The Arab conquests in Central Asia

by H. A. R. Gibb

V. THE RECONQUEST OF TRANSOXANIA.

The reaction produced by the downfall of the Türgesh power was manifested in Transoxania in the first place by an increased regard for China. The princes had found the Türgesh yoke no less galling in the end than that of the Arabs[99]; the country was as wasted and impoverished by their continual raids as it had been under the latter. The profitable native and transit trade, the source of the entire wealth of the cities, must have shrunk to negligible proportions if it had not wholly ceased. All classes of the people therefore were weary of war and sought only a peace consonant with their self-respect. For the attainment of these aims it was vain to look to China; the granting of bombastic titles to a few princes brought neither comfort nor aid. A final opportunity was thus offered to wise statesmanship to swing the whole country round to the Arabs almost without a blow. For two years, however, the situation seemed to remain much as it was, except for an expedition into Khuttal, probably on the pretext of assisting the ruling house against a usurper from Bamiyān. Nevertheless some progress had been made by the administration in regaining the prestige it had lost. This was due not merely to the effect of the victories over Hārith and the Türgesh, but even more to Asad’s personal relations with the dihqāns. He had, as we have seen, gratified the national pride of the people of Tukhāristān by transferring the seat of power from Merv, the capital of the foreigners, to Balkh, the centre of their national life. As had been the case even in his first term of office, he was able to attract to his side many of the more influential elements in Lower Tukhāristān and the Ephthalite lands—to this, in fact, was largely due his success in the struggle with the Turks. More striking evidence still is afforded by the conversion of the dihqāns at this period, amongst them the minor chief Sāmān-Khudāh and probably also the Barmak. By this means Asad laid the foundations for a true reconciliation and Narshakhī’s work amply attests the honour which later generations attached to his name. His work was of course incomplete in that it was practically confined to the ruling classes and naturally did not extend to the now independent dihqāns of Sughd.

Early in 120/738 Asad died, and after a lapse of some months the governorship was conferred by Hishām on Nasr b. Sayyār. For the subject peoples no choice could have been more opportunely made. Nasr was one of the few men who had come with honour and reputation through the external and internal conflicts of the last thirty years. Belonging to the small and almost neutral tribe of Kināna, his position bore a strong similarity to that of Qutayba in that both were more dependent on the support of a powerful patron than on their tribal connexions, and therefore, though favouring Qays, less frantically partisan. In contrast to Qutayba, however, Nasr, after thirty years of active leadership, knew the situation in Khurāsān, Transoxania, and Central Asia as no Arab governor had ever done. He had seen the futility of trying to hold the country by mere brute force, and the equal futility of trying to dispense with force. While he held the support of Hishām, therefore, he set himself to restore Arab authority in Transoxania. The appointment of Qatan b. Qutayba, who had inherited much of his father’s ability, to command the forces beyond the river gave earnest of an aggressive policy. The appointment was not to Samarqand, as Wellhausen says, but “over Sughd,” i.e., the garrisons in Bukhārā and probably Kish, who were responsible in the first place for keeping the surrounding districts in subjection. The governor himself then carried out a brief expedition, intended apparently to punish some rebels in the neighbourhood of the Iron Gate, possibly in Shūmān. Having thus vindicated the authority of the administration, Nasr returned to Merv and delivered the famous Khutba in which the system of taxation and conditions of amnesty were at last laid down in a form satisfactory to the mawālī and the subject peoples[100]. The results were as he had foreseen. The princes and people of Transoxania submitted, as far as we can judge, without opposition when Nasr with his army marched through Sughd to re-establish the Arab garrison and administration in Samarqand.

This expedition may in all probability be dated in 121/739. A year or two later, Nasr collected his forces, which included levies from Transoxania, for an attack on Shāsh. Wellhausen considers that the first two expeditions were only stages of the third, but the expedition to Shāsh can hardly have taken place earlier than 122/740, in view of the fact that the armies of Shāsh and Farghāna were engaged with the Türgesh in 739, and of Narshakhī’s statement[101], which there is no reason to dispute, that Tughshāda was assassinated in the thirty-second year of his reign. Reckoning in lunar years this gives 122 (91-122), in solar years 123 (710-741), as the date. This is confirmed by the Chinese record of an embassy from Shāsh in 741 complaining that “Now that the Turks have become subject to China, it is only the Arabs that are a curse to the Kingdoms”[102]. 123 is also the date given for the return of the Sughdians[103]. It is most unlikely that the intervening year or years passed without expeditions altogether, and the most reasonable supposition is that they were occupied in the pacification of Sughd. The expedition marched eastward through Ushrūsana, whose prince, as usual, paid his allegiance to the victor on his passage, but on reaching the Jaxartes Nasr found his crossing opposed by the army of Shāsh, together with Hārith b. Surayj and some Turkish troops. It would seem that he was unable to come to blows with the main body of the enemy, but made a treaty with the king by which the latter agreed to accept an Arab resident and to expel Hārith, who was accordingly deported to Fārāb. As usual, later tradition magnified the exploits of the Arabs by crediting Nasr with the capture and execution of Kūrsūl, the Türgesh leader who had been scarcely less redoubtable than the Khāqān himself. If the story has any foundation it is probably a legendary development from the capture of a Turkish chief Al-Akhram, related by Tabarī in a variant account. The presence of Kūrsūl with a Türgesh force on this occasion is not in itself impossible, but if his identification with Baga Tarkhan is sound, we know that he was executed by the Chinese in 744/126[104]. The expulsion of Hārith was probably the object for which the expedition had been undertaken; before returning, however, the Arabs entered Farghāna and pursued its king as far as Qubā before bringing him to terms. The negotiations were carried out between Sulaymān b. Sūl, one of the princes of Jūrjān, and the Queen-Mother. This invasion of Farghāna is related in three (or four) different versions, some of which may possibly refer to a second expedition mentioned by Tabarī later. In the same year, on returning from the expedition to Shāsh, Nasr was met at Samarqand by the Bukhār Khudāh Tughshāda and two of his dihqāns. The nobles laid a complaint against the prince, but as Nasr seemed indisposed to redress their grievance, they attempted to assassinate both the Bukhār Khudāh and the Arab intendant at Bukhārā, Wāsil b. ʿAmr. The former was mortally wounded, and succeeded by his son Qutayba, so named in honour of the conqueror. The incident is related also by Narshakhī with some additional details which profess to explain the assassination. The two narratives present such a remarkable similarity of phrase, however, even though they are in different languages, that it is rather more likely that the Persian version has elaborated the story than that Tabarī deliberately suppressed any offensive statements, as argued by van Vloten[105].

Except for a possible second expedition to Farghāna, no other campaigns into Transoxania are recorded of Nasr, unless Balādhurī’s tradition (from Abū ʿUbayda) of an unsuccessful attack on Ushrūsana refers to a separate expedition. This is unlikely, and the account conflicts with that given in Tabarī. Ushrūsana, however, was never really subdued until nearly a century later. Tukhāristān, if it had not already been recovered by Asad, may have made submission of its own accord. Since the defeat of the Türgesh and the flight of Hārith it had ceased to hold any menace to the Arabs, and Nasr had accordingly retransferred the capital to Merv on his appointment.

The governor now turned his attention to restoring the prosperity of the country and developing a policy of co-operation with the subject peoples. Nasr was the first Arab ruler of Transoxania to realise that the government depended for support in the last resort on the middle classes and agriculturalists. Both these classes were of greater political importance perhaps in Transoxania, with its centuries of mercantile tradition, than any other were in the Empire. It was in the same way that in later years the Tāhirids and Sāmānids established their ascendancy[106]. He was thus able not only to complete the work begun by Asad b. ʿAbdullah, but to settle it on more stable foundations. Shortly after his recapture of Samarqand he had sent an embassy to China. This was followed up in 126/744 by a much more elaborate embassy, obviously intended to regulate commercial relations in the most complete manner possible, in which the Arabs were accompanied by ambassadors not only from the Sogdian cities and Tukhāristān, but even from Zābulistān, Shāsh, and the Türgesh. Two other Arab embassies are also recorded in 745 and 747. There can be no doubt that it was not so much the justice of Nasr’s rule as his personal influence and honesty that reconciled the peoples of Transoxania. Even the Sughdian refugees, stranded after the dissolution of the Türgesh confederacy, trusted him to honour the conditions upon which they had agreed to return, and were not deceived although his concessions raised a storm of protest, and the Caliph himself was brought to confirm them only for the sake of restoring peace.

It is not surprising, however, that the princes were dissatisfied with the success which had attended the pacification of Transoxania. The people were “becoming Arabs” too rapidly and their own authority was menaced in consequence. They were still hopeful of regaining their independence, especially when Nasr’s position became less secure after the death of Hishām. We hear therefore of sporadic embassies to China, such as that sent from Ishtīkhan in 745 asking for annexation to China “like a little circumscription.” That the governor was aware of this undercurrent may be judged from the fact that he felt it necessary to have Hārith b. Surayj pardoned, in case he should again bring in the Turks to attack the government[107]. But the people as a whole held for Nasr. The respect and even affection which he inspired held all Transoxania true to him during the last troubled years. No tribute could be more eloquent than the facts that not a single city in Transoxania took advantage of the revolutionary movements in Khurāsān to withdraw its allegiance, that Abū Muslim’s missionaries went no further than the Arab colonies at Āmul, Bukhārā, and Khwārizm, and that the loyal garrison of Balkh found first support and then refuge in Chaghāniān and Tukhāristān. On these facts the various authorities whose narratives are related by Tabarī completely agree, and by their agreement disprove the exaggerated account given by Dīnawarī (359 f.) that “Abū Muslim sent his envoys (duʿāt) to all quarters of Khurāsān, and the people rallied en masse to Abū Muslim from Herāt, Būshanj, Merv-Rūdh, Tālaqān, Merv, Nasā, Abīward, Tūs, Naysābūr, Sarakhs, Balkh, Chaghāniān, Tukhāristān, Khuttalān, Kish, and Nasaf.” Dīnawarī himself states a little later that Samarqand joined Abū Muslim only after the death of Nasr. Abū Muslim’s main strength, in fact, was drawn from Lower Tukhāristān and the neighbourhood of Merv-Rūdh, several of the princes of which, including the ruler of Būshanj and Khālid b. Barmak, declared for him. But even here the people were not solidly against the administration. We are told that a camp was established at Jīranj (south of Merv) “to cut off the reinforcements of Nasr b. Sayyār from Merv-Rūdh, Balkh, and the districts of (Lower) Tukhāristān.” Herāt fell to Abū Muslim by force of arms. The Syrian garrison of Balkh, together with the Mudarite party, were supported by the rulers of both Upper and Lower Tukhāristān, and twice recaptured the city from their stronghold at Tirmidh. An example of Abū Muslim’s efforts to gain over the Iranians is afforded by an incident when, having taken 300 Khwārizmian prisoners in an engagement, he treated them well and set them free[108].

The tradition of the enthusiasm of the Iranians for Abū Muslim is true only of the period after his success. In our most authentic records there is no trace of a mass movement such as has so often been portrayed. His following was at first comparatively so small that had the Arabs been more willing to support Nasr at the outset, it is practically certain that it would have melted away as rapidly as the following of Hārith b. Surayj at the first reverse. “Nothing succeeds like success,” and Abū Muslim, once victorious on so imposing a scale, and that with the aid of Iranians, became a heroic figure among the peoples of Eastern Khurāsān. The legend penetrated but slowly into Transoxania. When by 130/748, however, the whole of Eastern Khurāsān had fallen to Abū Muslim and Nasr no longer held authority, his governors in Transoxania were replaced by the nominees of Abū Muslim without outward disturbance. But the recrudescence of embassies to China shows that under the surface currents were stirring. Shāsh had already thrown off its allegiance and the Sogdian princes had by no means lost all hope of regaining independence in spite of the tranquillity of the last few years. As it happened, however, the first revolt was not on their part but by the Arab garrison of Bukhārā under Sharīk b. Shaykh in 133/750-751. The rising, which was due to their resentment at the seizure of the Caliphate by the ʿAbbāsids and the passing over of the ʿAlid house, was suppressed with some difficulty by Abū Muslim’s lieutenant Ziyād b. Sālih assisted by the Bukhār Khudāh. The fact that the Bukhār-Khudāh assisted the troops of Abū Muslim against Sharīk might be regarded as an indication that he belonged to the party of the former. This inference is more than doubtful, however. Of the 30,000 men, who, we are told, joined the rebels, probably the greater part were the townsmen, or “popular party,” of Bukhārā. The revolt thus assumed the domestic character of a movement against the aristocratic party, who, led by the Bukhār-Khudāh, naturally cooperated with the Government in its suppression. The events of the following year are sufficient evidence against any other explanation. According to Narshakhī, who gives by far the fullest account of this revolt, Ziyād had also to suppress a similar movement in Samarqand. In the same year an expedition was sent into Khuttal by Abū Dāwud, the governor of Balkh. Al-Hanash at first offered no opposition; later in the campaign he attempted to hold out against the Arabs but was forced to fly to the Turks and thence to China where he was given the title of Jabghu in recompense for his resistance[109]. By this expedition Khuttal was effectively annexed to the Arab government for the first time.

Of much greater, and indeed decisive, importance were the results of an expedition under Ziyād b. Sālih into the Turkish lands beyond the Jaxartes. It is surprising to find no reference to this either in Tabarī or any other of the early historians. A short notice is given by Ibn al-Athīr, drawn from some source which is now apparently lost. The earliest reference which we find in the Arabic histories seems to be a passing mention of Ziyād b. Sālih’s expedition “into Sīn” in a monograph on Baghdād by Ibn Tayfūr (d. 250/983)[110]. For a detailed account of the battle we are therefore dependent on the Chinese sources[111]. In 747 and 749 the Jabghu of Tukhāristān had appealed to China for aid against certain petty chiefs who were giving trouble in the Gilghit and Chitral valleys. The governor of Kucha despatched on this duty a Corean officer, Kao-hsien-shih, who punished the offenders in a series of amazing campaigns over the high passes of the Karakorum. Before returning to Kucha after the last campaign he was called in by the King of Farghāna to assist him against the king of Shāsh. Kao-hsien-shih at first came to terms with the king of Shāsh but when on some pretext he broke his word and seized the city, the heir to the kingdom fled to Sughd for assistance and persuaded Abū Muslim to intervene. A strong force was accordingly despatched under Ziyād b. Sālih. The Chinese, with the army of Farghāna and the Karluks (who had succeeded the Türgesh in the hegemony of the Western Turks), gave battle at Athlakh, near Tarāz, in July 751 (Dhuʾl-hijja 133). During the engagement the Karluks deserted and Kao-hsien-shih, caught between them and the Arabs, suffered a crushing defeat. Though this battle marks the end of Chinese power in the West, it was in consequence of internal disruption rather than external pressure. Nothing was further at first from the minds of the princes of Sughd than the passing of the long tradition of Chinese sovereignty, indeed it blazed up more strongly than ever. For had not a Chinese army actually visited Shāsh on their very borders; even if the Arabs had won the first battle, would they not return to avenge the defeat? For the last time the Shao-wu princes planned a concerted rising in Bukhārā, Kish, Sughd, and Ushrūsana. But China gave neither aid nor encouragement; the presence of Abū Muslim at Samarqand overawed the Sughdians, and only at Kish did the revolt assume serious proportions. Abū Dāwud’s army easily crushed the insurgents in a pitched battle at Kandak, near Kish, killing the king Al-Ikhrīd and many of the other dihqāns. Amongst the treasures of the royal palace which were sent to Samarqand were “many articles of rare Chinese workmanship, vessels inlaid with gold, saddles, brocades, and other objects d’art.” The Bukhār-Khudāh Qutayba and the dihqāns of Sughd also paid for their complicity with their lives[112].

So ended the last attempt at restoring an independent Sogdiana under the old régime. For some years yet the princes of Sughd, Khwārizm, and Tukhāristān continued to send appeals to China. The Emperor, however, “preoccupied with maintaining peace, praised them all and gave them consolation, then having warned them sent them back to assure tranquillity in the Western lands.” Abū Muslim had also, it would seem, realised the importance of maintaining relations with the Chinese court, for a succession of embassies from “the Arabs with black garments” is reported, beginning in the year following the battle of the Talas. As many as three are mentioned in a single year. It is possible that these embassies were in part intended to keep the government informed on the progress of the civil wars in China, though the active interest of the new administration in their commerce would, as before, tend to reconcile the influential mercantile communities to ʿAbbāsid rule. The actual deathblow to the tradition of Chinese overlordship in Western Central Asia was given, not by any such isolated incident as the battle of the Talas, but by the participation of Central Asian contingents in the restoration of the Emperor to his capital in 757[113]. Men from the distant lands to whom China had seemed an immeasurably powerful and unconquerable Empire now saw with their own eyes the fatal weaknesses that Chinese diplomacy had so skilfully concealed. From this blow Chinese prestige never recovered.

The complete shattering of the Western Turkish empires by the Chinese policy had also put an end to all possibility of intervention from that side. Transoxania, therefore, was unable to look for outside support, while the reorganization of the Muslim Empire by the early ʿAbbāsid Caliphs prevented, not indeed sporadic though sometimes serious risings, but any repetition of the concerted efforts at national independence. The Shao-wu princes and the more important dihqāns continued to exercise a nominal rule until the advent of the Sāmānids, but many of them found that the new policy of the Empire offered them an opportunity of honourable and lucrative service in its behalf and were quick to take advantage of it. On the other hand the frequent revolts in Eastern Khurāsān under the guise of religious movements show that the mass of the people remained unalterably hostile to their conquerors[114]. In none of these, however, was the whole of Transoxania involved until the rising organized by Rāfiʿ b. Layth three years after the fall of the Barmakids. The extraordinary success of his movement may partly be ascribed to resentment at their disgrace, but it perhaps counted for something that he was the grandson of Nasr b. Sayyār. Though the revolt failed it led directly to the only solution by which Transoxania could ever become reconciled to inclusion in the Empire of the ʿAbbāsids. Whether by wise judgment or happy chance, to Maʿmūn belongs the credit of laying the foundations of the brilliant Muhammadan civilisation which the Iranian peoples of Central Asia were to enjoy under the rule of a dynasty of their own race.