In 705 AD, the Umayyad dynasty of the Arab Empire began a new wave of expansion, by which time the Umayyad dynasty had occupied the outer areas of the Amu Darya River, while the Sogdians living in Central Asia still firmly controlled the major cities of Samarkand and Bukhara in the river region. In the spring of that year, Qudipo, who was governor of Khorasan of the Umayyad dynasty, led an army across the Amu Darya River and began the Arab war of conquest of Central Asia.
The armies of the Arab Empire
Born in Syria in 640 AD, Qudipo served in the Umayyad army for his early years, was promoted by his governor Hajjaja in 698 for his military exploits, and was later appointed governor of Khorasan by Caliph Walid I, in charge of most of eastern Iran. Because Qutipo's garrison bordered Central Asia, Walid I entrusted him with the task of conquering Central Asia, and the Arabs at that time coveted the rich lands of the river region.
At that time, the main inhabitants of Central Asian towns were Sogdians, and the Sogdians who were good at business established many small countries centered on the cities in which they lived, and Chinese history books called these countries the Nine Kingdoms of Zhaowu. Although the Sogdian army was not consolidated into a single force at that time, the ancient Sogdians were very martial, most of the men were qualified warriors, and they also had perfect fortifications, which was a great threat to the Arabs, who were known for their cavalry. In addition, in the steppes beyond the river, there lived many nomadic herders who were good at riding and shooting, and they could come at any time to help the Sogdians resist the Arabs.
The Sogdians of antiquity
At that time, there were not many Arab soldiers under Qudipo, and many of them went to the reclamation and colonization, and the number of soldiers who could really fight was probably no more than 40,000. If Qudipo had crossed the Amu Darya River and attacked the Sogdian cities directly, the Arabs would have been able to capture some of the cities in the river in the end, at a very high cost of casualties, and might even have been completely annihilated. Qudibo also understood this, so he used a "tactic" during the expedition against the Sogdians to minimize the losses of the Arabs under Qudipo.
After Qu Dibo entered Central Asia, he first faced the Fire Seeker Kingdom located in the Khwarazm region, but Qu Di Bo did not lose a single soldier when he conquered the Fire Seeker Country, he secretly bribed the Brother of the Fire Seeker King, Hurazade, and then helped Hurazade to seize power, so that the Fire Seeker State became Qu Di Bo's ally. After solving the fire search, Qu Dibo's army pointed directly at Bukhara, the second largest city in Central Asia, and faced the nobles and residents of Bukhara, Qu Dibo used a money offensive.
He promised the inhabitants of Bukhara that if they surrendered, they would never have to pay taxes, which was a great temptation for the profit-hungry Sogdians, so they opened the gates of the city and welcomed Qudipo's army into the city, and the Arabs occupied Bukhara with little resistance.
Samarkand
The surrender of the fire-seeking state and the city of Bukhara greatly enhanced the strength of the Arabs, and the inhabitants of these two places became qudipo's loyal partners, so that when qudibo later attacked Samarkand, the largest city in Central Asia, a large number of sogdians from the fire-seeking country and the city of Bukhara participated in the siege, and these people had become qudipo's loyalists, and they did not hesitate to use the blood of their people to repay qudibo. When the king of Samarkand saw this, he surrendered Kaesong after a period of resistance, and Qudipo may have given these capitulators a beautiful promise that the property of the inhabitants of Samarkand would not be plundered and their lives would not be threatened.
It was on the basis of this promise that Qudipo occupied most of the Sogdians, and the Sogdian nobleman Ikhshid, who was the most resolute rebel against Qudipo, once satirized the Sogdians who surrendered to the Arabs:
"Qudipo did not defeat the Sogdians; he relied on his Sogdian brethren and relatives to defeat us."
Arab
But when Qudipo later occupied the stone kingdom in Tashkent, he began to liquidate all The Sogdians, and he had "forgotten" the good promises he had made to the Sogdians. The inhabitants of the fire-seeking nation became slaves, the Bukharans were forced to pay double taxes to the Arabs, the wealth of the city of Samarkand was plundered, the inhabitants of the city were driven out of their houses, and the Arabs lived as conquerors in Sogdian castles. Barthold, a Russian scholar of The history of Middle East Asia, once argued that:
"The Arabs led by Qudipo were able to treacherously defend themselves in order to win, which was the main reason why they were able to defeat the Sogdians quickly."
When the Sogdians saw the true face of Qudypo, the king of Samarkand asked the Tang Dynasty for help, hoping that the Tang Emperor would send a large army to drive out the Arabs, but it was too late. After Qudipo was killed by the caliph in 715 AD, the governors sent by the Umayyad dynasty to rule the Sogdians began to intensify their treatment of the Sogdians, leading to a continuous revolt of the Sogdians against Arab rule, which continued until the demise of the Umayyad dynasty.