In Our Time - The Battle of Talas

Episode Date: October 9, 2014

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Battle of Talas, a significant encounter between Arab and Chinese forces which took place in central Asia in 751 AD. It brought together two mighty empires, the Abbasid Caliphate and the Tang Dynasty, and although not well known today the battle had profound consequences for the future of both civilisations. The Arabs won the confrontation, but the battle marks the point where the Islamic Empire halted its march eastwards, and the Chinese stopped their expansion to the west. It was also a point of cultural exchange: some historians believe that it was also the moment when the technology of paper manufacture found its way from China to the Western world.GUESTSHilde de Weerdt, Professor of Chinese History at Leiden UniversityMichael Höckelmann, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at King's College LondonHugh Kennedy, Professor of Arabic at SOAS, University of LondonProducer: Thomas Morris.

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time, for more details about In Our Time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello. In the steps of Central Asia, any remote setting near the border between Kazakhstan and Kigestan, is a river called the Talas. In July 751, it was the site of a battle between the forces of the Abbasid Caliphate and the Tong Dynasty. It was the only confrontation ever to take place between Arab and Chinese, armies. The Arabs won, but Talas marks the point where the Islamic Empire halted its march eastward and where the Chinese stopped their expansion to the west. It was a turning point in the global balance of power. In the years following the battle, Islam became the dominant religion from the

Mediterranean to the Himalayas. But it was also a moment of great cultural exchange. According to tradition, paper was first introduced into the West by Chinese prisoners of war captured by the Arabs. With me to discuss the Battle of Talas are Hugh Kennedy, Professor of Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, Hilada of Viette, Professor of Chinese History at Leiden University, and Michelle Huckleman, British Academy postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History at King's College London. Hugh Kennedy, the background of the Battle of Talas is the Arab conquest that began immediately after death of Muhammad in 632. Why did these conquest start and how were they carried out?

The Arab conquest began immediately after the Prophet's death and the Arab Muslim armies were extremely effective at conquering the ancient empires of the Byzantines in the West and the Sassanians in the east. By around 650 the whole of what is modern Iran was effectively under Muslim rule. And then going east there was a pause because beyond the frontiers of modern Iran into what is now Turkmenistan and Uzbekis They came across a country which was not a United Empire that could easily be conquered,

but was rather dominated by a series of or group of princes, mostly of Iranian origin, often living in remote mountain castles, who've put up a fierce and prolonged resistance to the Arab advances. It was also a land with a strong commercial tradition of people called the Sogdians, who spoke an Iranian language, had for many generations at least, established trading links with China far to the east. And certainly these economic considerations did spur on the Arab Muslims, though there were the religious motivations and so on as well in their conquest.

The idea of, as it were, profiting from and taking advantage of these commercial links, certainly pulled them further east in that direction. It was an extraordinary dynamic, wasn't it, for that time? Nobody comes out of nowhere, but it seemed as if they came out of nowhere, and then they're the fastest moving, almost irresistible force in a great part of the world. Well, can you tell us what the extent of Arab power was in the middle of the 8th century, just when our battle takes place? Well, this was a period when the Umayad dynasty, up till 750 at least,

the Umayyad dynasty, based in Damascus, ruled over in one way or another the whole of the Muslim world. So we're talking from Spain and Portugal and Morocco in the west, right through to the borders of Uzbekistan and what used to be Soviet Central Asia in the east and in the southeast sinned the southern part of modern Pakistan and of course all the countries in between and the whole Arabian Peninsula but not the Byzantine Empire, not modern Turkey, which was then ruled by the Byzantines from Constantinople. How did they manage to do it so quickly and so effectively?

What was that? Did that, were they technologically ahead of everybody else? Were they more numerous? What was going on? No, neither of those explanations seems to hold much water. There's no evidence that they were technologically more advanced or indeed they're more numerous. It seems to have been a question of exhaustion, if you like, of the two great powers that had previously dominated this area,

the Byzantines and the Sussians, and also, I think, leadership, skilled leadership in warfare, and an ideology that encouraged them to think of the whole world, as their potential area of rule and so on, not to be confined by existing national borders or imperial borders or whatever. And very quick moving.

This was an army that didn't have supply trains, it didn't have huge numbers of oxwagons to carry stuff and so on. They moved very quickly on their horses with their supplies around them. They took what they could from the surrounding countryside. And these were hardy, tough Bedouin people who were used to being brought up, in the deserts of Arabia. They didn't need much to keep going. Hilda de Viet. And the other side of the Battle of Tulles was the Chinese, the Tongue dynasty. Who were they and what was the set of their empire in the middle of the 8th century?

Tang was the name of the dynasty chosen by Li Yuan. Li Yuan was a military commander of the preceding Sway dynasty. He hailed from a family of people who had held high positions in politics, but also in the military for generations. And this meant that he and his sons were actively involved first in reuniting the Chinese territories, which had been thrown into civil war since the early 600s. And then later also in establishing the foundations

for the creation of an empire, that would be one of the largest in Chinese history and certainly the largest until that point in Chinese history. So by the mid-eighth century, the Chinese, the Tang Empire, were one of the major players in Eurasia. They had been able by the late 7th century to extend their power as far as contemporary Afghanistan. This is the furthest a Chinese power would ever go.

They faced challenges, and this is the second side to the story, that they were not the only player. We've already heard that the Umaa, the Abbasids, were a major player, but there were many others as well. So the Chinese were surrounded by, strong forces in pretty much every direction. In the east, there were the Koreans. In the north, there were the Khitan, but also Turkish empires. In the west, there were Tibetan forces, Uyghur forces and other Turkish confederation. And to the south, there was a kingdom called the Nanja.

The tongue had won many battles, but they had also lost quite a few. So by the mid-eighth century, the then reigning Suenzong Emperor could be proud of such a large empire, but it was also clear that the situation was always unstable. They were extremely civilized, weren't they at that time, Chinese, in terms of their culture? They had established traditions for ruling large states long ago. In that sense, yes, there was an apparatus that they could go back to.

But at the same time, it's important to keep in mind that perhaps unlike later Chinese dynasty, that were proud of being ethnically Han, that was not the case for the Lee family. Stories vary, but they were part of the northern aristocracy, which had four generations intermarried with Turkic and Mongolic peoples. The reason why that matters is that it meant that they shared a political and military culture with those people. So in cultural terms, the distance between the town rulers and Turkic and Mongolic rules may not have been as far as it might seem

to us today. The military valor was important for that family just as it was across the border. Can you give us a brief notion of the territory between these two great empires? What was going on there? Central Asia, let's call it. Yes.

The geography really matters here. In order to understand the politics, it's good to get a sense of what the territory, the lay of the land was like. So say if you were a tongue merchant or a soldier, you had to travel from the west of the tongue empire all the way to where the abasids had come, you would first go through an area that we now call the Kansu Corridor.

That's a strip that separates the Gobi Desert. It's an area where you can't really go through to the north, and then to the south you have the Qinghai Mountains, also an area that's not easy to cross through. In that area, there had been Turkish Tangut peoples who were able to set up strong Confederacy, those they were forced to deal with for the tongue. Once you'd gone through that area, roughly 600 miles or so,

you would reach the Toclamaakan Desert. Another place, that's not easy to cross. But you could get around it. To the north, there was a series of oasis cities. To the south, similarly, there were oasis cities that had for centuries been trading with the Sorgians that he already referred to. These were small independent city-states,

but the Chinese had been trying to extend their power into that area. To the north and south of the Taklamakan doesn't work again mountains. At the very end, to the west, these mountains came together into what is now called the Pamir Mountains. Once you crossed that last obstacle, you would reach the opposite. Can I, Michelle Huckleman, how much contact had there been between the Chinese and the Arabs? before 751? Well, the Chinese had been interested in what would

generically be come to known as the Western regions or Xi Yu in Chinese sources from a very early stage. And the way the Chinese collected information on these

so-called Western regions, the first kind of sources came to the Chinese by way of reconnaissance missions. the military sent into the western regions. The earliest one dates to around the year 100 BC when a Chinese general named Zhang Qian was sent on a mission by the then-reigning emperor Han Wudi

to find the source of the so-called blood-swetting treasure horses of Fergana. for Ghana a name that plays an important role in the events that led to the Battle of Talas actually later on. We then have the next very well-known reconnaissance mission around the year 60s 70 AD, when a pity lieutenant named Ganying was sent by the governor of the then Chinese ruled eastern regions of modern Xinjiang. And he supposedly reached either the Euford and Tegris region or even the eastern Mediterranean. We're not entirely sure because the term that he used for a sea in the West is not very clear. So are we talking about a strategy of investigation over those centuries?

We're certainly talking about a strategy of investigation from a very early stage from the first large empire of the Hunts. How much we've heard quite a bit about, we've heard about Central Asia, how much involvement did the Chinese have in Central Asia? That's a very good question. Up to the tongue, it's actually quite difficult to ascertain how much involvement they had with Western Asia, because historical accounts about that period are either contradictory or. incomplete. So we have, as I was laying out before, we have historical accounts of these Western regions in the so-called dynastic histories from a very early stage. And the impression these sources give us is that the Chinese didn't actually know very much about these regions. So there was not much direct interaction

between the eastern Mediterranean or Western Asia and East Asia at that particular time. It was more probably the same way the Silk Road trade went through several stages on the road that information travelled to both directions. Do you feel at the time, and I'll ask

a Samifu Kennedy about the Arab, do you feel that the Chinese were just pushing west and western west until they were stopped of? they didn't think they would be stopped? Was it going to be a continuous process? Were they on the march, in other words, to keep going before this talus battle? In the town, certainly, yes.

They were pushing westwards, certainly, yeah. And what about you, Hugh Kennedy? What about the others? Are they pushing eastwards as resolutely? Ideologically, this idea of pushing and incorporating the whole of the known world into Islamic rule was certainly in the background, but in practice, Islamic conquest in Central Asia

so ran out of steam where the settled lands end. They were keen in possessing the last oases in the northeast of the last fertile river valleys. But when that sort of civilization and cultivation ceased and we'd go into the wide open grassland spaces of what is now Kazakhstan and so on. There wasn't much booty, there wasn't much incentive to go on into these lands. The fighting was very hard with the local nomads.

So, in effect, they were quite content to secure their frontiers where the last cities were. Just before the battle, the fact of the year before the battle, the Arab Empire went through the Abbasid Revolution. How did that affect the Arab forces and their determination to keep going east? The area of the northeast of the Islamic Empire was quite unusual in the sense that at the time of the original conquest, a lot of Arab Muslims had settled in that. They'd settled on the frontier rather than. in Western Iran and so on.

So there was a strong Arab Muslim presence. And by the time of around 750, when we're talking about the coming of the Abbasids, there was a fusion between an Arab leadership and local Iranian population. And these people rose up in rebellion, essentially, in the year 747 against the Umayas in Damascus. Armies from northeastern Iran, what they called Khorasan,

went west, they conquered Iraq, they conquered Syria, and they conquered Egypt. in the years immediately before the Battle of Talas. There was this huge explosion of military energy in this part of Central Asia. And the new regime, the Abbasid regime that was established in Baghdad, was essentially dependent on the forces from northeast Iran for its military power and its military. So we're talking about non-Muslim contingent as well, aren't we?

There were some non-Muslim contingents, but overwhelmingly the armies who fought were at least nominally Muslims. They were Iranians and Arabs together in a Muslim army. So Hilda Divert, what were the Chinese doing there in 751, doing in that part of Asia, Central Asia in 751? Well, there had been some prior investment in India, to follow up on your earlier question. So by the late 7th century, the Tongan Empire had set up protectorates.

These are military bases that would allow them to maintain a presence. They allowed the locals to rule themselves, but they wanted to be sure to have soldiers in place, so that if their influence in the area was challenged, they would be able to respond. Now, by around 750, there had been several decades of battles with particularly two forces. The first of those is the Tibetans. The Tibetans were eager to take over the Tonga Oasis states, and they were quite successful from time to time. So between 720 and 740, the Tibetans won some battles, the Tong forces,

won some battles, but by and large, by around 750, the Tang Empire had been successful to withstand the Tibetan onslaught. One battle in particular I want to mention is the one of 746, which was led by the general that would actually lead the tongue forces against the abysite forces as well. This is a man in Chinese called Kausianjur. He was actually of Korean descent, so his Korean name is Kosundi, probably massacring the name somewhat. He had been able to make the Tibetans withdraw, not only, and this is important,

the Tarran Basin, but even from as far as India. So at that point, there was still that drive from the Tongue Forces to go as far as possible, as you were saying earlier. The second major force they had to dealt with was a people called the Turgesh. This was a Western Turkish people who similarly were also trying to extend their influence over the Tarran Basin. Similar story, Tang lost some battles, but they were able to hold their own and fight them off. Now, the Korean general in trying to extend tongue influence in the area got involved in a battle between the rulers of two city-states,

Fragana and Tashkent, two city-states and what is now Uzbekistan. The tongue did obtain the submission of the King of Tashkand, but they decided to punish him nevertheless. As a result of that, the king or the crown prince, went to the Abbasid and asked for forces to be sent. These were done the forces that the tongue would face. What I get from what's going on, Michelle Huckleman, is a extent of these armies roving over vast areas in Central Asia, you casually throw in this state and that state and the other state. It seems that they were getting a move on. There's a feeling of rushing around.

There's a feeling of fighting fire, outbreaks of fire, warfire in certain states. Is that how you said? I mean, was there any sense of a purposeful, coherent movement? I think one has to distinguish here between the purposes, the court associated with the Western expansion and part of the intellectual elite of that time associated with this expansion. You get a feeling of the Tang Empire

overstretching itself when you look at poetical sources that other sources outside of the historical record there's one famous poem by one of the greatest poets that ever lived in Chinese history, Li Bai, which Arthur Wealey, who is well-known translator of Chinese literature in England, dated to the year 751 to the year of the Battle of Talas. And Whaley thought that certain references in that poem, are referring to the Battle of Talas. And the feeling you get from that bone is,

what are our forces doing out there? This is so far outside of our own realm. We don't really have business there. It's a bit like American or British politics nowadays. What are we doing in the Middle East? So you get this feeling in, in Tang Chinese poem and poetry at that time. What are the sources you relying on for this battle?

That's actually a very interesting question because we have basically two kinds of sources. One are the transmitted historical or standard histories of the Tang dynasty, two books which are usually known as the old in the New Tong history. And the Battle of Talas is referred to in the biography of that general Gao Xen Zhi, Hilda just mentioned.

There's only very scarce mention of that battle in those sources, only a few couple of lines. Then in another source from the Song Dynasty, the 11th century, the Zeditjian. We have a longer, account of the events that led to the battle. Not very much on the battle itself. They only tell us that, okay, the forces met, and they fought for five days, and then the tongue lost. That's basically the information we get from the sources.

What we have, we are in the very luxurious position that we have a text written by a man named Du Huan. who allegedly was captured during the Battle of Talas and spent some 20-odd years in the western regions in Baghdad, a text named the Jinxing Ji, which just means travelogue. And that only survives in fragments in a much larger work on institutional history written by one of his relatives a generation after, a man named Du Yow.

And the work this travel account survives and is basically interspersed in the sections Du Yow wrote in his work on the Western regions. Hugh Kennedy, what do we know about the Arab armies at this point of their size and their size will do for a start? Arab Muslim armies of this era were seldom more than 30,000 people, often much smaller in number.

They tended to travel very rapidly on camels and horses to the battles when they actually fought their enemies at this stage. They tended to dismount and fight on foot. And that was the way that conflicts were classically decided. But we don't, of course, have the sort of information for the Battle of Talas that would actually make that clear in this particular case. How are they armed? They were armed with swords and spears, coats of mail,

metal helmets. They had archers with them, foot archers probably fighting on foot at this stage. Was it much the same on both sides? The armour and the weapons? I would think so. I'd have to ask my Chinese colleagues.

Yes, that would be roughly similar. Perhaps the Chinese had fewer horses. I've quoted I've seen as about 80,000 for an army that by the mid 8th century would be around 500,000. soldiers on the frontiers. So do we know, it's been explained very carefully

about Michel, what we don't know in the fragments and so on, but what do we know? What can you piece together about the Battle of Talis? You know it's five days, you know, it's two armies. We're still a bit wobbly vague about the numbers involved, but still, can you have a shot at it? Yes. The battle took place in July

751. Chinese sources suggest that the Tongue force was a about 30,000 soldiers, 10,000 tongue regular regulars, and 20,000 roughly, that were allies. These were another Turkish tribe, the Kyrgyz, who had agreed to fight with the tongue. This was not an unusual thing to happen. Alliances were easily formed and also easily, easily broken. And this seems to have been what happened in this case.

The Chinese put the size of the opposite force at around 200,000. This is probably more than the Arab sources would admit. What happened is that a couple days into the battle, this is again, according to some Chinese accounts, the Carleuk decided to go against their allies, and they fought them from the back. This led to the massacring of the Tang forces. Thousands died.

Thousands were taken, a prisoner, and a few were able to escape. So just to repeat that, inside the Chinese army, they had mercenaries, a great number of mercies, switch sides, went behind the Chinese army, and so the Chinese army was being attacked on two fronts. Indeed. One account I read an Arab source

which suggests that this was actually all planned ahead. That was not a fortuitous event. But they seemed to be agreed that one reason why the Chinese lost had to do with the switching of lives. Could I just come to numbers before I ask you to join in about the battle, anything else you can throw at it? We're told that 20,000 Chinese prisoners were taken by the

Now, 20,000 prisoners have taken, Chinese prisoners, and a lot of Chinese are massacred, and presumably some of them got away. It does suggest an army bigger than 30,000, doesn't it? Well, the problem, one always has to be careful with these numbers in battle accounts of that particular period. The Arab sources probably tend to exaggerate the size of the Chinese army and underestimate the size of their own army, because that makes their victory all the more glorious. And had the Chinese won, it would probably have been the other way around. But the Chinese sources give us quite small numbers of their own forces

and much larger numbers for the Arab forces. Hitler has mentioned 200,000, and you said it was never much more than 30. That's just by comparison. But it's always phenomenal. Everyone overestimates the forces of the enemy. because they know much more about their own forces, they're probably more realistic of that.

Yeah, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands is sometimes just an indicator of how big that army would have been, not necessarily an accurate count. Just means very large. Michelle, can you tell us what happened to the Tang dynasty after the battle? I mean, what happens when you lose in battle like that? Did they officially surrender or do they scoot or what happens? Well, from what we know, nothing really happened.

there wasn't really a huge outcome of that battle. The tongue onslaught into Western Asia and Central Asia didn't just stop with the Battle of Talas. What actually happened is that the battle is totally overshadowed, but by what happened four years later, an event some of your listeners might be familiar with the Andushan Rebellion, which through the Tang dynasty in utter chaos and brought it to brink of total collapse.

And that actually stopped the Chinese expansion into Central Asia. And then the Tibetans and Uyghurs moved in to fill the void that was created by the incapability of the tongue to hold their possessions in Central Asia. There were some back and forth wars fought in the 140. 50 years afterwards, the Tang for a time reconquered part of what Hilda named the Gansu Corridor, and then it was retaken back by the Tibetans. But it's totally overshadowed by this other major event, this watershed in Chinese history,

the An Lushan Rebellion. Hugh Kennedy, why didn't the Arabs go further east? They'd won. Why didn't they keep pushing on? Because it was inhospitable and unprofitable country, I think. This is a classic example of empires, I think, being dragged into conflict by small buffer states on the frontiers. And interestingly, the Chinese accounts and the only Arab accounts paint a very similar picture. It's the local kings.

One appeals, the king of Fugana appeals to the Chinese, the king of Shash-Tash-Kent appeals to the Arabs. And they sort of drag their imperial allies into a conflict, which possibly neither of the imperial allies that actually wanted in the first. place. It's not a question of clash of empires so much as people being persuaded to support their local vassal states, I think. So you talk, I'm trying to get a fix on the significance of battle. It seems as if

they both were drawn into it, stumbled into it, didn't really say Arabs, we are going to conquer the Chinese or the Chinese we are going to conquer the Arabs. They happened to meet at this river and had a fight. On the Chinese side, it may be difficult to say. I mean, there are some accounts that as Korean General Kosovojee, who had also been able

to flee, was planning revenge. but he got drawn into the Andushan conflict. So the Chinese didn't reappear. It didn't mean that they weren't interested in reappearing at some point, but they just were forces had to be withdrawn from that area to go fight battles elsewhere and others filled the void. Can we talk, Michelle, can we talk about the balance of power in Central Asia, how it changed in the following years after 751?

It changed in the world. way, I already mentioned before that the Tibetans and Uyghurs were just jumping into the void that was created due to

the Battle of, due to the Anlushan rebellion where the, when the Tang forces had to withdraw from Central Asia. Can you just remind people like, you said your listeners and maybe not all of them would know. Can you just

briefly remind us what that rebellion was? It was four years later. It was very big and how powerful effect did it have on the Chinese forces? Well, one corollary of what has already been discussed about the Battle of Talas that the Tang forces were commanded by a Korean general was actually not a coincidence. There had been major developments within the Tang military way before the Battle of Talas and the Anlu Shan rebellion.

the Tang have moved their attention from militia-based military to border defense forces, which were largely made out of conscripts and foreign auxiliaries often commanded by foreign generals. And one of these generals was a man called Anlu Shan, who was a very influential figure, of obviously very popular at the court, having. very good connections to the emperor himself and his favorite concubine, Yang Gouye. And in the year 755, he decided to rebel against the Tang court and try to establish his own dynasty, the very short-lived Yen dynasty, which was then crushed also because the Tang court drew in some of their Central Asian allies.

They actually had to rely on Uyghur forces to retake their capital. So the Chinese pulled back, and it began a very, very extended period of a more isolationist policy altogether. Anyway, whether they intended it is one thing. The fact is they had to deal with people who were forcing them to stay within their own

already extensive boundaries. And the Arabs pulled back, Hugh, because they'd gone as far as they wanted to go and they wanted to consolidate half the other world that was behind them. And you would say something else before you go to Hill here. There's another thing that's going on here, and that is the Anlu Shan Rebellion, which we've been hearing about, and other forces, meant that the commercial links between Muslim Central Asia

and China were essentially ruptured. The Silk Road that had existed in the early centuries of our era was disrupted. Trade shifted between China and the Middle East shifted to the sea route. So the overland route between. Central Asia and China was no longer so profitable or so inviting. And so it didn't encourage people to explore militarily these remote and desolate areas. Hilda, can you tell us how the battle affected the development of religion in China? Yes.

Up till, say, the mid-8th century, the area that we've been mostly focused on today, Central Asia, had been a fairfare for the transmission of Buddhist culture. Buddhist monks, Buddhist texts, Buddhist artifacts traveled from India all the way to Korea and Japan. This changed not necessarily only as a result of the battle and the spread of Islamic culture, also because of the revival of Hinduism in India. India had been the heartland of Buddhist culture, and it was for Buddhist believers across Europe, deep place to visit and deep place to watch. That changed as a result of the battle and also, as he referred to it, the cutoff of the land routes.

It became more difficult to go there, but it also became less appealing because India no longer, or at least the Buddhist community, and India no longer was a thriving Buddhist community. It happened up until that point. So what happened as a result of that is that instead there were a variety of homegrown varieties of Buddhism in East Asia that spread. And China became sort of the focus of attention for the East Asian, Buddhist world at least. As far as Islam is concerned, we do see a spread of Islamic culture in India and Central Asia, but it did not happen overnight. This did not happen in decades following the battle.

It took centuries as a matter of fact. We see Islamic communities, voluntary conversions mainly, no massive forced conversions. And there's good evidence to show that even though the influence of the hasn't declined, it continued to do fairly well in Central Asia, particularly under the patronage of the Tonguts, the Mongols. So between the 11th and 14th century, there were still Buddhist communities, but there were no longer as influential as they had been. Can we talk about the development of Islam in that area, Michelle?

If I just may jump in at this point, we should probably also mention the Manicheans, because the Uyghurs, which had been major times, allies, they were Manichaeans at that point. The Uyghurs, which are a so-called national minority in Western China nowadays, and which we normally perceive as being Muslims, only converted to Islam, like many of the Central Asian people in the centuries after the Battle of Talas. And it's very, very interesting when you look at one of the major events in religious history in the mid-9th century, the great Huichang prescription of foreign religions,

that the official sources, they mention Buddhism, they mention Manichaeism, they mention Zoroastrism, they even mention Christianity, but they don't mention Islam. However, the Jingxing Ji of Du Huan, that guy who allegedly had been captured by the Arab forces, he actually gives an account of what he saw in Baghdad and mentions some of the customs which prove that he must have, at least even if he hadn't seen it himself, he must have known something about Islam. He mentions that women have to cover their faces

and he mentions that they worship heaven five times a day. Hugh, can you give us a bit of an overview as we came to the end of the programme us to a settlement of that over the next. century or so what these two who hadn't had a war since what they were which they were moving into their heartlands both of them is that right

can you develop that? Yes certainly from the Muslim side there's a certain retrenchment if you like and the the commerce and the commercial activity of Muslim Central Asia becomes redirected to Baghdad and to even to the Mediterranean world and the direct links with China are cut off and

but there are still consequences this is where the paper story comes in to Well let's have the paper story as it was common According to the Arab Muslim sources The introduction of paper To the Middle East

Which is of fundamental importance In spreading literacy and written culture and so on occurred because Chinese prisoners captured at the Battle of Talas Or around that time were then transported to

Iraq, first to Central Asia to Samarkand, then to Iraq, and brought this new technology with them. Now, this sort of story seems too simple in a way, and historians are distrustful of this sort of thing, but it has a certain credibility because we know that paper began to be manufactured on a large scale in Iraq in the second half of the 8th century,

precisely the moment when we'd expect this to be happening. And the tradition is an old one in the Arab Muslim literature, and I see no reason why it should have been invented. But there again. It was a great lining to this 500-year blossoming of the Golden Age. Exactly. Without paper, without the importation of paper,

the golden age of a varsit culture is inconceivable. Yeah, two points. I'm less convinced by the story. It's definitely a good story, I love it too, and similar stories like it about the transmission of technology. But it is clear that between the 3rd and 5th century, paper was already in wide use in Central Asia. We found many archaeological caches of paper documents.

Now, of course, finding them doesn't necessarily mean they were produced there, but because the paper that is found in that area is also different from Chinese papers, it's quite likely that actually paper was also made. The technology itself is actually quite simple. You don't need to capture experts to manufacture paper. You throw some rags together with some fibers, you get a pulp, you lift the paper out of it. It was used for all sorts of things, not just for writing, but also for wrapping, in daily use, cards and so forth. So it's quite likely that it was

already a widely dispersed technology. And there may have been others who were responsible for transmitting the technology at that point. But there was this great rush of use of paper in Baghdad, in the second half of the 8th century. There was suddenly this great rush. Is that not a factor in your thinking about it, Michelle? another possible expedition. Yeah, we have to get a bit of... Because he's got...

You're asking for my personal opinion. Yeah, I am. That's exactly what I'm doing. The paper transmission. I'm probably as reluctant as Hilda to believe in that story because I thought a lot about this in preparation for this program. And I was also wondering where this story actually sprang from.

And since you mentioned that it's an old tradition in Arab sources. I'm not entirely sure where it comes from in China. And I think there are some, and I still as yet, have to see a reference to that story in Chinese sources. I haven't seen it. There isn't any. I think it comes mostly from slightly later Arab historiography. And there are families also moving from Balg, what is now of Afghanistan into Baghdad around the time,

families that would have been used for using paper in that. area. So there are some other explanations. Well, the Pinsa movement there, Hugh, one on the other side, saying, you're on your own now. I still like the story. Liking it isn't enough for scholars like you. No, it makes sense plausibly. I mean, there certainly was paper, as Sildas been saying, in use in Central Asia, but there was no record of any paper being in Iraq, Syria, any of the Central Islamic lands before the Battle of Talas, after there is. And that's as far as we can go.

don't have any sort of smoking guns or whatever that or any individuals we can point to. That's as far as we have time to go. So thank you very much indeed. Hugh Kennedy, Hilda Divert, Michelle Huckleman. Next week we'll be talking about Rudyard Kipling. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Yes, definitely, definitely. It's a great account.

I mean, although it did itself, in itself doesn't seem to have been, I don't know how to But there's, doesn't need to mean a significant battle event? It had significance, didn't it, in terms of how we can look at the development of the two pauses from then on? We were doing the Battle of Pottier some time ago, and that has very much same significance. We know almost nothing about the battle itself, and yet it represents a sort of high water mark or a turning point or whatever in quite a distinct way. My pitch for its significance would have come with the switch to the sea routes. That one, it's slightly exaggerated claim, but I think, perhaps not entirely so in that the switch to the sea routes meant that over the next couple

centuries there was increasing excursions of goods and people between the South Chinese coast and West Asian but also the Mediterranean and in some ways I mean the bringing together of these economic systems in Europe in West Asia in South Asia and East Asia blaze of foundations for the early modern and later the modern world economy so in some ways you know that's that's its larger significance, I think. It's economic rather than anything else. Just to catch up on that, I wouldn't say that the Chinese only switched to the sea routes after the Anlushan Rebellion. I mean, the sea routes have been very important, had been very important for centuries, even before the land routes were cut off.

The oldest still existing mosque in China is not in northern China. It's in Guantan. No, no, there definitely were, but the increase. But if you look, between the 11th and 14th century, they're entirely there, whereas before they were also in Chang'an. Certainly. But just what I want to point out is that people sometimes claim, or very often claim, that Buddhism also came over the Silk Road and over the land roads, which isn't the whole picture, because Buddhism had also traveled via the South China Sea for centuries.

Do any of you have any sense that are more documents waiting to be found or do you think you've got everything you're going to get? Well, it's possible. Documents, but also stone steelys, and for example, one of the communities that are there, Arab, Jewish, Indian, even Italian, by the 13th, 14th centuries,

that comes because somebody digs up a stone and you find that there's Francesca so-and-so in Hongzhou. So, unfortunately, because these are also the most densely populated parts of China. It's very hard to dig. But I wouldn't be surprised if they do some major construction work somewhere, they still still find things.

Yes. And then recently, historic documents have appeared from the early Abbasid period in northeast Iran, written on leather and so we don't know exactly where they come from because they float onto the antique market, but they're clearly north-eastern Iranian. They clearly date from the early Islamic period. And there may be many more of them, but maybe tomorrow we'll open the newspaper and find out.

We can't get mining coins in the city of London when they build a new skyscrapher. Here's Tom, here's Tom. Tom Morris. There are many more Radio 4 arts and discussion programmes to download for free. Find these on the website at BBC.com.uk slash Radio 4.