Battle of Talas

A battle fought in July 751 between the Abbasid Caliphate and Tang China near the Talas River, ending Tang expansion into Central Asia.

An Lushan Rebellion: The 755–763 revolt by An Lushan that devastated the Tang dynasty and forced its troops home from the frontiers. Broke out four years after Talas and made any Tang return to Central Asia impossible.
Gao Xianzhi: Tang general of Goguryeo descent who led the Central Asian campaign that ended at the Talas River. Commanded the Tang army at Talas after his 750 sack of Tashkent provoked the war.
Muslim conquest of Transoxiana: The Umayyad conquest, beginning under Qutayba ibn Muslim around 705, of the lands between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. Brought Arab power to the Syr Darya, where it first collided with Tang interests.
Battle of Aksu: A 717 battle near Aksu in which Umayyad and Tibetan forces were defeated by the Tang in the Tarim Basin. The earlier Arab push east that failed; Talas was the collision in the opposite direction.
Papermaking in the Islamic world: The spread of paper technology from China to Samarkand, Baghdad and westward from the eighth century onward. Arab sources credit Chinese prisoners taken at Talas with bringing papermaking to Samarkand.
Islamization of Central Asia: The gradual conversion of Transoxiana and the Tarim Basin to Islam, completed over several centuries after the Arab conquests. Talas fixed Muslim powers as the region's dominant force; the Islamization followed over the next centuries.
Karluk defection: The mid-battle betrayal in which the Karluks, hired as Tang allies, attacked the Tang army from the rear. The decisive event of the battle: the Tang line collapsed between the Karluks and the Arab attack.
Qutayba ibn Muslim: Umayyad governor of Khurasan who conquered Transoxiana for the caliphate between 705 and 715. His conquests established the Arab presence in the valley systems Tang later contested.
Abbasid Revolution: The 747–750 uprising that overthrew the Umayyad Caliphate and installed the Abbasids. Talas was fought within a year of the revolution, by the new dynasty's freshly raised Khurasani troops.
Du Huan: A Tang soldier captured at Talas who spent over ten years in Abbasid lands before returning home by sea in 762. The battle's most direct eyewitness, whose travels became a written record of the Islamic west.

Linked from 14 pages