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Historical thread552–603

Central Asia and the steppe (6th–10th c.)

The steppe and the oases of Central Asia from the fall of the Rouran to the year 1000: the Turkic khaganates and the Sogdian merchants, Tang China and Tibet in the Tarim Basin, the Arab conquest of Transoxiana and the battle of Talas, the Uyghurs and the Kyrgyz, and the Samanids of Bukhara.

5 events · 1 region · Central and Northern Asia

The thread covers the Mongolian and Kazakh steppes, the Tarim Basin, Sogdiana and Bactria (Tokharistan) from the 6th to the 10th century. It opens with the rise of the Turks: in 552 the Ashina overthrew their Rouran overlords, and within a generation their khaganate reached from Manchuria to the Black Sea, destroyed the Hephthalites with the help of Sasanian Iran and exchanged embassies with Byzantium, before splitting into eastern and western halves.

For the 6th century the main written sources come from outside the steppe: the Chinese dynastic histories (the Book of Zhou and the Book of Sui), the Byzantine historians Menander Protector and Theophylact Simocatta, and the Persian and Arabic tradition; the earliest text of the Turks themselves, the Bugut inscription, is written in Sogdian. Years taken from the Chinese histories are precise to the year; disputed dates are given as intervals and explained.

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Events

Key participants

Sources

  1. Wikipedia (English): First Turkic Khaganate
  2. Wikipedia (English): Sogdia
  3. Wikipedia (English): Samanid Empire
  4. Wikipedia (Russian): Тюркский каганат
  5. Wikipedia (Russian): Согдиана
  6. Wikipedia (Russian): Саманиды
  7. Линху Дэфэнь и др. Чжоу шу (Book of Zhou), гл. 50: жизнеописания тюрков и эфталитов.
  8. Вэй Чжэн и др. Суй шу (Book of Sui), гл. 84: жизнеописание тюрков.
  9. Гумилёв Л. Н. Древние тюрки. — М.: Наука, 1967.

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