In fact, many people now talk about the turks too broadly, and even create a feeling for others that Central Asia in the history of the Tang Dynasty has become the domain of the Turks, and Islam has followed them, and it is they who have introduced Islam to Xinjiang, China, in large quantities or on a large scale.
In fact, this is not the case, the Turks were also heroes against the Arab Empire, and they were not the first to introduce Islam to Xinjiang. During the Arab Empire, Islam did not have any influence on the religious beliefs of the masses in the area of present-day Xinjiang, and after the collapse of the Arab Empire, Islam was truly introduced to Xinjiang by the Persians through the Qarakhanid dynasty, and at that time, it was difficult to distinguish who the Turks were, and even the concept of turks as a race or nation no longer existed.
The Gelug tribe
The Gelulu were a Turkic tribe, or rather a Turkic-speaking nomadic tribe, belonging to the Tang Dynasty in the early 1950s and living in the area around the Altai Mountains and Beiting (present-day Jimsar, Xinjiang). The tribe's fall to the Arab Empire (i.e., the Abbasids, the Black-Clad Eater) marked the historic Battle of The Rus.
The Tang Dynasty had a habit of dealing with the ethnic minorities in the north, that is, to let those ethnic groups affiliated with the Tang participate in some foreign wars, let them become soldiers, become mercenaries, and accept the command of Tang generals.
In 750, Gao Xianzhi defeated the Shi kingdom and Tuqi Shi in Central Asia, and became the governor of The Tang Dynasty in Central Asia. In this battle, Gao Xianzhi beheaded the king of the Stone Kingdom, but the prince of the Stone Kingdom fled to the Arab Abbasid Dynasty and asked for the assistance of the Abbasid Dynasty, and Gao Xianzhi preemptively attacked the Abbasid Dynasty. In April 751, Gao Xianzhi's troops set out from Anxi, crossed the Pamir Plateau (Green Ridge), crossed the desert, and after a three-month long journey, reached the Arab-controlled Melus in July and began to besiege the city of Melus. What Gao Xianzhi did not expect was that during the battle, the Ge Lulu people, who were mercenaries of the Tang Dynasty, suddenly rebelled and attacked the Tang army with the Arab army, resulting in the defeat of the Tang army, leaving only a few thousand people to return.
The Arabs were furious about the outcome of the war, because it would promote their strength and martial arts. Later Arab historians recorded that the Abbasids killed 50,000 Tang troops and captured 20,000 Tang troops, which was far higher than the total number of troops brought by Gao Xianzhi at that time. The fact is that after the war, the Tang Dynasty still controlled the Western Regions, and the Abbasid Dynasty immediately sent people to make peace with the Tang Dynasty. The relationship between the Tang Dynasty and Arabia was not significantly affected, and the Abbasid Dynasty did not change much from the previous dynasties in terms of its relations with the Tang Dynasty.
Why did the Abbasids make peace with the Tang Dynasty? Mainly because of its infighting and rebellion, it no longer has the ability to move east and regard the Tang Dynasty as an enemy, and of course, it does not have the ability to Islamize the Western Regions. Instead, Ge Lulu, who had fallen to the Abbasid Dynasty, became stronger and later became stronger, and in 766 gradually replaced Tuqi Shi and occupied the western Turkic homeland of the Chu River Valley, including the famous Shanye City and the City of Qiluosi.
The Turkishi tribe
The Turkishi tribe, the Western Turks, but to say that they are Turkic must be a little impure. The tribe was first scattered in the Ili River Valley, and in the early 1950s it was subordinated to the Western Turk Khan Ashina helu. In 658, after the Tang general Su Dingfang led an army to pacify Ashina Helu, the Tang Dynasty set up two governorates, with the Tuqi Shiso Ge Mohe Department in the Governor's Mansion of Yalu Prefecture (near the Present-day Xiili River in Yining City), and the Tuqi Shi Alishi Department in the Prefecture of Qishan (in the area of present-day Almaty, Kazakhstan), which was subordinate to the Protectorate of Anxi. Since then, the Turks have stepped onto the stage of history in the homeland of the Western Turks.
At the same time, the Tang Dynasty also established the Kunling Capital Protectorate and the Mengchi Capital Protectorate, which were in charge of the Western Turkic departments west of the Yingjiao River (present-day Bayinbrook Grassland, Xinjiang) west of Yanqi to the Hengluosi River Valley (around the present-day City of Jiangbul, Kazakhstan), which were also under the jurisdiction of the Anxi Du Protector. The leader of the Tuqishi tribe was entrusted with heavy responsibilities, and during the time of Wu Zetian, the tribal leader Wu Zhile basically became the ruling force in the Western Regions, and Guizi, Khotan, Yanqi and Broken Leaves were all controlled by Wu Qianle. Util divided his people into twenty tribes, each of which was set up as a governor, with 7,000 soldiers, and nomadic herders in the Western Turk homeland. In 706, Emperor Zhongzong of Tang made Wu Zhile the "King of Huaide County", and together with the capital of Anxi, he guarded the western border. At this point, the Western Regions Raider Khanate was basically formed.
The Khan Sulu in the history of Turkishi was also a hero against the Arab Empire, and the greatest significance of Turkishi's existence was that as the western barrier of the Tang Dynasty, it once played an effective role in preventing the Arab Empire from advancing eastward. The Umayyad Dynasty, Chinese also known as the Umayyad Dynasty, the Omerian Dynasty, was the first hereditary dynasty of the Arab Empire. In 724, Sulu defeated the Umayyad invading army at present-day Hujand, Tajikistan, and drove the Arab forces back south of the Amu Darya River, so that the Arabs never dared to step into the river easily. Three years later, he led an army west against the Umayyad Dynasty, which won a great victory and recaptured the city of Yujiao (present-day Bukhara, Uzbekistan) for the Tang. In 730, he built another campaign for the Tang Dynasty (present-day Samarkand, Uzbekistan), which wiped out almost all of the 12,000 elite troops reinforced by the Arab army.
Sulu Khan brought Turkishi into his heyday during his reign, in 738, Sulu Khan was killed by his subordinates, Turkishi soon became chaotic, his successor Mohe Dagan broke with the Tang Dynasty, and was attacked by the Tang Dynasty continuously, in 744, Mohe Dagan was killed by Fu Mengling, and in 751, Gao Xianzhi captured another Turkic leader. At this point, the Raiders were no longer glamorous, and were eventually replaced by Gelug after the Battle of Gorros.
Why do we say that turkics must be somewhat impure as Turks? From the ethnic origin, Tuqishi is composed of 3 tribes: Tuqishi, Chumukun, and Chebishi. Both are outsiders. Turkishi was a descendant of the Wusun people, once known as "SariUsun", but it was only Turkified. Chu mukun, which is not much recorded in historical documents, is believed by scholars today to be the remnants of the Ōtsuki clan, who were conquered by the Turkishi tribe and became the first foreign members of the Turkishi tribe.
Che Noshi, also known as the Gaoche people (Shule), only left the Mongolian plateau for Xinjiang during the Turkic expedition to the west, and were eventually exiled to Central Asia because their chieftain Gelen rebelled against Western Turkic rule. During the civil unrest in the Western Turks, its chief Che chiefTain He Li led a part of his troops to the east and surrendered to the Tang Dynasty, and Qi Mo He Li also became a famous general of the Tang Dynasty. The sulu Khan mentioned above is also a Che-nosed Shi, because he is not a "purebred" Turkishi, and his power is called "Black Surname Turkishi", and the "purebred" Turkishi, that is, the descendants of the Wusun people, are called "Huang surname Turkishi".
Unfortunately, however, like Gelug, Turks are referred to in many sources as Turkic, and they are considered "purebred" Turks. It is not difficult to see that history here gave the Turks a very general concept, as long as those who once submitted to the Turkic regime were called Turks.
Qarakhanid dynasty
The Qarakhanid Dynasty, also known as the "Black Khan", was a feudal regime established by Turkic-speaking peoples in the northwestern region of ancient China in present-day Xinjiang and Central Asia. At its peak, the dynasty controlled an area equivalent to most of the area under the jurisdiction of the Tang Dynasty's Anxi and Beiting protectorates, paying tribute to the Song Dynasty, and in 1041, the khanate was officially divided into east and west.
Regarding the founders of the Black Khan Dynasty, there are "Theory of The Mo Mo", "The Theory of Ge Lulu", "The Theory of Chu Yue", "The Theory of Moving West to the Green Ridge", etc., and we understand it in this way, that is, the Black Khan Dynasty was jointly established by the peoples of Ban Mo, Gelulu, Chuyue, Uighur and so on. As already introduced in the preceding article, the Sample Mill people were once subordinate to the Turks, but it cannot be said that they were a branch of the Turks, because the Sample Mill was also a "place name", that is, the Tang Dynasty Pharyngeal Governor's Mansion, in present-day Taldi Kurgan Prefecture of Kazakhstan, with jurisdiction over the three prefectures of Pharyngeal Noodles, Mouth Mouth, and Jin, which belonged to the Protectorate of The Great Andean Capital. In 709, it returned to the Later Turks. It was restored in 715 and returned to the kingdom of Gelulu in 753. This way of naming regions is close to what we say today that so-and-so is a Sichuan, Gansu, Xinjiang, and so on, but it is only a definition of the region, and it is difficult to guarantee which ethnic group they are.
The moon is Shatuo, the Western Turkic department. Because it once lived in the great desert area of present-day northeastern Xinjiang, it was called Shatuo. Li Cunxun, who founded the Later Tang Dynasty, Shi Jingyao, who established the Later Jin Dynasty, and Liu Zhiyuan, who established the Later Han, were also Shatuo people. The Western Uighurs of the Onion Ridge are one of the ancestors of present-day Uyghurs. Through these, it is not difficult to see that the so-called Turks in history are actually a very complex internal ethnic group, which gradually disappeared with the demise of the Turkic regime and was integrated into other ethnic groups.
It is said that the founder of the Black Khan Dynasty was named Vijay Khadir Khan. After the death of Qadir Khan, his eldest son, in Tokmak in the territory of the present-day Kyrgyz Republic, called himself Aslan Qarakhan (meaning Lion Khan), as The Chief Khan; the younger son, Ogurchak, built the capital of the city of Lus, and called himself Bugera Qara Khan (meaning Gongtu Khan) as deputy khan. The time was around 880 AD, less than 30 years from the 907th year of the fall of the Tang Dynasty.
The khans of the Black Khan Dynasty liked to add the word "peach blossom stone" to their khan's name to indicate that they were "Chinese". The dynasty was also initially uninhibited, and during the time of Ogurchak, he fought fiercely against the Persian Samanid dynasty in Central Asia. In 873, after the fall of the Tahir dynasty, Ahmed unified the river region. In 874, his son Nasr ibn Al-Ahmet was appointed governor of the river region by the caliph, the beginning of the Samanid dynasty. The Persians originally embraced Zoroastrianism and later converted to Islam.
In 893, the Samanid Emperor Ismail bin Mahmud attacked Henglusi, killing 10,000 of Ogurchak's warriors and capturing his wife and 15,000 men. Ogurchak was forced to move the capital to Kashgar and continue the struggle against the Samanid dynasty. According to the tradition of the nomadic tribes in northern China, Ogurchak married his sister-in-law after the death of his brother Bazir, and took in his brother's son, who was later Satuq Bogra Khan, who declared Islam the state religion and vigorously promoted it, so that Islam was officially transmitted to Xinjiang, China.
The general story goes like this: In the early years, under the influence of the Samanid dynasty, Satuk was developed into a "secret Muslim" by a Persian named Nasser Samani, and with the support of Islamic jihadists in the river region, defeated and killed his uncle Ogurchak and seized power. After Satuq's death, his son Musa succeeded to the throne as Arslan Khan, islamizing the dynasty. In 960, Musa declared Islam the state religion, and 200,000 Turks were forcibly commissioned.
Some people say that the Black Khan Dynasty was the first Turkic-speaking people, the Islamic Dynasty, and we want to emphasize that the main ethnic group of the Black Khan Dynasty was the Uighurs. In 960, when Musa declared Islam the state religion, when Zhao Kuangyin launched the Chen Qiao Mutiny to establish the Song Dynasty, at this time, from 540, the word Turk began to appear in Chinese history, to 630 and 657, when the Eastern Turks and Western Turks were destroyed by the Tang, and then after 745, the Turks disappeared, and the Turks withdrew from the historical stage of northern China for many years, and the word Turk gradually disappeared from the Annals of Chinese history. That is to say, in 960, as a regime or as a nation, the Turks no longer existed in Chinese historical records. Turkic-speaking peoples are not equal to Turkic peoples. Therefore, there is no such thing as the Turks who introduced Islam to Xinjiang, China.
Today, many people are seriously saying that the descendants of the ancient Turks are the Turks, Turkmens, Kazakhs, Tatars (Tatars), Yakuts, Kyrgyz (Kyrgyz), Salars (Salars), Azerbaijanis, Uzbeks, Bashkirs, Chuvash, Tuvans, Altai and so on. In fact, these people themselves are many different ethnic groups, not descendants of the ancient Turks, at best they can speak Turkic languages, and their ancestors have submitted to the Turkic regime in Chinese history.
In the case of the Turks, for example, they "knew" that there was still a little bit of Turkic conception in their genes, which was something that made them write their own "Belonging" to the Turks according to the Chinese Book of Wei. Even in 1836, an emissary was sent to China in an attempt to use "Turk" as a sign to unite all Muslims in Central Asia and even China and the world, so as to revitalize the weakening Ottoman Empire.
What we want to say is that a nation is a nation, a religion is a religion, two things cannot become the same thing, the Turks will not be unaware, the Turks in Chinese history were heroes against the Arab Empire, nor were the Turks who introduced Islam to Xinjiang, China. (Wen | Lusheng)