What is one major Chinese historical event that had a huge impact on the world, but is hardly covered or known about today? The Battle of Tales between the armies of Arabs and Chinese in 751 AD could be considered an event that eventually had a huge impact on the rest of the world. The battle itself was barely noticed or remembered today but it did help change the course of history.

In 751 AD, the Arabs were in the ascendancy. At the time, the Arab caliphate was ruled by the powerful Abbasid dynasty. In the East, the Chinese empire was ruled by the great Tang dynasty. At their point of contact in today’s Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, an event would spark a conflict between these two great empires. Historian and Georgetown University professor, James Millard, wrote in his book, “Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang”, calling the conflict the “first and last meeting of Arab and Chinese armies”.

By the mid-740s, the Tang controlled trade routes both north and south of the Tangshan mountains in modern Kyrgyzstan. Tang’s general, Gao Xianzhi, had been engaged in a series of campaigns to drive the Tibetans out of the Pamir mountains at the time. A quarrel between the rulers of the principality of Chace and the Kingdom of Fergana in Central Asia would eventually spark the conflict between the Arabs and the Chinese. In those days, the Kingdom of Fergana, ruled by the Ikhshids, was a vassal of Tang.

In 750 AD, the king of Fergana had a border dispute with the ruler of neighboring Chace. He appealed to the Chinese, who sent General Gao to assist Fergana’s troops. Gao besieged Chace, and offered the Chechen king safe passage out of his capital. But Gao reneged and beheaded the king. The son of the Chechen king escaped and sought help from Abbasid Arab governor at Khorasan. The Arabs decided to teach Gao a lesson. They gathered their troops and marched East. The Arabs were, of course, also keen to take the opportunity to assert Abbasid power in the region.

The Battle

In 751 AD, the two armies finally met along the Tales river in today’s Kyrgyzstan. The Tang army was reinforced by the Karluks, a Turkic Central Asian tribal confederacy. The Karluks would later prove unexpectedly decisive in the forthcoming battle.

Both sides fielded tens of thousands of troops. For five days, the two mighty armies clashed. Then the Karluks came in on the Arab side on the fifth day and attacked the Chinese troops. The Tang army’s doom was sealed. Chinese sources imply that the Karluks had been fighting for them, but treacherously switched sides midway through the battle, causing their defeat. Gao managed to escape but with only a fraction of his army.

The defeat marked the end of Tang westward expansion and resulted in Muslim control of the Central Asia area for the next 400 years. Control of this region was economically beneficial for the Abbasids because it was where the Silk Road passed through.

Consequences

At the time of the battle, its significance was not clear. The historical records of the battle are few but it was recorded in both Chinese and Arabian accounts. Not long after the Battle of Tales, China would be swept up by an even bigger event.

The Tang at first wanted revenge and planned to chase the Arabs out of the Central Asia region. However, a catastrophic civil war, the An Shi Rebellion, later consumed the whole of China from 755 to 763. The rebellion resulted in a huge number of deaths and that the Tang empire’s population was greatly reduced. The devastation of the population was not only a direct result of the heavy combat casualties and collateral civilian deaths, but, due to the widespread dislocations of the peasants, especially in the north and middle areas of China, mass starvation and disease also resulted in the deaths of millions.

The rebellion spanned the reign of three Tang emperors and the death toll is estimated to be up to 36 million according to some sources.

The An Shi Rebellion and its aftermath greatly weakened the centralized bureaucracy of the Tang dynasty, especially in regards to its perimeters. Virtually, autonomous provinces and ad hoc financial organizations arose, giving rise to warlords and reducing the influence of the central government. Furthermore, the Tang government also lost most of its control over the Western regions, due to troop withdrawal to central China to help crush the rebellion and deal with subsequent disturbances.

Hence, continued military and economic weakness resulted in further subsequent erosion of the Tang territorial control during the ensuing years, particularly in the Western region. By 790 the Chinese had completely lost control over the Trim Basin area. The Arabs took opportunity to further expand into Central Asia as the Tang’s influence in the region retreated.

Nevertheless, the Battle of Tales had important consequences. The weakened Chinese Empire was no longer in any position to interfere in Central Asia, so the influence of the Abbasid Arabs continued to grow. Many of the communities and tribes in Central Asia were converted to Islam. Within the next 250 years, most of the formerly Buddhist, Hindu, Zoroastrian, and Nestorian Christian tribes of Central Asia became Muslim. With the decline of Central Asian Buddhism due to Islam influence, Chinese Buddhism was cut off from Indian Buddhism and developed into an independent religion with distinct spiritual elements.

Paper technology goes West

Most significant of all, the art of making paper is said to have spread to the Arabs, then to the West as a result of the Battle of Tales.

According to the 11th century historian, Thalami, Chinese prisoners captured at the battle helped introduce paper manufacturing to Samarkand, a city in southeastern Uzbekistan and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Central Asia.

Some of the Chinese dogfaces were said to have worked at paper manufactories in China ahead. They were the bones who latterly helped make paper manufactories outside of China. One of the internees was a Tang Dynasty handicraftsman Tou- Houan. It was reported that he and others were brought to Baghdad where they stayed and worked for their Islamic convicts for some times. When he returned to China, Too wrote to the emperor that he and his associates tutored the Abbasid tradesmen important ways of paper- timber, cloth manufacture, and gold- working.

Soon, paper manufactories sprang up in Samarkand, Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, Delhi and in 1120 the first European paper shop was established in Sativa, Spain( now called Valencia). Note that at the height of the Arab domination, they controlled Spain and Portugal, as well as North Africa, the Middle East, and large swaths of Central Asia. This eased the transfer of paper- making technology to the West. From Sativa, this Chinese invention latterly passed to Italy, Germany, and across Europe.

Paper, being less precious than diploma, helped spread knowledge, much of which was picked from the great Asian culture centers along the Silk Road, that advantaged Europe during the Middle periods. It revolutionized the Islamic world, and latterly the European West. The arrival of paper technology, along with woodcut printing and latterly portable- type printing, clearly fueled the advances in wisdom, theology, and history in the West.