In 1902, the Royal Geographical Society published a geopolitical article from Mackinder, in which he divided the earth into two parts, namely, a core area of Asia, Europe and Africa, and a series of relatively isolated continents and archipelagos that surrounded its edge, such as the Americas, Australia, Japan, and the British Isles. As the core region of the earth, Asia, Africa and Europe occupy the world's largest, most populous and richest land combination, so it is called the geographical term "world island".
The emergence of the concept of "world island" has influenced the development and trend of many geopolitical events such as the two world wars and the Cold War in the 20th century, but as the region with the longest history of civilization, "world island" has indeed influenced the trend of human civilization development for a long time. As a witness to the exchange of different civilizations on the mainland, as early as the Western Han Dynasty, the Silk Road has undertaken the medium of cultural trade between the East and the West. However, with the collapse of the four ancient world empires (Eastern Han, Roman, Sabbath, and Kushan), Eurasia was once again in chaos, and it was not until the first half of the 7th century that the Silk Road order was re-established.
※ The rise of Datang and Dashi reconstructs the Silk Road order? ※
In 630, under the leadership of the generals Li Ji and Li Jing, the Tang Dynasty's hundreds of thousands of troops attacked the Turks in the north, and pursued them to the north of the Yin Mountains, capturing Jieli Khan, and the Eastern Turks perished. Subsequently, ashina sher, Tielebu Qifu Heli and other steppe tribes known for their wisdom and courage were annexed and jointly revered Tang Taizong as the Heavenly Khan, and the Tang Dynasty's power gradually stabilized in the north of the desert and began to gradually extend to the western region. In the following decades, the Tang Dynasty attacked Goguryeo, Baekje, and XueYantuo, and the state rose sharply. However, Tang Taizong Li Shimin did understand the logic of the rule of the steppe nomadic tribes very well, and his ethnic policies and personal heroism greatly enhanced the prestige of the central government of the Tang Dynasty. By 649, when Emperor Taizong died, hundreds of people who were officials in the imperial court and the leaders of the minority tribes who came to pay tribute were weeping and weeping when they heard the bad news. Many even cut their hair, cut their faces, and cut off their ears. Ashina Sher and Chifu Heli heard the news and asked for a killing and martyrdom, but they were blocked. Songtsen Gampo also wrote a letter of allegiance and mourning, indicating that if any of his courtiers were disloyal when the Son of Heaven was newly established, he would lead his troops to the disaster. It can be seen how high the status of the Tang Dynasty in the eastern section of the Silk Road was in the first half of the seventh century.
In the year when Tang Taizong was revered as the "Heavenly Khan" by many tribal leaders in the northern steppe, after twenty years of development, Muhammad, who had gathered enough strength, led a large Muslim army to the city of Mecca in 630, and after the two sides concluded the "Treaty of Hudbiye Peace", the city was taken without bloodshed. Since then, the nobles of Mecca have enjoyed a superior religious position and have become the most important holy city in Islam. Two years later, in 632, the Arab Empire was officially founded, and there was a tribe in the Arab Empire that was close to Sassanid Persia, which translated in Persian as Tay, so it was used by the Sassanids and even the Tang Dynasty to refer to the entire Arab ethnic group. During the four subsequent caliphates, the empire continued to expand and launched attacks on Byzantium and Sassanid Persia. After years of confrontation, the old enemies of Byzantium and Sassanid Persia, each was exhausted and powerless to stop the Arabs. Eventually, Byzantium lost Syria and Jerusalem, and the Sassanid Empire was chased and beaten until it collapsed. At this point, Dashi expanded its power to the south of Central Asia, and many ethnic tribes in Central Asia, fearful of the arab strength and ethnic policies, threw themselves into the hands of the Tang Dynasty. The two great peaks of civilization in the Middle Ages are about to meet.
※Collision between the Tang Dynasty and the Arab Empire?※
Because the Arab Empire was a theocratic form of government, and the empire's territory spanned many different civilizations in ancient times, just when the external expansion was breaking through, the empire was divided internally. The Shia, which was formed by pro-Ali figures from the Hashemite family, questioned the legitimacy of the Umayyad-born Ottoman caliphate and opposed the Sunnis who generally accepted the Ottoman succession. After this, the Ottomans succeeded ali as caliph in 656. Soon, however, a more radical Khawariji faction emerged within the Shiites, who instead assassinated Ali, culminating in the end of the theocratic republican era (the period of the orthodox caliphate). The Umayyad family took the opportunity to seize central power in the empire and established the Umayyad dynasty. By 710 AD, the Arab Empire during the Umayyad Dynasty, in order to compete with the Tang Empire for Central Asia, concentrated all its national strength to develop the military, and its military strength was roughly comparable to that of Tubo in Central Asia.
After Emperor Taizong of Tang, the Tang Dynasty went through the period of Emperor Gaozong and Wu Zetian of Tang, and the country's power was still in its heyday. Among them, during the reign of Emperor Gaozong of Tang and Li Zhi, militarily the Territory of the Tang Dynasty continued to expand westward, reaching the most extensive territory of the Tang Dynasty; diplomatically, the mobei tribes continued the inheritance of the Taizong period and continued to honor the Tang Emperor as the Heavenly Khan; politically, the emperors of Emperor Gaozong of Tang followed Xiao Zhi and Cao Sui, in accordance with the laws of the Tang Taizong period, the border was stable, and the people were in Fu'an. Because of this, during the reign of Emperor Gaozong, it was called the legacy of Zhenguan by later generations, and the history was called "the rule of Yonghui". As early as the reign of Emperor Gaozong, Wu Zetian handled the government for reasons of Li Zhi's health, and was called the "Second Sage". After being promoted to the throne as Emperor Zetiannu, he vigorously promoted officials who were born in the imperial examination, and made progress in social, cultural, artistic, and economic aspects. Zhou Wu's twenty years were commented by the history books as "Shang Chengzhen Guan, Lower Qi Kaiyuan". However, the Shenlong coup and the later dictatorship of Wei's foreign relatives led to a certain period of turmoil in the Tang Dynasty. In 710, Li Longji, the third son of King Xiang of the Tang Dynasty, led an army to fight against the forces of foreign relatives such as Wei and Wu, stabilized the tang dynasty, and honored his father Li Dan, the Prince of Xiang, as emperor for Ruizong. Later, Li Longji succeeded to the throne as Emperor Xuanzong of Tang.
In 751, during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, the Tang Dynasty's Anxi Protectorate and the Governorate of Khorasan met in Central Asia, and the Battle of Qiluosi broke out. The location of the Lyros has not been specified, but roughly west of the Onion Ridge (the Sheng Tang Dynasty was also one of the few periods in China to control the west of the Onion Ridge for a long period of time) near the Taraz of present-day Kazakhstan. The battle arose as a result of the Tang Dynasty's repressive policy towards the Shi state. In the end, although the Tang army attacked for a long time, it attacked more with less and gained superior battle losses. In the end, due to factors such as backup supplies, the number of personnel, and the betrayal of allies, they were defeated and withdrawn. Although the battle ended with the victory of the Afghan army, the Afghan side did not take advantage of the victory to march eastward, but began to pursue a foreign policy of peace, and immediately sent people to make peace with the Tang Dynasty. This may be due to the impression of the tang army's strength, or it may be due to the fact that At this time, Arabia was ruled by the emerging Abbasid dynasty, and internal instability continued to be sorted out. The Tang Dynasty also did not lose Anxi and Beiting due to the Battle of Qiluo (after about 790, tang dezong lost contact with the western region), but the Tang army in the western region quickly recovered and continued to expand, and in 754 its power in the western region reached its peak, until the situation changed after the Anshi Rebellion.
※ Twilight of the Empire - Datang?※
In 755, during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, An Lushan, Shi Siming and others rebelled, and the An Shi Rebellion broke out. Unlike Tang Taizong Li Shimin, although he was also revered as a Heavenly Khan, Tang Xuanzong was not familiar with the logic of his rule over the desert steppes. On the one hand, in order to suppress the power of the scholars in the court, he began to appoint eunuchs and Hu people with no foundation, especially to let the Hu people guard the border; on the other hand, he did not have enough heroism and the vision of knowing people and good responsibilities. In the end, An Lushan rebelled, gaining the support of many Hu tribes in youzhou territory, and when the rebellion was quelled, Gao Xianzhi, who presided over the Battle of Qiluo, went out as a deputy commander to fight the rebellion, lost the front line, retreated to Tongguan, and framed and killed the eunuch Bian Lingcheng for the overseer. This incident not only revealed Tang Xuanzong's serious dereliction of duty in formulating policies in his later years, but also reflected the role that eunuchs were about to play in the political institutions of the late Tang Dynasty.
After suffering heavy damage from the Anshi Rebellion, the Tang Dynasty completely lost contact with Beiting and Anxi during the reign of Emperor Dezong of Tang. The power of the Tubo Empire began to rise and successively occupied Hexi and Western Regions. At this point, the Eurasian Silk Road in the Middle Ages was once again blocked, and the east-west trade exchanges decreased. At the same time, in the chaos of pacifying the history of Anshi, the local festivals that had risen one after another made them effectively independent because they simultaneously controlled the military, political, and financial powers of various localities. This led to an unprecedented increase in distrust of the military generals in the center of the imperial court, and began to increase taxes and expand the forbidden army to defend the imperial court. In order to make the military general bigger, the emperor appointed eunuchs to lead the forbidden army, and gradually formed a eunuch forbidden army interest group, which led to an unprecedented increase in the power of eunuchs, even enough to hold the emperor hostage and abolish it without authorization. In order to cope with internal and external crises, the imperial court repeatedly experienced financial crises and had to maintain heavy taxes, which eventually led to a large-scale civil revolt instigated by salt merchants.
※ Twilight of the Empire - The Great Eclipse?※
As mentioned earlier, the Arab Empire had already experienced a period of upheaval at the time of the Battle of The Rus, transitioning from the Umayyad dynasty to the Abbasid dynasty. Soon after, the commander of the Afghan army, Abu Muslim, who presided over the Battle of Tiros, was murdered for his merits and his general Ziyad ibn Al-Sari was executed, which led to a new round of large-scale mutiny. Due to the inherent interweaving of many cultures, languages, nationalities, sects and other factors, the Abbasid dynasty has been in chaos since its founding. The power of the imperial center was shrinking to Baghdad and the surrounding areas, and there were more and more hereditary states on its periphery.
Due to the outbreak of the Anshi Rebellion and the rise of Tibet, the Silk Road was blocked. The Arab Empire, which had been linked by road trade routes to maintain a vast and vastly different geographical region, no longer had a common bond. With the long period of social and economic development, there was an increasingly serious gap between the rich and the poor within the Great Food Empire at this time, and class contradictions became increasingly prominent. Because of the mixture of old and new factors, different interest groups colluding with each other and then betraying each other, the empire was completely divided. In the late Abbasid dynasty, the Turkic slaves attached to Central Asia became mercenaries of the Arab Empire, and gradually formed a pattern of Persian rule, Turkic troops, and Arab chanting within the empire.
※Mountain rain is coming to the wind full of buildings?※
In the second half of the 9th century, the two peak civilizations of the ancient period in the world, the Tang Empire and the Arab Empire, appeared similar to the Great Collapse Ring. In 874-884 AD, the Tang Dynasty broke out the Huangchao Rebellion, which shook the foundation of the country, and the popular uprising initiated by the salt merchant HuangChao quickly swept through the Central Plains and contributed to a new round of Chinese northerners moving south. Almost at the same time as the Huangchao Rebellion, the Abbasid Dynasty broke out the Zangi Uprising (also known as the Singh Uprising or The Layer Period Uprising) in 869-883. The main members of the Zanji Uprising were black slaves from the coast of East Africa, but the ranks of the rebel army were not limited to black slaves, but also included disobedients to the status quo in basra, such as serfs, craftsmen, Bedouins and deserters, which at its peak reached 500,000 people. The Zamgi uprising severely shook the rule of the central government of Baghdad, and before the uprising broke out, there was a rebellion by the Commander-in-Chief of Safar in Khorasan, and the Turkic slave generals stationed in Egypt also took the opportunity to become independent. Since then, Cairo, Syria, and many governorates in the east have become independent of central Baghdad. As for the Córdoba-dominated state established by the Umayyad remnants in the Iberian Peninsula, it has long since left Baghdad.
After suffering the blows of the Huangchao Rebellion, the Tang Dynasty eventually collapsed, and China immediately entered the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Of the five dynasties of the Central Plains, three were founded by the Shatuo (Western Turks), who dominated the development of the Tang Dynasty after its collapse. The heirs to the central Islamic baghdad also originated from the former Western Turkic clique, the Seljuks. Although the Abbasid dynasty survived in name only, it has long since ceased to exist in name only. After that, the caliph was completely reduced to a puppet of the Baiyi family that had risen in the Caspian Sea. By 1055, after another group of Seljuks had captured Baghdad, the caliph had been relieved of its political power and only the status of religious leader had been retained, and the caliph had been edgeted by the sultan.
In summary, the rise of the Tang Dynasty and the Great Food promoted the prosperity of the Silk Road, which in turn fed back and stimulated the development of the two empires. However, with the frequent exchange of Sogdian, Turkic, Persian and other tribes on the Silk Road and the infiltration of the imperial bureaucracy, new hidden dangers were created from within. The Battle of TheRos was only a strategic fringe showdown between the two empires, and the expansion of the two civilizations was unsustainable regardless of victory or defeat. Factors such as the decline of the center, the oppression of the people at the bottom, and the loss of control of local officials all contributed to the complete collapse of the two great empires in the Middle Ages.
After that, the Silk Road fell into the dilemma of traffic blockage again, until the arrival of the steppe people, but by then the Maritime Silk Road had risen, and the ensuing Era of Navigation would completely change the influence of the Silk Road representing land power on the situation of the "world island". After the era of sea power has affected mankind for hundreds of years, entering the 21st century, the grand blueprint of the Silk Road Economic Belt has been proposed again, which will lead and drive a new world pattern.