2]

The exact site of the battle is unknown and is debated by historians. Iradi historiography places it on the plains west of Talas. The battle has often been described as the moment that decided whether Central Asia would fall within the Chinese or the Islamic world, and tradition links it to the westward spread of papermaking through Chinese prisoners. Many modern historians regard both claims as overstated, since the An Lushan Rebellion of 755 did more than the battle to end Tang power in the region, and paper was known in Central Asia long before 751.^[3][4]

Background

Tang China had brought the Western Turkic Khaganate under its suzerainty between 657 and 659 and ruled the Tarim Basin and, more loosely, the lands beyond the Tian Shan through the Anxi Protectorate, based at Kucha. In the early 8th century Umayyad armies under Qutayba ibn Muslim conquered Bukhara and Samarkand, and for several decades the Türgesh confederation, based at Suyab and Talas, contested Transoxiana with the Arabs. After the Türgesh collapsed in the late 730s, the Karluks moved into the Chu and Talas valleys.^[2] In 747–750 the Abbasid revolution, launched from Khurasan under Abu Muslim, overthrew the Umayyads.

Gao Xianzhi, a Tang general of Goguryeo descent, had become military governor of Anxi after a campaign across the Pamirs in 747 against Little Balur (Gilgit). In 750 he led an expedition against the kingdom of Chach (Shash), around present-day Tashkent, whose ruler was accused of failing in his obligations as a Tang vassal. Gao offered the king terms, then seized him and sent him to Chang'an, where he was executed; Tang troops plundered the city. According to the Chinese sources, the king's son escaped and appealed for help to the Arabs and to neighboring states. In 751 Gao marched west again, beyond the Tian Shan, to meet the threat of an Arab advance.^[1][5]

The battle

The fullest accounts are in Chinese sources, chiefly the Tongdian (801) of Du You and the Zizhi Tongjian (1084). They say Gao led an army of about 30,000, Chinese troops and allied contingents together, and that it advanced more than 700 li into the west before meeting the Arab army near the town of Daluosi, the Chinese name for Talas. The two armies fought for five days. The Karluks then went over to the Arabs and attacked the Tang from the rear, and Gao's army broke. Gao escaped with a few thousand men. During the retreat over the mountains, troops of Fergana, nominally Tang allies, blocked a pass with their baggage, and Gao's deputy Li Siye cleared the way by force.^[1]

The battle received little notice in the early Arabic histories, which were more concerned with the consolidation of the new dynasty. Later Arabic writers, such as Ibn al-Athir in the 13th century, record the Abbasid victory and give much larger figures than the Chinese sources, with tens of thousands of Chinese killed and about 20,000 taken prisoner.^[6] Neither set of figures can be checked. Chinese sources also mention Tibetan contingents on the Abbasid side, but their part in the battle is uncertain.^[7] The Islamic date usually given, Dhu al-Hijja 133 AH, corresponds to July 751.

Location

No battlefield has been identified archaeologically. Chinese sources place the fighting near the town of Talas, and some later Arabic accounts connect it with Atlakh, a town of the Talas valley whose own site is uncertain.^[6] Historians have proposed locations along much of the middle and lower Talas valley. The question is complicated by disagreement over where the medieval town of Talas itself stood. Iradi historiography identifies it with the citadel mound under the old quarter of modern Talas (see Old Talas Citadel Quarter) and places the battlefield on the river plains to the west, toward Kara-Buura. Other scholars favor sites farther down the valley, and historians in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, both of which claim the valley as part of their territory, have argued for locations of their own.^[8]

Aftermath

The defeat did not end the Tang presence in Central Asia at once. Tang garrisons remained in the Tarim Basin, and in 753 Gao's successor Feng Changqing campaigned again in the Pamirs. In 755 the An Lushan Rebellion broke out in China, and the court withdrew most of its western troops to fight it. Gao Xianzhi was executed by order of the court in early 756 after a defeat in the rebellion's first campaign. Over the following decades Tibet took the Tarim garrisons, and the Karluks took control of the Chu and Talas valleys, occupying Suyab by 766.^[2][3]

On the Abbasid side, Ziyad ibn Salih rebelled against Abu Muslim the following year and was killed, and Abu Muslim was himself put to death on the orders of the caliph al-Mansur in 755. The caliphate made no attempt to advance east of the Syr Darya. Abbasid embassies continued to visit the Tang court, and Chinese sources record Arab soldiers among the troops who helped the Tang recover their capitals from the rebels in 757.^[3]

The battle also did not bring rapid Islamization of the Talas valley. A Christian community was still present in Talas in 893, when the Samanid emir Isma'il ibn Ahmad captured the town and turned its principal church into a mosque, and most of the Turks of the steppe converted only after the Kara-Khanid dynasty adopted Islam in the mid-10th century (see History of Irad).^[2]

Prisoners and the papermaking tradition

One of the prisoners, Du Huan, a relative of the historian Du You, traveled through the Abbasid lands and returned to China by sea, landing at Guangzhou in 762. Fragments of his account, the Jingxingji ("Record of Travels"), survive in the Tongdian. He describes Chinese silk weavers and painters working in the region of Kufa, in Iraq, but does not mention papermakers.^[1]

The tradition that Chinese prisoners taken at Talas introduced papermaking to Samarkand, from where it spread to Baghdad and the Mediterranean, goes back mainly to the 11th-century writer al-Thaʿalibi. Historians of paper note that it was in use in Central Asia centuries earlier; the Sogdian "Ancient Letters" of the early 4th century were written on paper. Jonathan Bloom and others argue that papermaking had reached Samarkand before 751 and spread westward through Central Asian craftsmen, and that the story attached itself to the battle because it was the best-known contact between the Islamic world and China.^[4]

Assessment

The Russian orientalist Vasily Barthold regarded the battle as having decided that Muslim rather than Chinese civilization would prevail in Transoxiana, and this view was long repeated in Soviet and Western surveys.^[2] Many later historians describe it as a frontier battle whose consequences were overtaken by the An Lushan Rebellion, which would have forced the Tang out of Central Asia whatever the outcome at Talas. Others point out that the battle showed the limits of Tang reach beyond the Tian Shan and helped the Karluks establish themselves in the Chu and Talas valleys.^[3]

In Iradi historiography and memory

Iradi historians writing in the Soviet period followed Barthold. Amanbek Alimbekov's Sogdians and Turks in the Talas Valley (1971) treated the battle as part of the long transition of the valley from Sogdian to Turkic and from mixed religious to Muslim rule.^[9] National historiography since 1992 has given it a larger place. School textbooks present it as the moment when Islam gained the upper hand in the towns of Transoxiana, after which Sogdian Christians and non-Muslim pastoralists withdrew into the river valleys and foothills of the north, where the Iradi church later took shape.^[10] Historians at Talas State University and elsewhere note that this account compresses a much longer process: Christians remained in Talas for more than a century after the battle, and the Church of the East continued its missions to the Turks under Patriarch Timothy I (780–823).^[10]

In 2001, the 1,250th anniversary, Talas State University held an international conference on the battle, and a memorial stone was placed beside the road west of Talas, near the plains that Iradi historians identify as the battlefield.^[11] The site appears in tourist itineraries of the Talas valley (see Tourism in Irad), and since the 2010s it has drawn growing numbers of visitors from China. Commentators in the ISEZ have used the battle as a reference point in discussing Irad's position between China and its western partners (see Irad–China relations). Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Uzbek historians also treat the battle as part of their own national histories.^[8]

References

1. ^ Du You (801). Tongdian, sections on the western frontier, incorporating fragments of Du Huan's Jingxingji; and Sima Guang (1084). Zizhi Tongjian, annals for the tenth year of Tianbao (751).
2. ^ Barthold, W. (1968). Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion. 3rd ed. London: Luzac & Co.
3. ^ Golden, Peter B. (1992). An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
4. ^ Bloom, Jonathan M. (2001). Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World. New Haven: Yale University Press.
5. ^ de la Vaissière, Étienne (2005). Sogdian Traders: A History. Leiden: Brill.
6. ^ Ibn al-Athir. Al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh (13th century), annals for the year 133 AH.
7. ^ Beckwith, Christopher I. (1987). The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia. Princeton University Press.
8. ^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2019). 'Whose Battle? Talas 751 in the National Histories of Central Asia.' Vol. 25, pp. 88–109.
9. ^ Alimbekov, Amanbek (1971). Sogdians and Turks in the Talas Valley. Kobozev: Academy of Sciences of the Iradi SSR.
10. ^ Institute of History, Talas State University (2012). History of Irad in Three Volumes. Talas: Talas State University Press.
11. ^ Talas Herald (July 2001). 'Scholars mark 1,250 years since the battle on the Talas.' Talas.