China is a great enemy and we necessarily need to seek means to
counter it and overcome it in battle. The Chinese have always been
inveterate and ruthless expansionists who, like the Moslems,
understand only learn through the language of blows and punches.
Hence, reviewing the battle of Talas one of the most defining moments
in Asiatic history is worthwhile. We have to learn many military
lessons from the battle of Talas for a scenario like that is still
likely to be useful to unravel Chinese war machine.
In the space of 740-750 AD a numbers of events of importance
transpired in Central Asia. The Moslems from Merv and Khorasan grouped
under Abu Muslim and marched on the Umayyad Kalif and having routed
him placed the Abbasid Kalif as the head of the Moslem world. Shortly
after that Abu Muslim was commissioned to conduct Jihad in Central
Asia to exterminate the Kaffirs once and for all. It was a great low
point for the Western Turks. Their great Khan Su’lu, who was a bulwark
against the Moslems and the Chinese, in the wars of 720 and 723, was
assassinated by the Arabs. The pagan Turkic rulers of Samarqand and
Bokhara came under a heavy assault from the ghazis after the fall of
Su’lu when the Arabs with 300 giant trebuchets stormed the cities and
forcibly imposed Islam with the destruction of the pagan places of
worship. Archaeological evidence shows that these Turkic cities were
cosmopolitan with Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and the Tengri
cults of the Altaics being practiced. The Chinese in the meantime
eliminated a major rival of the Moslems, the Tibetans in a combined
operation with the Indians by smashing them in a 749 and reducing them
to vassalage. The pagan Turkic ruler of Tashkent, known as the Tudun,
was repeatedly pressured by the Chinese to pay tributes to the T’ang
emperor of China. The Uighurs in the mean time became the most
powerful Turko-Mongol group in the east and pushed the Qarluq turks
westwards. The Qarluqs remained the masters of the territory just west
of the Balkash lake. The Chinese appointed the Korean general Kao
Sien-chih to enforce the Chinese rule in central Asia and if possible
seize Baltistan, Gilgit and Wakhan from the emperors of Kashmir. Kao
marched right across the Pamirs and then took the Baroghil pass to
assault Gilgit and take its chief hostage. Thus he reduced Gilgit to
Chinese vassalage. Shri Mangala, the king of Kunduz was battling a
Tibetan invading force, when Kao promised him aid but betrayed him
once the former had beaten the Tibetans. Kao arrested him after
pretending to come to sign a treaty with his large Chinese army. Kao
to show his might as the Chinese viceroy of Central Asia, marched
suddenly on Tashkent and seized the city in 750 AD. He beheaded the
Tudun and appropriated the treasury of Tashkent, marking the pinnacle
of Chinese imperialist hegemony. The Turkic Tudun’s son shaken by the
Chinese advance, fled to his cousins, the Qarluqs, and sought their
aid against the imperial T’ang army. The Qarluq Yagbhu having built
his cavalry over the end of 750 started moving his horde towards the
Talas river from the northern bank. The Arabs under Abu Muslim
savagely crushed, the last attempt made by the populations of
Samarqand and Bokhara to rid themselves of Islam. Abu Muslim sent his
victorious commander of these wars, Ziyad ibn Salih, with a band of
40000 ghazis, to wage a Jihad on the Chinese. The Arab army marched
from the south towards Talas. Kao, itching to prove his might took
the cue and marched towards Aulie-Ata on the Talas with 100000 Chinese
troops in cavalry and infantry divisions. He totally underestimated
the strength of the Qarluq horde closing in from the north. On July
10th 751 AD the Qarluq, Arab and Chinese armies took to the field in
Aulie-Ata. The Chinese cavalry seemed to initially overwhelm the Arab
cavalry, but the Qarluqs forded the river and encircled a part of the
Chinese infantry butchering it to man. The Qarluq archers then shot
down Kao, shaking the Chinese center, which was rapidly assaulted by
the Arab heavy cavalry and destroyed. The infallible Chinese war
machine gave way under combined assault and they faced a heavy rout.
The Qarluqs fell upon their animals, baggage trains and supplies
carrying away all they could and receded back into the steppe. The
Arabs rounded up tens of thousands of Chinese and took them to
Samarqand from where Abu Muslim sent them to Baghdad and Damascus to
be sold as slaves, each worth a dirham. One Chinese survivor mentions
being kept as cattle in the Arab prison camps. Abu Muslim and Ziyad
made a huge buck out of this slave trade to pay their armies. More
importantly the Arabs forced the Chinese prisoners to teach them paper
making this allowed them the spread the ghazi manual, the Q’uran, with
even greater effectiveness. The same year the Southern division of the
Chinese Army faced a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Thais,
opening the once mighty empire for invasion by the Uighur Kha’Khans of
Mongolia.
The lesson to be learnt is that probably like the Moslem-Qarluq
combined assault, India, should draw China into Central Asia and then
combine with Japan, Russia and USA inflict a crushing blow on it and
split it up. Once communism goes away the Chinese will return to
normalcy on their own.
musingsofhh 
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