Reviewing the battle of Talas
one of the most defining moments in Asiatic history is worthwhile because the
same explosive mix continues to dominate Central Asia. We have to learn many
military lessons from the battle of Talas for a scenario like that is still
likely to be useful to unravel Chinese war machine.
In the space of 740-750 AD a
numbers of events of importance transpired in Central Asia. The Moslems from
Merv and Khorasan grouped under Abu Muslim and marched on the Umayyad Kalif and
having routed him placed the Abbasid Kalif as the head of the Moslem world.
Shortly after that, Abu Muslim was commissioned to conduct Jihad in Central
Asia to exterminate the Kaffirs once and for all. It was a great low point for
the Western branch of the Blue Turks. Their great Khan Su’lu who was a bulwark
against the Moslems and the Chinese in the wars of 720 and 723, was
assassinated by the Arabs. The pagan Turkic rulers of Samarqand and Bokhara
came under a heavy assault from the ghazis after the fall of Su’lu when the
Arabs with 300 giant trebuchets stormed the cities and forcibly imposed Islam
with the destruction of the pagan places of worship. Archaeological evidence
shows that these Turkic cities were cosmopolitan with Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism
and the Tengri cults of the Altaics being practiced. The Chinese in the
meantime eliminated a major rival of the Moslems, the Tibetans in a combined
operation with the Indians by smashing them in a 749 and reducing them to
vassalage. The pagan Turkic ruler of Tashkent, known as the Tudun, was
repeatedly pressured by the Chinese to pay tributes to the T’ang emperor of
China. The Uighurs in the mean time became the most powerful Turko-Mongol group
in the east and pushed the Qarluq turks westwards. The Qarluqs remained the
masters of the territory just west of the Balkash lake. The Chinese appointed
the Korean general Kao Sien-chih to enforce the Chinese rule in central Asia
and if possible seize Baltistan, Gilgit and Wakhan from the emperors of Kashmir.
Kao marched right across the Pamirs and capture the Baroghil pass. This allowed
him to led a direct assault on Gilgit, take its chief hostage, and reduce it to
Chinese vassalage. Shri Mangala, the king of Kunduz was battling a Tibetan
invading force, when Kao promised him aid but betrayed him once the former had
beaten the Tibetans. Kao arrested him after pretending to come to sign a treaty
with his large Chinese army. Kao to show his might as the Chinese viceroy of
Central Asia, marched suddenly on Tashkent and seized the city in 750 AD. He
beheaded the Tudun and appropriated the treasury of Tashkent, marking the
pinnacle of Chinese imperialist hegemony. The Turkic Tudun’s son shaken by the
Chinese advance, fled to his cousins, the Qarluqs, and sought their aid against
the imperial T’ang army. The Qarluq Yagbhu having built his cavalry over the
winter of 750 started moving his horde towards the Talas River from the
northern bank. The Arabs under Abu Muslim savagely crushed, the last attempt
made by the populations of Samarqand and Bokhara to rid themselves of the
murderous Ghazis. Abu Muslim sent his victorious commander of these wars, Ziyad
ibn Salih, with a band of 40000 ghazis, to wage a Jihad on the Chinese. The
Arab army marched from the south towards Talas. Kao, itching to prove his might took the cue and marched towards
Aulie-Ata on the Talas with 100000 Chinese troops in cavalry and infantry
divisions. He totally underestimated the strength of the Qarluq horde closing
in from the north. On July 10th 751 AD the Qarluq, Arab and Chinese
armies took to the field in Aulie-Ata. The Chinese cavalry seemed to initially
overwhelm the Arab cavalry, but the Qarluqs forded the river and encircled a
part of the Chinese infantry butchering it to man. The Qarluq archers then shot
down Kao, shaking the Chinese center, which was rapidly assaulted by the Arab
heavy cavalry and destroyed. The infallible Chinese war machine gave way under
combined assault and they faced a heavy rout. The Qarluqs fell upon their animals,
baggage trains and supplies carrying away all they could and receded back into
the steppe. The Arabs rounded up tens of thousands of Chinese and took them to
Samarqand from where Abu Muslim sent them to Baghdad and Damascus to be sold as
slaves, each worth a dirham. One Chinese survivor mentions being kept as cattle
in the Arab prison camps. Abu Muslim and Ziyad made huge financial gains out of
this slave trade and used it to pay their armies. More importantly the Arabs
forced the Chinese prisoners to teach them paper making this allowed them the
spread the Q’uran, with even greater effectiveness. The same year the Southern
division of the Chinese Army faced a disastrous defeat at the hands of the
Thais, opening the once mighty empire for invasion by the Uighur Kha’Khans of
Mongolia.