Battle of Talas
The Battle of Talas was an armed confrontation between the Abbasid Caliphate along with the Tibetan Empire against the Tang dynasty and its allies in 751. In July of that year, the Tang and Abbasid armies clashed at the Talas River over control of the regions surrounding the Syr Darya. The Tang army under Gao Xianzhi was defeated by the Abbasid army under and Karluk mercenaries. Sources differ on whether the Karluks defected to the Abbasids or if they were Abbasid allies from the start. The defeat marked the end of Tang influence in Transoxiana and halted Tang westward expansion.
After the battle, the caliph dispatched an envoy to the emperor, who arrived in December 752 to negotiate the restoration of diplomatic relations. Chinese prisoners captured at Talas in 751 are said to have introduced papermaking to the peoples of West Asia, although this account is disputed by several findings.
Location
The exact location of the battle has not been confirmed but is believed to be near Taraz and Talas, on the border between present-day Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The Chinese name was first seen in the account of Xuanzang. Du Huan located the city near the western drain of the Chui River.Background
The oasis towns on the Silk Road in central Asia had once been controlled by the Türgesh, but the Turkic tribal confederation plunged into chaos in the latter half of the 7th century. Empress Wu had retaken control of the Tarim Basin from the Tibetan Empire in 692 as part of the Tang expansion in Inner Asia and the oasis towns became a major source of income for the Tang. In 705, Qutayba ibn Muslim started to lead the Umayyad army on campaigns to conquer towns across along the Silk Road, exploiting Türgesh infighting. The caliphate conquered the oasis towns Bukhara and Samarkand, expanding the border of their empire eastwards. At the same time, the Türgesh khagan Suluk began uniting the infighting Türgesh tribes. The Muslim, Tibetan and Tang armies would have two encounters. In 715, Alutar was established as king of Fergana with the help of Umayyad and Tibetan soldiers. The deposed Ikhshid fled to the Tang controlled Kuqa and requested the aid of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang; 10,000 Tang soldiers reinstated Ikhshid as Fergana's king. In 717, Umayyad soldiers, assisted by the Tibetan Empire, besieged Aksu City in the Tarim Basin, but were defeated by the Tang military in the Battle of Aksu.In 715, the Tang emperor declined the demand of the Türgesh tribe leader Suluk to be recognized as Khagan, instead offering him the rank of duke within the Tang military. In response, Suluk invaded the Tarim Basin along with the Tibetans, but they were driven out by the cavalry of Ashina Xian. Suluk and his soldiers regularly challenged Umayyad–Tang control of the oasis towns. Before Suluk's death, his soldiers were defeated by the Tang in 736 and by the Caliphate in 737. At the same time, Türgesh tribes established metal industries in Tang-controlled Fergana Valley, an area that was also home to important centres of iron production. The Karluks, a federation of three Türgesh tribes with settlements around Tian Shan, were producers and exporters of iron weapons to the Tibetan Empire and the Tang dynasty.
In 747, the Tang general Gao Xianzhi, who had successfully fought the Tibetan empire in the Pamir Mountains, established control over the Gilgit region. In early 748, the Abbasid general Abu Muslim occupied Merv, the capital of Greater Khorasan, and went on to lead what has become known as the Abbasid Revolution. In 750, Abu al-'Abbas al-Saffah was proclaimed the first Abbasid caliph in the great mosque of Kufa. The Umayyad Caliphate fell in 750 at the Battle of the Zab. Abu Muslim had raised an army that included Muslims and non-Muslims, which he dispatched westwards to take control over Umayyad territory. In Fergana, the Tang general Gao Xianzhi raised an army by recruiting Karluk Turks. During the reign of Lalitaditya Muktapida, the Karkota dynasty of Kashmir that acknowledged the Tang as suzerain or their vassal lord, supported the Chinese against the Tibetans. According to art historians Denise Patry Leidy and Donna K. Strahan, Kashmir "helped defeat the Arabas at the Battle of Talas in 751".
Battle
The confrontation first emerged during the incident in the land of Shash. The Ikhshid of Ferghana came into conflict with the king of Shash and sought assistance from the Chinese ruler. Gao Xianzhi, the commander who led an army of Tang and Karluk soldiers against the kingdom of Shi in Tashkent. The king of Shi surrendered and submitted to Chinese authority, after which he and his followers were treated without harm but Gao's army plundered the city anyways. The king was brought back to the Tang capital of Chang'an where he was executed by order of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang. The king's son then sought assistance from the Abbasids in the year 133 AH / 751 CE.The number of the combatants involved in the battle of Talas are not known with certainty. According to Chinese sources, the Abbasid army consisted of 200,000 soldiers, included contingents from their Tibetan ally. On the opposite side, Arabic records put the combined Chinese forces at 100,000. Chinese sources record a combined army of 30,000 consisting of 10,000 Tang infantry and 20,000 Karluk mercenaries. A Western estimate of Abbasid forces puts them at 30,000 strong.
The Tongdian, the earliest narrative for battle itself by either side, suggests 30,000 deaths, and the Old Book of Tang counted 20,000 deaths in this battle. Arabic sources estimate Chinese casualties at between 45,000 and 50,000 dead, along with 20,000 to 25,000 captured. Gao Xianzhi's official position was that of the Anxi Jiedu envoy, The total number of Tang troops in the jurisdiction was 24,000 and was stationed in the four countries of Qiuzi, Yanqi, Khotan, and Shule.
Gao Xianzhi was crossing the Pamirs on his return trip to China when he received news of the advancing Arab army. He turned back to confront the Arab army, catching them on the southern bank of the Talas River near the modern city of Taraz. In July 751, the Arab advance guard spotted the Tang forces and opted to hold their ground by digging trenches and forming a densely packed shield and spear formation. They held out until the main army under the command of Ziyad arrived, forcing the Tang forces to retreat to Taraz.
The sequence of the first three days of the battle were similar to each other, with the Chinese attacking first from the front, with their archers and crossbowmen dealing substantial damage to the Arab archers with greater accuracy and ranged superiority in crossbows. For five days, the two armies fought to a stalemate using similar tactics. They formed a shield wall with their infantry, behind which the archers shot volleys of arrows. Occasionally cavalry would charge the enemy and attempt to make a breakthrough.
The Karluk mercenaries, two-thirds of the Tang army, defected to the Abbasids on the fifth day of the battle. Karluk troops attacked the Tang army from the rear while the main Abbasid forces attacked from the front. Gao's troops held out until nightfall before managing to retreat to their camp escape with some of his Tang regulars. Despite the defeat, Gao wanted to continue the battle the next day, however his lieutenant Li Siye convinced him that such a path would lead to their complete destruction. The next morning, the Tang forces started retreating eastward across the Tian Shan mountain range. While they were crossing the mountains, their former Ferghanese allies suddenly attacked them. With the help of Li Siye, who led what remained of the armored cavalry to cut a path out of the encirclement, Gao and many his officers managed to escape, but most of their troops were captured. Out of an estimated 10,000 or 20,000 Tang troops, less than 2,000 managed to return from Talas to their territory in central Asia. Despite losing the battle, Li did inflict heavy losses on the pursuing Arab army after being reproached by Duan Xiushi.
Islamic sources give a different account of the battle. According to these sources, the Tang aided the recently deposed Umayyad Caliphate against the Abbasids in Bukhara and Sogdiana. The two sides engaged in a contest over the Silk Road and its neighboring kingdoms, resulting in the battle in 751, where the Abbasids defeated the Tang army. According to al-Maqdisi and Ibn al-Athir, approximately, 45,000 to 50,000 Chinese soldiers were killed and 20,000 to 25,000 fell as captives. as Arabic sources claim that the Tang commander, Gao Xianzhi, was also killed in action during the battle. As this battle would not have been mentioned were it not for the fact that it determined the fate of Transoxiana, particularly in cultural and political terms. It marked the withdrawal of Tang political influence and the permanent retreat of Chinese civilization, as well as end of Tang expansion from Transoxania, leaving it to fall under the control of Islamic political power first, and then under the enduring influence of Islamic civilization in religion, thought, art, and traditions to this day. It also resulted in Tang being sidelined from the ongoing struggle between the Arabs and both the eastern and western Turks, bringing an end to the long-standing political, military, and economic cooperation between the Turks and the Tang Empire. This cooperation subsequently shifted from eastern to western Turkestan, meaning that after the battle the Turks changed their sphere of orientation and influence. They were left to confront Islamic power on their own, relying solely on their own efforts and resources. This led to their fragmentation, with some Turkic groups being allied with the Arabs while others opposed them for a long period, before eventually becoming integrated into Islamic civilization. Finally, the Tang Empire was compelled to accept Muslim control over the major international trade routes passing through Transoxania. These routes had long been the reason for China's involvement in Turkic affairs, but from this point onward, their various branches and paths came under Muslim control.
According to the 13th century historian, Al-Dhahabi, the Karluks had always been allied with the Abbasid army and entered the battle on their side. Historian Filippo Donvito speculates that the Karluks were simply biding their time to get rid of their Chinese overlords, who had by that time a long history of conquest in Central Asia while the Arabs were still relative newcomers, regardless of what agreement they had with Ziyad.