Battle of Talas

The Battle of Talas was fought in July 751 near the Talas River in Central Asia, on the borderlands of today's Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. An army of the Chinese Tang dynasty under the general Gao Xianzhi was defeated by forces of the newly founded Abbasid Caliphate under Ziyad ibn Salih, helped by the defection or intervention of Karluk Turkic troops. It is the only major recorded clash between Arab and Chinese armies, and it is often linked, with some exaggeration, to the spread of papermaking westward.

In the first half of the eighth century the Tang dynasty extended its power deep into Central Asia, controlling the oasis cities of the Tarim Basin and claiming overlordship over states west of the Tian Shan mountains. At the same time Arab armies had conquered Transoxiana, the lands between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers. The Tibetan Empire competed with both for the region. The local princes of Ferghana, Chach (around modern Tashkent) and other states played the powers off against each other.

Gao Xianzhi, a general of Korean descent, had won fame in 747 by leading a Tang army across the Pamirs to defeat Tibetan forces. In 750 he attacked Chach and plundered the city even though its ruler had submitted; the ruler was taken to the Tang capital and executed. The ruler's son fled to seek help from the Arabs. In the caliphate, the Abbasids had just overthrown the Umayyads in 750, and their governor in Khurasan, Abu Muslim, sent troops under Ziyad ibn Salih to answer the appeal. Gao advanced west to meet the threat.

The armies met near the Talas River in July 751. Figures for their size vary widely: Chinese accounts give the Tang side between 10,000 and 20,000 of its own troops plus Karluk auxiliaries, Arab writers claim 100,000, and modern historians tend to suggest around 30,000 on each side. According to Chinese sources the fighting was even for five days before the Karluks, who had been fighting with the Tang, changed sides and attacked them, leading to a heavy defeat. The sources differ on this, and some historians think the Karluks were allied with the Abbasids from the start. Gao Xianzhi escaped with a small remnant of his army, and many Tang soldiers were taken prisoner.

The battle is often described as the moment that fixed the frontier between the Chinese and Islamic worlds in Central Asia. Its immediate significance was more modest: the caliphate made no attempt to advance into Chinese territory, and an Abbasid embassy arrived at the Tang court in December 752. What ended Tang ambitions in the west was the An Lushan Rebellion, which broke out in 755 and forced the dynasty to withdraw its troops from Central Asia. Over the following centuries the Turkic peoples of the region gradually converted to Islam rather than coming under Chinese influence.

One prisoner, Du Huan, spent about a decade in the caliphate and later wrote an account of his travels, part of which survives in a Chinese encyclopaedia. Later Arabic writers claimed that Chinese prisoners taught papermaking to the people of Samarkand, from where it spread to Baghdad and beyond. Paper was certainly being made in the Islamic world soon after, but some historians argue the technique was already known in Central Asia before 751, so the story may simplify a longer process of transmission.

Our 700 map shows the Tang dynasty and the Umayyad Caliphate expanding towards each other in Central Asia, and the 800 map shows the Abbasid Caliphate after the battle.