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Crossroads Asia
The Battle that Kept the Chinese Out of Central Asia
In 751, a Muslim army and a Chinese army clashed on the banks of the Talas river.
By Catherine Putz
January 08, 2016
2.8k Shares
31 Comments
It’s easy to understand why the battle of Talas in 751 between the Abbasid Caliphate’s Arab-Persian army and the Chinese army is often said to be one of the most important battles in Central Asian history. It was, as James A. Millward wrote in his 2007 history of Xinjiang, the “first and last meeting of Arab and Chinese armies.” For many it marks a decisive point in history–”barely noticed by contemporary chroniclers” wrote Svat Soucek–which decided whether Central Asia would come under the influence of the Muslim world or the Chinese.
The battle of Talas itself decided very little, but its timing was critical.
The Abbasid caliphate in 751 was in its ascendency, having replaced the Umayyad Caliphate in 750. When the Abbasids began their open revolt in 747 the first city taken was Merv (Mary, in modern Turkmenistan). In the early 700s, Qutayba bin Muslim captured several key cities in Central Asia for the Umayyads–including Bukhara and Samarkand–before being killed in 715 by his own army (he’d refused to pledge himself to the new Umayyad Caliph upon the death of Walid I).
Over the ensuing three decades, internecine wars and revolts against Muslim governors wracked the region and opened the door to the Chinese who were working their way back west through Tibet and Xinjiang. In 693, the Tang dynasty re-established its control of the west, though it did not reclaim Kashgar until 728.
With the rise of the Abbasids–who would eventually move the caliphate’s capital east from Damascus to Baghdad–the caliphate would again look east to expand at the same moment local politics would draw the Chinese further west.
By the mid-740s, the Tang controlled trade routes both north and south of the Tianshan mountains in modern Kyrgyzstan. Gao Xianzhi (also known as Ko Sonji, a Korean general serving the Tang) had been engaged in a series of campaigns to drive the Tibetans out of the Pamir mountains when a quarrel between the Chabish of Tashkent and Ilkhshid of Fergana erupted (Soucek writes that the ruler of Tashkent used the Turkish title Chabish while the ruler of Fergana used the Iranian title Ilkhshid). The leader of Tashkent allied with the remnants of a tribal confederacy the Chinese had crushed years earlier, so the leader of Fergana called on the Tang for help. Gao captured Tashkent and its leader while his army sacked the city in 750. Eventually Gao executed the Chabish, whose son fled to the Abbasids in Samarkand for help.
The governor of Samarkand, Ziyad ibn Salih, asked Abu Muslim (the Abbasid general who had led the revolt in Merv) for reinforcements and after they arrived set off in the direction of Chinese territory. The two armies met along the Talas river. By some accounts, both sides fielded armies in excess of 100,000 troops each (other estimates are significantly lower). The Tang were reinforced by the Karluks (Qarluqs), a Turkic Central Asian tribal confederacy, a fact which would prove unexpectedly decisive. The Karluks switched sides and attacked the rear of the Tang army as the Abbasids attacked the front. Gao managed to escape but with only a fraction of his army.
Millward notes, however, that it was not Gao’s defeat at Talas that forced the Chinese to retreat from Central Asia. Instead, before Gao could return to his unfinished business with the Abbasids, the An Lushan rebellion shattered Tang control of the west. “The An Lushan rebellion in the Tang homelands necessitated a pullback from Tang outposts in Xinjiang,” Millward writes. “Although the Tang dynasty survived the An Lushan rebellion, it would never extend power as far west as Xinjiang.”
The battle of Talas, lacking any greater strategic importance, is nonetheless a key piece of Central Asia’s history and provides a crucial lesson that in matters of war and empire, timing is everything.
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Elvis • 2 days ago
What If, there had been no rebellion by general An Lushan? If the Tang armies returned, defeated the Arabs, & reestablished Chinese suzerainty over Central Asia? Perhaps the Oguz Turks would not have converted to Islam and remained Buddhist or Shamanistic. That means no invasion (jihad) of the Middle East by one of their clans, the Seljuk Turks. No appeals to Western Europe for help from the Byzantine Empire, and therefore no Crusades. Fast forward a couple centuries and no House of Osman, therefore no Ottoman Empire.
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Inquisitive Corgi > Elvis • 2 days ago
Wow. That would have been pretty interesting huh. Byzantium probably would have still slowly been whittled away, but with no Turks the Eastern Roman Empire would've survived till fairly recently.
I guess the real question is: would the Mongols / Tartars still have risen with the Tang firmly in control of China proper? That would've also had a grand web of butterfly effects across the Eurasian continent.
Ah alternate history, full of infinite possibilities.
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Elvis > Inquisitive Corgi • 2 days ago
Good question. After all the Tang Dynasty had conquered the Mongols of that era, the Gokturks who had built a steppe nomad Empire that encompassed Mongolia, Xinjiang, Manchuria, & Central Asia. Said former Gokturk territories came under direct Tang rule (e.g. Xinjiang) or suzerainty (e.g. Central Asia).
Not only did the Tang defeat and conquer them, but Emperor Taizong and his two successors were given the title of Great Khan by the steppe nomads. They were the only individuals who were not steppe nomads who ever received that honor from the horse riding nomads.
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Easy Al > Inquisitive Corgi • a day ago
Since China was united and ruled by the court headed by emperor, the length of dynasty ranges from 12 to 289 years. Tang dynasty is the longest one. The problem is that the dynasty court get more and more corrupted as time goes. Eventually, people would up-rise and violently overthrow the dynasty. So, my answer to your question is that Mongols / Tartars would still likely have risen because it extremely unlikely that the Tang dynasty could last another 200 years.
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Elvis > Easy Al • a day ago
Longest one? Only if you consider the Western & Eastern Han dynastic periods separately. If the Tang Dynasty did not have its latter period dominated by generals, a result of the An Lushan Rebellion it may had not led to the "5 Dynasties & 10 Kingdoms" period.
A time when the Imperial throne was in the hands of dynasties created by several successive generals. When the southern part of China temporarily broke of info 10 kingdoms, while the northern border (Great Wall) lost to the Khitan Mongols (who later established the Liao Dynasty) and the northwestern horse pastures to the Tanguts (who later established Xixia).
If the successor state had controlled the northern border region with its "Great Wall" & fortresses, the northern defenses of the Yellow River Valley would have been vastly strengthened. If they still possessed the horse pastures, they would have possessed the offensive power of the Tang cavalry armies.
As for the Mongols, part of the reason they were able to defeat their rivals the Tatars, was that their southern neighbors the empires of the Khitan Liao and later Jurchen Jin were focused on their Wars with the Song Dynasty. If China proper was ruled by a Dynasty that was not on the defensive, it would have been the rival confederations of the Mongolian Plateau that would have likely come under Chinese suzerainty.
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Liars N. Fools • 3 days ago
The battle of Talas is actually one of my favorites because of the cast of personnel on the Tang side. Gao/Go is specifically from Gogureo (he probably would have self-identified as such since "Korea" would not be a term he would understand since "Koryo" -- from which "Korea" derives -- would not exist for centuries afterwards. An Lushan himself was ethnically Turkic even though he was the highest official of the Tang court. The Tang ruling family itself probably had Turkic antecedents. This was the great multiethnic Chinese dynasties.
In addition to many Chinese, many Koreans are aware of the extent to which Koreans were part of the diversity in the steppe regions extending to Central Asia. So just because many westerners -- and I'll lump the Japanese in with them -- are ignorant of the battle does not mean that it is obscure to Chinese and Koreans.
Many ethnic Chinese in southern China, incidentally, describe themselves as Tang -- as opposed to Han -- Chinese, and San Francisco Chinatown is sometimes referred to as 唐人街.
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Elvis > Liars N. Fools • 2 days ago
Yeah, the Tang Dynasty (mixed Han Chinese / Xianpei Turk) ruled over the cosmopolitan period of Imperial Chinese history. When China was the most open to foreign ideas and its culture was at its most influential outside of China. When many immigrants lived in their port cities and served the emperors as monks, generals, ministers, and so on. Too bad the devastating An Lushan Rebellion put an end to that.
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Jon Steward > Elvis • 2 days ago
Xianpei is not Turk. Xianpei come from Northeast China dàxīngānlǐng.
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Elvis > Jon Steward • 2 days ago
There is debate about that. One school of thought says that they were proto-Turks. Another school of thought says that they were proto-Mongols. They lived in Eastern Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, & Northeast China. Since the Toba Wei Dynasty that conquered northern China was a branch of the Xianbei, we can say that the latter Sui & Tang dynasties were either mixed Han Chinese / Turk or mixed Han Chinese / Mongol.
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Bankotsu > Jon Steward • a day ago
Xianbei's most powerful military ruler was this guy:
Tanshihuai
http://historyofmongolia1.blog...
http://gumilevica.kulichki.net...
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Bankotsu > Liars N. Fools • 2 days ago
"Han" and "Tang" can both be referred to by chinese. There is no meaningful distinction between the two by chinese.
I am "han chinese" or I am "Tang lang(person)" - there is no difference.
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Kira • 2 days ago
What if the Chinese(Han Chinese) today were Muslims instead of Buddhists ?
That would have been a very interesting case.
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Bankotsu > Kira • 2 days ago
That would be the Hui people.
Hui people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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Kira > Bankotsu • 2 days ago
Anyways,thanks for the article.Hui are Han people who follow Islam.I get that.
I mean the Chinese today,the Han Chinese,if all of them were Muslims ?
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Elvis > Kira • 2 days ago
Who knows but that would have been one of the unlikely scenarios. Imperial China at that time was leagues more powerful and united than either medieval Europe or India. Odds of the Islamic Empires of the Arabs, and later Turks conquering the Chinese is extremely low.
That being said, I subscribe to the theory that there is a Multiverse of countless universes with infinite possibilities. Therefore somewhere out there it probably happened, and if it did, the Islamic conquest and conversion of the Han Chinese would have resulted in only one thing. All of Asia would have become Muslim, via either Jihad Wars or missionaries. Odds are good that the rest of the world would have followed with such resources at their command.
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Kira > Elvis • a day ago
Even,if the Mongols who ultimately did succeed in conquering China(who themselves became Sinotized later),if they were Muslims earlier,like what happened after the break up of the great Mongol empire,then too,it would have been a very scary prospect for China.Good for it,that no Islamic armies ever managed to overrun it unlike in the case of India.As for India never being united is true even now and all throughout history in linguistic,cultural or religious sense,although,India as a geographical entity was at various junctures in history united under strong empires like Maurya,Maratha or Mughal etc.
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chsr • a day ago
Please study more of China history and then issue,otherwise quiet will be better.
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Bungarra • a day ago
Not sure about the exact timing. The demand from India for horses at one stage, for occasional massive horse sacrifices (>100,000) religious observances in the Indian Sub continent required that there was extensive trading networks from the South into this area as well. I would suggest that the interaction of both India and trade along the Southern Silk Road (out of Yunnan) could also be significant contributing factors to this history of the area. Much research to be done, including that of human DNA to track influences in the region.
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Tsinging • 2 days ago
I kinda like to see The Diplomat get torn apart between anti-China and anti-Muslim sentiments
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JEng • 2 days ago
So this article claims Xinjiang for non Chinese - so why did Sven Hedin find the Great Wall extended to Xinjiang? He was also in Tibet as well.
Why would this website remove the comment when I first offered this link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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Doan • 2 days ago
Despite being confronted on both sides, the heavily outnumbered Tang managed to break out and inflicted heavy damage to the enemies while in retreat. That's what I have read, too.
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Bob Bob • 2 days ago
“first and last meeting of Arab and Chinese armies.”
They have clashed with Arab/Muslim armies since then. Yuan dynasty is a successor state of the Mongol empire - which rampaged through Muslim lands eventually sacking Baghdad.
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drkkrw > Bob Bob • 2 days ago
totally un-Chinese though. i don't think anyone (apart from some deluded Chinese) counts the Mongol/Yuan army as Chinese.
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Tian Zhao • 3 days ago
You can't be serious in thinking that the Chinese had 100,000 troops...
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gtiger • 3 days ago
Chinese internal problems would have ended its western expansion even if Gao Xianzhi had won the battle at Talas. The An Lushan rebellion and the rebellion that followed it would embroil China in constant warfare for the better part of a decade, consuming the life of Gao Xianzhi himself (executed on the false charge of treason.) For decades afterwards, the Tang court struggled to maintain control territories that it already possessed. It was only partially successful in that kind of efforts for some brief periods during the remaining century of its rule. Had the Tang army won the battle at Talas, the Chinese would have very likely lost the territories it gained anyway.
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Valkyrie • 2 days ago
Is there a battle that China has ever won? Seems like when it comes to martial history and reputation, China is at the very bottom.
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Bankotsu > Valkyrie • 2 days ago
List of Chinese wars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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Elvis > Bankotsu • 2 days ago
He has never had anything good to say about the Chinese in my experience. Tell him about all the military achievements of China and he will accuse you of lies or propaganda, or bring out the trope about "human waves".
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drkkrw > Elvis • 2 days ago
lol. reminds me of those around the world that claim America has never won a war...either coming in late and slow towards the end or using unfair technology advantage ("not real men!") or simply bullying small/backward countries...i guess it is a psychological survival mechanism.
been reading some history lately. what amazes me though about the historical sinosphere is that military prowess was never the key (unlike the Roman world)...plenty had conquered the Chinese state but somehow they then capitulated to Chinese 'soft power' and became Chinese themselves within 100 years or so (or they got kicked out in that time frame).
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Elvis > drkkrw • a day ago
Even then, only two foreign powers conquered the Chinese (Mongols & Manchus). The others like the Toba, Khitans, and Jin conquered Chinese territories but not the state which continued to exist, sometimes relocating the capital and Dynasty.
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drkkrw > Valkyrie • 2 days ago
wouldn't that prove theirs and this Martin Someone's claim that the Chinese have always 'conquered' 'peacefully'? since they ve grown to this size and dominance in Asia by losing wars against all their more martial competitors?
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For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://thediplomat.com/2016/01/the-...l&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Crossroads Asia
The Battle that Kept the Chinese Out of Central Asia
In 751, a Muslim army and a Chinese army clashed on the banks of the Talas river.
By Catherine Putz
January 08, 2016
2.8k Shares
31 Comments
It’s easy to understand why the battle of Talas in 751 between the Abbasid Caliphate’s Arab-Persian army and the Chinese army is often said to be one of the most important battles in Central Asian history. It was, as James A. Millward wrote in his 2007 history of Xinjiang, the “first and last meeting of Arab and Chinese armies.” For many it marks a decisive point in history–”barely noticed by contemporary chroniclers” wrote Svat Soucek–which decided whether Central Asia would come under the influence of the Muslim world or the Chinese.
The battle of Talas itself decided very little, but its timing was critical.
The Abbasid caliphate in 751 was in its ascendency, having replaced the Umayyad Caliphate in 750. When the Abbasids began their open revolt in 747 the first city taken was Merv (Mary, in modern Turkmenistan). In the early 700s, Qutayba bin Muslim captured several key cities in Central Asia for the Umayyads–including Bukhara and Samarkand–before being killed in 715 by his own army (he’d refused to pledge himself to the new Umayyad Caliph upon the death of Walid I).
Over the ensuing three decades, internecine wars and revolts against Muslim governors wracked the region and opened the door to the Chinese who were working their way back west through Tibet and Xinjiang. In 693, the Tang dynasty re-established its control of the west, though it did not reclaim Kashgar until 728.
With the rise of the Abbasids–who would eventually move the caliphate’s capital east from Damascus to Baghdad–the caliphate would again look east to expand at the same moment local politics would draw the Chinese further west.
By the mid-740s, the Tang controlled trade routes both north and south of the Tianshan mountains in modern Kyrgyzstan. Gao Xianzhi (also known as Ko Sonji, a Korean general serving the Tang) had been engaged in a series of campaigns to drive the Tibetans out of the Pamir mountains when a quarrel between the Chabish of Tashkent and Ilkhshid of Fergana erupted (Soucek writes that the ruler of Tashkent used the Turkish title Chabish while the ruler of Fergana used the Iranian title Ilkhshid). The leader of Tashkent allied with the remnants of a tribal confederacy the Chinese had crushed years earlier, so the leader of Fergana called on the Tang for help. Gao captured Tashkent and its leader while his army sacked the city in 750. Eventually Gao executed the Chabish, whose son fled to the Abbasids in Samarkand for help.
The governor of Samarkand, Ziyad ibn Salih, asked Abu Muslim (the Abbasid general who had led the revolt in Merv) for reinforcements and after they arrived set off in the direction of Chinese territory. The two armies met along the Talas river. By some accounts, both sides fielded armies in excess of 100,000 troops each (other estimates are significantly lower). The Tang were reinforced by the Karluks (Qarluqs), a Turkic Central Asian tribal confederacy, a fact which would prove unexpectedly decisive. The Karluks switched sides and attacked the rear of the Tang army as the Abbasids attacked the front. Gao managed to escape but with only a fraction of his army.
Millward notes, however, that it was not Gao’s defeat at Talas that forced the Chinese to retreat from Central Asia. Instead, before Gao could return to his unfinished business with the Abbasids, the An Lushan rebellion shattered Tang control of the west. “The An Lushan rebellion in the Tang homelands necessitated a pullback from Tang outposts in Xinjiang,” Millward writes. “Although the Tang dynasty survived the An Lushan rebellion, it would never extend power as far west as Xinjiang.”
The battle of Talas, lacking any greater strategic importance, is nonetheless a key piece of Central Asia’s history and provides a crucial lesson that in matters of war and empire, timing is everything.
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Elvis • 2 days ago
What If, there had been no rebellion by general An Lushan? If the Tang armies returned, defeated the Arabs, & reestablished Chinese suzerainty over Central Asia? Perhaps the Oguz Turks would not have converted to Islam and remained Buddhist or Shamanistic. That means no invasion (jihad) of the Middle East by one of their clans, the Seljuk Turks. No appeals to Western Europe for help from the Byzantine Empire, and therefore no Crusades. Fast forward a couple centuries and no House of Osman, therefore no Ottoman Empire.
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Inquisitive Corgi > Elvis • 2 days ago
Wow. That would have been pretty interesting huh. Byzantium probably would have still slowly been whittled away, but with no Turks the Eastern Roman Empire would've survived till fairly recently.
I guess the real question is: would the Mongols / Tartars still have risen with the Tang firmly in control of China proper? That would've also had a grand web of butterfly effects across the Eurasian continent.
Ah alternate history, full of infinite possibilities.
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Elvis > Inquisitive Corgi • 2 days ago
Good question. After all the Tang Dynasty had conquered the Mongols of that era, the Gokturks who had built a steppe nomad Empire that encompassed Mongolia, Xinjiang, Manchuria, & Central Asia. Said former Gokturk territories came under direct Tang rule (e.g. Xinjiang) or suzerainty (e.g. Central Asia).
Not only did the Tang defeat and conquer them, but Emperor Taizong and his two successors were given the title of Great Khan by the steppe nomads. They were the only individuals who were not steppe nomads who ever received that honor from the horse riding nomads.
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Easy Al > Inquisitive Corgi • a day ago
Since China was united and ruled by the court headed by emperor, the length of dynasty ranges from 12 to 289 years. Tang dynasty is the longest one. The problem is that the dynasty court get more and more corrupted as time goes. Eventually, people would up-rise and violently overthrow the dynasty. So, my answer to your question is that Mongols / Tartars would still likely have risen because it extremely unlikely that the Tang dynasty could last another 200 years.
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Elvis > Easy Al • a day ago
Longest one? Only if you consider the Western & Eastern Han dynastic periods separately. If the Tang Dynasty did not have its latter period dominated by generals, a result of the An Lushan Rebellion it may had not led to the "5 Dynasties & 10 Kingdoms" period.
A time when the Imperial throne was in the hands of dynasties created by several successive generals. When the southern part of China temporarily broke of info 10 kingdoms, while the northern border (Great Wall) lost to the Khitan Mongols (who later established the Liao Dynasty) and the northwestern horse pastures to the Tanguts (who later established Xixia).
If the successor state had controlled the northern border region with its "Great Wall" & fortresses, the northern defenses of the Yellow River Valley would have been vastly strengthened. If they still possessed the horse pastures, they would have possessed the offensive power of the Tang cavalry armies.
As for the Mongols, part of the reason they were able to defeat their rivals the Tatars, was that their southern neighbors the empires of the Khitan Liao and later Jurchen Jin were focused on their Wars with the Song Dynasty. If China proper was ruled by a Dynasty that was not on the defensive, it would have been the rival confederations of the Mongolian Plateau that would have likely come under Chinese suzerainty.
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Liars N. Fools • 3 days ago
The battle of Talas is actually one of my favorites because of the cast of personnel on the Tang side. Gao/Go is specifically from Gogureo (he probably would have self-identified as such since "Korea" would not be a term he would understand since "Koryo" -- from which "Korea" derives -- would not exist for centuries afterwards. An Lushan himself was ethnically Turkic even though he was the highest official of the Tang court. The Tang ruling family itself probably had Turkic antecedents. This was the great multiethnic Chinese dynasties.
In addition to many Chinese, many Koreans are aware of the extent to which Koreans were part of the diversity in the steppe regions extending to Central Asia. So just because many westerners -- and I'll lump the Japanese in with them -- are ignorant of the battle does not mean that it is obscure to Chinese and Koreans.
Many ethnic Chinese in southern China, incidentally, describe themselves as Tang -- as opposed to Han -- Chinese, and San Francisco Chinatown is sometimes referred to as 唐人街.
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Elvis > Liars N. Fools • 2 days ago
Yeah, the Tang Dynasty (mixed Han Chinese / Xianpei Turk) ruled over the cosmopolitan period of Imperial Chinese history. When China was the most open to foreign ideas and its culture was at its most influential outside of China. When many immigrants lived in their port cities and served the emperors as monks, generals, ministers, and so on. Too bad the devastating An Lushan Rebellion put an end to that.
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Jon Steward > Elvis • 2 days ago
Xianpei is not Turk. Xianpei come from Northeast China dàxīngānlǐng.
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Elvis > Jon Steward • 2 days ago
There is debate about that. One school of thought says that they were proto-Turks. Another school of thought says that they were proto-Mongols. They lived in Eastern Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, & Northeast China. Since the Toba Wei Dynasty that conquered northern China was a branch of the Xianbei, we can say that the latter Sui & Tang dynasties were either mixed Han Chinese / Turk or mixed Han Chinese / Mongol.
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Bankotsu > Jon Steward • a day ago
Xianbei's most powerful military ruler was this guy:
Tanshihuai
http://historyofmongolia1.blog...
http://gumilevica.kulichki.net...
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Bankotsu > Liars N. Fools • 2 days ago
"Han" and "Tang" can both be referred to by chinese. There is no meaningful distinction between the two by chinese.
I am "han chinese" or I am "Tang lang(person)" - there is no difference.
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Kira • 2 days ago
What if the Chinese(Han Chinese) today were Muslims instead of Buddhists ?
That would have been a very interesting case.
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Bankotsu > Kira • 2 days ago
That would be the Hui people.
Hui people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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Kira > Bankotsu • 2 days ago
Anyways,thanks for the article.Hui are Han people who follow Islam.I get that.
I mean the Chinese today,the Han Chinese,if all of them were Muslims ?
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Elvis > Kira • 2 days ago
Who knows but that would have been one of the unlikely scenarios. Imperial China at that time was leagues more powerful and united than either medieval Europe or India. Odds of the Islamic Empires of the Arabs, and later Turks conquering the Chinese is extremely low.
That being said, I subscribe to the theory that there is a Multiverse of countless universes with infinite possibilities. Therefore somewhere out there it probably happened, and if it did, the Islamic conquest and conversion of the Han Chinese would have resulted in only one thing. All of Asia would have become Muslim, via either Jihad Wars or missionaries. Odds are good that the rest of the world would have followed with such resources at their command.
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Kira > Elvis • a day ago
Even,if the Mongols who ultimately did succeed in conquering China(who themselves became Sinotized later),if they were Muslims earlier,like what happened after the break up of the great Mongol empire,then too,it would have been a very scary prospect for China.Good for it,that no Islamic armies ever managed to overrun it unlike in the case of India.As for India never being united is true even now and all throughout history in linguistic,cultural or religious sense,although,India as a geographical entity was at various junctures in history united under strong empires like Maurya,Maratha or Mughal etc.
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chsr • a day ago
Please study more of China history and then issue,otherwise quiet will be better.
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Bungarra • a day ago
Not sure about the exact timing. The demand from India for horses at one stage, for occasional massive horse sacrifices (>100,000) religious observances in the Indian Sub continent required that there was extensive trading networks from the South into this area as well. I would suggest that the interaction of both India and trade along the Southern Silk Road (out of Yunnan) could also be significant contributing factors to this history of the area. Much research to be done, including that of human DNA to track influences in the region.
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Tsinging • 2 days ago
I kinda like to see The Diplomat get torn apart between anti-China and anti-Muslim sentiments
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JEng • 2 days ago
So this article claims Xinjiang for non Chinese - so why did Sven Hedin find the Great Wall extended to Xinjiang? He was also in Tibet as well.
Why would this website remove the comment when I first offered this link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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Doan • 2 days ago
Despite being confronted on both sides, the heavily outnumbered Tang managed to break out and inflicted heavy damage to the enemies while in retreat. That's what I have read, too.
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Bob Bob • 2 days ago
“first and last meeting of Arab and Chinese armies.”
They have clashed with Arab/Muslim armies since then. Yuan dynasty is a successor state of the Mongol empire - which rampaged through Muslim lands eventually sacking Baghdad.
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drkkrw > Bob Bob • 2 days ago
totally un-Chinese though. i don't think anyone (apart from some deluded Chinese) counts the Mongol/Yuan army as Chinese.
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Tian Zhao • 3 days ago
You can't be serious in thinking that the Chinese had 100,000 troops...
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gtiger • 3 days ago
Chinese internal problems would have ended its western expansion even if Gao Xianzhi had won the battle at Talas. The An Lushan rebellion and the rebellion that followed it would embroil China in constant warfare for the better part of a decade, consuming the life of Gao Xianzhi himself (executed on the false charge of treason.) For decades afterwards, the Tang court struggled to maintain control territories that it already possessed. It was only partially successful in that kind of efforts for some brief periods during the remaining century of its rule. Had the Tang army won the battle at Talas, the Chinese would have very likely lost the territories it gained anyway.
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Valkyrie • 2 days ago
Is there a battle that China has ever won? Seems like when it comes to martial history and reputation, China is at the very bottom.
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Bankotsu > Valkyrie • 2 days ago
List of Chinese wars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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Elvis > Bankotsu • 2 days ago
He has never had anything good to say about the Chinese in my experience. Tell him about all the military achievements of China and he will accuse you of lies or propaganda, or bring out the trope about "human waves".
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drkkrw > Elvis • 2 days ago
lol. reminds me of those around the world that claim America has never won a war...either coming in late and slow towards the end or using unfair technology advantage ("not real men!") or simply bullying small/backward countries...i guess it is a psychological survival mechanism.
been reading some history lately. what amazes me though about the historical sinosphere is that military prowess was never the key (unlike the Roman world)...plenty had conquered the Chinese state but somehow they then capitulated to Chinese 'soft power' and became Chinese themselves within 100 years or so (or they got kicked out in that time frame).
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Elvis > drkkrw • a day ago
Even then, only two foreign powers conquered the Chinese (Mongols & Manchus). The others like the Toba, Khitans, and Jin conquered Chinese territories but not the state which continued to exist, sometimes relocating the capital and Dynasty.
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drkkrw > Valkyrie • 2 days ago
wouldn't that prove theirs and this Martin Someone's claim that the Chinese have always 'conquered' 'peacefully'? since they ve grown to this size and dominance in Asia by losing wars against all their more martial competitors?
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