Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (34 page)
Authors: Christopher I. Beckwith
Tags: #History, #General, #Asia, #Europe, #Eastern, #Central Asia
70
The first two syllables of his full Old Koguryo name are *Ür and *Ghap (*fiaip ~ *γap); see Beckwith (2007a: 46, 62–63). The second syllable is not *kaj
3
(Pul. 102), the Middle Chinese ancestor of the later reading Kai, Sino-Korean Kae; the reading seems to be a medieval error. His unknown personal name is conventionally transcribed in Sino-Korean form as Somun. Old Koguryo *fiaip ‘great mountain’, from Archaic Koguryo *fiapma ‘great mountain’, is cognate to Old Japanese *yama ‘mountain’ (Beckwith 2007a: 46, 121).
71
These men were probably the king’s comitatus, but the sources are extremely laconic and do not give enough information to allow more to be said about them.
72
Wechsler (1979b: 232–233).
73
Twitchett and Wechsler (1979: 282–284), Beckwith (2007a: 46–49).
74
On the Koguryo (or Puyo-Koguryo) language and its relationship to the Japanese-Ryukyuan languages, see Beckwith (2005a, 2006e, 2007a).
75
Wood (1994: 146–147); Scherman (1987: 232–233).
76
This is the traditional Battle of Poitiers, q.v. Wood (1994: 283).
77
See Wood (1994: 273–274, 281–284) for details and problems.
78
The ideology was maintained as late as the Mongols and is very clearly expressed in the Mongol rulers’ letters to other rulers demanding their submission.
79
Beckwith (1993: 14–15, 19–20). On the title emperor among the Franks and Avars, see endnote
70
.
80
See Schamiloglu (1984a), whose description largely refers to the Mongol Empire and post-Mongol period. This was an “ideal” political organization system in most of Central Eurasia, much noted in the sources from the earliest times. The extent to which it was put into actual practice in all regions “on the ground” should be examined carefully.
81
The Chinese accounts of the early Puyo Kingdom list a sovereign plus four subdivisions; for Koguryo they name five directions or subdivisions, of which the center or Yellow subdivision was that of the royal clan
(SKC
30: 843;
HHS
85: 2813; Beckwith 2007a: 41–42). This is similar to the later-attested Khitan (Liao Dynasty) system.
82
This would seem to be the intended meaning of Menander’s term Σγεμoviα
h
ê
egemonia,
translated as “principalities” by Blockley (1985: 114–115).
83
Blockley (1985: 115). On the name of the Türk royal clan, *Aršilas, see endnote
71
.
84
For discussion of proposed etymologies of the name *Aršilas, see endnote
72
.
85
See Uray (1960).
86
One of them, An-nan ‘the Pacified South’, survives in name to modern times as Annam, an old name for Vietnam. The capital Ch’ang-an ‘Eternal Peace’ would appear to have been conceptually in the middle, but it is an ancient name and seems not to be mentioned in connection with the four geographical units. The usual Chinese name of China itself,
Chung-kuo,
is thought to have meant, originally, ‘the Central States’ rather than ‘the Middle Kingdom’, which is a later reinterpretation of the name.
87
Manz (1989: 4) notes, “Chinggis divided his steppe empire into four great territories, later known as the four
uluses,
which he assigned to his sons along with sections of his army.” The Chinggisids are well known for their quadripartite state structure (Schamiloglu 1984a).
88
The pretense was maintained at all official levels until the early ninth century, when the first true bilateral treaty in eastern Eurasia was signed between the Chinese and Tibetan empires (Beckwith 1993). However, the imperial ideology did not disappear entirely from Eurasia. The Mongols under Chinggis Khan still followed it in the thirteenth century, and the Chinese have continued to follow it down to modern times.
89
Cf. de la Vaissière (2005a: 186).
6
The Silk Road, Revolution, and Collapse
He has led you away
and separated you from me
He has made me partake of every suffering
and taken away all my joy
—From an anonymous Tokharian poem
1
Mercantile Power, Monasticism, Art, and Science
Within a thirteen-year period in the mid-eighth century, every empire in Eurasia suffered a major rebellion, revolution, or dynastic change. The turmoil began in 742 with the overthrow of the Türk dynasty in the Eastern Steppe and establishment of the Sogdian-influenced Uighurs, and simultaneously a major rebellion in the Byzantine Empire. These were followed in short succession by the Abbasid revolution in the Arab Empire, organized by merchants in the Central Asian trading city of Marw; the Carolingian revolution in the Frankish kingdom; a major rebellion in the Tibetan Empire in 755; and beginning late in the same year, a great rebellion in the Chinese Empire organized and led by An Lu-shan, a Turco-Sogdian general in the T’ang army.
The reestablishment of peace was followed by the building of carefully planned, symbolic cultural centers by the younger imperial powers: the Arabs’ circular-plan cosmological City of Peace palace-and-mosque complex at Baghdad, designed in accordance with Central Asian Iranian ideas and settled with Central Asians; the circular-plan Tibetan monastic complex of Samye at Bragmar; and the sixteen-sided
2
cathedral of the new Frankish capital at Aachen. Each of these states, and the other young empires as well, declared their official support for a particular world religion or sect.
The most significant developments in the following century were the spread of national literacy across Eurasia; the further shift of the world’s commercial, cultural, and scientific center to Western Central Asia; and the northward shift of trade routes—in the West, the routes between the caliphate and Europe shifted to a northern route running from Central Asia via the Volga River to Old Ladoga and the Baltic Sea, greatly stimulating economic development in Northern Europe, while in the East the routes between China and Central Asia shifted north to pass through Uighur territory. The capital of the Arab Empire under al-Ma’mûn was in Marw in Central Asia itself for a decade; when the caliph finally moved it back to Baghdad, he brought with him another influx of Central Asians and Central Asian culture. This brought about a brilliant fusion of intellectual-scientific culture in the Arab Empire. Some of the epoch’s achievements, later transmitted to Europe via Islamic Spain, were fundamental to the Scientific Revolution.
The Revolutions and Rebellions of the Mid-Eighth Century
The causes of the great upheaval in Eurasia in the middle of the eighth century remain to be established. Given the interconnectedness of the Eurasian world by that time, it is perhaps conceivable that the changes that occurred in Central Asia and the Eastern Steppe between 737 and 742 set in motion a domino effect that spread across the continent. However, this does not seem to account for the Carolingian Revolution in 751 or the Tibetan Rebellion in 755. A few common elements are known. By far the most important of these is surely the fact that all of the better-known rebellions or revolutions, beginning with the very first one, in the Eastern Steppe, were led by merchants or people closely connected to merchants and international commerce.
THE TURKS IN CENTRAL ASIA AND THE EASTERN STEPPE
The Türgiš in the lands of the Western Turks were the overlords of the Central Asian trading cities, the heart of the Silk Road commercial system. Many explicit references in the Arabic and Chinese sources reveal that they were the protectors and patrons of commerce in Jungharia and most of the rest of Central Asia as well.
3
However, the relentless attacks of the Chinese and Arabs against them in the 730s eventually were successful and utterly destroyed the Türgiš Kaghanate between 737 and 740.
4
This created a power vacuum where clan raided clan, leaving the Chinese and Arabs free to tighten their grip on the Central Asian cities.
In the Eastern Steppe, the Türk Empire declined rapidly after the death of Köl Tigin in 731 and Bilgä Kaghan (r. 716–734) in 734. Although the two brothers had fought valiantly for two decades and achieved many victories, they were ultimately unable to maintain Türk power much beyond the Eastern Steppe. In 742 a Turkic coalition consisting of Uighurs, Basmïl, and Karluks overthrew the Türk. The three victors, of whom the Uighurs were by far the most numerous and powerful, then fought among themselves. The Basmïl were defeated first, then the Karluks, and in 744 the Uighur Kaghanate was established. In Jungharia and the eastern part of the Central Steppe in general, the place of the Türgiš was quickly filled by the Karluks, who had previously bordered on the Türgiš in the west. They absorbed the remnants of the Türgiš but did not attain the political-military power of their predecessors. In the Eastern Steppe, the Uighurs—like their Türk predecessors—were under very heavy Sogdian influence.
THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE
In 741 or 742 the newly crowned Byzantine emperor Constantine V (r. 741–775), an ardent iconoclast who was married to Princess Tzitzak,
5
daughter of the Khazar kaghan, was attacked and defeated by his brother-in-law, the Armenian general Artavasdos. The latter was crowned emperor in Constantinople and reigned there until Constantine V defeated and deposed him as a usurper in 743.
Because Artavasdos was Armenian and a supporter of icon veneration, he was accordingly supported by the iconodules (icon worshippers or anti-iconoclasts), and the sources and modern histories have paid attention to little else. His possible annoyance at Constantine’s succession to the throne (instead of Artavasdos himself) does not explain his rebellion, the underlying causes of which seem to be unknown. Perhaps the devastating Arab invasion of Khazaria in 737 and other strife in the area near Armenia at that time may be connected to the rebellion.
6
THE ARAB EMPIRE
The Abbasid Rebellion broke out in 747 in Marw, one of the greatest commercial cities in Eurasia at the time. It was led by merchants of Arab and Central Asian origin.
7
They overthrew the Umayyads in 750 and proclaimed the new Abbasid Dynasty, with its first caliph Abû al-’Abbâs (al-Saffâh, r. 749/750–754).
The strongly commercial, Central Asian character of the rebellion is hard to ignore. Although some would place the emphasis on Central Asianized Arabs
8
rather than on Arabicized Central Asians,
9
this disagreement does not change the unquestioned facts: the rebellion was largely organized in Central Asian cities by and for Central Asians, who were both Arab and non-Arab by origin; it was proclaimed openly in the Central Asian city of Marw, where there was a Sogdian Market and a Bukharan quarter, including a palace of the Bukhâr Khudâ, the king of Bukhara;
10
and the defeat of the Umayyads was undertaken and accomplished by a Central Asian army, the Khurâsâniyya.
11