The Battle of Talas

ThoughtCo ^ | October 23, 2019 | Kallie Szczepanski

[SunkenCiv]

...Eighth century Asia was an ever-shifting mosaic of different tribal and regional powers, fighting for trade rights, political power and/or religious hegemony. The era was characterized by a dizzying array of battles, alliances, double-crosses and betrayals.

At the time, nobody could have known that one particular battle, which took place on the banks of the Talas River in present-day Kyrgyzstan, would halt the Arab and Chinese advances in Central Asia and fix the boundary between Buddhist/Confucianist Asia and Muslim Asia.

None of the combatants could have predicted that this battle would be instrumental in transmitting a key invention from China to the western world: the art of paper-making, a technology that would alter world history forever...

Control of what is now Xinjiang, Western China, and neighboring provinces went back and forth between China and Tibet throughout the seventh and eighth centuries. China also faced challenges from the Turkic Uighurs in the northwest, the Indo-European Turfans, and the Lao/Thai tribes on China's southern borders...

China's interests in Central Asia went back at least to 97 B.C., when the Han Dynasty general Ban Chao led an army of 70,000 as far as Merv (in what is now Turkmenistan), in pursuit of bandit tribes that preyed on early Silk Road caravans.

China also had long courted trade relations with the Sassanid Empire in Persia, as well as their predecessors the Parthians. The Persians and Chinese had collaborated to quell rising Turkic powers, playing different tribal leaders off of one another...

Inevitably, the lightning-quick expansion by the Arabs would clash with China's established interests in Central Asia...

[SunkenCiv]

SY / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

[SunkenCiv]

[Fiji Hill]

The armies of China’s T’ang Dynasty had earlier defeated the Arabs at Kashgar in 736. This defeat, along with the Muslim defeats at Tours in Transalpine Gaul and Akroinon in Anatolia, which happened at about the same time, temporarily halted the Muslim conquests, which for a time threatened to envelop the entire civilized world.

[SunkenCiv]

• Looks like Tang success was shortlived though. Kashgar

[AndyJackson]

Eighth century Asia was an ever-shifting mosaic of different tribal and regional powers, fighting for trade rights, political power and/or religious hegemony. The era was characterized by a dizzying array of battles, alliances, double-crosses and betrayals.

This is the curse of being an Asian land power. You would think that we would have taken comfort in being a sea power and being isolated from all of that, but Nooooooo! our beloved global neocons thought they wanted to try to squander wealth and power fixing the middle east. And we don't even have a vital stake in it, much less do we comprehend it. Except the double crossing and betrayal part. Our neocons got that part down solid and screwed all of us over.

Now when we need to rely on maritime forces we are fixated on another useless land war on the Eurasian land mass.

[Fiji Hill]

Looks like T'ang success was shortlived though

It was. Shortly after the Battle of Talas, the An Lushan rebellion (755-763), one of the bloodiest wars in history--right up there with WWI--broke out in China, and by 906, the T'ang Dynasty was history.

[SunkenCiv]

There's no special curse to being an Asian land power. Take the rest of your idiotic talking points and stuff them up your butt.

[AndyJackson]

When you sober up you should re-read what you just wrote.

[SunkenCiv]

I don't drink, and even anti-American jackoffs can't drive me to it.

[AndyJackson]

How is pointing out the geo-strategic realities of having to live on the Eurasian continent being anti-American? How is advocating focusing on the defense of our maritime allies and trading partners and the force structure required to do that anti-American? How is recognizing that the principal threat to all of that is China anti-American?

Or are you a neo-con Bush boot licker?

[SunkenCiv]

Everything you say is anti-American.

[AndyJackson]

okie dokie

[colorado tanker]

Well, to bring this back to the issue at hand . . . I was not at all aware of the Battle of Talas, but it does explain a lot about how the Silk Road eventually came to be governed. Thanks for posting.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks, it was crying out for a change. Same boat, likewise (for me) the battle of Kashgar. It’s likely that they were fairly small places but larger than anything anywhere nearby. As realtors say, it’s location location location. :^)