Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (32 page)

At the same time, the Tibetans expanded into the territory of the former Zhangzhung Kingdom in the western Tibetan Plateau and on into the Pamir region, which straddled the trade routes from the Tarim Basin in Eastern Central Asia to Tokhâristân in Western Central Asia. By 661 to 663 they had subdued the Pamir kingdoms of Balûr (or Bruźa) and Wakhân, and an area around Kashgar. In 663 also, Mgar Stong Rtsan the Conqueror decisively defeated the T’u-yü-hun and incorporated their land and people into the Tibetan Empire. The T’u-yü-hun kaghan, his Chinese princess, and several thousand families of T’u-yü-hun fled to China. The Tibetans subdued Khotan as early as 665, and two years later, after fighting off constant Chinese attacks, the Western Turks nominally accepted Tibetan overlordship. This relationship developed into the Tibetan-Western Turk alliance, which lasted for almost a century, through several changes of regime on both sides.

In 668 the Tibetans constructed defensive fortifications on the Jima Khol (Ta fei ch’uan), a river in the former T’u-yü-hun realm, in anticipation of a Chinese attack. In the early spring of 670, with Khotanese troops, the Tibetans attacked and took Aksu. That left two of the Four Garrisons, Kucha and Karashahr, in Chinese hands. Instead of fighting back, the T’ang withdrew and apparently left East Turkistan to the Tibetans. Later that same spring, though, they responded. The T’ang sent a huge army to attack the Tibetans in the former T’u-yü-hun realm. In a great battle at the Jima Khol, the Chinese were defeated by Mgar Stong Rtsan’s son Mgar Khri ‘Bring. The T’ang moved their Protectorate General of the Pacified West back to Qocho. For the next twenty-two years East Turkistan was theoretically under Tibetan rule. In fact, though Khotan and the region to the west of it do seem to have been under direct Tibetan control, most of the Tarim Basin countries were at least semi-independent during this period.

The 680s were marked by unsettled internal conditions in the home territories of the Arab, Tibetan, and Chinese empires. The Central Asian areas remained much as they were, nominally under the rule of one or the other of these three states. A change began in the later part of the decade, when the Tibetans attacked Kucha and other areas to the north. Tibetan control increased, despite T’ang resistance, until the young Tibetan emperor Khri ‘Dus Srong focused all his attention on an internal problem: wresting personal control of his government from the leaders of the Mgar clan, who had held the actual power while he was a child. At the same time, the T’ang—from 690 actually called the Chou Dynasty, under the usurping female ruler Emperor Wu Chao (r. 690–705)
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—planned to retake the Four Garrisons. In 692 the Chinese governor of Kucha, which was again in Chinese hands, led an army of Chinese and Turks against the Tibetans and defeated them, reestablishing the Four Garrisons. Despite the Tibetans’ attempts to hold onto the region with the help of their subordinate Western Turkic allies, they were decisively defeated by the T’ang in 694 at both of the Tibetans’ strategic points of entrance into Central Asia.

Inside Tibet, Emperor Khri ‘Dus Srong massacred the entire Mgar clan in cold blood.
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He then led the army to the eastern frontier of the Tibetan Empire, where he was killed in 704 during a campaign against the Nan-chao Kingdom (located in what is now Szechuan and Yunnan). The de facto rule passed to his mother, Khrimalod, who governed Tibet at about the same time Wu Chao and her female successors ruled China. The Tibetan Empire recovered only slowly over the next decades and went increasingly on the defensive with respect to T’ang China.

Establishment of the Second Türk Empire

In the Eastern Steppe, the Türk were unhappy under Chinese overlordship. They rebelled unsuccessfully several times until Elteriš Kaghan (r. 682–691), a distant descendant of *Hellig Kaghan, working tirelessly out in the steppes, united the scattered, weakened peoples under his banner. In 682 the Türk again revolted, this time successfully. Elteriš reestablished an independent Türk Empire on the Eastern Steppe. His brother Kapghan Kaghan ‘Buk Chor’ (r. 691–716) succeeded him and further strengthened and expanded the realm. In the very beginning of the eighth century the lands of the Western Turks based in Jungharia and eastern Transoxiana had come under the control of a new confederation of peoples, known as the Türgiš. In 712 the Eastern Turks, under Köl Tigin (Kül Tigin), son of Elteriš, defeated the Türgiš kaghan, *Saqal. They reestablished the long-lost Eastern Türk dominion over the Western Turks, becoming by extension the overlords of Ferghana, Tashkent, and probably most of Sogdiana, in place of the Türgiš.

Arab Conquest of Western Central Asia

The rebels of Khurasan—Central Asia—were resubdued by the Arabs in 671–673. In 673 Mu’âwiya made Khurasan a separate governorship and appointed ‘Ubayd Allâh ibn Ziyâd its first governor. The latter crossed the Oxus River in 674 and raided Baykand (Paykand), the commercial city of the Bukharan Kingdom, forcing Bukhara to pay tribute. When Mu’âwiya died in 681, the succession was troubled and turned into a civil war (684–692), during which most of Khurasan became de facto independent again. After revolts and other internal troubles, ‘Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705) became caliph, and control over the nearer parts of Khurasan was eventually restored. In 695 he appointed a new governor over Iraq and the East, al-Ḥajjâj ibn Yûsuf, still retaining Khurasan, along with Sîstân, as a separate governorship. Due to disastrous rebellions and weak governors, though, ‘Abd al-Malik added Sîstân and Khurasan to al-Ḥajjâj’s governorship in 697. This gave al-Ḥajjâj control over half of the Arab Empire for the rest of ‘Abd al-Malik’s reign and all that of his son al-Walîd I (r. 705–715).

By the late seventh century, not only were the Arabs living in the cities of Khurasan; some of them had acquired land and were becoming assimilated to the local people. Some became so assimilated that they lost their status as tax-exempt Arabs. The relationship with the local people was stronger in Marw than elsewhere. The Arab government even borrowed money from the Sogdians in Marw for an expedition against Sogdiana itself in 696.
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Two of the leaders of the merchant community in Marw at the turn of the century were Thâbit and Hurayth ibn Qutba, each of whom had acquired his own comitatus of
châkars.
Eventually they joined the Arab rebel Mûsâ ibn ‘Abd Allâh ibn Khâzim in Tirmidh and rallied the princes of Transoxiana, Tokhâristân, and the Hephthalites of Bâdghîs in a rebellion against the Umayyads. The alliance broke up, both brothers were killed, and al-Ḥajjâj appointed another governor, al-Mufaḍḍal ibn al-Muḥallab, who finally crushed Mûsâ’s rebellion in Tirmidh in 704. Al-Ḥajjâj then appointed Qutayba ibn Muslim al-Bâhilî governor of Khurasan (705–715).

Qutayba was trained by al-Ḥajjâj himself, and reorganized Arab administration of the province when he arrived in Marw. He also resecured Arab control over Tokhâristân and in the next years captured Paykand, a center of the Chinese trade, and Bukhara, which was finally conquered in 709.
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In 709–710 he took Kišš and Nasaf and also crushed the revolt of Tokhâristân and the Hephtalites, capturing the Yabghu of Tokhâristân, who was sent to the Arab capital of the time, Damascus.
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In 712 Qutayba seized Khwârizm by trickery and settled an Arab colony there. In that year, he also besieged Samarkand. Its king appealed to Tashkent for help, so as overlords of Tashkent the Eastern Türk sent an army led by Köl Tigin into Sogdiana in his support. But Qutayba prevailed. The Türk were forced to withdraw, and the Arabs established a garrison in Samarkand.
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In 714 Qutayba invaded deep into Transoxiana, as far as Ferghana. By this time he had acquired a personal comitatus known as the Archers. Qutayba heard about his patron al-Ḥajjâj’s death (in 714) when he was coming back from a campaign against Shâsh (Tashkent), but he was confirmed by al-Walîd as governor. In 715 Qutayba invaded the Jaxartes provinces again. This time he made an alliance with the Tibetans and a faction of the Ferghana royal family. Together they overthrew the ruler of Ferghana, Bâšak, and replaced him with Alutâr, a member of another royal family.

The same year, while Qutayba was still in Ferghana, al-Walîd died and Sulaymân (r. 715–717) succeeded as caliph. Knowing he would be recalled, Qutayba rebelled. But his army turned against him. Only his comitatus, the Archers, stood by him to the end. All were killed.

Meanwhile, Bâšak had fled to the Chinese in Kucha. The T’ang military governor there organized an expedition and, together with Bâšak, invaded Ferghana in December of the same year, deposed Alutâr, and restored Bâšak to the throne—now as a Chinese dependent.
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Kapghan Kaghan was killed on campaign in 716 shortly after withdrawing from the Türgiš territory. He was succeeded by his nephew, Elteriš’s son Bilgä Kaghan, who was greatly aided by his brother Köl Tigin. *Suluk, the head of the Black Bone clan
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of the Türgiš, became kaghan in the Western Türk domains. He promptly restored Türgiš power and rapidly expanded their territory further than had his predecessors. The Türgiš asserted their claim to the former Western Turkic hegemony over the lands of Transoxiana and Tokhâristân. They thus became the supporters of the local peoples against the Arabs and Islam and also the close allies of the Tibetans.

The Chinese saw the Türgiš alliance with the Tibetans as the realization of a connection between north and south, feared from Han times, that would cut China off from the West.
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As conscious imitators of the Han, the T’ang were bound to attempt to break the alliance. They and the Arabs made a secret alliance of their own and planned the downfall of the Türgiš and Tibetans.

The T’ang-Silla Conquest of Koguryo

The monumental Sui and early T’ang attempts to reestablish the Han Dynasty dominion over southern Manchuria and northern Korea had failed one after the other, defeated by the redoubtable forces of the Kingdom of Koguryo. But in 642 internal troubles struck Koguryo when the usurper *Ür Ghap Somun (Y?n Kaesomun)
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seized power. He murdered the king and some hundred aristocrats
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and put a son of the dead king on the throne as his puppet. Nevertheless, under his regency Koguryo was able to repulse yet another massive Chinese invasion—this time led by the T’ang emperor T’ai-tsung himself—in 645.
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Under Kao-tsung (r. 649–683), the T’ang made an alliance with Silla, a kingdom in southeastern Korea that had been expanding in the southern Korean Peninsula at the expense of the other kingdoms. Together the allies attacked Paekche, the most highly civilized and second strongest kingdom in Korea, by land and by sea. Despite troops sent by the Koguryo and a fleet sent by the Japanese, the T’ang and Silla defeated Paekche and its allies in 660 and completed their subjugation and occupation of the country in 663.

Then, in 666, *Ür Ghap Somun died. His son Namsaeng succeeded to the position of regent, but his two brothers contested the succession, and Namsaeng appealed to the Chinese for help against them. The T’ang strategists saw their chance. They and the Silla launched a massive offensive against Koguryo from two fronts. Despite a valiant resistance, the Koguryo were crushed in 668, and some 200,000 of them, with the Koguryo king, were taken captive to China. The remaining Koguryo people rebelled against the T’ang in 670, but the Chinese brutally repressed the rebellion four years later, executing the leaders and exiling the survivors deep inside central China. In 676 the T’ang colonial government was forced to withdraw from Pyongyang to Liaotung, and within a few years Silla supplanted T’ang rule in the former Paekche and Koguryo territories except for the northern part of Koguryo, which was incorporated into the new kingdom of Parhae.
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The Koguryo language was still spoken by a few people in the mid-eighth century, but shortly thereafter the people and their language—the only well-attested continental relative of the Japanese-Ryukyuan languages—disappeared completely.
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