|
MongoliaInfluence of Tang China
From 629 to 648, a reunited China--under the Tang Dynasty
(A.D. 618-906)--destroyed the power of the Eastern Türk north of
the Gobi; established suzerainty over the Kitan, a semi-nomadic
Mongol people who lived in areas that became the modern Chinese
provinces of Heilongjiang and Jilin; and formed an alliance with
the
Uighurs (see Glossary),
who inhabited the region between the
Altai Mountains and Lake Balkash. Between 641 and 648, the Tang
conquered the Western Türk, reestablishing Chinese sovereignty
over Xinjiang and exacting tribute from west of the Pamir
Mountains. The Türk empire finally ended in 744.
For more than a century, the Tang retained control of central
and eastern Mongolia and parts of Inner Asia. During this
century, the Tang expanded Chinese control into the Oxus Valley.
At the same time, their allies and nominal vassals, the Uighurs,
conquered much of western and northern Mongolia until, by the
middle of the eighth century, the Uighur seminomadic empire
extended from Lake Balkash to Lake Baykal.
It was at about this time that the Arab-led tide of Islam
reached Inner Asia. After a bitter struggle, the Chinese were
ejected from the Oxus Valley, but with Uighur assistance they
defeated Muslim efforts to penetrate into Xinjiang. The earliest
Mongol links with Tibetan Buddhism, or
Lamaism (see Glossary),
also may have been established in this period
(see Religion
, ch.
2). During this time, the Kitan of western Manchuria took
advantage of the situation to throw off Chinese control, and they
began to raid northern China.
Despite these crippling losses, the Tang recovered and, with
considerable Uighur assistance, held their frontiers. Tang
dependence upon their northern allies was apparently a source of
embarrassment to the Chinese, who surreptitiously encouraged the
Kirghiz and the Karluks to attack the Uighurs, driving them south
into the Tarim Basin. As a result of the Kirghiz action, the
Uighur empire collapsed in 846. Some of the Uighurs emigrated to
Chinese Turkestan (the Turpan region), where they established a
flourishing kingdom that freely submitted to Chinggis Khan
several centuries later
(see Early Wars in China
, this ch.).
Ironically, this weakening of the Uighurs undoubtedly hastened
the decline and fall of the Tang Dynasty over the next fifty
years.
Data as of June 1989
|
